GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL - Cloverport Independent Schools

FURTHER READINGS • 4 5 7
between historical and nonhistorical sciences, with particular reference to
the contrast between biology and physics, but much of what Mayr says is
also applicable to human history. His views will be found in his Evolution
and the Diversity of Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976),
chap. 25, and in Towards a New Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1988), chaps. 1-2.
The methods by which epidemiologists reach cause-and-effect conclusions
about human diseases, without resorting to laboratory experiments
on people, are discussed in standard epidemiology texts, such as A. M.
Lilienfeld and D. E. Lilienfeld, Foundations of Epidemiology, 3rd ed. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Uses of natural experiments are
considered from the viewpoint of an ecologist in my chapter "Overview:
Laboratory experiments, field experiments, and natural experiments," pp.
3-22 in Jared Diamond and Ted Case, eds., Community Ecology (New
York: Harper and Row; 1986). Paul Harvey and Mark Pagel, The Comparative
Method in Evolutionary Biology (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1991), analyzes how to extract conclusions by comparing species.