The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning by Jeremy Lent (review)

This ambitious and ultimately disappointing book offers a number of interesting historical arguments but with precious little nuance, in a domain where nuance may matter a great deal. Lent has read widely. He includes summaries of work in anthropology, linguistics, and psychology that can certainly be of interest to historians. The book's early sections about cognition are particularly informative, but it has other nuggets scattered at various points. Moreover, Lent is on the side of the angels in current debates about environmental degradation and the need for a more constructive approach, offering a heartfelt final chapter on the subject.

Non-historians can sometimes offer a sweeping vision and a lively prose that can open new doors. It is important to avoid narrow disciplinary quibbling, recognizing that freedom from petty convention and detail may provide access to greater historical understanding for many readers. That said, and granting that Lent's effort has made something of a stir, a number of problems bedevil this particular venture.

The basic argument is clear enough. Lent believes that culture—the fruit of humans' particular cognitive capacity—determines much of the stuff of history, from the hunter-gatherer past to the present. This claim could lead to engagement with the "cultural turn," but Lent is more intent on implying a greater sense of innovation than this strategy would allow. Actual cultures emerge with hunting and gathering and then with agriculture, but Lent's main further point is the development of two divergent cultural traditions. On the one hand, in Asia (India and primarily China), cultures arose that emphasized human harmony with nature (and a limit to conquest). On the other, in Greece and the Judaic world, a duality between humans and nature took shape that led directly to Christian rationalism and then to the scientific revolution and the various economic and imperialistic endeavors that shaped the modern world. Islam gains Lent's attention only for its ultimate rejection of science, and he largely ignores regions with syncretic cultures.

The argument depends not only on cultural determinism but on a rooted belief that major cultures—like the Chinese or the Western—change little from their origins onward, except that by the time of global modernity, somehow every society has converted to the destructive Western approach, in a process that Lent fails to examine. His good summary of the Great Divergence argument ignores the extent to which explanation turns away from culture; the book includes almost nothing about patterns beginning during the nineteenth century. As Lent properly exhorts in his final chapter, we can only hope that cultures will change sufficiently to end the exploitation of nature.

Western cultural traditions certainly deserve critical appraisal. The importance of culture in world history warrants emphasis, and an interdisciplinary framework and an engaging writing style are always refreshing. On balance, however, Lent's reluctance to address important historical arguments (including the disputes about earlier attempts to highlight an East—West divide), the absence of real attention to processes of cultural change, and the inattention to ongoing cultural diversities outweigh the merits of this particular effort. Hence, Lent's is an incomplete history, which is unlikely to convince the intended audience of the need for future change.