Volume 21, Number 7 · May 2, 1974
The Jolly Institution
By C. Vann Woodward
Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery
by Robert William Fogel, by Stanley L. Engerman
Little, Brown, 286 pp., $8.95
Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods—A Supplement
by Robert William Fogel, by Stanley L. Engerman
Little, Brown, 267 pp., $12.50
The 'Cliometricians,' as they call themselves, have married the muse of history to the science of mathematics. These statistical historians are extremely sensitive and defensive about the union for they are aware that traditional devotees of Clio, most historians, regard the marriage as a mésalliance, a forced union of incompatibles. Confronted with equations they cannot read, with techniques they cannot understand, with copious data beyond their comprehension, traditional historians have reacted defensively and belligerently themselves. They see their authority challenged, their humanistic values threatened, their canons of criticism ridiculed, and their cherished classics derided as 'soft,' impressionistic, and unscientific. It is not surprising that some of them have overreacted.
Review, 4686 words
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