Entrevista a David Edgerton
“Communicating Science: Pleasures and Pitfalls of Historical Narrative”
Per Jaume Valentines Álvarez i Jaume Sastre Juan
E:“The Shock of the Old” has shocked historians because of its project on global history. Does global history go far beyond from the sum of local histories and from the traditional “big pictures”?
D.E: Really? Why should historians be shocked by a global history?
I can’t answer in general, but in my case I can be very clear: “The Shock of the Old” is not a sum of local histories of technology, nor a traditional big picture. For two reasons. First, local histories are usually embedded in big pictures, often old-fashioned ones: big pictures of history and big pictures of the disciplines in which they arise. Secondly, the book was an attack on standard big pictures of the twentieth century – whether focused on the economy, war, production, or science or technology.