Response Paper 3

Choose one of the following options for your response paper: 

1. Johnson is writing in part an intellectual history, or a history of ideas. What we tend to get in many history textbooks are “the history[ies] of breakthroughs and eureka moments”; Johnson’s own work argues for “the history of canards and false leads, the history of being wrong” (126). This raises an issue we continue to return to: how narratives are shaped. Why might creating a history based on ideas that have worked be a popular method? What are the dangers or risks of presenting history in this manner?
   
   
2. In presenting why so many Victorians were invested in the miasma theory, Johnson makes the case for a number of factors (from evolutionary to environmental to religious) simultaneously supporting this idea. Do any of these factors seem more (or less) compelling to you than others? What other issues or texts seem to address these sorts of forces? Would you weight any factors differently, and why?