AHQ: "Science" outside Europe

[Hearkener]

Still, my question is left unanswered. The apparent uniqueness of Europe. The antikythera invention alone is a striking example of this. There seem to be other, earlier indicators as well, among other examples, strikingly detailed, if not shockingly realistic, prehistoric cave paintings in France and Spain, that even seem to have evidence of experimentation in perspective, which would see further development in Ancient Rome thousands of years earlier, if not in now lost Ancient Greek paintings, and would ultimately mature in Renaissance Europe. This process is merely one of numerous others that largely originated in, and was developed to it's furthest extent in, Europe. Need I mention naturalistic sculptures predating those of Ancient Egypt, Turkey and Mesopotamia?

What cave paintings are you talking about? History only began in Italy around 800 BCE. Humans have lived there for at least 100,00 years, so "prehistory" is so vague as to be useless. I also disagree with the idea that a cultural continuity exists between the neolithic and the Roman period in Italy.
Furthermore, perspective is not unique to Europe. Attempts at perspective are as old as art itself.
What "numerous other" processes originated in Europe and were brought to their fullest extent there?
What sculptures do you mean?
Please elaborate, you are being far to vague.

 

[The Tai-Pan]

What cave paintings are you talking about? History only began in Italy around 800 BCE. Humans have lived there for at least 100,00 years, so "prehistory" is so vague as to be useless. I also disagree with the idea that a cultural continuity exists between the neolithic and the Roman period in Italy.
Furthermore, perspective is not unique to Europe. Attempts at perspective are as old as art itself.
What "numerous other" processes originated in Europe and were brought to their fullest extent there?
What sculptures do you mean?
Please elaborate, you are being far to vague.

He's been kicked.

 

[Hearkener]

He's been kicked.

Yeah, just noticed that too. Good riddance.

 

[wcv215]

On the antykythera mechanism itself, the reason that say China didn't develop something similar is because the mechanism is designed for a specific purpose, that being astronomy, something that historically wasn't seen as super important in Imperial China. There's a reason that debates about the shape of the Earth were still ongoing after 1600 in China, even though for the West it had been settled science for 2000 years. But that's not a matter of being less advanced, its just a matter of having different priorities.

Note that things like the antykythera mechanism fell into disuse in the West as well, for much the same reason. And mechanisms of such complexity didn't emerge again until clocks started to be something people wanted. 1500 years later.

 

[Alien and Sedition Bat]

Just my two cents: Ancient Greece is probably better understood as a Near Eastern civilization than European. The Greeks had deep and continuous contact and cultural exchange with places like Egypt and Mesopotamia and they wrote entire volumes on the history of the Persians (I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen references to other European cultures in Greek sources) . Plus, as others have pointed out, the Arabs and Persians of the Middle Ages were the direct heirs to the Greek intellectual tradition.

Not "the direct heirs" but "among the heirs" to parts of the Greek intellectual tradition. The Western states would have greater access in some respects through their accumulation of texts and compendiums in Latin (and their ongoing literacy in Latin thanks to the Church). And don't forget the influence of geometry on Byzantine architecture; also there's the proto-physics of John the Grammarian during the era of Justinian. Finally, there's the rationalism of Byzantium's military thinking and the empire as its best's views on debt and taxation (the latter as explicated by Arnold Toynbee after he turned away from his earlier stance that Byzantium was merely a "ghost" of the Roman Empire).

 

[Jürgen]

Halfway serious conclusion: We may have gotten science faster if not for the influence of "Greek/Roman/Christian culture."

You could argue it with Greek and Roman culture, but I disagree with Christian. While Christianity didn’t have the answer to all these question, but the Catholic and the Protestant Churches did build up the educational institutions, which enable the sharing of knowledge and mass education, which enable scientific theory to spread. While these universities were set up to produce clergy, administrators and lawyers, they also ended up producing the people who founded modern science.

 

[wcv215]

You could argue it with Greek and Roman culture, but I disagree with Christian. While Christianity didn’t have the answer to all these question, but the Catholic and the Protestant Churches did build up the educational institutions, which enable the sharing of knowledge and mass education, which enable scientific theory to spread. While these universities were set up to produce clergy, administrators and lawyers, they also ended up producing the people who founded modern science.

And, if such was the case then surely it would be supportable by say…areas with less of such influence, or lacking it entirely, to develop “science” (whatever that means in this context) first.

But that’s not what happened. Its almost like things happen for complicated reasons and boiling it down to simple ones is a fool’s errand.

 

[H.Flashman(VC)]

You could argue it with Greek and Roman culture, but I disagree with Christian. While Christianity didn’t have the answer to all these question, but the Catholic and the Protestant Churches did build up the educational institutions, which enable the sharing of knowledge and mass education, which enable scientific theory to spread. While these universities were set up to produce clergy, administrators and lawyers, they also ended up producing the people who founded modern science.

I would like to nuance this with stating that many universities in the 16th and 17th century were quite conservative bulwarks. Very much of the spreading of the newest theories and ideas was done in correspondences and later through membership of scientific societies. Many of the great scientists of that period didn't work in universities.

 

[Socrates]

Not defending the Eurocentric crap, but I'd argue that China peaked somewhere between the Song and the Ming. All five major continents've had their ups and downs.

This is true, but the ups and downs were all rather minor compared to the massive upswing in technological and economic advantage that happened after 1800, first in Britain, then Germany and the US, then the rest of Western Europe.

 

[Socrates]

The scientific revolution in the 17th century was only made possible by the repudiation of the authorities of the Ancient world (and the repudation of the new created authority of Descartes). That made the way open to accept experimentational observation as the final authority.

It's weird. You are correct in all that you say, but at the same time, the repudiation itself was based on a logical framework that ultimately came from Aristotle. So classical thinking had to be both used and rejected.

 

[Socrates]

Halfway serious conclusion: We may have gotten science faster if not for the influence of "Greek/Roman/Christian culture."

Maybe, but a big part of the advance was possible because of the separation of political and religious authority enabled by Christianity. When the intellectual orthodoxy was owned by someone that didn't have political power, it meant more backing could be given to the heterodox challenges to it.

 

[Sunny]

What cave paintings are you talking about? History only began in Italy around 800 BCE. Humans have lived there for at least 100,00 years, so "prehistory" is so vague as to be useless. I also disagree with the idea that a cultural continuity exists between the neolithic and the Roman period in Italy.
Furthermore, perspective is not unique to Europe. Attempts at perspective are as old as art itself.
What "numerous other" processes originated in Europe and were brought to their fullest extent there?
What sculptures do you mean?
Please elaborate, you are being far to vague.

Of all the stuff in this thread, the cave painting stuff is the one that shocked me the most. Not the Eurocentricism, which is sadly all too common (especially on the net).

But the cave painting one was surprising. Why? Because, everything that has come to light recently in anthropology and genetics indicates strongly that modern Europeans have only a small fraction of European Hunter Gatherer/Cro-Magnon DNA. They were a dark skinned people, who from various reconstructions I have seen, bear a striking resemblance to Australian Aboriginals (but with blue eyes) who were overrun and almost totally replaced by lighter skinned Caucasian farmers from what is today Turkey and the Middle East. Some of their DNA does survive, however, since we know "Cheddar Man" (below left), an European Hunter-Gatherer from 8-10000 years ago (just as the Holocene was starting), has an ancestor in England today (below right).

But that isn't even the end of it. These Middle Eastern farmers, were in turn invaded by steppe nomads who were most likely the famed PIE people (proto-Indo-Europeans). And this invasion, from everything I have read was pretty brutal. While modern Europeans still have a lot of Middle Eastern farmer DNA, it is almost all inherited only from the female line, and little to none from the male line. IOW, the men and boys were almost totally wiped out (sadly, much as with the fate of the European Hunter-Gatherers, we have seen this pattern around the world).

TL-DR version: citing cave paintings from a long vanished group of people from 20-60,000 years ago as "proof" of European "superiority" is ridiculous. And as Calbear and others have noted, some of the oldest ones may not even be Homo Sapiens at all.

 

[spoonzandforkz]

The entire main argument of the original thread thread just seems to be: "Our superior European scientists and thinkers are the only ones that can invent stuff. Other non-European cultures who did invent important stuff, we either helped them or they stole it from us, it isn't even all that good in the first place, and we do science better, anyways."

 

[catconqueror]

Ah yes Europeans are the only people who know math because they wrote a specific book on the topic. Just like how Chinese are the only people who knows war because they wrote the Art of War and Indians are the only people who knows sex because they wrote Kama Sutra.

 

[DJ03]

So ur answer to one common historical inaccuracy/myth is to propagate another one?.

Not only that, OP chose to respond to the dark ages myth by hyping the contribution of ancient europeans when the exaltation of Antiquity is what half of said myth is about

 

[Hearkener]

But that isn't even the end of it. These Middle Eastern farmers, were in turn invaded by steppe nomads who were most likely the famed PIE people (proto-Indo-Europeans). And this invasion, from everything I have read was pretty brutal. While modern Europeans still have a lot of Middle Eastern farmer DNA, it is almost all inherited only from the female line, and little to none from the male line. IOW, the men and boys were almost totally wiped out (sadly, much as with the fate of the European Hunter-Gatherers, we have seen this pattern around the world).

I would be extremely hesitant to draw any historical conclusions from DNA evidence. While we can track the spread of certain genes, we have to be aware that genes alone are ambiguous to ethnic and linguistic identity. Using words like "invaded" and "overrun" are an overreach in my opinion. Genes can spread without any overt violence between populations, as can language and subsistence strategies. Simply put, we do not know how European hunter-gathers disappeared. We do not know what happened to the Paleo-europeans and we do not know to what extent the expansion of the Indo-european languages was violent.

The underlying assumptions are often inspired by old-fashioned phrenology. Human populations are understood to form internally homogenous cultural groups, which are in turn identical to linguistic groups. In reality, ethnic groups can be wildly heterodox in genetic makeup (just consider modern day Americans) and language (the Romans).

When the Indo-europeans enter the historical record towards the mid 2nd millennium BCE, in the form of such groups as the Hittites, they are not genocidal invaders bent on massacring anyone they can get their hands on. They migrate into an area, form local governments and then integrate into the socio-political framework of their new home. The spread of their languages is imo better explained through cultural suffusion brought on by initial migration.

 

[H.Flashman(VC)]

Maybe, but a big part of the advance was possible because of the separation of political and religious authority enabled by Christianity. When the intellectual orthodoxy was owned by someone that didn't have political power, it meant more backing could be given to the heterodox challenges to it.

But was the first part of your second sentence really the case in Europe? The separation of church and state was a long proces. And certainly not finished in the 17 th century.

 

[Socrates]

But was the first part of your second sentence really the case in Europe? The separation of church and state was a long proces. And certainly not finished in the 17 th century.

It was a damn sight more separated than in most regimes in world history. Typically the Pope was responsible for dogma and also appointed the bishops. That meant when the reformation came along, princes supported the challenge in order to free themselves from the Pope's influence. The intellectual debate that followed set the stage for the Enlightenment.

 

[The Tai-Pan]

It was a damn sight more separated than in most regimes in world history. Typically the Pope was responsible for dogma and also appointed the bishops. That meant when the reformation came along, princes supported the challenge in order to free themselves from the Pope's influence. The intellectual debate that followed set the stage for the Enlightenment.

This is a tricky thing to measure. I'm not even saying you are wrong, for certain POV's but it is really hard to compare (say) how 'involved' religion was in late Tokugawa Japan versus Louis XIV's France.

 

[wcv215]

It was a damn sight more separated than in most regimes in world history. Typically the Pope was responsible for dogma and also appointed the bishops. That meant when the reformation came along, princes supported the challenge in order to free themselves from the Pope's influence. The intellectual debate that followed set the stage for the Enlightenment.

Not really. Arguably the Reformation did the opposite of separate Church and state, because it put the Church more directly under the control of the government. Before the Reformation the Church was a separate force within the state's heirarchy, one that had to balance its loyalty to Rome and to the prince/king/emperor. Like look at the Church in England before and after Henry VIII. Was it really more "separate" after the Church of England was established now that it just directly answered to the king, the head of state AND head of Church.

It was effectively illegal to be Catholic in England until the 1700s, and civil rights were not granted until the 1820s. I really don't see much "separation of Church and State" in such an arrangement.