[PEN-L:1840] Re: Re: Re: Re: Enlightenment Insight, part two

[PJM0930@xxxxxxx]

I hate to be dredging up old threads but I am behind in my e-mail duties.
The discussion of the relative technological advantages of Europe vs. China
seems a bit
overly politicized, as Blaut tends to be, in asserting any "difference" that
gave Europe a leg
in its socio-technological competition witht the rest of the world is a quasi-
racist apology for
Western imperialism. Well, such assertion don't logically deny the role of
Western militarism
or savagery (i.e, primitive accumulation) and they should be considered.

One factor that has not been alluded to in the technological development of
Europe is
the importance of maritime trade. India and China had vast land based
economies and
China went through periods of alternating between enthusiastic trade and
exploration and
a more inward focus. For a number of European countries, especially England,
such
a isolationist alternative was out of the question given the intense inter-
state competition
prevalent in Europe. Water based trade is orders of magnitude cheaper than
land based
commerce and is one of the reasons for the cultural achievement of
civilizations in the
Mediterranean.

That points to another factor of potential significance. The lack of
continental state power
in Europe (though with the unique prescence of a culturally unifying quasi-
state, the Church). While the royal patronage of scientific research was
probably not very different in form than in India and China, the very fact
that such scholarship was split between many
different capitals and to some extent spurred by state competition (especially
with regards
to astronomy and other navigation related technologies) is a qualitatively
different situation
from India and China. And at the same time these competing centers of
patronage were
drawn together by a shared language, Latin,  and if not a shared
ecclesiastical training
then a shared experience of teachers and universities sponsored by the Church.

As Doug Henwood points out, it is not really the "marketplace of ideas" that
is germane,
it is the linking of science to a social process that is the focal point of
this discussion.

The other point which also has not come out in this discussion, is the legacy
of both the
Hellenistic and Arab contributions to Western scholarship and science.  The
Hellenistic
level of scientific attainment was higher than that of medieval Europe and the
Arabs, of course, added to it. So the introduction of classical and Arabic
science into Medieval Europe
is a tremendous exogenous variable in the history of the West. Of course, the
mere introduction was not enough, the newly recovered knowledge was introduced
into a
socio-political setting that involved growing state centralization, religious
fragmentaion and
international competition, and a rising of the bourgeoisie and market forces,
all densely intertwined with each other.

-Paul Meyer