Why was Europe First?

How I view it: There were three major revolutions in the history of mankind and the most recently came exclusively from Europe, notably Britain. And this shapes the world in which we now live.

1. Change from hunter and gatherers to agriculture
2. Rise of urban societies
3. Industrialization

To say then that Europe's civilization may have prevailed for 200, 500 or 800 years, means in this context to not address the subject accurately. Actually, this grossly understates the whole question. It has rather to be said that in Europe happened something which was qualitatively unique for the last 5000 years and that it happened only there.

You can't equate any random 200 years of domination of civilization xyz with the two hundred years of industrialization. Because these were only conventional phases, while the processes begun with the first steam machine have been TOTALLY unique and unparalleled since the first cities emerged five millenia ago.

Therefore, the rise of Europe deserves a very special placa. I am not saying this out of Eurocentrism, but because this is a fundamental fact of history. And misapplied Political Correctness should not get in the way of a sound historical statement here.

I agree that the Industrial Revolution is was an important cause of the "competitive advantage" of the west. however, the roots of the Industrial Revolution are in two previous revolutions: the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th century (Newton included), and the "Age of discovery" that was started by the Portugueses sailors and that made the markets to skyrocket. (You may add the invention of the printing press as well as a key factor).

I have a third factor that may be a candidate for being essential to the Industrial Revolution, though it may not be as obvious. The Condemnations of 1277, which was for all effects and purposes a decision of the Catholic Church to reject Aristotelianism and encourage new philosophical thinking. This happened because the condemnations encouraged natural philosophers to find holes in the reasoning of Aristotle and/or Averr�es, in order to transform Aristotelian science into something new. This eventually lead to to a great shift in the intellectual life of Europe, with philosophy superseeding theology as the supreme science of the intellectual elite; and a new way of thinking about the world being developed. With the new focus on philosophy, came an interest in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering. Without this shift in attitude, and in effect the blessing of the Catholic Church of the pursuit of science, the Renaissance would have been unlikely to occur, with all the consequences that this entails. Europe may well have borrowed all the technology it wanted, but if scientific investigation had been condemned by the Church, it would have generated little progress on its own.

Edited by Decebal - 05-Oct-2006 at 14:15

In fact, the acceptation of that, the Renaissance have a link with the XIII knowledge, is the death sentence of the Renaissance concept

Yes. I agree that in the late Middle Ages, Europe changed radically. The first universities started, people like Thomas Aquinas, King Alphonse the wise, Bacon, where up there shinning. People got nuts for studying. cathedrals, clocks and technology was developed.

Sorry to change steeds in midstream here guys, but to add to the pics of the Chinese pagodas I posted earlier, I completely forgot to add this one, although it is of a later date than the medieval pagoda towers I posted on page 3 of this thread. The stone-constructed Real Spirit Pagoda of Famen Temple, the original built during the medieval Tang Dynasty but destroyed by an earthquake in the 16th century, was rebuilt in 1579 AD at 47 meters in height as it looks today. It is located 118 kilometers (73 miles) west of the old Han and Tang Dynasty capital of Chang'an (modern-day Xi'an), in Shaanxi Province, and supposedly houses a finger bone of the Sakyamuni (the Buddha). The underground palace was accidentally discovered in 1985 when the provincial government commenced rebuilding the stupa, the palace dimensions being 21.2 meters long with an area of 31.84 square meters.

Edited by Preobrazhenskoe - 06-Oct-2006 at 02:56

Originally posted by konstantinius I'd like to add that behind the scholastisism of the M. Ages lies what I consider to be the reason for this so-called western preponderance: rights for the indivindual and representational political system, open inquiry, accountability of the governor to the governed,  abstract research and experimentation, citizen-based and/or voluntary militaries. These, I believe, are also a unique European developments that laid the spiritual and social basis for later developments to follow.

Citizenship.

Reverting back to the topic of Eastern art, which has been discussed since I believe the 3rd page of this thread, I noticed that a lot of the paintings I posted were of the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, whereas very little that I posted was of the earlier Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) and before in China.

Edited by Preobrazhenskoe - 12-Oct-2006 at 06:29

no