Why was Europe First?

Originally posted by Beylerbeyi We don't need to be praised and we don't claim to be the only Aryan people in the world but Iran without Aryan has no meaning, if someone says "Aryans" were a great people and then you call him a racist, you have in fact insulted the whole Iranian peoples. Yes you are extremely naive.

I think that Europe had a lucky combo of events. One was a population boom around 1500 CE. Also during the time of the Black Death, the public support of the Church faltered and there was much oppression from both Church and state. I think that European superiority was precipitated from the Enlightenment which promoted science when before it had been associated with evil forces. China just didn't have the incentives.  

Originally posted by dud I think that Europe had a lucky combo of events. One was a population boom around 1500 CE. Also during the time of the Black Death, the public support of the Church faltered and there was much oppression from both Church and state. I think that European superiority was precipitated from the Enlightenment which promoted science when before it had been associated with evil forces. China just didn't have the incentives.

That's a rather narrow view on the historical development and emergence of modern civilization. Population numbers rose and fell all the time, in Europe, in China and else. To explain the rise of the modern world with plain demographics is almost the same as to avoid answering the queston, because demographics doesn't answer much at all.

Also, your view on pre-Enlightenment science in Europe is highly flawed, science as a method (eg. the scientific method) and as an endeavour came into existence in medieval Europe, though of course it had a long way to go before it was perfected. Apart from the early contributions of a few Islamic scholars, the development of science (as opposed to engineering/technology) was an entirely European endeavour which lasted for several centuries prior and up to the Enlightenment.

You OTOH mention science as if it was a readily available concept that appeared out of nowhere and was first rejected due to religious fervour and then suddenly accepted when the Church "lost its grip on people", which then marked the beginning of Enlightenment and a sharp break with the past. If there is one myth that deserves to be debunked, it's the one about Europeans living in darkness and ignorance due to the power of the Church.

But, back to the topic itself... Europe's rise was IMO due to 3 key factors: its Greco-Roman heritage, the emergence of the European nation state and scholasticism. The Italian Renaissance which someone mentioned was only a highly visual and artistic expression of some of the changes that were already taking place in Europe but by no means the originator or even a significant part of these processes.

The evolution of these 3 key factors and processes can be traced all the way back to the fall of Roman Empire but you could say that they became almost inevitable by the turn of the millenium. By then the Viking raids into mainland Europe had been mostly pacified, the Arab incursions into southern Europe likewise, many European nations were starting to take their modern shape (the Norman conquest of England, etc), all of which enabled long-term stability on the continent which in turn enabled further economic and other developments. But like I said, that's just the part concerning the necessary stability for development and prosperity for the processes to be successful. The processes themselves had much deeper roots...



Edited by abvgd - 18-Feb-2011 at 19:42