Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientiic Revolution-A Global Perspective

Huff, Toby E., Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientiic Revolution - A Global Perspective. Cambridge University Press, 2010. The surprising rise of Europe that began in the 17th century quickly eclipsed the glories of China, India, or the Middle East at a time that nobody would have predicted. Why did this happen despite the population and wealth advantages of those other three civilizations? Huff says: "On the road to modernity, we are accustomed to identifying the Industrial Revolution of the 1 8th century as a great landmark. The present inquiry will lead us to consider whether that great transformation could have taken place without the scientific revolution and, above all, Newton's Principia Mathematica and the related developments in astronomy and the science of mechanics that occurred uniquely in Western Europe. "It may be more than coincidence that the absence of those developments in other regions of the world had something to do with the economic and political stagnation that persisted outside Europe (and Europe overseas) all the way to the mid-twentieth century. Such are some of the questions that need to be examined in an age of apparent instant thought and communication that has everyone wired." Huff notes that the 17th century in Europe was the great divide that separated Western European development from the rest of the world for the next 3-1/2 centuries. The flow of discoveries included astronomy, optics, science of motion, math, and new physics. The Newtonian synthesis created an integrated celestial and terrestrial physics within the framework of universal gravitation. There were advances in hydraulics and pneumatics, medicine, microscopy, and human and animal anatomy. Also - big steps toward discovery of electricity. Why did this only happen in the West, and not in China, India, or the Muslim Middle East, all of which were much more prosperous than the Europe of the time? Cultures are not uniformly alike. The shape of a culture is affected by its geography, its religions, and its social practices. Europe had accumulated an enormous amount of intellectual capital absent everywhere else. It began in the 12th and 13th centuries in philosophy, law, institution building, and education. The scientific revolution then flowered in the Enlightenment of the 18th century as an ongoing process. The key to all of this was the educational system in Europe - the universities that had no counterparts elsewhere. The entire European worldview was different, held together by a very different concept of law and legal structure, a system constantly in reform and renewal. European law had a tradition of considering the rights of many participants: citizens, professionals, and nobles. This legal tradition does not develop in authoritarian civilizations. The rise of European literacy in the 16th and 17th centuries was a major part of that success. Note also the newspaper revolution in England and tiien in Europe - but not in China or Muslim world until the 19th century, and even then, not anywhere as free in expression as the western world. The telescope of 1608 that started a whole train of scientific discoveries was taken by travelers to China, India, and Ottoman Turkey - but while used in these cultures as a toy, was never improved and never spurred new inventions. While the new geography spurred by the 16th century discoveries sent Europeans to explore and visit other cultures, the other tiiree civilizations did not exhibit a like curiosity. What Europe had developed by the 16th century was a whole system of law derived from Roman and Medieval Christian culture that included merchant law, contracts for international commerce, and even a system of petitions for redress from citizens to their monarchs. And then add to this the Protestant Reformation with its work ethic - the idea that work was a good thing in itself, not just a necessary evil, and it is apparent why Europe and Europe abroad flourished. …