Why did Modern Science develop in Europe

[Scapthat]

Despite the fact that for many centuries the Arabic World, India, China were actually more advanced than Europe in science/technology..but then a huge shift, suddenly Europe was producing scientific and technological innovation to a much bigger scale than anyone else (Western Europe in particular)

It's always something I wanted to know

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

It depends a bit on where you consider the starting off point (Ancient Greece? The Renaissance? The Industrial Revolution?), but if we're going by the last one, I'd say it can be put on imperialism, and more specifically, the British Empire. Due to its size, resources, and habit of carrying trophies from other cultures (practically everything in the British Museum is basically stolen shit) innovations in technology and science could be developed faster than elsewhere.

I don't know if this theory holds any water, but I've always thought that the expansion of specifically Europe from the 1500's onward instead of, say, China or India, could be in part explained by the geography. If you look at the world map, no other equally inhabited part of the world has a similar structure and variety in geography: it's all connected by land, yet separated in multiple places by seas, gulfs and mountain ranges. The geographical areas are also very small when compared to Asia or America. This leads to smaller, separate cultures that could still reach each other to wage war. This IMO explains why an expansion overseas would be inevitable: When habitable living environments become scarce enough, a culture needs to expand to accommodate more inhabitants, inevitably running into other cultures. There you have an explanation for Europe's war-ridden history. And as we know, wars are usually the greatest heralds of technological innovation, hence why the ships that crossed the Atlantic came from Europe, and not America: there was already plenty of space (the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea) and opportunity (all that warfare) to develop better and better ships and armaments. With enough time you'll eventually have the means to both travel farther and subjugate other cultures more efficiently, inevitably leading to not only expanding to neighboring countries, but entire new continents as well.

 

[Scapthat]

It depends a bit on where you consider the starting off point (Ancient Greece? The Renaissance? The Industrial Revolution?), but if we're going by the last one, I'd say it can be put on imperialism, and more specifically, the British Empire. Due to its size, resources, and habit of carrying trophies from other cultures (practically everything in the British Museum is basically stolen shit) innovations in technology and science could be developed faster than elsewhere.

I don't know if this theory holds any water, but I've always thought that the expansion of specifically Europe from the 1500's onward instead of, say, China or India, could be in part explained by the geography. If you look at the world map, no other equally inhabited part of the world has a similar structure and variety in geography: it's all connected by land, yet separated in multiple places by seas, gulfs and mountain ranges. The geographical areas are also very small when compared to Asia or America. This leads to smaller, separate cultures that could still reach each other to wage war. This IMO explains why an expansion overseas would be inevitable: When habitable living environments become scarce enough, a culture needs to expand to accommodate more inhabitants, inevitably running into other cultures. There you have an explanation for Europe's war-ridden history. And as we know, wars are usually the greatest heralds of technological innovation, hence why the ships that crossed the Atlantic came from Europe, and not America: there was already plenty of space (the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea) and opportunity (all that warfare) to develop better and better ships and armaments. With enough time you'll eventually have the means to both travel farther and subjugate other cultures more efficiently.

but how did Europe get that powerful...It had to be more powerful to conquer other lands..so how did it reach that power more so than other civilizations?

 

[DefunctTheory]

As you say, 'modern' science was developed in Europe. However, they only hold the distinction because they were 'last.' The Middle East and Asia did do it as well.

There's a variety of theories and factors that people think had an affect. A short list...

1. White people are just better (This one's bullshit, but hey, people think it, so there it is)

2. Europe was, geographically, lucky as hell, because...
a. It's position allowed for trade with just about everyone else, so they got the best of every world at the time, and that eventually led to their dominance in the technological and scientific fields
b. They had some of the best land. The land was very good for agriculture, it had a lot of readily available resources to exploit, and the largest quantity of domesticatable animals/farmable crops. This allowed them to more efficiently survive, which allowed for more people to do engage in pursuits more ambitious then 'keep my kids from starving'

3. Christianity is more conducive to free thought and scientific progress. This is another one I'm not really a fan of, but there is some truth to it. It's true that Christianity is, in modern times, fairly open to technology, but I'm not convinced that's because of any inherent property. It's true that early science was conducted by monks and such, and funded by the Catholic Church, but they also did a lot to hinder it's development and discredit many of Europe's early scientific heroes. And it's not like Judiasm, Islam, and a variety of Eastern religions didn't play a part in scientific pursuits as well. I'm more inclined to believe that, because of outside factors, Christianity is just the religion that happened to be strong armed into giving up and letting science go on without them.

4. Europe's continual, but fairly stable, 'eternal war' state created an incentive to innovate. Basically the 'cultural evolution' argument - Conflict breeds innovation and knowledge, as nothing stokes the fires of the mind like a fight to the death that never seems to end. This has been replicated time and again through history - The most modern examples being the American Civil War, which saw huge leaps in surgical technology and technique, even if we find their methods terrible now; WWII which saw speedy advances in technology across the board, most notably in manufacturing, usable atomic theory and rocket technology; and the Cold War, which saw the Soviets and the US pushing the boundaries of the possible, sometimes in practical terms, and sometimes in pissing contests (We'd probably just be getting around to landing on the Moon if it weren't for Sputnik).

5. Too complicated to ever fully appreciate, and probably a little bit off all the above (Except for the white people one), plus a bunch of stuff I can't think of at the moment.

EDIT: Whoops, meant 'as well,' not 'better.'

 

[pookie101]

you can mainly thank italian city states like florence and its leaders the medici's for creating a place where science could flourish in spite of what the catholic church said

 

[Scapthat]

As you say, 'modern' science was developed in Europe. However, they only hold the distinction because they were 'last.' The Middle East and Asia did do it better.

There's a variety of theories and factors that people think had an affect. A short list...

1. White people are just better (This one's bullshit, but hey, people think it, so there it is)

2. Europe was, geographically, lucky as hell, because...
a. It's position allowed for trade with just about everyone else, so they got the best of every world at the time, and that eventually led to their dominance in the technological and scientific fields
b. They had some of the best land. The land was very good for agriculture, it had a lot of readily available resources to exploit, and the largest quantity of domesticatable animals/farmable crops. This allowed them to more efficiently survive, which allowed for more people to do engage in pursuits more ambitious then 'keep my kids from starving'

3. Christianity is more conducive to free thought and scientific progress. This is another one I'm not really a fan of, but there is some truth to it. It's true that Christianity is, in modern times, fairly open to technology, but I'm not convinced that's because of any inherent property. It's true that early science was conducted by monks and such, and funded by the Catholic Church, but they also did a lot to hinder it's development and discredit many of Europe's early scientific heroes. And it's not like Judiasm, Islam, and a variety of Eastern religions didn't play a part in scientific pursuits as well. I'm more inclined to believe that, because of outside factors, Christianity is just the religion that happened to be strong armed into giving up and letting science go on without them.

4. Europe's continual, but fairly stable, 'eternal war' state created an incentive to innovate. Basically the 'cultural evolution' argument - Conflict breeds innovation and knowledge, as nothing stokes the fires of the mind like a fight to the death that never seems to end. This has been replicated time and again through history - The most modern examples being the American Civil War, which saw huge leaps in surgical technology and technique, even if we find their methods terrible now; WWII which saw speedy advances in technology across the board, most notably in manufacturing, usable atomic theory and rocket technology; and the Cold War, which saw the Soviets and the US pushing the boundaries of the possible, sometimes in practical terms, and sometimes in pissing contests (We'd probably just be getting around to landing on the Moon if it weren't for Sputnik).

5. Too complicated to ever fully appreciate, and probably a little bit off all the above (Except for the white people one), plus a bunch of stuff I can't think of at the moment.

what you you mean the middle east and asia did it "better"



there were of course great Arab polymath,scientists and thinkers as well as asian scientists...but Newton was really the one that turned science into a rigorous study

 

[DefunctTheory]

Spoiler

As you say, 'modern' science was developed in Europe. However, they only hold the distinction because they were 'last.' The Middle East and Asia did do it better.

There's a variety of theories and factors that people think had an affect. A short list...

1. White people are just better (This one's bullshit, but hey, people think it, so there it is)

2. Europe was, geographically, lucky as hell, because...
a. It's position allowed for trade with just about everyone else, so they got the best of every world at the time, and that eventually led to their dominance in the technological and scientific fields
b. They had some of the best land. The land was very good for agriculture, it had a lot of readily available resources to exploit, and the largest quantity of domesticatable animals/farmable crops. This allowed them to more efficiently survive, which allowed for more people to do engage in pursuits more ambitious then 'keep my kids from starving'

3. Christianity is more conducive to free thought and scientific progress. This is another one I'm not really a fan of, but there is some truth to it. It's true that Christianity is, in modern times, fairly open to technology, but I'm not convinced that's because of any inherent property. It's true that early science was conducted by monks and such, and funded by the Catholic Church, but they also did a lot to hinder it's development and discredit many of Europe's early scientific heroes. And it's not like Judiasm, Islam, and a variety of Eastern religions didn't play a part in scientific pursuits as well. I'm more inclined to believe that, because of outside factors, Christianity is just the religion that happened to be strong armed into giving up and letting science go on without them.

4. Europe's continual, but fairly stable, 'eternal war' state created an incentive to innovate. Basically the 'cultural evolution' argument - Conflict breeds innovation and knowledge, as nothing stokes the fires of the mind like a fight to the death that never seems to end. This has been replicated time and again through history - The most modern examples being the American Civil War, which saw huge leaps in surgical technology and technique, even if we find their methods terrible now; WWII which saw speedy advances in technology across the board, most notably in manufacturing, usable atomic theory and rocket technology; and the Cold War, which saw the Soviets and the US pushing the boundaries of the possible, sometimes in practical terms, and sometimes in pissing contests (We'd probably just be getting around to landing on the Moon if it weren't for Sputnik).

5. Too complicated to ever fully appreciate, and probably a little bit off all the above (Except for the white people one), plus a bunch of stuff I can't think of at the moment.

what you you mean the middle east and asia did it "better"

none of those geographical areas have any scientists on the level of Isaac Newton, Gallileo, Darwin, Maxwell, Gauss Einstein etc. talking modern rigorous mathematics and science

there were of course great Arab polymath,scientists and thinkers...but Newton was really the one that turned science into a rigorous study

I haven't the slightest clue why I did. I meant 'also.' I'll blame the fact that I had just realized I left 12 dollars worth of tuna steaks on the roof of my car, which are now presumably being run over by SUVs on a road 30 minutes away, and I was distracted.

 

[Tautology]

Way too many factors were at play for there to be a simple and concise answer. I think a majorly overlooked factor was how popular the printing of literature was in Europe compared to the rest of world.

Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th Century, Europe suffered several major catastrophes which retarded scientific advancement. Western Europe was almost completely abandoned by the remainder of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, who hoarded most the knowledge accumulated from Classical Antiquity. Copying by hand all these texts was a laborious task, taking many months for one copy. Few copies existed at the time. The Greek and Latin languages, of which all that knowledge was recorded in, eventually fell out of common use in West Europe. Any scientific progress in the West would be cut short by famine, the Black Death, and the beginning of the Little Ice Age prior to the Renaissance.

In the Islamic World, scientific advancement came through their interactions with India and The Byzantines, which allowed them larger access to Greek and Latin knowledge. This knowledge was translated into Arabic, combined with Indian and Muslim work, and expanded before finding its way back to Europe.

The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in the 15th Century led to an influx of Byzantine scholars seeking refuge in Western Europe, which had entered the Italian Renaissance some 50 years earlier. These scholars brought with them a significant amount of the Greek and Latin texts held by the Byzantine Empire. The Italians had very little of those texts and thought most of them lost, so it was a massive boon to them.

Johannes Gutenberg's recent development of a new mechanical movable type printing press would become a major contributor in allowing the quick spread of that knowledge. Scholars and scientists could also now have their own work copied and disseminated in large volumes much quicker and cheaper than was possible before. It is not known if Gutenberg was familiar with Asian printing technology, which had not seen wide spread use in the Middle East and Europe, but his was the first example of metal movable type in Europe. The employment of oil based inks meant that his printings lasted much longer than the water based inks China had been using. His method also allowed for both sides of a piece of paper to be printed on.

The reasons Gutenberg's press achieved for Europe what the earlier presses could not for Asia were twofold; differences in Asian and European languages and economic factors impacting the ability to print. Most written Asian languages at the time did not have an alphabet and instead used specific characters for each word. this meant that a typesetter in Asia needed as many as 60000 different type faces and several hundred thousand duplicates in order to print a single page. It was only economically feasible for a printer to print very large runs of a page, carving and transporting all those pieces was expensive and time consuming, and the carved wooden type pieces were poor quality. Gutenberg's metal type case was less than 300 faces and easier to cast.

The revolution in Europe sparked by printed literature did not extend beyond its borders. The printing of Arabic was prohibited in the Islamic World until the 18th Century, leaving the copying of texts to be done by hand. Technological limitations made Indian script almost impossible to set in type and low interest in India for print made it economically impractical for the English East India Company to continue trying. The ruling elite in Korea and China made changing their written languages to an alphabet system almost impossible.

The slow spread of information outside Europe following the 15th Century allowed Europe to overtake the rest of the world in terms of knowledge and scientific advancement.

 

[Zontar]

The best answer can be explained as the reinterpretation of an old idea: rationalism. Specifically Greek rationalism. Part of the renaissance had many parts to it both cultural and political, but one of the biggest was the reintroduction of the concept of rationalism into the Western world, but with new thinkers from Italy, France, Germany, the UK and beyond adding to it by way of making a method out of it which could be used to explain the things we see the world. Simply put, the birth of the scientific method.

That itself also had the good fortune of only a few centuries later having the industrial revolution begin. This one is a combination of geography and industry working together to give Europe good luck. Europe had already taken over the Americas due to plague doing most of the work of taking the two continents over, and the technological disparity that already existed did the rest. But with the advent of coal power in Britain (which later spread to all of Europe) the means of mass production, true industry and the ability to project power on a truly global level became a reality. This, coupled with an academia which used what remains the greatest system of attaining new knowledge (the scientific method) culminated in making Africa, South Asia and South East Asia land which was simply too far behind technologically to resist at the time (and of note was that it would not be until the 20th century that in many of these places the notion of nationhood took root. Before the UK took it over there was no Indian identity, and in China the idea of China being a nation is still a similarly new concept).

The scientific method allowed for a disparity in thinking power and ability to innovate due to taking an old idea and improving upon it, and the industrial revolution allowed for a disparity in material output from its origins in mechanical improvements from the scientific method being applied on an ever larger scale.

These two things are where it stems form, and in fact we are still living in the period of change it had brought about, as while imperialism has gone into the history books, the scientific method and the industrial line of organizing society not only remains but continues to dominate the world.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

*snip*

The slow spread of information outside Europe following the 15th Century allowed Europe to overtake the rest of the world in terms of knowledge and scientific advancement.

I'll be the first one to admit that I hadn't even thought of how the mechanics of how you write words could have an impact on how you can spread information. Overlooked it entirely. Good write up.

And being able to print up a dozen copies of your latest findings to distribute to colleges and such in under a month would certainly be invaluable compared to writing everything out a dozen times.

Shit, now I'm worried I'm giving the printing press and the phonetic alphabet too much credit.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Shit, now I'm worried I'm giving the printing press and the phonetic alphabet too much credit.

That's pretty much impossible. The printing press is like the sun - no matter how much you acknowledge its importance, you'll always be forgetting something great it's done for you.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Shit, now I'm worried I'm giving the printing press and the phonetic alphabet too much credit.

That's pretty much impossible. The printing press is like the sun - no matter how much you acknowledge its importance, you'll always be forgetting something great it's done for you.

Add to that having a language that could be comprehensively used with only 20-40 individual symbols?

God, it's like we were cheating.

 

[wizzy555]

The ability to question authority AND the narrative that there is knowledge that we don't know and yet is important.

In a "normal" society there are authorities on things, if you want to know what is good you ask your priest, if you want to know how to make a sword you ask a blacksmith. If they don't know then your question just wasn't important enough to have an answer. Someone may occasionally make an advancement but mostly they believe that everything that is important is already known, so why bother exploring.

The scientific revolution along with colonial expansion was a massive "Holy fuck there's a lot of shit here we had no idea of... I wonder how much more there is"

But why Europe? Maybe just luck... and free trade. The belief that the future will be better allows credit lines to open up and thus growth. "Normal" societies believe the future will be the same if not shitter than the past.

 

[Amaror]

Despite the fact that for many centuries the Arabic World, India, China were actually more advanced than Europe in science/technology..but then a huge shift, suddenly Europe was producing scientific and technological innovation to a much bigger scale than anyone else (Western Europe in particular)

It's always something I wanted to know

Just a bunch of reasons really. Europe has a pretty great climate which worked well for farming and agriculture. On top of that Europe is rich in ressources like metals and coal, which were essential in the industrial revolution that really pushed the European powers to the top of the food chain on an international level.
Supporting the agriculture, Europe is home to a lot of very usefull animals that we domesticated. Sheep, Horses, Pigs and Chicken are all extremely usefull.
Additionally Europe had trade going with a huge part of the world. We traded all the way to China and with goods, technological innovation also founds it's way to Europe from the more advanced places you mentioned in your post.
All of these factors made Europe a pretty rich place, which means that you have more people that don't need to spent their time just surviving, but can also use it for other pursuits such as science and art.

 

[wizzy555]

Supporting the agriculture, Europe is home to a lot of very usefull animals that we domesticated. Sheep, Horses, Pigs and Chicken are all extremely usefull.

Yep, it's almost impossible to get a Zebra to let you ride it.

 

[Johnlives]

Supporting the agriculture, Europe is home to a lot of very usefull animals that we domesticated. Sheep, Horses, Pigs and Chicken are all extremely usefull.

Yep, it's almost impossible to get a Zebra to let you ride it.

How do you ride chickens, they've always been quite resistant when I try?

 

[arabianstories]

something I need to know, why did cutting edge science create in Europe and not Islam or China for quite a while before the European rennaisance and even a century or two after that (it wasn't until the seventeenth century taht Europe advanced beyond everybody in science and innovation)

Middle Easterners and Chinese were very exploratory and mechanically advance.So why did cutting edge science create in Europe.

 

[Saelune]

something I need to know, why did cutting edge science create in Europe and not Islam or China for quite a while before the European rennaisance and even a century or two after that (it wasn't until the seventeenth century taht Europe advanced beyond everybody in science and innovation)

Middle Easterners and Chinese were very exploratory and mechanically advance.So why did cutting edge science create in Europe.

My guess as a History nerd is that because China tried to lock itself in a culture bubble, it stagnated. Europe is many countries, cultures, and peoples, and conflict has a tendancy to create scientific advancement. Plus having all these different ways of thinking creates newer ways of thinking.

 

[DefunctTheory]

something I need to know, why did cutting edge science create in Europe and not Islam or China for quite a while before the European rennaisance and even a century or two after that (it wasn't until the seventeenth century taht Europe advanced beyond everybody in science and innovation)

Middle Easterners and Chinese were very exploratory and mechanically advance.So why did cutting edge science create in Europe.

Chinese (And arguably asian in general) culture has a bad tendency to be a) rather insular and b) a bit... rigid. Science requires that one question everything, and while that was (And arguably still is) something that's looked down on in many cultures, the Chinese seem to have taken it to a new level.

As for the Middle East... they did have cutting edge science. Way, WAY before anyone else. And then it got to the same point Christianity would eventually get to, where scientific progress was at odds with the Church. The Churches of Europe didn't win that fight.

The churches of the Middle East did.

 

[EvilRoy]

Shit, now I'm worried I'm giving the printing press and the phonetic alphabet too much credit.

That's pretty much impossible. The printing press is like the sun - no matter how much you acknowledge its importance, you'll always be forgetting something great it's done for you.

Add to that having a language that could be comprehensively used with only 20-40 individual symbols?

God, it's like we were cheating.

The interesting thing is that we're actually kind of doing it wrong. Like not wrong wrong, but just not how one would expect written language to develop.

Pictographic language like Japanese or Mandarin are basically the most natural progression of verbal concepts to written language - its a house, you say the word house, you write the character 'house' and the character for 'house' looks like a house in a way that would be culturally recognizable on a large scale. Even if other villages have a different house character, you can figure it out from context because its going to look roughly like a house and be in a sentence talking about house things. Once you have all the common nouns down, you move into verbs, and so on until you hit a massive roadblock at abstract concepts. Those don't have a visual representation that works culturally beyond extremely localized areas, proper nouns being the worst kind of abstract because now you have special characters for individual people. Bad enough you had to write a character that represents the concept of partial differential mathematics, now you need to write that Steve from accounting came up with it. What does accounting even look like.

For whatever reason a few written languages managed to dodge this problem or grow past them, and a bunch got completely sunk in them.