how important was modern science for European world hegemony?

Assuming we understand by "modern science" what Galileo called "scientia nuova" (however that is spelled in Italian). That is, the science that was born in the late XVI or early XVII centuries in Europe and which was based on observation and repeated experimentation, on collecting lots of measurments and numerical data and then formulating equations and mathematical models that describe nature (and can be used, under some circunstances, to predict what would happen given an initial set of conditions.

In this scense, I see this modern science as a modern European phenomenon. Other peoples, like the Ancient Greeks, the Arabs in the X or XI centuries, or the Indians came close, but didn't achieve this. Some of the ancient Greek, for example, developed accurate ideas about how the universe works. But these were rarely set in a mathematical model nor were they put to test, so it was almost impossible to distinguish the ideas corresponded to reality from those who didn't.

The question is, what was the role played by modern science in European world dominance? When, if ever, did it begin to matter? I mean, the Precolumbian civilization were conquered before modern science, and I don't think it played a significant rol in Napoleons brief success against the Memeluks or in British success in India around 1800. I've read somewhere that the invention of the steam engyne hadn't much to do with science, that it was more a practical thing, and that termodinamical laws were invented after trains and steam machines were already invented. Is that so? If so, when did science begin to matter? Could an industrial revolution take place in a world without modern science?
 
I'm not sure if the improvements in nautical technology would be considered "science", but they were obviously indispensable to European empire building.
 
Nautical technology, gunpowder weapon technology, facing scurvy (Definitely a result of science, at least in a limited sense). . .
 
Nautical technology, gunpowder weapon technology, facing scurvy (Definitely a result of science, at least in a limited sense). . .

But are this a result of modern science (that is, post-Galilean science)? I don't think gunpowder is, for example, it was invented in China and it was more trial and error than the result of the application of any theory. Calculating trajectories of artillery through mathemathic equations is indeed a result of science, but I don't know when that began.

So is, of course, using a cronometter to calculate longitude.
 
I'm not sure if the improvements in nautical technology would be considered "science", but they were obviously indispensable to European empire building.

There are many definitions of science, but, for the purpose of this thread, let's limit the definition of science as "Post-Galilean science", which means things like measuring stuff repeatedly, and writteng mathematical equations that explain natural phenomena.
 
But are this a result of modern science (that is, post-Galilean science)? I don't think gunpowder is, for example, it was invented in China and it was more trial and error than the result of the application of any theory. Calculating trajectories of artillery through mathemathic equations is indeed a result of science, but I don't know when that began.

So is, of course, using a cronometter to calculate longitude.

Gunpowder, itself, no. I said 'gunpowder weapon technology", which was the result of experiments and improvements from what was borrowed initially.

Mike: Precisely. I wouldn't say science produced in the sense of abstract experiments by "scientists", but in the sense of application of knowledge gained in such a manner definitely shows.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
It was the scientific application of physics that lead to the perfection of the steam engine, which in turn lead to the Industrial Revolution. But it was as much, if not more, the development of modern economic theory that allowed the West to dominate the world for so long.

So it's really all the fault of James Watt and Adam Smith. Bloody Scots...
 
Though I shudder to say this, I agree in this instance with Niall Ferguson, in that I think it was the development of European institutions rather than specifically science that enabled European dominance. A banking system to finance expansion, corporations to control long distance trade and, of course, scientific institutions (like the Royal Society) that allowed for interaction and exchange of scientific concepts.

Of course you can point to speific scientific advantages e.g. the focus of Portuguese shipbuilders on (relatively) large oceangoing vessels gave them a crushing naval advantage in the Indian ocean since their ships were far bigger and sturdier than Arab and Indian dhows.

However I think it's significant that technologically Europe didn't fully pull ahead until the very late 18th C- it was their institutions not technological force that enabled Europeans to sieze the balance of power in Asia and later directly dominate
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Though I shudder to say this, I agree in this instance with Niall Ferguson, in that I think it was the development of European institutions rather than specifically science that enabled European dominance.

Not only that, but it was for similar reasons that the British defeated the French in the "Second Hundred Years War". The war was won on the bond market, not the battlefield.
 
Although if bayonets hadn't been up to the task, no amount of bonds would have helped.

I'm not going to say it wasn't driven by financial institutions and their power, but it was as that enabled the fighting of war, rather than in their own right as if this was a game of Monopoly.

Otherwise the Netherlands would be threatening France rather than vice-versa.
 
Not only that, but it was for similar reasons that the British defeated the French in the "Second Hundred Years War". The war was won on the bond market, not the battlefield.

Yup. I hate Ferguson but his point that Europeans developed effective financial institutions that gave them the economic capability to conduct expeditions to Asia is certainly true in great measure.

I'd also artue that Europe's relative poverty in terms of trade goods also has onething to do with it- there is no major incentive for Malay merchants to find the way to Europe but there is for Portuguese merchants to get to Malacca.

Then once Industrialisation rolls around its Europe's access to easily accessible and plentiful sources of coal and steel that give it the advantage- compare to India which is coal poor (the deposits it has are harder to access and of poor quality) which in all my TLs always trips me up- given the right PODs you can get Indian polities to develop on par financially and institutionally with Europe until the 18th C equivalent of tech but there's no way for them to make that initial jump to industrialisation.
 
Although if bayonets hadn't been up to the task, no amount of bonds would have helped.

I'm not going to say it wasn't driven by financial institutions and their power, but it was as that enabled the fighting of war, rather than in their own right as if this was a game of Monopoly.

But even that's institutional- the viewing of war as a science with officers as a body forming essentially collegiate institutions. If you look at 18th C India, for example, it's not tech that enabled European Company armies to prevail- for the most part the Indian kings had equally sophisticated armies tech-wise- they soent lots on tech with artillery lines as advanced and sophisticated as anything in Europe. it was European militaries institutional organisation and discipline, especially with regard to infantry drill and training that allowed them to consistently beat Indian states
 
But even that's institutional- the viewing of war as a science with officers as a body forming essentially collegiate institutions. If you look at 18th C India, for example, it's not tech that enabled European Company armies to prevail- for the most part the Indian kings had equally sophisticated armies tech-wise- they soent lots on tech with artillery lines as advanced and sophisticated as anything in Europe. it was European militaries institutional organisation and discipline, especially with regard to infantry drill and training that allowed them to consistently beat Indian states

I agree with this in full. I would add - and I don't have the knowledge or the gall to compare it to the rest of the world, only Europe's past - say that the institutions of government (even monarchical) not depending solely on the ability of the ruler and his personal staff but on institutions and organization made a huge difference.

Ad hoc methods of dealing with things as they come up aren't always failures, but they're unreliable - and the ability to achieve reliable results is everything in these kind of contests.

Although on the issue of trade goods, one must note how much money, shipping, and materials was spent on (and reaped from) things as plebeian as cod and timber and wheat and woolen textiles. This gave a very strong boost to European societies and economies in a virtuous upward spiral - where is the Chinese (for example) equivalent to "The plains of North America and Russia are our grain fields; Chicago and Odessa our granaries; Canada and the Baltic our timber forests; Australasia contains our sheep farms, and in Argentina and on the western prairies of North America are our herds of oxen[.]" (Jevons in 1865, speaking of Great Britain, but the process that lead there was started in this period, and it was not only Great Britain exploiting the world for its purposes in these products)?
 
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I agree with this in full. I would add - and I don't have the knowledge or the gall to compare it to the rest of the world, only Europe's past - say that the institutions of government (even monarchical) not depending solely on the ability of the ruler and his personal staff but on institutions and organization made a huge difference.

Ad hoc methods of dealing with things as they come up aren't always failures, but they're unreliable - and the ability to achieve reliable results is everything in these kind of contests.

Oh naturally- in India (and i use India because I'm more familiar with it) things tended to depend on an individual monarchs ability to enforce his will. For an excellent example look at the Sikh Empire. Ranjit Singh forged the Khalsa (the Sikh army) into an instrument that observers admitted was the finest army in Asia, equal to any force in Europe. However the institutions of the Khalsa were not independent of Ranjit and so with his death the Khalsa fractured into competing factions rendering it institutionally incapable of putting up a credible fight against the Company even though on paper it was perfectly capable of doig so.

The successful European powers however had an institutional ability to absorb or overcome individual incompetence. Basically Indian polities, institutionally centered in the persona of their rulers had to get lucky every time whereas Europeans with their independent institutions could recover from individual incompetent rulers, generals or governors.
 

katchen

Banned
There are three books that go into this issue in good detail. Wallis's work "Growth Recurring", Berman "The Re-Enchantment of the World" and "Eros and Magic in the Rennesance" by Ioan Couliano each deal with different aspects of what made Europe different from other countries.

Basically, what it comes down to is that the Black Death lowered the poulation of Europe, cracking the institutions of Christaindom , particularly the economic institutions of feudalism, which were based on a surplus of peasant labor. Moreover, the Black death was not just one episode, but recurred in waves from 1348 until 1500. Read "The Black Death" by Gottfried. This is something most histories don't mention.

Moreover, the Black Death hit at the time the Little Ice Age started. The Little Ice Age ceated conditions of chronic famine across Northern Europe. Crops failed. Labor was scaree and dear, even for peasants. Landlords were not able to enforce feudal dues in kind and tenants could pay in cash. even though they were still largely serfs.

The Church still controlled marriage. And what this meant in Western Europe was that marriage required the consent of both spouses and both their parents. And in most cases, the local feudal lord. Or the priest would not perform the ceremony. This resulted in a pattern of late marriage and a lot of sexual tension, illegitmate birth, abortion and often women purporting to be witches performing those abortions

.( The Affair of the Posions (France 1673) in which a satanic cult headed by Abbe Guiborg and Catherine La Voisin may show an underlying pattern that was caught only because the cult inquestion branched out ffrom being an abortion ring to attempting to murder King Louis SIV).

Previous periods of global cooling in post Minoan and Roman times had also harmed Northern European civilizations. But while in previous times, Northern people could migrate south as Dorian Greeks, Etruscans, Iberian Celts, ects or Visigoths, Lombards, ect to relatively weak Mediteranean civilizations, this time they found the Mediteranean world too strong for them in thFrance, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire. This created a situation in which the only outward direction that Northern Europe could expand, ultimately was by sea to other continents, and that put a premium on technoogical innovation.

And because of the Western European marriage system, the ability to make use of innovation, b it ias a merchant, as an exporer, a soldier or a farmer or an artisan yielded immediate results in terms of being able to marry and start a family. Also, the Black DDeath had created enough skepticism about the Church's explanation of life so that initiallymagic and from magic, scientific explanations could get a foothold on people's imaginations. It was not that the scieintific innovations were out there that was the issue. The scientific innovations were in a lot of other places, including Song China and the Arab world. It's just that Early Modern Europe produced a unique set of incentives for large numbers of common people to attempt to adopt them instead of simply acquiring land, slaves or imperial beaureaucratic positions.

Which is a good lesson for us about what it takes for a country to continue to innovate and when and why a nation falls behind, isn't it?
Is the United States really the font of innovation or is innovation being smothered in fear of legal liability? Are nations such as Finland, Israel and Australia more nimble when it comes to innovation than the United States and less worried about the consequences of failure?
 
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Of course you can point to speific scientific advantages e.g. the focus of Portuguese shipbuilders on (relatively) large oceangoing vessels gave them a crushing naval advantage in the Indian ocean since their ships were far bigger and sturdier than Arab and Indian dhows.

..

A naval advantage from large ships was arguably more a economic matter than a scientific one. Eastern countries/economies were certainly _capable_ of building large ships.

The Spanish Manila-Acapulco galleons were mainly built in the Phillipines. Wikipedia The Infallible records that the Moghul Emperor Aurangzeb possessed a 1500 ton 80 gun ship the Ganj-i-Sawai (and others too). So they could _build_ big ships. The early Chinese Emperors also built some _very_ large junks.

They didn't _have_ many, because there was little trade carried on within the Indian Ocean basin that needed such large ships. No economic justification, they didn't build them. To flourish, I think science needs an economic justification. Rather like the interminable arguments about whether the Romans could have built steam engines. Probably they could, but having no economic purpose, they didn't.
 
A naval advantage from large ships was arguably more a economic matter than a scientific one. Eastern countries/economies were certainly _capable_ of building large ships.

The Spanish Manila-Acapulco galleons were mainly built in the Phillipines. Wikipedia The Infallible records that the Moghul Emperor Aurangzeb possessed a 1500 ton 80 gun ship the Ganj-i-Sawai (and others too). So they could _build_ big ships. The early Chinese Emperors also built some _very_ large junks.

They didn't _have_ many, because there was little trade carried on within the Indian Ocean basin that needed such large ships. No economic justification, they didn't build them. To flourish, I think science needs an economic justification. Rather like the interminable arguments about whether the Romans could have built steam engines. Probably they could, but having no economic purpose, they didn't.

Very, very good point
 
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