Is Europe destined to rule the world?

Wasn't the Islamic world far more scientific than Christendom for centuries? I have to laugh when people assert that Islam is somehow inherently anti-science.

I mean, algebra, engineering, astronomy, Arabic numerals... "European" science was largely built on Arabic improvements to the Aristotelian base. Same with philosophy; European studies of folks like Aristotle owe a lot to Averroes and, to a certain extent, the Byzantines.
 
...You do realize that technologically, philosophically, and scientifically Europe was behind the Islamic world for the vast majority of the middle ages to the early modern period right?

Wrong. Western Europe had caught up with the Islamic world by the late Middle Ages. Uzun Hassan, lord of Persia and contemporary of Mehmet the Conqueror, needed the Venetians to supply him with cannons because he couldn't make his own (Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time, pg. 307-08). The Ottomans in 1453 needed Hungarian help in making their big cannons and getting their technique down. The Ottomans only started using cannons a century after the French and English were. The first printing press in the entire Muslim world was in Istanbul in 1727 (Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, pg. 381). By that point the technology was almost 300 years old in western Europe.
 
I feel like that this is either a) he copied these arguments from some racist verbatim or b) Charles Murray has an account here.

It might have been copied from some Reddit post, I remember reading something very similar, if not exactly the same, in Askreddit.
 
Agreed, but that guy's comment was so offensive I'm actually laughing for some reason.

Yeah. At first I was like: :mad:

But now I'm: :D
Uh. You better have a damn good explanation for this sentence, and provide it right now. And I mean a damn good example of backpedalling for this kind of blatant racism and ethnocentric bullshit.
And backpedalling on the level of Michael Phelps and the U.S. Olympic swim team. ;)
He got some 'splaining to do...
Yeah, I'll say.
I feel like that this is either a) he copied these arguments from some racist verbatim or b) Charles Murray has an account here.
Or Samuel A. Cartwright's ghost. Damn it, Charlie! I thought we told you to get off of here! Go sell your books somewhere else! :p
It might have been copied from some Reddit post, I remember reading something very similar, if not exactly the same, in Askreddit.

Oh, Reddit's numerous resident racists. Where would we be without thee? :eek:
 
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Europe is also easily traveled across. It is surrounded on four sides by Seas (south - Mediterranean, West - Atlantic, North - baltic, East - Black sea though not always). That allows easier long range trade. From these seas there are further river ways to facilitate trade going inland (Kievan rus).

The Islamic world while it does have internal waterways (sharing the mediterranean, the Red sea and some control of the Indian ocean and at some points controlling the black sea) they are split in two. A European ship could go from Constantinople to the Baltics either through riverways and the black sea or going the long way across the Mediterranean to the atlantic then into the Baltic sea. Islamic shipping on the other hand was either Mediterranean trade or Red sea - Indian ocean trade. Also there were less river systems but were still important (Nile, Fertile crescent and indus).

I think somebody mentioned a while ago that at one point half of the world's trade was in the North Sea - Baltic region. That shows a extremely connected european trade network.
 
Wasn't the Islamic world far more scientific than Christendom for centuries? I have to laugh when people assert that Islam is somehow inherently anti-science.

It is a nonsense to speak about islam if science as well as christian science or jewish science. It is a caricature of political-correctness, mainly die to oil, petro-dollars or ideology.
Would one speak about mongol science because the mongols ruled China and used chinese knowledge ?

We should talking about egyptian, syriac, mesopotomian and person science. They were there Before the tribes came out of the arabic peninsula and conquered a world empire. They went on as long as the grip of Islam did not become too tight.

And It has been demonstrated that Byzantium was at least as important as the arae-islamisme world in transmiting ancient hellenistic science to latin Europe,
 
And It has been demonstrated that Byzantium was at least as important as the arae-islamisme world in transmiting ancient hellenistic science to latin Europe,

Who has demonstrated this? 8th and 9th century Byzantines didn't even know who the statutes in Constantinople were of, so anecdotally I am not sure if this suggests a strong interest or corpus of scholars translating materials.

Now sure, in the 15th century, there were Byzantine scholars. But that's a bit late.
 
But how does conflict give rise to better textile manufacturing equipment, or equipment for draining coal mines?

I don't think it is so much a matter of the conflict being the driver of innovation, as it is having a disunited, but trading, area meant that any one nation's foolishness in not implementing a new technology would quickly be proven wrong. On the other hand since China had no competitors at its height, the downsides of innovation (disruption of established power centers, and possibly political instability) were much more salient than the advantages of implementation.

Regardless, China could have been a contender. The relative dominance of Eurasia as a whole was pretty much set upon the early adoption of agriculture, but the focus being on the east or west axis was, IMHO, more a matter of historical contingency.
 
[QUOTE =eschaton;10580687]I don't think it is so much a matter of the conflict being the driver of innovation, as it is having a disunited, but trading, area meant that any one nation's foolishness in not implementing a new technology would quickly be proven wrong. On the other hand since China had no competitors at its height, the downsides of innovation (disruption of established power centers, and possibly political instability) were much more salient than the advantages of implementation.

Regardless, China could have been a contender. The relative dominance of Eurasia as a whole was pretty much set upon the early adoption of agriculture, but the focus being on the east or west axis was, IMHO, more a matter of historical contingency.[/QUOTE ]
conflict didn't give rise to use of steam pumps, necessity did.

In Englands case you had mass deforestation by the 16th century and so they turned to coal which was easy to access and due to the waterways of England could be transported cheaply and easily as fuel. To further efficiency of said coal transporting and extracting innovations occurred and from their the basis for coal use were laid.

India had no deforestation till the 18th--19th century and so they didn't turn to coal and in china's case it is difficult to transport coal form the rocky north to the urbanized coast or south due to distance constraints.

As for pumps well those were pioneered by the dutch because the Netherlands had poor arable land and so to extract the most use form land they relied on poulders and dykes(read van der walds poulders and dykes of the Netherlands) which later advanced into becoming pumps and canals and when other European states saw how successful the dutch were in raising agricultural productive they imported dutch engineers to help build pumps and canals within their own territories and thus tee diffusion occurred. Really just read Rourke and Findlay or Parsannan or Pommeranz and your answers are their.
 
Wrong. Western Europe had caught up with the Islamic world by the late Middle Ages. Uzun Hassan, lord of Persia and contemporary of Mehmet the Conqueror, needed the Venetians to supply him with cannons because he couldn't make his own (Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time, pg. 307-08). The Ottomans in 1453 needed Hungarian help in making their big cannons and getting their technique down. The Ottomans only started using cannons a century after the French and English were. The first printing press in the entire Muslim world was in Istanbul in 1727 (Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, pg. 381). By that point the technology was almost 300 years old in western Europe.
I'll point out that there's more to technology and science than weapons development and printing, and that different regions even among Western Christian Europe had radically different technological levels, but fair enough. Still, the dominance of the Islamic world through most of the Middle Ages at least shows that Christian thought is not inherently superior to Islamic thought as regards development.

Also, thank you for making citations. I'll see what I can dig up if there's anything contrary to that, but it's nice to see it every now and then.
 
I feel like that this is either a) he copied these arguments from some racist verbatim or b) Charles Murray has an account here.
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I'll point out that there's more to technology and science than weapons development and printing, and that different regions even among Western Christian Europe had radically different technological levels, but fair enough. Still, the dominance of the Islamic world through most of the Middle Ages at least shows that Christian thought is not inherently superior to Islamic thought as regards development.

Also, thank you for making citations. I'll see what I can dig up if there's anything contrary to that, but it's nice to see it every now and then.

True, although weapons technology has the virtue of being well documented and easily comparable and quantifiable as opposed to say, crop yields or educational attainment. And considering the importance and value of the printing press when it comes to spreading information, I'd argue that it is an extremely important piece of technology.

My objection with your post, which I did not make clear (my bad), was your inclusion of the early modern period along with the Middle Ages. The Muslims were ahead for the majority of the Middle Ages.
 
My personal belief is that European dominance is very likely, but this may be inspired by misunderstanding of especially Indian Ocean weather.

As far as I can tell, Europe has a rather decent progression of storminess. The Mediterranean is quite calm, the Baltic/North Sea a bunch rougher (but, at least the North Sea, fairly predictably), and the Atlantic eventually gets real rough.
As such, each subsequent step in sturdiness of ships was worthwhile, as it meant a few more miles of sea you could travel safely, or a month more of (relatively) safe travel, while Asia has more typhoons of the all-or-nothing variety (where small progressions might mean you sink half an hour later but still sink).

If this is true, the seeds of European dominance (represented by the Portuguese, mostly), which were firmly naval, are quite logically more likely in Europe. Sure, desire and need drove the Europeans a lot too, but in the end it was the European small-but-sturdy ships that took over Indian Ocean trade from the Arabs and (expat) Chinese, and accidentally also added America to the European sphere. IMO 1500-something is the last time to prevent Europe becoming dominant (not the absolute hegemony of the 1900s yet, mind, just 'Europe is the most powerful continent' dominance), as that is when the Indian trade was really cornered.
 
I have read that the dominance of Europe was determined by the fact that only in Europe could capitalism come to power. After this happened it was only a matter of time for Europe to dominate the world. Capitalism was much more efficient than any other economical system that existed around the time and it strongly encouraged innovation.
Im not sure if i read this by Wallerstein but if not him for sure someone likeminded.
 
Wasn't the Islamic world far more scientific than Christendom for centuries? I have to laugh when people assert that Islam is somehow inherently anti-science.

We should be careful about making broad cultural statements here. The "Islamic world" at that time was very religiously diverse, with an Islamic governing class but vast numbers of Christian and Jewish subjects. Egypt for example is thought to have remained predominantly Christian until the thirteenth or fourteenth century.
 
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