Jared Diamond, _Guns, Germs, and Steel_
Samuel Paik
book, _Guns, Germs, and Steel_, by Jared Diamond, is
available in paperback. I saw it at a local Barnes & Noble
in the New Paperbacks table and picked up a copy last weekend.
Basic argument: geography and distribution of domesticatable
plants and large animals have a lot to do with the very
broad strokes of human history--particularly why the peoples
of Europe-Asia came out on top over the peoples of Africa
and the Americas.
So far, the writing is clear and direct and the evidence
and arguments are presented intelligibly without being
condescending. He is a little bit repetitive. I'll post
something more when I finish this book
--
Samuel S. Paik | http://www.webnexus.com/users/paik/
3D and multimedia, architecture and implementation
Solyent Green is kitniyot!
Nancy Lebovitz
Samuel Paik <pa...@webnexus.com> wrote:
>Just like to mention that the interesting and controversial
>book, _Guns, Germs, and Steel_, by Jared Diamond, is
>available in paperback. I saw it at a local Barnes & Noble
>in the New Paperbacks table and picked up a copy last weekend.
>
>Basic argument: geography and distribution of domesticatable
>plants and large animals have a lot to do with the very
>broad strokes of human history--particularly why the peoples
>of Europe-Asia came out on top over the peoples of Africa
>and the Americas.
>
Williams--basically, that Africa had a lot going against it.
There is a lack of navigable rivers (iirc, the best one didn't
have an easily usable conneciton to the ocean) and a lot of
parasites. Anyone remember which book this was in or more
details about it?
t
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com
Calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
JoatSimeon
geographic reason why China shouldn't have played the role Europe actually did.
-- S.M. Stirling
Captain Button
[ text died of pestilence ]
> I've seen a similar argument by either Thomas Sowell or Walter
> Williams--basically, that Africa had a lot going against it.
> There is a lack of navigable rivers (iirc, the best one didn't
> have an easily usable conneciton to the ocean) and a lot of
> parasites. Anyone remember which book this was in or more
> details about it?
May not be the the one you mean, but an interesting non-fiction
book on this topic is _Plagues and Peoples_ by William H. McNeill.
--
[ but...@io.com ]"DOGBERRY: Marry, sir, they have committed false report;
moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth
and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust
things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves." Shakespeare - _Much Ado.._
Martin Terman
>Diamond has some good arguments but takes them to extremes -- eg., there's no
>geographic reason why China shouldn't have played the role Europe actually did.
Diamond was careful to talk in terms of probability, but yes, his geographic
explanation for China's unity did seem a little thin, and why that unity
worked against it. He never explained why the Roman Empire didn't play the
role that the rest of Europe did later on either.
His thesis is more useful in explaining barriers to the development of
civilizations, and simply stating that Eurasia lucked out in that it had
very few if any factors working against it.
He would have been better to skip trying to explain why China had not
industrialized and spent a chapter instead focusing on metalworking and
how the development of that technology affected the rise of technology.
--
Martin Terman, Therapy and Behavioral Counseling for Troubled Computers.
Disclaimer: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but flames are just ignored
email: mfte...@panix.com home page: http://www.panix.com/~mfterman/
"Sig quotes are like bumper stickers, only without the same sense of relevance"
Charles Fisher
>
> In article <19990715111622...@ng-fj1.aol.com>, joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) writes:
> >Diamond has some good arguments but takes them to extremes -- eg., there's no
> >geographic reason why China shouldn't have played the role Europe actually did.
>
> Diamond was careful to talk in terms of probability, but yes, his geographic
> explanation for China's unity did seem a little thin, and why that unity
> worked against it. He never explained why the Roman Empire didn't play the
> role that the rest of Europe did later on either.
>
> His thesis is more useful in explaining barriers to the development of
> civilizations, and simply stating that Eurasia lucked out in that it had
> very few if any factors working against it.
>
> He would have been better to skip trying to explain why China had not
> industrialized and spent a chapter instead focusing on metalworking and
> how the development of that technology affected the rise of technology.
>
> --
> Martin Terman, Therapy and Behavioral Counseling for Troubled Computers.
David Landes (_The Wealth and Poverty of Nations_) has another argument
about this, mainly that the Chinese went for an immediate payoff in food
and goods for everybody above the peasants at the cost of intensive
labor and having no room to experiment.
His more interesting point is that he suspects the Japanese might've had
an Industrial Revolution if the Europeans hadn't arrived with one. Not
sure of some of his data - he claims that the Japanese where the only
non-Europeans before the modern period to see European mechanical
clocks, import them for awhile, then start their own indigenous clock
and watchmaking industry without European technicians or assistance.
Chuck Fisher
ch...@pop.uky.edu
Kevin J. Maroney
>Diamond has some good arguments but takes them to extremes -- eg., there's no
>geographic reason why China shouldn't have played the role Europe actually did.
Well, for many centuries, it did, within its own borders.
Kevin Maroney | kmar...@crossover.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor
The New York Review of Science Fiction
http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/olp/nyrsf/nyrsf.html
R Shaw
writes:
>In article <19990715111622...@ng-fj1.aol.com>, joats...@aol.com
>(JoatSimeon) writes:
>>Diamond has some good arguments but takes them to extremes -- eg., there's
>>no geographic reason why China shouldn't have played the role Europe actually
>>did.
>
>Diamond was careful to talk in terms of probability, but yes, his geographic
>explanation for China's unity did seem a little thin, and why that unity
>worked against it. He never explained why the Roman Empire didn't play the
>role that the rest of Europe did later on either.
>
>His thesis is more useful in explaining barriers to the development of
>civilizations, and simply stating that Eurasia lucked out in that it had
>very few if any factors working against it.
Diamond says as much, he is mostly concerned with why Eurasia
did best. The reasons he gives for China are not original to him;
many historians have given the same reason for the differences between
Europe and China
Whether the fall of the Roman empire was inevitable, and if so why
is a more complicated question, much debated by historians. Some
of the reasons are probably purely historical, but others are geographical.
Europe does have more prominent peninsulas and larger off-shore
islands than China. Both had phases when they were divided into many
rival kingdoms but while China was reunified by conquest, Europe never
was. There are historical reasons for this, but there are also geographical
constraints that stopped Charlemagne or his rivals from conquering
all Europe (Iberia, Britain and the Balkans included) and establishing his
borders on the russian steppes. Terrain gave the European kingdoms
a near unbeatable advantage on the defensive.
---
Matter is fundamentally lazy:- It always takes the path of least effort
Matter is fundamentally stupid:- It tries every other path first.
That is the heart of physics - The rest is details.
Robert
Mike Scott
>Diamond has some good arguments but takes them to extremes -- eg., there's no
>geographic reason why China shouldn't have played the role Europe actually did.
Not enough peninsulas. According to Diamond.
--
Mike Scott
mi...@plokta.com
PNN has frequently updated news & comment for SF fandom
http://www.plokta.com/pnn/
JoatSimeon
>Not enough peninsulas. According to Diamond.
-- yeah, that's what I mean -- he tries to shoehorn everything into a
geographical-determinist framework.
As if peninsulas made Europeans develop the scientific method. Lord have
mercy!
He'll go through any amount of intellectual contortion rather than admit the
simple fact that some cultures are just plain superior to others.
-- S.M. Stirling
Craig J Neumeier
>Diamond has some good arguments but takes them to extremes -- eg., there's no
>geographic reason why China shouldn't have played the role Europe actually did.
He also has an annoying tendency to compare the finished products
of domestication in one area with potentially-domesticable species
elsewhere. His main arguments may still be salvageable, but
they're weaker than he presents them.
Craig Neumeier, LHN
Lisa A Leutheuser
Mike Scott <mi...@moose.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On 15 Jul 1999 15:16:22 GMT, joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) wrote:
>
>>geographic reason why China shouldn't have played the role Europe actually did.
>
IIRC, Diamond said it had to do with government (societal/political)
decisions. Cultural and political pressures can affect how a people
develop. Japan, for example, exerted great deliberate control over
their technological and economic development during the Tokugawa
Shogunate.
In China's case, they were a great naval power at one time -- sailing
as far as Africa. One of the Dynasties (don't remember which) decided
to kill off their naval program. Had they continued to explore and
trade by sea, they might have become like England or Spain with their
far-flung empires. China also had a number of enemies (e.g. Mongols
to the north) that kept them focused on *protecting* their interior
borders, which is different from pushing to expand beyond their borders.
Lisa Leutheuser
eal (at) umich.edu
http://www.umich.edu/~eal
R Shaw
(JoatSimeon) writes:
>
>>Not enough peninsulas. According to Diamond.
>
>-- yeah, that's what I mean -- he tries to shoehorn everything into a
>geographical-determinist framework.
>
>As if peninsulas made Europeans develop the scientific method. Lord have
>mercy!
You are overstating your case.
This idea is not original to Diamond. Many historians have
postuated the same idea. Nor is Diamond that definite about it.
You've shortened the suggested chain of causes, a rhetorical trick that
says absolutely nothing about the firmness of the actual argument.
The suggestion is that all the pennsulas and islands made it much harder
for Europe to be united under a monolithic empire. Diamond does know
Rome existed, and he wouldn't be daft enough to suggest this if Rome
was a counterexample. Rome never controlled all Europe. None of its
successor kingdoms came anywhere near reuniting its empire, quite unlike
the Chinese case.
Monolithic empires put all their eggs in one basket, it was possible for China
to suppress its fleet and ignore technical possibilities, since it had no
external
enemies. Europe could not, if one King did the next would use the new
knowledge
against him. This was not the only factor, but it was a factor in the different
routes China
and Europe took.
Europe did have a better culture than China, but why? Its not because
Europeans are smarter. The reasons are unclear but geography may be
among them.
Michael Brazier
>
> In article <378D67CC...@webnexus.com>,
> Samuel Paik <pa...@webnexus.com> wrote:
> >Just like to mention that the interesting and controversial
> >book, _Guns, Germs, and Steel_, by Jared Diamond, is
> >available in paperback. I saw it at a local Barnes & Noble
> >in the New Paperbacks table and picked up a copy last weekend.
> >
> >Basic argument: geography and distribution of domesticatable
> >plants and large animals have a lot to do with the very
> >broad strokes of human history--particularly why the peoples
> >of Europe-Asia came out on top over the peoples of Africa
> >and the Americas.
> >
> Williams--basically, that Africa had a lot going against it.
> There is a lack of navigable rivers (iirc, the best one didn't
> have an easily usable conneciton to the ocean) and a lot of
> parasites. Anyone remember which book this was in or more
> details about it?
Thomas Sowell, definitely; it's in one of the "X and Cultures" books.
"Migration" according to my memory. Sowell doesn't extend the argument
to places outside Africa, and he only mentions it in passing.
--
Michael Brazier
Graydon
> >geographic reason why China shouldn't have played the role Europe actually did.
>
> explanation for China's unity did seem a little thin, and why that unity
> worked against it. He never explained why the Roman Empire didn't play the
> role that the rest of Europe did later on either.
In the case of both Rome and China, power was too tightly
concentrated. Their ruling classes were in a possition to strangle
any innovation that threatened their relative social standing. (After
Rome fell in the West, there was a sudden and considerable burst of
innovation in technology. There just about has to be a reason why it
didn't happen under Roman rule, because Rome in all material respects
ought to have been a better environment for it.)
--
graydon@ |The Human Dress is forged Iron, The Human Form a fiery Forge,
lara. |The Human Face a Furnace seal'd, The Human Heart its
on.ca |hungry Gorge. -- from Wllm. Blake, "A Divine Image", 1794
Phil Fraering
>David Landes (_The Wealth and Poverty of Nations_) has another argument
>about this, mainly that the Chinese went for an immediate payoff in food
>and goods for everybody above the peasants at the cost of intensive
>labor and having no room to experiment.
>His more interesting point is that he suspects the Japanese might've had
>an Industrial Revolution if the Europeans hadn't arrived with one. Not
>sure of some of his data - he claims that the Japanese where the only
>non-Europeans before the modern period to see European mechanical
>clocks, import them for awhile, then start their own indigenous clock
>and watchmaking industry without European technicians or assistance.
I have my suspicions that the Koreans might also have gotten one
started; they did manage to invent _movable_ type and the ironclad
warship, for example.
Phil
--
Phil Fraering "What are we going to do tonight, Miles?"
p...@globalreach.net "Same thing we do every night, Ivan,
/Will work for tape/ try to take over the Imperium!"
MADAM IM ADAM
Phil Fraering
>-- yeah, that's what I mean -- he tries to shoehorn everything into a
>geographical-determinist framework.
>As if peninsulas made Europeans develop the scientific method. Lord have
>mercy!
>He'll go through any amount of intellectual contortion rather than admit the
>simple fact that some cultures are just plain superior to others.
>-- S.M. Stirling
I think I heard the argument thusly:
The peninsulas helped ensure that during the period when the New
Technologies were starting to be developed, Europe was politically
fragmented, and this fragmentation helped speed up the cycle of
the development of new technologies. If the Italian city-states turn
down your trade-with-India-by-going-West idea, you could try selling
it to Portugal instead, and if they don't like it, you could go to
Spain, and if Spain doesn't like it, you can threaten to sell it to
Britian and Spain will buy into it.
Whereas with China you had one large area united under the political
control of some of the most hidebound control freaks you'd ever
seen. When the Ming decided to scuttle the treasure fleets, evacuate
the coasts, and ban contacts with foreign countries via the sea,
you couldn't appeal to the Portugese or to Spain or Britian.
You just got stuck with no innovation for a very long period of
time, and after a while, the British showed up with very refined
versions of Chinese technologies and, well, the finer details
of what happened next are generally well known.
Samuel Paik
> I have my suspicions that the Koreans might also have gotten one
> started; they did manage to invent _movable_ type and the ironclad
> warship, for example.
I don't know, population of Korea is pretty small...
Phil Fraering
>R Shaw wrote:
>>Monolithic empires put all their eggs in one basket, it was possible for
>>China to suppress its fleet and ignore technical possibilities, since it
>>had no external enemies.
>China has also had many significant periods of disunity,
>and has been ruled by outsiders about, oh, half the time.
I would think somewhat less than half the time. I don't think
the Yuan dynasty lasted that long. I don't know how they felt
about technological innovation. The other "foreign" dynasty,
the Qing, didn't seem to encourage it, except sporadically near
the end, and then only for copying technology but not the
attached methodology.
Coyu
>In the case of both Rome and China, power was too tightly
>concentrated. Their ruling classes were in a possition to strangle
>any innovation that threatened their relative social standing.
Which dynasty? Because your description doesn't hold very well
for many of them.
Coyu
JoatSimeon
Besides gunpowder, the compass, the rudder, and other well known inventions.
They had coal-smelted iron 800 years earlier than the Europeans (and managed
really quite impressive levels of production); they invented paper money,
long-distance canals, a quite good cotton-spinning machine, etc.
They didn't have the intellectual tradition to develop a true science, though;
and their mathematics were always rather primitive.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>Monolithic empires put all their eggs in one basket, it was possible for
>China
>to suppress its fleet and ignore technical possibilities, since it had no
>external
>enemies.
-- this is quite true, and accounts for the Chinese suppression of sea travel.
However, it has nothing to do with the discovery of the scientific method --
which the Chinese never came anywhere near.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>China has also had many significant periods of disunity,
>and has been ruled by outsiders about, oh, half the time.
-- true, and much of it is difficult to get to, separated by high mountain
ranges and so forth.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>The peninsulas helped ensure that during the period when the New
>Technologies were starting to be developed, Europe was politically
>fragmented, and this fragmentation helped speed up the cycle of
>the development of new technologies. If the Italian city-states turn
>down your trade-with-India-by-going-West idea, you could try selling
>it to Portugal instead,
-- there's an old saying: Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the
third time it's enemy action.
Prior to 1200 or so, the whole 'intercommunicating zone' between Ireland and
Japan had roughly comparable levels of scientific and technological
development.
Gunpowder was used as early in India as in Europe, for instance -- so were
cannon.
European culture developed a _method of investigation_ that no other had.
This is not the same thing as specific technical tricks, no matter how refined.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>He also has an annoying tendency to compare the finished products
>of domestication in one area with potentially-domesticable species
>elsewhere. His main arguments may still be salvageable, but
>they're weaker than he presents them.
-- good point. An aurochs -- the ancestor of domestic cattle -- is much bigger
and much, much meaner than any Texas longhorn or Spanish fighting bull.
-- S.M. Stirling
R Shaw
writes:
>R Shaw wrote:
>
>>Monolithic empires put all their eggs in one basket, it was possible for
>>China to suppress its fleet and ignore technical possibilities, since it
>>had no external enemies.
>
>China has also had many significant periods of disunity,
>and has been ruled by outsiders about, oh, half the time.
>
But did the Chinese think of the outsiders as a threat?
They were quite capable of dismissing them as unimportant
barbarians even when under barbarian rule. China has been
disunited, but it has also been repeatedly reunited, unlike Europe.
The Roman empire was never restored.
China had no civilised close neighbors, every European nation
had civilised rivals just across the border.
These aren't the only reasons for the differences but it is
widely considered plausible that Chinas unity worked against
it, in combination with other cultural factors.
A Giridhar Rao
news:neume001....@amethyst.tc.umn.edu...
> [>Diamond] also has an annoying tendency to compare the finished products
> of domestication in one area with potentially-domesticable species
> elsewhere. His main arguments may still be salvageable, but
> they're weaker than he presents them.
don't you find his arguments about the domesticability of some species of
plants and animals over others convincing? in the case of the spread of
agriculture, i find the argument about domesticability in conjunction with
that on the major axes of continents quite powerful. and what choice might
he have had but to compare finished products with counterfactuals?
also, in the discussion so far, no one's touched upon the methodological
essay at the end of the book, where he dilates on the variety of strategies
that the scientific method encompasses; and the legitimacy of "narrative"
strategies in some disciplines (i don't have the book at hand, but wasn't
there a reference to "historical" disciplines, from galactology through
paleobiology to ecology?)
regards
giridhar
hyderabad
india
>
>
> Craig Neumeier, LHN
>
Charles Fisher
>
(stufff snipped)
>
> don't you find his arguments about the domesticability of some species of
> plants and animals over others convincing? in the case of the spread of
> agriculture, i find the argument about domesticability in conjunction with
> that on the major axes of continents quite powerful. and what choice might
> he have had but to compare finished products with counterfactuals?
>
compares the buffalo and cattle, finding the buffalo much less
domesticable.
As the others in the thread point out, the proper comparison is buffalo
and
wild aurochs - much less of a difference if any, even buffalo and tame
cattle can produce fertile offspring (I'll defer to anybody with
ranching experience on this, particularly if they've dealt with both
aurochs and buffalo).
(more snippage)
>
> regards
>
> giridhar
> hyderabad
> india
>
Coyu
>[Chinese] mathematics were always rather primitive.
Hm? No, it was about par till about 1500 - ahead on basic probability
theory, behind on algebra. Competent surveyors as well.
Coyu
>>China has also had many significant periods of disunity,
>>and has been ruled by outsiders about, oh, half the time.
>>
>But did the Chinese think of the outsiders as a threat?
Sure did - you're conflating late Qing attitudes to all of China's
history. (The Qing were of course outsiders themselves.)
>China had no civilised close neighbors, every European nation
>had civilised rivals just across the border.
I'm sure the Koreans, the Japanese, the Mongols, the Tibetans
and the Vietnamese will be pleased to hear this. Oh, and the
Iranians and the central Asian republics, too.
tere...@my-deja.com
should have taken into consideration the point of view of the
individual. Christianity gave the Europeans a leg up over the rest of
the humanity. It modified the whole out look. Before the Christianity
came around, the mankind was a victim of gods whims. After
Christianity, mankind was cherished free child of God. From the
perspective of personal freedom, one is free to explore and question.
Once mankind learned to ask questions, the seeds of scientific
revolutions were planted.
Greg
In article <neume001....@amethyst.tc.umn.edu>,
neum...@amethyst.tc.umn.edu (Craig J Neumeier) wrote:
> joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) writes:
>
> >Diamond has some good arguments but takes them to extremes -- eg.,
there's no
> >geographic reason why China shouldn't have played the role Europe
actually did.
>
> He also has an annoying tendency to compare the finished products
> of domestication in one area with potentially-domesticable species
> elsewhere. His main arguments may still be salvageable, but
> they're weaker than he presents them.
>
> Craig Neumeier, LHN
>
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Kevin J. Maroney
>However, it has nothing to do with the discovery of the scientific method --
>which the Chinese never came anywhere near.
Nor, for that matter, did the Europeans. They borrowed it from the
Muslims.
Why it found more fertile ground in Europe than in Arabia, Spain, and
North Africa is not clear to me. Accidents of history are accidents of
history, not predestination.
Kevin Maroney | kmar...@crossover.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor
The New York Review of Science Fiction
http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/olp/nyrsf/nyrsf.html
David Joseph Greenbaum
of divine composition, inscribed in fleeting electrons:
>I've seen a similar argument by either Thomas Sowell or Walter
>Williams--basically, that Africa had a lot going against it.
>There is a lack of navigable rivers (iirc, the best one didn't
>have an easily usable conneciton to the ocean) and a lot of
>parasites. Anyone remember which book this was in or more
>details about it?
There's bunches of books about sub-Saharan epidemiology, quite a few
about European colonization, and a number about African ethnology.
I have a couple of problems with this thesis as related to Africa.
While it does explain the lack of penetration by people from north
of the Sahara, it does not explain the indigenous development of
the Zimbabwean Iron Age kingdoms, nor the existence of the
Empire of the Kongo (a confederation of the Congolese tribal
kingdoms throughout present-day Angola, Congo), nor the great west
African empires.
Dave G.
--
Such fragrance,
from where -
which tree?
Richard Harter
>joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) wrote:
>
>>However, it has nothing to do with the discovery of the scientific method --
>>which the Chinese never came anywhere near.
>
>Nor, for that matter, did the Europeans. They borrowed it from the
>Muslims.
>
>Why it found more fertile ground in Europe than in Arabia, Spain, and
>North Africa is not clear to me. Accidents of history are accidents of
>history, not predestination.
Why Europe is one of those eternally debated questions. I am fond of
the Mongol theory myself - Europe was the only major cultural center
that wasn't conquered by the Mongols. I don't have any real explanation
of why that mattered although the impact was traumatic for Islam. The
neat thing is that Europe being spared was wildly contingent. Subotai
was poised to run over Europe and was called back for the funeral of
Ogotai. He never came back and Europe was spared.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-978-369-3911
Changing your mind is no big deal provided
You remember to change your underwear
JoatSimeon
>He
>should have taken into consideration the point of view of the
>individual. Christianity gave the Europeans a leg up over the rest of
>the humanity.
-- true, although one should note that it was specifically Latin Christianity
-- the areas where Catholicism and its Protestant offshoots predominated.
Orthodoxy and the Monophysite areas didn't do so well.
The reasons for this are extremely complex.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>Nor, for that matter, did the Europeans. They borrowed it from the
>Muslims.
-- not unless you're using a very odd definition of the scientific method.
Islam never got close either. We derived some very useful information via
Muslim sources, and of course observations on Classical work.
However, the scientific method proper was developed exactly once, in
post-Renaissance Europe.
-- S.M. Stirling
Leigh Kimmel
joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) writes:
> However, the scientific method proper was developed exactly once, in
> post-Renaissance Europe.
Which might be an answer to Fermi's Paradox -- the development of a
scientific, industrial civilization is a very uncommon event, and most
civilizations get by with empirical methods until they get stuck in a
"high end trap" and never go anywhere with it. We may well end up
discovering that there are lots of worlds with intelligent life, but
those with civilizations seem stuck in patterns more akin to those of
Rome or China, in which the idea of consciously applying scientific
principles to material culture is alien.
--
One terrified boy and the girl who would save him.
"Claws of Vengeance" on sale now
http://www.alexlit.com/ Alexandria Digital Literature
Leigh Kimmel -- writer, artist and historian
kim...@globaleyes.net
http://members.tripod.com/~kimmel/lhkwebpage.html
Ask me how to order the new Sime~Gen novel!
Check out my bookstore http://members.tripod.com/~kimmel/bookstore/
Jeffrey C. Dege
>In article <19990716133805...@ng-bk1.aol.com>
>joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) writes:
>
>> However, the scientific method proper was developed exactly once, in
>> post-Renaissance Europe.
>
>Which might be an answer to Fermi's Paradox -- the development of a
>scientific, industrial civilization is a very uncommon event, and most
>civilizations get by with empirical methods until they get stuck in a
>"high end trap" and never go anywhere with it. We may well end up
>discovering that there are lots of worlds with intelligent life, but
>those with civilizations seem stuck in patterns more akin to those of
>Rome or China, in which the idea of consciously applying scientific
>principles to material culture is alien.
Another "only-happened-once" mentioned in Diamond's book: the alphabet.
Agriculture has been independently developed several times, both farming
and herding. A number of societies have developed systems of writing,
completely from scratch, with no outside input. The alphabet was invented
once, and all others derived from that single discovery.
Would we have developed digital computers if we didn't have the telegraph?
Would we have invented the telegraph if we didn't write with an alphabet?
--
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.
Nancy Lebovitz
Leigh Kimmel <kim...@mail.globaleyes.net.> wrote:
>
>Which might be an answer to Fermi's Paradox -- the development of a
>scientific, industrial civilization is a very uncommon event, and most
>civilizations get by with empirical methods until they get stuck in a
>"high end trap" and never go anywhere with it. We may well end up
>discovering that there are lots of worlds with intelligent life, but
>those with civilizations seem stuck in patterns more akin to those of
>Rome or China, in which the idea of consciously applying scientific
>principles to material culture is alien.
>
the aliens won't be alien enough. It's a pity when the universe
falls down on the job like that.
Alternative possibility for OTL: The scientific method is just
plain unlikely. If the Chinese had had another 2 or 10 millenia,
they might have invented it and people would be exercising their
minds about why it never got invented in Europe.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com
Calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Irv Koch
> >kmar...@crossover.com
> >Nor, for that matter, did the Europeans. They borrowed it from the
> >Muslims.
> -- not unless you're using a very odd definition of the scientific method.
> Islam never got close either. We derived some very useful information via
> Muslim sources, and of course observations on Classical work.
> post-Renaissance Europe.
Not trying to be argumentative, but I seem to recall that the Islamic
world made SOME scientific advances. Yes, much of this may have been
due to "scholarship" and other alternatives to "scientific method," but
didn't at least a few of their people do some physical experimentation?
Generally in biological, genetic (breeding), etc. areas?
George D. Phillies
On Fri, 16 Jul 1999, Jeffrey C. Dege wrote:
> completely from scratch, with no outside input. The alphabet was invented
> once, and all others derived from that single discovery.
Not on this time line.
The Mayan system (a syllabic alphabet, but a true alphabet allowing
an arbitrary statement to be written unambiguously) was *certainly*
independent of the Latin alphabet. See the recent book by Coe. Belief
that the Mayan system was either a rebus system (so-called "heiroglyphic",
a system that has never been used) or not a true alphabet has collapsed
now that the alphabet is largely deciphered.
The Chinese system predates the Latin, and must be original. The Japanese
developed a syllabic alphabet from it. The Koreans developed by intent a
purely phonetic script (and SF writers tired of rehashing Belisarius and
the Byzantines, down to two recent authors who seem to think "spangenhelm"
is a word in Farsi, really should look for variety at Korean history of
the period), where by "intent" I mean that a collection of scholars were
ordered to invent it, and they did. (For the last of these, there is a
possibility of Latin cross-communication.)
Works very well, too, or so I am told.
George
Samuel Paik
> China has also had many significant periods of disunity,
> and has been ruled by outsiders about, oh, half the time.
Right, but China has been and is much more unified than Europe.
Samuel Paik
> The Koreans developed by intent a purely phonetic script, where by
> "intent" I mean that a collection of scholars were ordered to
> invent it, and they did. (For the last of these, there is a
> possibility of Latin cross-communication.)
>
> Works very well, too, or so I am told.
My slightly informed opinion is that Korean script ("Hangul")
is not too well suited for the print age. While it is phonetic,
the characters are organized into syllables, so to print it
essentially requires a syllabary. The computer age reduces
these problems significantly--but you need typefaces with
thousands of symbols, which doesn't fit earlier computers too
well.
Sam (Seung-Jo)
Elisabeth Carey
They did make some scientific advances. Nearly all major civilizations
have made some scientific advances. Nearly all of them produced a few
people who did physical experimentation.
Only in Europe was the scientific method--systematic development and
testing of hypotheses, and recording the results, and _disseminating_
the results, and developing theoretical structures to _explain_ the
results, and then testing the theories--fully developed. This is a
non-trivial difference; it's a major force in the worldwide spread of
western civilization. It can't be waved away by pointing to individual
scientific achievements elsewhere; it can't be waved away by pointing
to other cultures that had _parts_ of the scientific method, but not
all of it. Europe put all the pieces together, and ran with it; other
cultures did not, even when they had contact with Europe, until
European culture overran much of the rest of the world.
Lis Carey
Graydon
> I don't think anyone's disputing the axis of spread argument. OTOH,
> he compares the buffalo and cattle, finding the buffalo much less
> domesticable. As the others in the thread point out, the proper
> comparison is buffalo and wild aurochs - much less of a difference
> if any, even buffalo and tame cattle can produce fertile offspring
> (I'll defer to anybody with ranching experience on this,
> particularly if they've dealt with both aurochs and buffalo).
What _kind_ of buffalo? Asian plow buffalo and NorAm plains and wood
buffalo aren't the same critters.
We can safely conclude that aurochs lead to breeds of domestic cattle
(just as a tangential point, the large milk breeds like Holsteins
produce aurochs scale bulls not noted for the evenness of their
tempers) which make good milk cows (and that _is_ important) and which
handle a broad range of climate types, as well as good draft animals.
(This has, after all, happened.)
Plow buffalo make good draft animals, but they don't appear to make
good beef or milk animals.
NorAm buffalo aren't generally willing to be fenced in, and the amount
of effort it takes to do the fencing wouldn't be available to a
neolithic culture in any sort of net-positive way.
--
graydon@ |The Human Dress is forged Iron, The Human Form a fiery Forge,
lara. |The Human Face a Furnace seal'd, The Human Heart its
on.ca |hungry Gorge. -- from Wllm. Blake, "A Divine Image", 1794
Craig J Neumeier
>Craig J Neumeier <neum...@amethyst.tc.umn.edu> wrote in message
>> [>Diamond] also has an annoying tendency to compare the finished products
>> of domestication in one area with potentially-domesticable species
>> elsewhere. His main arguments may still be salvageable, but
>> they're weaker than he presents them.
>don't you find his arguments about the domesticability of some species of
>plants and animals over others convincing? in the case of the spread of
>agriculture, i find the argument about domesticability in conjunction with
>that on the major axes of continents quite powerful. and what choice might
>he have had but to compare finished products with counterfactuals?
Comparing the initial species. The clearest example is when he talks
about the potential agricultural plants in the eastern US -- yes, they
have disadvantages, but are they really so much worse than manioc or
the Andean tubers which aren't even *edible* without substantial
processing?
His argument that all the large African mammals must be undomesticable
is also weak, boiling down largely to the fact that they never have
been. This is weak; after all, it was 5500 years between the first
non-dog domestications and the camel, which is quite comparable to the
4500 years from the camel to now. Compare the aurochs, which was
domesticated very early although if any non-domesticated versions
still existed I doubt Diamond would find them any more suitable than
bison.
Some species are undoubtedly better candidates than others (dogs are
the best by far), but *impossibility* is a very strong claim and I don't
think he proves it adequately.
I could rag on him about other points too: e.g. his methods for big
comparison depend on there being *lots* of cultures in any given
area so he can say they must have tried pretty much everything that's
obviously possible -- works OK for the anthropology parts of the
book (though I still have reservations), but when you're dealing
with civilizations the number of candidates is so small that it just
doesn't work.
I repeat: I don't think Diamond is *wrong* so often as just making a
weaker case than he thinks he is.
Craig Neumeier, LHN
Craig J Neumeier
>joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) writes:
>> However, the scientific method proper was developed exactly once, in
>> post-Renaissance Europe.
>Which might be an answer to Fermi's Paradox -- the development of a
>scientific, industrial civilization is a very uncommon event, and most
>civilizations get by with empirical methods until they get stuck in a
>"high end trap" and never go anywhere with it. We may well end up
>discovering that there are lots of worlds with intelligent life, but
>those with civilizations seem stuck in patterns more akin to those of
>Rome or China, in which the idea of consciously applying scientific
>principles to material culture is alien.
Or suppose that many cultures get to early industrial-revolution
stage, but without any scientific method, just cut & try. (ObSF:
Poul Anderson's "Delenda Est" and "In the House of Sorrows.")
That's a high-level equilibrium trap that is perhaps more
probable than what actually happened to us. And what happens
after they burn the easy- & cheap-to-get fossil fuels?
Craig Neumeier, LHN
Elisabeth Carey
>
> Elisabeth Carey <lis....@mediaone.net> wrote:
>
> >Irv Koch wrote:
> >>
> >> JoatSimeon wrote:
> >> > >kmar...@crossover.com
> >> > >Nor, for that matter, did the Europeans. They borrowed it from the
> >> > >Muslims.
> >> > -- not unless you're using a very odd definition of the scientific method.
> >> > Islam never got close either. We derived some very useful information via
> >> > Muslim sources, and of course observations on Classical work.
> >> > post-Renaissance Europe.
> >>
> >> world made SOME scientific advances. Yes, much of this may have been
> >> due to "scholarship" and other alternatives to "scientific method," but
> >> didn't at least a few of their people do some physical experimentation?
> >> Generally in biological, genetic (breeding), etc. areas?
> >
> >They did make some scientific advances. Nearly all major civilizations
> >have made some scientific advances. Nearly all of them produced a few
> >people who did physical experimentation.
> >
> >Only in Europe was the scientific method--systematic development and
> >testing of hypotheses, and recording the results, and _disseminating_
> >the results, and developing theoretical structures to _explain_ the
> >results, and then testing the theories--fully developed. This is a
> >non-trivial difference; it's a major force in the worldwide spread of
> >western civilization. It can't be waved away by pointing to individual
> >scientific achievements elsewhere; it can't be waved away by pointing
> >to other cultures that had _parts_ of the scientific method, but not
> >all of it. Europe put all the pieces together, and ran with it; other
> >cultures did not, even when they had contact with Europe, until
> >European culture overran much of the rest of the world.
>
> other factors which, in their own right, made European culture
> successful. Until the 1800's science as such had little to do with the
> increase in the level of technology. I submit that it was the improving
> technology that provided the impetus for the development of science.
> The question then, is: Why did technology bloom in Europe?
>
> It wasn't the invention of movable type that needs to be accounted for;
> it is the spread of printing in one place and not in another.
> Similarly, many other important inventions made in the 1500's and the
> 1600's were not completely original; yet in Europe there was a
> continuing exploitation of new technology and in the rest of the world
> there was not. Why was that?
It's not an explanation, but an observation: The Europeans were
absolutely wild over new technology. From at least the fifth century
onward, they eagerly adopted new technologies, whether invented
locally or imported from other cultures. They enjoyed making things
work, pretty much for the sake of making them work, as much as for
what practical use they were. You talk about the 1500s and 1600s, but
it goes right back the roots of what Christian European, rather than
imperial Roman, culture. I think the place to look is somewhere in the
collision of late Roman culture, Christianity, and the cultures of the
Germanic and Celtic barbarians.
Lis Carey
Samuel Paik
> His argument that all the large African mammals must be undomesticable
> is also weak, boiling down largely to the fact that they never have
> been.
Since humans were in Africa the longest, they've had the most time
to do domestications.
> Some species are undoubtedly better candidates than others (dogs
> are the best by far), but *impossibility* is a very strong claim
> and I don't think he proves it adequately.
I doubt he would claim *impossibility*.
> I repeat: I don't think Diamond is *wrong* so often as just making a
> weaker case than he thinks he is.
Fair enough.
Sam
Phil Fraering
>The Chinese were often very technically inventive.
>Besides gunpowder, the compass, the rudder, and other well known inventions.
>They had coal-smelted iron 800 years earlier than the Europeans (and managed
>really quite impressive levels of production); they invented paper money,
>long-distance canals, a quite good cotton-spinning machine, etc.
Among the "etc." were percussion-drilled salt water and natural gas
wells. I'm fairly sure the West did pick up on a lot of these techniques,
which I suspect were slowly being _abandoned_ in China...
>They didn't have the intellectual tradition to develop a true science, though;
>and their mathematics were always rather primitive.
>-- S.M. Stirling
If they had true science, it might not have mattered, especially if
they threw the results away.
Phil
--
Phil Fraering "What are we going to do tonight, Miles?"
p...@globalreach.net "Same thing we do every night, Ivan,
/Will work for tape/ try to take over the Imperium!"
MADAM IM ADAM
Phil Fraering
>>Phil Fraering
>>The peninsulas helped ensure that during the period when the New
>>Technologies were starting to be developed, Europe was politically
>>fragmented, and this fragmentation helped speed up the cycle of
>>the development of new technologies. If the Italian city-states turn
>>down your trade-with-India-by-going-West idea, you could try selling
>>it to Portugal instead,
>-- there's an old saying: Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the
>third time it's enemy action.
Auric Goldfinger, I think :-)
>Prior to 1200 or so, the whole 'intercommunicating zone' between Ireland and
>Japan had roughly comparable levels of scientific and technological
>development.
I was given to understand that the Islamic countries had somewhat better
metallurgy than Europe, although I'm not sure whether Scandinavia's
metalworking was any better than the rest of Europe's. I don't know
what China's was like; Japan and Korea seemed to have better hardened
steel. Whatever China had, they could produce a lot more of. But I
have run across hints and clues that they didn't bother actually
_using_ it in a useful fashion.
(Egad. Another thing I'll have to look up...)
Phil Fraering
>My slightly informed opinion is that Korean script ("Hangul")
>is not too well suited for the print age.While it is phonetic,
>the characters are organized into syllables, so to print it
>essentially requires a syllabary. The computer age reduces
>these problems significantly--but you need typefaces with
>thousands of symbols, which doesn't fit earlier computers too
>well.
Does the creation of Hangul predate or postdate the invention
of movable type? Did one influence the other?
Richard Harter
Trent Goulding
>R Shaw wrote:
>
>>Monolithic empires put all their eggs in one basket, it was possible for
>>China to suppress its fleet and ignore technical possibilities, since it
>>had no external enemies.
>
>China has also had many significant periods of disunity,
>and has been ruled by outsiders about, oh, half the time.
Note also that during most if not all of those periods of "ruled by
outsiders", the outsiders (generally northern nomads, or their
descendants, of one stripe or another) by the time of the conquest
were either already significantly "sinicized", or quickly to become
so.
The Manchus (Qing dynasty), for instance, were just as staunch a
pack of neo-Confucians, if not more so, than the indigenous rulers
around the end of the Ming. The Kang Xi emperor (early Qing) was
far closer to the Confucian ruling ideal than the Wan Li emperor
(late Ming) ever was.
--
Trent
Lucy Kemnitzer
<lis....@mediaone.net> wrote:
This last winter I cozied up with a bunch of medieval-era Islamic
scientists, that is, their biographies, summaries of their life's
works, and longish quotes from their writings, and I would have to
say that a very recognizable version of the scientific method was
quite visible in several places, with all the steps.
I personally believe that what we attribute to Europe's
specialness in this regard is the "standing on the shoulders"
phenomenon, and the reason Islamic science lost its hegemony is
nothing to do with its quality and everything to do with the loss
of political and cultural hegemony. Recall that Moorish Spain was
the major center of Islamic science, and that less than a tenth of
the libraries were left after Christian Spain got through
"reclaiming" the place and burning everything they could get their
hands on.
Recall that this culminated in 1492.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Damien Raphael Sullivan
>Prior to 1200 or so, the whole 'intercommunicating zone' between Ireland and
>Japan had roughly comparable levels of scientific and technological
>development.
Which fits with Jared's main thesis: Eurasia vs. the rest of the world.
But you picked a special date: 1200, when Eurasia did have approximately equal
levels. (I'd guess it might actually be a couple centuries later.) After
that Europe steamed ahead. Before that Europe was a backwater, importing most
of its technology. This could be because of random (relative to geography)
reasons; it could be because fragmented (and northern) Europe discouraged
early development, but when the different developments from elsewhere were
imported later, into the fragmented environment, that milieu raised the
chances of scientific/Enlightenment culture taking root. (Whereas the milieus
with earlier development had well-established non-scientific cultures.)
Given that it's happened all of once on the planet, it's hard to reach solid
conclusions either way.
One of the things I thought was really cool was his use of New Guinea and
Polynesia as microcosms of the forces affected the whole world, for
comparative study.
On the other hand, I wonder what he makes of the recent pieces of evidence
that some humans were hanging around the Americas for a couple of millenia
before the Clovis explosion.
-xx- Damien X-)
JoatSimeon
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>Alternative possibility for OTL: The scientific method is just
>plain unlikely.
-- it requires a distinctly unusual way of looking at the universe, which
developed out of a whole series of unique historical circumstances.
We tend to underestimate the importance of this factor because of the
fish-don't-see-water factor.
It's natural to us, because our culture is saturated with it, and so it seems
"natural". But it ain't.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>Not trying to be argumentative, but I seem to recall that the Islamic
>world made SOME scientific advances.
-- oh, lots of them, particulary in chemistry and astronomy. And a lot of
technological tricks.
But they never developed a systematic _method_.
You've got to, first, believe that the world is orderly -- that is, patterned
according to natural law which is universal and invariant.
Second, you've got to believe that the patterns can be known; that is, that the
structure of the universe is knowable.
And that it can be precisely described, usually mathematically.
And that doing so is transcendantly _important_, the most important
intellectual endeavor there is (as opposed to theology, literary criticism, or
whatever).
Then you've got to get the habit of using theory _and_ empirical
testing/observation in a feedback loop -- developing a hypothesis,
systematically testing it with the apparatus of controls, etc.
This cultural framework is an exceeding rarity; again, we tend to loose sight
of this, since the world is so Westernized these days.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>Try this for a thought: The development of science was a by-product of
>other factors which, in their own right, made European culture
>successful. Until the 1800's science as such had little to do with the
>increase in the level of technology.
-- superficially true, but not really.
Eg., Watt was a university instrument maker who'd attended lectures on
atmospheric pressures. His predecessors, like Newcomb, were also aware of
scientific work in the field.
More generally, the technology and the beginnings of science both grew from the
same habit of mind -- analytical, reductionist, and "mechanical".
Breaking an industrial process down into steps, developing a machine to do each
step, then testing and re-combining -- it's all extremely similar to laboratory
science.
The method had been spreading in Western culture for centuries.
Maurice of Nassau did the same thing to infantry drill, for example, in the
17th century.
-- S.M. Stirling
Jeffrey C. Dege
>
>
>On Fri, 16 Jul 1999, Jeffrey C. Dege wrote:
>> completely from scratch, with no outside input. The alphabet was invented
>> once, and all others derived from that single discovery.
>
>Not on this time line.
>
>The Mayan system (a syllabic alphabet, but a true alphabet allowing
>an arbitrary statement to be written unambiguously) was *certainly*
>independent of the Latin alphabet.
Syllabaries aren't alphabets.
JoatSimeon
>I personally believe that what we attribute to Europe's
>specialness in this regard is the "standing on the shoulders"
>phenomenon
-- nope.
Islamic culture had become sterile long before then. They went just so far,
and then stopped.
In practical matters -- eg., metal production, casting and forging, application
of inanimate wind and water power to manufacturing -- the Latin West had begun
to draw ahead of Islam as early as 1000 AD.
By the 1200's it was quite decisively ahead, even in areas like military
architecture which had been traditional areas of Islamic strength. The
Europeans had taken all that Islam had to offer and surpassed it.
For an example of why, you might note that Jews in the Ottoman Empire used the
printing press for 350 years before any books were printed in either Arabic or
Turkish.
In fact, the first Arabic printing press was set up in Catholic Italy.
>the major center of Islamic science, and that less than a tenth of
>the libraries were left after Christian Spain got through
>"reclaiming" the place and burning everything they could get their
>hands on.
-- urban legend. Several of the Iberian Christian kingdoms had translation
programs as early as the 1100's and all the major works of Islamic scholarship
were translated by the end of the medieval period.
By way of contrast, as Bernard Lewis has pointed out, the Islamic countries
showed a total, utter lack of curiosity about the Christian areas.
>culminated in 1492
-- nope.
The Kingdom of Granada was a tiny remnant which survived on Christian
suffrance.
The bulk of the Reconquista was over in the mid-1200's, when the Castilians and
Aragonese took the Guadalquivir valley.
That's why there are all those towns in southeastern Spain with names like
"X-de-la-frontera". The frontier didn't move from the 1260's until Ferdinand
and Isabella decided to finish off Bobadil.
-- S.M. Stirling
Kirk Is
> >Only in Europe was the scientific method--systematic development and
> >testing of hypotheses, and recording the results, and _disseminating_
> >the results, and developing theoretical structures to _explain_ the
> >results, and then testing the theories--fully developed. This is a
> This last winter I cozied up with a bunch of medieval-era Islamic
> scientists, that is, their biographies, summaries of their life's
> works, and longish quotes from their writings, and I would have to
> say that a very recognizable version of the scientific method was
> quite visible in several places, with all the steps.
Makes me wonder if maybe there's a step *we're* missing, that would make
the scientific method even better.
--
Kirk Israel - kis...@cs.tufts.edu - http://www.alienbill.com
"If I cannot be free, I'll be cheap" --Joe Boswell
JoatSimeon
EUROPE is illuminating.
By the 17th century, when the Ottoman Empire reached its maximum extent in SE
Europe, European countries had university chairs in Oriental languages and
history, and large libraries in Arabic and Persian books, and in translations
of the same. Even on a purely theological plane, Christian scholars had made a
close study of Islamic thought, if only to refute it.
By way of contrast, the Ottomans (and other Middle Eastern and North African
muslims) knew virtually nothing about Europe.
Even the Ottoman government -- in continuous diplomatic and military contact
with Europe -- had no real grasp of how Central European politics functioned,
or how the Holy Roman Empire was organized, or what the role of the Pope was.
The only Ottomans who spoke Western languages were converts -- and this
knowledge was never passed on to the second generation.
(Thus the institution of the "dragoman").
The general level of Muslim knowledge of Europe was comparable to early
medieval West European knowledge of the Orient -- full of gross
misunderstandings, legends, etc. -- right down to the 18th and early 19th
century.
Their ignorance of -- and complete disinterest in -- European science,
mathematics, and philosophy was even more complete.
At most, they were occasionally willing to take up a specific European
technical trick -- the Ottomans employed European cannon-founders as early as
the 1400's, and their navy always depended on European 'renegados'.
But to an astonishing extent, they were unwilling to copy, to learn, or even to
investigate, until well into the era when the Europeans were repeatedly beating
the living shit out of them on the battlefield.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>But you picked a special date: 1200, when Eurasia did have approximately
>equal
>levels. (I'd guess it might actually be a couple centuries later.) After
>that Europe steamed ahead. Before that Europe was a backwater
-- well, not really. In many respects -- use of wind and water power -- Europe
was drawing ahead by about 1000. Its agricultural base, in terms of
productivity per man-hour, was superior before then.
The dar 'ul-Islam was at a higher level in the early middle ages, but static --
it took the techniques of the old high civilizations of the middle east and
applied them more widely. (Irrigation methods, for instance). It also
disseminated inventions from one end of its sphere to the other -- paper, etc.
But it invented little, and basically wasn't _interested_ in anything outside
itself, in the dar 'ul-harb.
Europeans, or specifically West Europeans, were just plain more inventive, and
more eager to borrow and apply foreign methods, than anyone else in the whole
Atlantic-to-Pacific zone.
This was apparent as early as the end of the first millenium, in a small and
tentative way, and it accelerated in fits and starts from then on.
By the early 1500's, Europe was unambiguously ahead of everyone else in nearly
everything, with the exception of the scale of political organization and
possibly medicine.
Eg., the Chinese still had a slight edge in some aspects of ferrous metallurgy,
but the Europeans were ahead in printing, use of gunpowder, shipping and
navigation. The Muslims were about equal then in use of gunpowder, but the
Europeans were ahead of _them_ in ferrous metallurgy.
By 1500, nobody was much ahead of the Europeans in anything, and they were
ahead of everyone in several things. And the gap was increasing at great and
ever-increasing speed. The seeds, however, were already centuries old by then.
-- S.M. Stirling
Jeffrey C. Dege
>Richard Harter wrote:
>>
>> Try this for a thought: The development of science was a by-product of
>> other factors which, in their own right, made European culture
>> successful. Until the 1800's science as such had little to do with the
>> technology that provided the impetus for the development of science.
>> The question then, is: Why did technology bloom in Europe?
>
>absolutely wild over new technology. From at least the fifth century
>onward, they eagerly adopted new technologies, whether invented
>locally or imported from other cultures. They enjoyed making things
>work, pretty much for the sake of making them work, as much as for
>what practical use they were. You talk about the 1500s and 1600s, but
>it goes right back the roots of what Christian European, rather than
>imperial Roman, culture. I think the place to look is somewhere in the
>collision of late Roman culture, Christianity, and the cultures of the
>Germanic and Celtic barbarians.
One factoid I remember from a course in the history of technology:
There were more watermills in England in 1085 than in the entire
Roman Empire at its peak.
The distinct character of Western Civilization evolved during the
600-900 period. By the 1100's, it was pretty well established.
The High Middle Ages count as an industrial revolution in every
sense, and were, in many ways, more significant than the later
industrial revolution of the 1800's.
--
Many companies that have made themselves dependent on [the equipment of a
certain major manufacturer] (and in doing so have sold their soul to the
devil) will collapse under the sheer weight of the unmastered complexity of
their data processing systems.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
JoatSimeon
>The High Middle Ages count as an industrial revolution in every
>sense, and were, in many ways, more significant than the later
>industrial revolution of the 1800's.
-- that's going a bit far... 8-).
"A very significant first try" would be more accurate, I think.
The West ran into a wall in the 1200's, essentially because food production
wasn't keeping up with population growth.
This is the basic cause of the steep population drop of the 14th century, which
in turn had valuable effects -- shifting demand down the social scale and so
promoting early tries at mass production, to name only one example.
In the "second wave", starting around 1500, food production _did_ keep pace,
although only just. This was the essential precondition for the 17th-18th
century breakthrough.
-- S.M. Stirling
Robin Lim
JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:19990716021326...@ng-fk1.aol.com...
> -- this is quite true, and accounts for the Chinese suppression of sea
travel.
>
> However, it has nothing to do with the discovery of the scientific
method --
> which the Chinese never came anywhere near.
Perhaps it's because of the limitations of the Chinese language. I'm
surprised no scholar has tried to connect the relative capabilities of
different cultures to their respective languages. One could argue that the
Chinese languages are inherently conservative, since vocabularies are much
smaller. In order to be functionally literate in Chinese, for instance, one
would need to know about 8,000 characters. In English, the average literate
person would know about 20,000 words. A college graduate could know more
than half a million words.
Having more words means being more able to categorize, to dissect, and to
break down. A complex grammar, like many European languages, may encourage
people to consider the transformations between different states of being. A
complex grammar, and a larger vocabulary, also allows one to record things
more precisely, with far greater detail. It seems to encourage concise
recording of say, experimental results.
This is not to say, however, that Western European languages are the best.
They have their disadvantages. It can be argued that Western European
languages, with their time-dependent grammar, strongly encourage and
reinforce a linear causal paradigm on its users. One could also argue that
the various Chinese languages, with their more context-dependent grammar,
encourage empiricism.
> -- S.M. Stirling
Rob (Lim)
Robin Lim
Richard Harter <c...@tiac.net> wrote in message
news:378f66a0...@199.0.65.59...
> Why Europe is one of those eternally debated questions. I am fond of
> the Mongol theory myself - Europe was the only major cultural center
> that wasn't conquered by the Mongols. I don't have any real explanation
> of why that mattered although the impact was traumatic for Islam. The
> neat thing is that Europe being spared was wildly contingent. Subotai
> was poised to run over Europe and was called back for the funeral of
> Ogotai. He never came back and Europe was spared.
Well, Africa wasn't conquered by the Mongols either :)
But yes, I know what you're saying, and I'm inclined to agree. Before the
Mongol invasion, Northern China (present-day Szechuan province and
surrounding environs) used to be the most prosperous area in all of China.
It used to be the breadbasket of China. However, with the damage to the
irrigation system and the fields, the area has never recovered. It's still
one of the poorest areas of China.
Rob
Fosfato
>-- not unless you're using a very odd definition of the scientific method.
>Islam never got close either
Well, how do you define the scientific method? It seems to me as if scientific
inquiry continued well into the sixteenth century in the Islamic world, (see,
for example, Turner, "Science in Medieval Islam" and Hodgson, "The Venture of
Islam," vol 1-3.)
Fosfato
>Islamic culture had become sterile long before then. They went just so far,
>and then stopped.
I really do not see anything in pre-modern Islamic or Christian
culture/religion that makes them more or less amenable to change (progressive
or otherwise) than the other. Now, Western society changed in a certain
direction before the Islamic Middle East and North Africa (which is not to say
that the latter was completely stagnant, mind you). The changes in the
West-involving the emergence of rational-bureaucratic states, the
secularization of politics and culture, the emergence of industrial societies,
urbanization, etc., have come to be understood as the hallmarks of modernity.
The change of the culture was itself SYMPTOMATIC of these other changes, and
not the cause. Your position, on the other hand, is that Western culture
changed BECAUSE the culture was more amenable to change. You have not proven
this. Rather, you have highlighted these monumental changes in the West and
then, working backwards, attributed these changes to the culture that itself
was changed due to exogenous factors (ie. class conflict, international
conflict, etc.). This is circular reasoning, in my view at least. It is also
telelogical, which is one of the most important flaws of conventional
historiography: You begin with the defining features of the present, then
offer a linear explanation of how these are the natural culmination of some
features in the past. Thus, Greek civ. begat Roman which begat the Ren. which
begat modern industrial society. There was, of course, a lot of discontinuity
in the history of the West. Much of the progress which you "naturally"
attribute to Christianity and Western culture was due to conflict within and
without (see Eric Wolf, "The West and the People without History").
At the risk of appearing redundant, your admonition that Islamic
culture/religion was not amenable to change in the medieval period is not
accurate. This is why I have referred you to the works of Rodinson, etc. I
would argue, instead, that Islamdom did not modernize sooner than its Western
counterparts due to the presence of different class and state structures that
mitigated against similar developments. I would even go further and assert
that, from a purely philosophical/cultural standpoint, Islamdom should have
developed earlier than the West. The end of the rationalist tradition in
Islamdom had less to do with Islam and more to do with other factors which, in
the West, were becoming increasingly conducive to the rise of modern society.
Footnote: In premodern times, Western culture/religion, adhered to by great
majority of population, was inherently superstitious, conservative, etc. Those
philosophers who broke from this tradition were clearly the small minority.
For this they incurred the wrath of the Church and the state. Same in Islamdom.
The fact that in the West their intellectual challenge to the status quo took
place in the context of OTHER DEVELOPMENTS accounts for their albeit
inadvertent contributions to the emergence of modern society. On the other had,
since these OTHER DEVELOPMENTS were not present in the Islamic world (at least
to the same degree), things developed differently there.
Much of the Islamic world (if you look at the scientific community, or the
perspective of national leaders on development-related issues), does subscribe
to the scientific-rationalist view. Still, the problems persist. There is,
therefore, a lot more going on that undermines the creation of dynamic
economies, etc. Both the Ottoman and the Qajar dynasties in the Middle East
attempted to modernize in the nineteenth century. They were also somewhat
successful. Again, you are assuming that once a country accepts the
rational-scientific perspective development becomes inevitable. My view is that
even if they do adopt such views (or at least once certain groups in societies
do-national leaders, reformers, educators, etc.), other factors may
prevent/retard economic modernization. What other factors? Depends on the
specific situation we are talking about. Resistance by traditional elites
(land owners who are opposed to higher taxes which reformers deem necessary for
instituting reforms), unfavorable strategic location which makes countries the
target of colonial intervention (certainly a factor in Persia and Turkey),
arbitrary division of peoples by colonial powers which undermined the creation
of a national ethos (in Africa and the Middle East, for example), etc. etc.
The distinction is also necessary (and interesting) because in sheds light on
how NOT everything in the region "is wrapped up in the nature of Islam." Since
the end of WWII the region has been witness to a host of ideological and
organizational currents. In the fifties and sixties secular ideologies clearly
had the upper hand. Witness, for example, the preeminence of secular,
modernizing regimes, Arab, Persian and Kurdish nationalism (to name a few), and
the popularity of various brands of Marxism among university students. The
pivotal point (especially in the Arab world) was the 1967 war. With the defeat
of Arab armies (and mounting socio-economic difficulties), the politicization
of religion in the ideological sense gained popularity.
In Egypt, religous laymen were in the forefront of such politicization of
religion, and in the process incurred the wrath of tradition "clerics" who
advocated an apolitical Islam (see article by Ellis Goldberg in "Rules and
Rights in the Middle East." Similar process in Iran.
Islam also adopted a whole lot: From the Sassanid Persians it adopted imperial
grandeur and system of bureaucratic administration. Muslims also integrated
Greek rationalism into their philosophical, theological and scientific
discourse.
In a nutshell, what I meant was that even respectable social scientists and
historians (not the fruitcakes at all!) can be ethnocentric. See classic work
by Said, "Orientalism." Also, see Samir Amin, "Eurocentrism," from which I
will quite one relevant passage at length:
"This hypothesis concerning the nature of Arab-Islamic thought has the
advantage of providing an explanation for the seemingly curious fact that the
brilliant rise of this civilization in the first centuries after the Hegira was
followed by centuries of stagnation. This phenomenon is exactly the inverse of
the key event in the history of European West, the Renaissance, which opened
the way for capitalist development. Arab-Islamic thought was established
through a confrontation between the new ruling powers and the societies of the
civilized East, the result of tributary reconstruction on a vast scale. Once
the new tributary state was established and the process of Arabization and
Islamization had advanced sufficiently, this confrontation could no longer
contribute anything beneficial to the now-consolidated societies. This
example illustrates another facet of unequal development. The progress of
thought is associated with situations of confrontation and disequilibrium.
Periods of stable equilibrium are periods of stagnation in thought. The
flourishing of thought during the first centuries of Islam had therefore no
relation to a "nascent capitalism." On the contrary, it is PRECISELY THE
ABSENCE OF CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT THAT EXPLAINS THE SUBSEQUENT TORPOR OF
ARAB-ISLAMIC THOUGHT" (emphasis added, p. 52-53.)
Yes, our knowledge has developed considerably beyond antiquated paradigm of
Lewis and other orientalists.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
wrote:
>Perhaps it's because of the limitations of the Chinese language.
Which Chinese language?
> I'm
>surprised no scholar has tried to connect the relative capabilities of
>different cultures to their respective languages. One could argue that the
>Chinese languages are inherently conservative, since vocabularies are much
>smaller. In order to be functionally literate in Chinese, for instance, one
>would need to know about 8,000 characters. In English, the average literate
>person would know about 20,000 words. A college graduate could know more
>than half a million words.
Where are you getting these numbers? "Functionally literate" is not
the same as "average literate person," for one thing -- I seem to
recall reading something about "basic English" only needing 2,000
words, while the average Chinese reader knows... damn. I think it was
either 11,000 or 16,000, but I can't document either number. In any
case, the total Chinese vocabulary is far larger than 8,000 words.
Furthermore, it would be a very exceptional college graduate who knows
half a million English words; last I heard English only had as many as
400,000 words if you counted a huge array of technical jargons and
slang vocabularies. Standard English, sans specialized terminologies,
is only about 120,000 words.
>Having more words means being more able to categorize, to dissect, and to
>break down.
No, it doesn't. It depends what the words are and how they're used.
> A complex grammar, like many European languages, may encourage
>people to consider the transformations between different states of being. A
>complex grammar, and a larger vocabulary, also allows one to record things
>more precisely, with far greater detail. It seems to encourage concise
>recording of say, experimental results.
English does not have a particularly complex grammar, yet it's the
dominant language in most technical fields. If you want a complex
grammar look at Japanese.
>This is not to say, however, that Western European languages are the best.
>They have their disadvantages. It can be argued that Western European
>languages, with their time-dependent grammar, strongly encourage and
>reinforce a linear causal paradigm on its users. One could also argue that
>the various Chinese languages, with their more context-dependent grammar,
>encourage empiricism.
Now, _there_ you actually have a point, only it's backward. You see a
language emphasizing causality as a _disadvantage_? Why?
It could also be argued that an alphabet makes it easier to coin and
use new technical vocabulary than ideograms do.
--
The Misenchanted Page: http://www.sff.net/people/LWE/ Last update 4/24/99
mike stone
>The Europeans were
>absolutely wild over new technology. From at least the fifth century
>onward, they eagerly adopted new technologies, whether invented
>locally or imported from other cultures. They enjoyed making things
>work, pretty much for the sake of making them work, as much as for
>what practical use they were. You talk about the 1500s and 1600s, but
>it goes right back the roots of what Christian European, rather than
>imperial Roman, culture. I think the place to look is somewhere in the
>collision of late Roman culture, Christianity, and the cultures of the
>Germanic and Celtic barbarians.
So for a more technologically advanced 20c, you should consider bringing down
the Roman Empire *sooner* - maybe sometime in the 200s
Mike Stone - Peterborough England
Q: How do you tell the difference between a Mormon wedding and a Non-Mormon
wedding?
A: At the Mormon wedding, it's the bride's *mother* who is pregnant!
Elisabeth Carey
>
> >From: Elisabeth Carey <lis....@mediaone.net>
>
> >The Europeans were
> >absolutely wild over new technology. From at least the fifth century
> >onward, they eagerly adopted new technologies, whether invented
> >locally or imported from other cultures. They enjoyed making things
> >work, pretty much for the sake of making them work, as much as for
> >what practical use they were. You talk about the 1500s and 1600s, but
> >it goes right back the roots of what Christian European, rather than
> >imperial Roman, culture. I think the place to look is somewhere in the
> >collision of late Roman culture, Christianity, and the cultures of the
> >Germanic and Celtic barbarians.
>
> So for a more technologically advanced 20c, you should consider bringing down
> the Roman Empire *sooner* - maybe sometime in the 200s
Maybe--but be careful. You may need a certain level of dissemination
of Christianity before bringing down the empire will have the desired
effect.
One of the effects of Christianity, which is different from what
happened elsewhere, is the widespread copying and dissemination of
books, and the loaning of books for copying. This was not only the
Bible, but also the pre-Christian manuscripts that reached the
monastaries--including the Greek manuscripts, even after knowledge of
the Greek language disappeared from the west and they couldn't read
them. This was not typical of the ancient world, and it was not
typical of the Islamic world, either. The great libraries of the
ancient world, including Alexandria, did everything they could to
acquire copies (or, even better, the originals) of important books,
but they did not _encourage_ the large-scale copying of the books they
had, nor did they loan books to be copied elsewhere. If the practice
of the ancient world had been more similar to the practice of
Christian Europe later, the destruction of the library at Alexandria
wouldn't have been nearly as important; when a mediaeval Christian
monastary was burned, particular copies of books would be destroyed,
but very rarely were they the _only_ copies of those books. Usually,
there were multiple copies in other monastaries all over Europe.
And that concern for the preservation of knowledge, including
knowledge that wasn't currently useful, such as the unreadable Greek
manuscripts, is part of what made Christendom different from the
Islamic world, and the Roman world, and the Greek world, and it's part
of what created the fertile ground for the growth of science. It's not
the whole explanation--it doesn't explain the love of tinkering, for
instance--but it's an important piece of the whole puzzle.
Lis Carey
Craig J Neumeier
>>kmar...@crossover.com
>>Nor, for that matter, did the Europeans. They borrowed it from the
>>Muslims.
>-- not unless you're using a very odd definition of the scientific method.
>Islam never got close either. We derived some very useful information via
>Muslim sources, and of course observations on Classical work.
Islam may have gotten closer; it's hard to judge but they did some
impressive work in astronomy, for instance. There are moments in
Islmaic history when a scientific revolution would not have looked
too out of place.
Personally, I'm inclined to think that one necessary but not
sufficient cause for the development of the scientific method is
the printing press, which allows ideas to be spread rapidly.
China had it, of course, but the Muslims never adopted it (there
are a few printed documents surviving from Abbasid or Fatimid
Egypt, I forget which, but they gave it up after that.)
>However, the scientific method proper was developed exactly once, in
>post-Renaissance Europe.
Quite true. I oscillate between thinking it is merely hard, and
very hard indeed.
Craig Neumeier, LHN
JoatSimeon
>
>Since humans were in Africa the longest, they've had the most time
>to do domestications.
-- zebra can be tamed and ridden or used in harness; I've seen that done.
Likewise, African Cape Buffalo are closely related to the Asian water buffalo
and can be tamed.
These days, ranchers in southern and eastern Africa raise eland and other
antelope for their meat and hides on quite a large scale.
These things could have been done before; nobody did. It would have required
time and selective breeding to turn them into properly domesticated species,
but so did domesticating the aurochs or the wild horse.
The tarpan (Central Asian wild horse) is at least as mean and fractious as the
zebra, for instance.
-- S.M. Stirling
Craig J Neumeier
>A Giridhar Rao wrote:
>>
>(stufff snipped)
>>
>> don't you find his arguments about the domesticability of some species of
>> plants and animals over others convincing? in the case of the spread of
>> agriculture, i find the argument about domesticability in conjunction with
>> that on the major axes of continents quite powerful. and what choice might
>> he have had but to compare finished products with counterfactuals?
>>
>I don't think anyone's disputing the axis of spread argument.
Well, while I'm at it ...
p. 178: "At the one extreme was the rapid spread along east-west axes:
from Southwest Asia both west to Europe and east to the Indus Valley (at
an average rate of about 0.7 miles per year) ... At the opposite extreme
was its slow spread along north-south axes: at less than 0.5 miles per
year, from Mexico northward to the U.S. Southwest..."
It is not exactly obvious that the difference between 0.7 and 0.5 is
great enough to justify calling one of thme "rapid" and one of them
"slow". The language about "opposite extremes" is particularly
unjustified: his numbers actually are a continuum 0.7/0.5/0.3/0.2
with a 3.2 outlier which doesn't count because it's Polynesian.
This argument looks good in the abstract -- crossing climate zones *ought*
to make it harder -- and I'm surprised that his numbers don't support it
better than they do.
Craig Neumeier, LHN
Craig J Neumeier
>Coyu wrote:
>> China has also had many significant periods of disunity,
>> and has been ruled by outsiders about, oh, half the time.
>Right, but China has been and is much more unified than Europe.
I am inclined to put the division at the Sui Dynasty, myself.
Prior to that, it did not look at all clear that the Han breakdwon
was *ever* going to be followed by reunification -- at least in
any lasting way. Then the Sui built the Grand Canal, and their
immediate successors the the Tang provided (another) cultural
exemplar: since then, unity has been natural to China and disunity
strange.
(This is a minority but mainstream position among historians of
China, as near as I can tell.)
Craig Neumeier, LHN
JoatSimeon
>West-involving the emergence of rational-bureaucratic states, the
>secularization of politics and culture, the emergence of industrial
>societies,
>urbanization, etc., have come to be understood as the hallmarks of modernity.
-- more in the nature of symptoms. Cultural factors first, symptoms later.
The process of modernization is detectable as early as the end of the 1st
millenium.
>
>that Western culture
>changed BECAUSE the culture was more amenable to change.
-- more amenable to a _particular type_ of change.
>features in the past. Thus, Greek civ. begat Roman which begat the Ren. which
>begat modern industrial society.
-- things could have turned out differently, if any of dozens of historical
turning-points had gone the other way. (Eg., if the Counter-Reformation had
succeeded.)
>counterparts due to the presence of different class and state structures that
>mitigated against similar developments.
-- that's another way of saying the same thing.
>For this they incurred the wrath of the Church and the state. Same in
>Islamdom.
-- no, no, no, completely and utterly wrong.
See Aquinas, Thomas.
Both Islam and Latin Christendom had similar theological controversies
concerning the relative roles of reason and revealed "truth".
In the Catholic world, the Aquinian thesis -- that reason and revelation could
not conflict -- won. In Islam, it went the other way.
This is one of the most important (and underrated) of all historical
turning-points.
>Again, you are assuming that once a country accepts the
>rational-scientific perspective development becomes inevitable.
-- yes. But it has to actually _accept_ it as a society; that is, the
resistance of groups and institutions hostile to it has to be broken and broken
for good and all.
No Muslim country has ever done this; Turkey comes closest, thanks to the work
of Attaturk, building on the Tamizat and other 19th-century modernizing
movements, but so far no cigar.
Eg., witness the strength of political Islam in Turkey today.
To actually modernize, an Islamic country has to effectively renounce its past
and transform at a very fundamental level -- right down to family and gender
relations.
This is extremely difficult; particularly as it means admitting the superiority
of a hated rival.
>instituting reforms), unfavorable strategic location which makes countries
>the
>target of colonial intervention
-- colonial intervention generally aided modernization and economic
development. The more, and the more drastic the subsequent restructuring under
Western domination, the better.
> See classic
>work
>by Said, "Orientalism."
-- Said is a grotesque propagandist and contaminated by postmodernism (ie.,
nihlistic, subjectivist horsehshit.)
Nobody but those still under the spell of infantile leftism takes him
seriously.
Lewis demolished him in a couple of paragraphs.
>Also, see Samir Amin, "Eurocentrism," from which I
>will quite one relevant passage at length:
-- to quote Tallyrand: sublime mysticism and nonsense.
Eg., why did capitalism arise in the West, and not elsewhere?
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
abortion and has been a millstone around their neck for millenia -- with the
Chinese language(s), which is/are as good as any other.
-- S.M. Stirling
Coyu
Well, the Japanese have the world's most cumbersome system of all,
and they seem to be doing all right.
It really isn't that hard.
Bertil Jonell
JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
>To actually modernize, an Islamic country has to effectively renounce its past
>and transform at a very fundamental level -- right down to family and gender
>relations.
>
>This is extremely difficult; particularly as it means admitting the superiority
>of a hated rival.
I think it has even gotten harder since the 19th century: The west
isn't going around rubbing their noses in it in their own countries
like when everywhere in the middle east except for Turkey was a
colony.
>-- S.M. Stirling
-bertil-
--
"It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view or
strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left as an
exercise for your kill-file."
Bertil Jonell
Craig J Neumeier <neum...@amethyst.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
>Personally, I'm inclined to think that one necessary but not
>sufficient cause for the development of the scientific method is
>the printing press, which allows ideas to be spread rapidly.
>China had it, of course, but the Muslims never adopted it (there
>are a few printed documents surviving from Abbasid or Fatimid
>Egypt, I forget which, but they gave it up after that.)
But *why* did they give it up? IMHO goving up the printing press
is a symptom, not a reason.
>Craig Neumeier, LHN
Bertil Jonell
Robin Lim <rl...@shaw.wave.ca> wrote:
>I'm
>surprised no scholar has tried to connect the relative capabilities of
>different cultures to their respective languages.
Toby Huff in 'The rise of early modern science : Islam, China, and the
West' talks *very* briefly about it. He appears to agree with you that
the Chinese languages are less precise.
>Rob (Lim)
Bertil Jonell
JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
>These things could have been done before; nobody did. It would have required
>time and selective breeding to turn them into properly domesticated species,
>but so did domesticating the aurochs or the wild horse.
Russian experiments suggest that 20-40 generations are sufficient.
They experimented on silver foxes and got them pretty doglike in the
end (American Scientist: March-April 1999, Volume 87, No. 2,
'Early Canid Domestication: The Farm-Fox Experiment', Lyudmila N. Trut)
>-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
> Russian experiments suggest that 20-40 generations are sufficient.
>They experimented on silver foxes and got them pretty doglike in the
>end
-- yes, I've seen those; very interesting stuff.
It would probably have taken longer with early domestications, since the
process was more slapdash and less systematic.
-- S.M. Stirling
Robin Lim
Phil Fraering <pgf@lungold> wrote in message news:8piom7.c42.ln@lungold...
> Samuel Paik <pa...@webnexus.com> writes:
>
> >My slightly informed opinion is that Korean script ("Hangul")
> >is not too well suited for the print age.While it is phonetic,
> >the characters are organized into syllables, so to print it
> >essentially requires a syllabary. The computer age reduces
> >these problems significantly--but you need typefaces with
> >thousands of symbols, which doesn't fit earlier computers too
> >well.
>
> Does the creation of Hangul predate or postdate the invention
> of movable type? Did one influence the other?
>
Post-dates. Hangui, is, IRC, a late-19th century invention, possibly even a
20th century one.
Rob
Robin Lim
Lawrence Watt-Evans <lawr...@clark.net> wrote in message
news:37929055...@md.news.verio.net...
> On Sat, 17 Jul 1999 05:19:41 GMT, "Robin Lim" <rl...@shaw.wave.ca>
> wrote:
>
> >Perhaps it's because of the limitations of the Chinese language.
>
> Which Chinese language?
All of them. They all use the same method of writing, don't they?
> > I'm
> >surprised no scholar has tried to connect the relative capabilities of
> >different cultures to their respective languages. One could argue that
the
> >Chinese languages are inherently conservative, since vocabularies are
much
> >smaller. In order to be functionally literate in Chinese, for instance,
one
> >would need to know about 8,000 characters. In English, the average
literate
> >person would know about 20,000 words. A college graduate could know more
> >than half a million words.
>
> Where are you getting these numbers? "Functionally literate" is not
> the same as "average literate person," for one thing -- I seem to
> recall reading something about "basic English" only needing 2,000
> words, while the average Chinese reader knows... damn. I think it was
> either 11,000 or 16,000, but I can't document either number. In any
> case, the total Chinese vocabulary is far larger than 8,000 words.
I can't document my numbers, but I either got it from a newspaper article,
or my undergrad textbook for Chinese history. I'm just too lazy to look it
up, but I know it's there. I also know the total Chinese vocabulary is far
larger than 8.000 characters. I wouldn't be surprised if it was in the area
of 50,000 characters and upwards. However, very, very few people would be
familiar with all those characters. Even with 11,000-16,000, that's far
less than English. In any case, I'm not saying that the average Chinese
reader is more or less ignorant, just that pictographic writing is a pain in
the a*s.
> Furthermore, it would be a very exceptional college graduate who knows
> half a million English words; last I heard English only had as many as
> 400,000 words if you counted a huge array of technical jargons and
> slang vocabularies. Standard English, sans specialized terminologies,
> is only about 120,000 words.
I got that number right out of my undergrad psychology text. Presumably,
there is some question as to what is considered a word, and that figure of
500,000 may also include the vast array of jargon, loan words, slang,
combined words, and so on and so forth.
> >Having more words means being more able to categorize, to dissect, and to
> >break down.
>
> No, it doesn't. It depends what the words are and how they're used.
Okay, let me provide an example.
Where we would say "there is/are X on the hill," the Wintu (or was it the
Trosbriander? I can give you the book reference, I just don't recall it off
the top of my head) would say "the hill lumps severally." The Wintu, not
having the same array of words we have, have a far more context-dependent
language. It's also not as useful for making written observations.
Similarly, many Pacific cultures have fewer words for color than we do.
Some cultures only have two colors, a light and a dark. Others have three.
How many does English have? Especially when you bring in artists colors,
like cerulean blue, or cadmium yellow?
> > A complex grammar, like many European languages, may encourage
> >people to consider the transformations between different states of being.
A
> >complex grammar, and a larger vocabulary, also allows one to record
things
> >more precisely, with far greater detail. It seems to encourage concise
> >recording of say, experimental results.
>
> English does not have a particularly complex grammar, yet it's the
> dominant language in most technical fields. If you want a complex
> grammar look at Japanese.
What? Where nearly every other verb and noun is irregular? Try learning a
nice, simple, onomatopeic language like Greek or German, and you'll see the
difference!
> >This is not to say, however, that Western European languages are the
best.
> >They have their disadvantages. It can be argued that Western European
> >languages, with their time-dependent grammar, strongly encourage and
> >reinforce a linear causal paradigm on its users. One could also argue
that
> >the various Chinese languages, with their more context-dependent grammar,
> >encourage empiricism.
>
> Now, _there_ you actually have a point, only it's backward. You see a
> language emphasizing causality as a _disadvantage_? Why?
/Linear/ causality. We take it for granted. A does not necessarily lead to
B and C, even if experimental evidence suggests such. However, this is more
of a philosophical sticking point for many post moderns. I certainly
applaud the contribution of the linear causal paradigm to our technological
development.
> It could also be argued that an alphabet makes it easier to coin and
> use new technical vocabulary than ideograms do.
Yes, that was a major point of my entire post.
Rob
Robin Lim
> One shouldn't confuse the Chinese writing system -- which is a Bronze Age
> abortion and has been a millstone around their neck for millenia -- with
the
> Chinese language(s), which is/are as good as any other.
There are limitations to the Chinese language as well. There is, for
instance, no past tense. To indicate something happened in the past, you
simply say it happened in the past. I should note that all European
cultures use tenses. Can anyone comment on African and Middle-Eastern
languages?
Rob
Robin Lim
Bertil Jonell <d9be...@dtek.chalmers.se> wrote in message
news:7mqijt$a1e$1...@nyheter.chalmers.se...
> >surprised no scholar has tried to connect the relative capabilities of
> >different cultures to their respective languages.
>
> the Chinese languages are less precise.
Wow. It sounds like I have an idea for a thesis now :)
Rob
Coyu
[snip many linguistic misconceptions]
>Try learning a
>nice, simple, onomatopeic language like Greek or German,
^^^^^^^^^^^
I do not think this word means what you think it means. Plus,
you've spelled it wrong.
Robin Lim
Samuel Paik <pa...@webnexus.com> wrote in message
news:37900A9A...@webnexus.com...
> Craig J Neumeier wrote:
> > His argument that all the large African mammals must be undomesticable
> > is also weak, boiling down largely to the fact that they never have
> > been.
>
> Since humans were in Africa the longest, they've had the most time
> to do domestications.
>
Perhaps it's because humans in Africa had less of a need to domesticate
their animals. The favourable climate (back when the Sahara was a rain
forest) encourages a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. When life is pretty good,
you don't /need/ to come up with technological innovations. You don't need
to write things down.
Most 'primitive' people today live in tropical paradises, untouched and
unspoilt by Western civilisation.
Rob
Coyu
>Post-dates. Hangui, is, IRC, a late-19th century invention, possibly even a
>20th century one.
No. Mid 15th century.
Question - and I hope it isn't too snarky - where are you getting
this stuff? For goodness' sake, change your textbook.
Trent Goulding
>On Sat, 17 Jul 1999 05:19:41 GMT, "Robin Lim" <rl...@shaw.wave.ca>
>wrote:
>> I'm
>>surprised no scholar has tried to connect the relative capabilities of
>>different cultures to their respective languages. One could argue that the
>>Chinese languages are inherently conservative, since vocabularies are much
>>smaller. In order to be functionally literate in Chinese, for instance, one
>>would need to know about 8,000 characters. In English, the average literate
>>person would know about 20,000 words. A college graduate could know more
>>than half a million words.
>
>Where are you getting these numbers? "Functionally literate" is not
>the same as "average literate person," for one thing -- I seem to
>recall reading something about "basic English" only needing 2,000
>words, while the average Chinese reader knows... damn. I think it was
>either 11,000 or 16,000, but I can't document either number. In any
>case, the total Chinese vocabulary is far larger than 8,000 words.
You're (both of you) confusing characters ("logograms") with words.
Most modern Chinese (Mandarin) words-- at least the nouns-- are
formed by combining two, sometimes three, characters together to get
a di-syllabic compound. The word for "airplane," for example,
combines a character "fei," meaning flight, with a character "ji,"
meaning machine, to get (you guessed it) flying machine.
Similar combinations are made to modify verbs, create complex verb
compounds, and do some of the work that tenses do in English, even
though it's considered on the opposite end of the
grammatic/morphological spectrum than inflected languages like Latin
or Japanese.
And the above "8,000 characters" figure is severely overstated. To
be functionally literate in modern Chinese-- say, to be able to read
a daily newspaper-- requires no more than 2,000 characters or so.
Of course, from there, one has to know the vocabulary that those
characters can combine to form, and how various characters can be
different parts of speech according to context...
In Classical Chinese, it would have been necessary to know more
characters-- 8,000 still sounds high for functional literacy-- since
it used more characters, and many have fallen into disuse or are
almost never seen in modern discourse. And Classical Chinese was
more nearly a monosyllabic language-- one character, one word--
unlike modern Mandarin.
Even so, Classical Chinese still had the property that a single
character could shift its part of speech and occasionally its
meaning, based on context and position in a sentence. This makes
the equating of number of characters with size of vocabulary
misleading at best..
--
Trent
JoatSimeon
>
>There are limitations to the Chinese language as well. There is, for
>instance, no past tense. To indicate something happened in the past, you
>simply say it happened in the past.
-- this conveys the meaning just as well. Apart from vocabulary items, which
are easily acquired, all human languages function at about the same level of
efficiency.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>Perhaps it's because humans in Africa had less of a need to domesticate
>their animals. The favourable climate (back when the Sahara was a rain
>forest)
-- the Sahara was never a rain forest. It was a scrubby savanna with seasonal
lakes -- rather like central Namibia is today.
Africa has always been a fairly difficult place to live. The disease
environment is hostile (since it co-evolved with us) and the soils are mostly
infertile.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
real-history changer had someone made the effort needed to domesticate the
zebra.
Most of tropical Africa is deadly to horses (and cattle) because of ngana,
sleeping-sickness, a tsetse-fly born disease. Zebras are immune.
-- S.M. Stirling
Phil Fraering
>The West ran into a wall in the 1200's, essentially because food production
>wasn't keeping up with population growth.
I thought that the High Medieval semi-Industrial period didn't run into
a wall until they got to the Black Death, which caused a great deal of
economic destruction.
Phil
--
Phil Fraering "What are we going to do tonight, Miles?"
p...@globalreach.net "Same thing we do every night, Ivan,
/Will work for tape/ try to take over the Imperium!"
MADAM IM ADAM
JoatSimeon
creolized contact-pidgin.
Afrikaans is rather similar, only more so. (Eg., there's been more loss of
inflection: "I is, you is, we is, they is" rather than I am, you are, etc.)
-- S.M. Stirling