freediver
Gold Member
Offline
www.ozpolitic.com
Posts: 48833
At my desk.
|
In "Why the West Rules - For Now, The patterns of history and what they reveal about the future", Ian Morris Argues that rather than new ways of thinking driving social changes throughout history, thought largely reflects the needs of society at the time. He highlights similarities in western and eastern thought, and that similar ideas arose at similar stages of social development, reflecting the needs of civilisation at the time. This includes religion, and the renaissance.
One key exception is the rise of scientific thought. China actually began industrialising earlier than Europe and started making heavy use of fossil fuels. They went through a renaissance of sorts at around the same time, driven by the increase in wealth. However they did not progress onto a "mechanical" model of the universe - that is, a world driven by laws of nature rather than unpredictable spiritual forces. Similar concepts did arise, but did not become popular.
In chapter 11, "Not why the west rules", p569, he points out:
When psychologists strap people into functional magnetic resonance imaging machines and ask them to solve problems, these scholars point out, the frontal and parietal areas in Western subjects' brains light up more (indicating that they are working harder to maintain attention) [ie, having more difficiulty with the question] if the question requires placing information within a broad context than if it calls for isolating facts from their background and treating them independently. For easterners the reverse is true.
Morris attributes the cause of this (unconvincingly, IMO) to the atlantic economy that arose around 1600 and the new problems this created for them. Scientific models of reality solved these problems best, became embedded in western education to the point where they became the default mode of thought. In the east, this process started later and thus has not progressed as far.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores measured in many parts of the world from roughly 1930 to the present day. When intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are initially standardized using a sample of test-takers, by convention the average of the test results is set to 100 and their standard deviation is set to 15 or 16 IQ points. When IQ tests are revised, they are again standardized using a new sample of test-takers, usually born more recently than the first. Again, the average result is set to 100. However, when the new test subjects take the older tests, in almost every case their average scores are significantly above 100.
Morris goes on to speculate that had the east not been incorporated into the western economic sphere, they would be independently going through there own industrial revolution about now. Scientific thought would have presumably been part of this.
|