"Brad McCormick, Ed.D." wrote: > *However*, long before Bernard Lewis asked "What went wrong?" > anent Islam, Joseph Needham spent a long lifetime asking: "What > went wrong?" (OK -- more accurately: "What failed to get > started?") in China. > > Needham's conclusion, which he did not like, was that Europe > "took off" into modernity whereas China stagnated because Europe > had capitalism and China didn't. > ... > Why didn't China "take off"? (Maybe they had too > much leisure?)
Brad - I don't think this quite gets Needham right. His question took more the form: given that ancient and medieval Chinese technology and its implementations are vastly superior to those of the west, why was there an industrial revolution in the west and not in the east (& correlatively, the modern techno-science that was part of the process). To say that Europe had capitalism and China didn't would be too close to a tautology for Needham. As I read his answer - especially in an essay "Science and Society: East and West" (1964) - the essential matter is intense & repeated social breakdown in Europe - which has many causes, the formations of early capitalism among them - whereas Chinese history is characterized by long periods of social stability only rarely punctuated by upheaval and social change. Social dislocations in Europe allow for the emergence of new activities. new social roles, the scientist-engineer (pioneered in some ways by the artist-architect-engineers of the Renaissance) and the capitalist-entrepreneur among them, and consequently the social activities of modern science, the premium placed on innovation, etc. So, interesingly, "too much leisure" in a sense is right. If everything is ticking right along and society is not breaking down all around you, one can proceed in a leisurely way. Stability. Tradition. No crises. sound right? Stephen Straker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Vancouver, B.C. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
