[snip]
In almost every conceivable way, life in 12th century Hangzhou was incomparably better than life in Ehropean capitals for centuries to come. The only cities that I can think of that come close to it in both commercial prosperity and the arts (they are, of course, closely linked) are Venice and Florence during Renaissance times. /Human Accomplishment/ is a stupendous book, incidentally, and the first attempt to quantify individual genius in the arts and sciences in terms of cultural origina and geographical distribution.[snip]
This sounds a bit like Ivan Morris's description of 10th century CE Heian (Kyoto), the Japanese capital at the time, which I have previously mentioned here
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/essays.html#genji
Morris's book, however, is quite modest; on the other hand, the way he succinctly "situates" such cultures historically is imaginatively evocative. And the Heian Japanese were probably far less technologically acomplished than the Chinese.
I have yet to see where scholars have really answered the question for either China or the classical Greco-Roman world (and late Medieval Islam? and some of the American pre-Columbian cultures?):
Why did not these cultures "take off" scientifically and
in engineering, as Europe did aproximately beginning
with Galileo? What went wrong?We can blame the decline of Minoan civilization on a massive volcanic eruption, locally equivalent for the Minoans to that meteor that changed global environmental conditions to the detriment of the dinosaurs.
???
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
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