In a message dated 9/30/00 12:02:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< If Martin Luther had come along a
century and a half later, there would have been no one in western
Europe to develop Copernican physics after the trial of Galileo. It's
certainly possible that inventive activity would have stagnated.
Coperniacnism is astronomy, not physics. Mechanics was Galileo's discovery.
Aside from that, Descartes, Gassendi, and other advocates of the New
Philosophy operated in Catholic countries. And even if Protestantism weas
needed, we have more to thank Henry VIII than Martin Luther. It was in
England that gave us Newton.
> Ken Pomeranz's _The Great Divergence_ makes the strongest argument I
have seen that Europe's breakthrough to industrial capitalism and
technology was a near-run thing... >>
Brenner argues this too.
--jks
