In mediaeval times, the region that led the world in
technological (1) was China. (2) , Europe
north and west of the Alps was a backwater that had invented nothing
(3) except for improved watermills. How did China (4)
in science and technology to Europe Two papers by Graeme Lang, rich
with broad implications, address this paradox (5) structural
or ultimate causation. Lang begins by pointing out that
(6) scientific inquiry in Europe developed within a (7)
European institution: autonomous universities where critical inquiry
was relatively (8) by governmental or religious authority.
Between A. D. 1450 and 1650, 90% of Europeans now considered to be (9)
to science receiver university educations, and half of them held
career posts at universities. There was (10) in China. Why
not Historical causation is like an onion, whose concentric
layers must be peeled back (11) to reveal the ultimate causes
at the center. Lang sees the autonomous universities on the onion’s outer
skin (13) springing from an underlying layer of European
political fragmentation. Mediaeval Europe was still divided into a thousand
independent statelets, whereas China was already unified in 221 B.C. So it
proved impossible to suppress critical thinking for long in Europe: a thinker
(14) in one statelet could (and often did) merely walk into the
next. To take just one example, the astronomer Johann Kepler was always able
to (15) the authorities by moving away.
Technological innovations were as hard to suppress in Europe as was
scientific inquiry. Competition between statelets provided a positive
(16) for them to adopt innovations that might yield military or
economic advantages (17) . (One such beneficiary was
Christopher Columbus, whose schemes for ocean exploration were rebuffed in five
states before he received backing from the sixth, Spain. ) (18)
, China’s unity meant that the decision of a single emperor could
(19) over the whole of China—the demise of China’s clocks,
(20) fleets and water powered spinning machines being only the
most flagrant instances.