Quote:



As Jim Trott would say, no, no.... yes.



A society's concepts of metaphysic shape the way the members of that society organise themselves.
Some have free will at their centre, others have determinism of every moment as their starting point for thinking.

Quote:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_scientists#Physicists_and_engineers

Then there was  Ahmed H. Zewail, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1999

Your paradigm is shattered.

You're definitely onto something here. The ideas that underpin society definitely does have an impact on how people act and think within that society.
The West is ahead in innovation and technology because, I believe, of three reasons. 1. Rights granted to the invididual to be able to "think outside" the norm. This allows him to innovate, experiment, and observe without persecution. 2. There is in the West institutions that allows the creative individuals to be able to apply their skills in their preferred discipline. 3. Marketing and selling the innovations and technology produced.
It's worth noting that 2 and 3 can, and is, done in most countries. But there's something about the West that begets the 1st.
I would hypothesize that competition is the prerequisite for the 1st; that of allowing the egoist to compete against other egoists. The egoist wants to stamp his innovation on the world.

The USA is known for its radical individualism.

I could also use the example of the German philosophers of the 18th and 19th century. I would hypothesize that why there were so many brilliant thinkers from there was because they were competing against each other to stamp their view of the world over each other. Competition made them think harder.

War is another example of where competition brings out huge technological advances.

Soren wrote on Feb 19^th, 2011 at 5:14pm:


Well it's true that most physicists and cosmologists are atheists, but what was your point? If you make a point about Muslims, are you contrasting with an atheistic background or what?

Generally Nobel Prize laureates in the hard sciences have come up with something original. Do you think they get it from contemplating their navels?

Soren wrote on Feb 19^th, 2011 at 10:11pm:

As the English discovered when they first attempted trade with China in the 17th century when their Ambassador offered the Emperor the finest English crockery as a gift which turned out to be so inferior to the local product he inadvertently insulted the Emperor.

Insulted, snooty, haughty... Whatever the sentiment, there was no trade with the English after that episode, until the English forced the Chinese to trade at gunpoint.

Soren wrote on Feb 19^th, 2011 at 11:16pm:

Undoubtedly true, (don't forget the Spanish and Portuguese!) but was it their metaphysics that drove their success or an arrogant confidence born of their sheer audacity leading to a wild success that shaped their metaphysics? (i.e. The metaphysics they just made up as they went along to account for it all).

Would the American colonists have been so audacious as to challenge a superpower, if in the first place they weren't on average, richer, healthier, stronger and taller than their English counterparts? I mean was it really self-evident that all men were created equal or was it simply part of a battle cry that no one really believed (invented out of the blue by rich landowners to cajole the ordinary colonists into fighting for their cause - keeping the wealth for themselves as opposed to handing any of it over to Britain)?

Would George Washington have committed an act of treason in the first place if he had not been passed over for promotion in the army by the British?

NorthOfNorth wrote on Feb 20^th, 2011 at 10:09am:



How the West became so dominant
James Forsyth 3:46pm
Niall Ferguson has a zippy essay in The Times today previewing his forthcoming TV series and book on why the West became so dominant over the past 600 years. He argues that there are six features of the Western system that gave it its edge:

“1. Competition: a decentralisation of political and economic life, which created the launch pad for both nation states and capitalism.
2. Science: a way of understanding and ultimately changing the natural world, which gave the West (among other things) a major military advantage over the Rest.
3. Property rights: the rule of law as a means of protecting private owners and peacefully resolving disputes between them, which formed the basis for the most stable form of representative government.
4. Medicine: a branch of science that allowed a major improvement in health and life expectancy, beginning in Western societies, but also in their colonies.
5. The consumer society: a mode of material living in which the production and purchase of clothing and other consumer goods play a central economic role, and without which the Industrial Revolution would have been unsustainable.
6. The work ethic: a moral framework and mode of activity derivable from (among other sources) Protestant Christianity, which provides the glue for the dynamic and potentially unstable society created by apps 1 to 5”


Ferguson makes the valid point that the extent to which the rest of the world is catching up with the West is largely determined by the extent to which it has adopted, or adapted, these approaches. One of the most fascinating aspects of the rise of China is whether it can succeed without adopting the whole-package or whether a failure to do so will make the whole enterprise inherently unstable.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6714948/howthe-west-became-so-dominant.th...