Bias_2012 wrote on Aug 26
th, 2021 at 1:29am:
That's a long time ago. Perhaps today, with growing muslim populations in Western nations they could become "Westernized" and relax some of their strict Islamic requirements and free themselves up to engage in the sciences once more, ensuring it's for the benefit of the Western nations they preside in, if they choose to stay in Western nations
Throughout history all cultures rose and fell, and some had a 'golden age' notable for its international reach....but 'times are a changin'....
Currently the West is supreme, but that is rapidly being breeched by China who will no doubt soon demonstrate new technological innovation (as it last did in the Tang dynasty c. 300-600AD) when its R&D budget surpasses the US, due the the sheer size of China's economy (likely to be double the US by the mid-century).
As for your idea of science for "the benefit of Western nations", well.. that's very ideological/parochial; modern science and innovation has a way of reaching the entire globe in weeks, not centuries as in the past.
Quote:It's a Western nation now, but remember Stalin imprisoned scientists and designers, including plane designers, and only let them out when Germany became a threat in 1941. They enjoyed a fair bit of freedom during the war but Western scientists and designers had no such political paranoia holding them back and were always free to invent, design and innovate
And yet the USSR launced the space age in the 60's ...due to well-directed socialist planning, even though the US was double the size of the USSR.
Quote:In Eastern cultures, technology seemed to have stagnated, only to come alive again in certain Eastern countries by the injection of Western off-shore manufacturing ... but they are still limited in their scientific outlook by either religious beliefs, politics or cultural restrictions
Addressed above. China doesn't have the science- restricting religious problem, and as for cultural/political restrictions, we will soon see if Chinese socialism has the better national development model, having changed considerably from the old Leninist model. (and if the repubs regain control of Congress in 2022, the US is stuffed..)
Quote:In terms of Eastern culture/technology stagnation versus Western culture/technological advancement ... we need only look at this photo of Afghanis in this Globemaster. Just one Eastern culture that has not advanced technologically in a very long time.
True, but you are really referring to Middle Eastern Islamic fundamentalist cultures, China, ie 'the East', will soon reclaim its place as one of the world's major scientific innovators, as noted above.
Quote: The Shar tried to change things, but he was booted out. The National Religion and a subsistence way of life was more important to Afghanis, bringing any introduced Western culture to a grinding halt, and any cultural freedoms with it
True; just shows the disastrous power of fundamentalist interpretation of scripture over uneducated men who prefer to hang onto an anachronisic 7th century culture described in the Koran.
{You mean the Shah in Iran? Actually the West (CIA in fact) was a major culprit in the demise of modernization happening in Iran after WW2, and the Islamic ME in general (during the Cold War): see the overthrow of the democratically elected socialist leader of Iran in 1953. US self-interested political ideology in all its evil).
Quote:Striking contrast between East and West ...
More accurately, a striking contrast between the modern West and an anachronistic 7th century Arab culture; but the West should not have been there in any case. .
The proper solution is in reform of the UN (eg, get rid of the UNSC veto, etc) and with international institutions which can oversee prosperous development in all nations, not the present nighmare of entrenched global poverty especially in the 3rd world, overseen by the pathetic US-created stooge the IMF ("Instant Misery Fund"...we lend you money, and you go broke...).
Forum
Pages: 
