Why did modern science and mathematics develop in Europe?

>>1740992
The Arab world changed with Islam and the backsliding began.

you want an honest answer:

The Catholic Church

The collapse in trade networks and the rise of Christianity as a political force during the early middle ages ended up eliminating most slavery in Western Europe.

The Black Death broke the back of serfdom in Western Europe

There were Greek and Roman republics to imitate.

The Printing Press made dissemination of information orders of magnitude more easy than it had previously been.

Europe developed colleges which spread knowledge of science.

Patent laws created a unique incentive to create and publicize economically useful technologies.

The combination of all of these produced the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution.

>>1741004
but China actually invented the Printing Press before Europe did..

but for some reason it didn't have no where near the same revolutionary impact that it did in Europe? why is this

>>1740998
How come most STEM advancements came from Protestant Europe then?

>>1741016
Galileo was who really kickstarted Europe's dominance of science.

and before you say "but the affair" it is completely misunderstood, the church didn't punish him because he went against the religion, they punished him because he was going against EXISTING SCIENCE...

i don't agree with the punishment, just saying

>>1741004
Christianity didn't eliminate slavery, there were still slaves in italy for example even during the middle ages, the collapse of trade networks is spot on though.

>>1741011
Different kind of printing press.

Europe invented the useful metal kind with movable type.

Also, Europe uses mainly phonetic alphabets rather than ideographic writing.

I frequently wonder how much of the West's lead over the East is solely down to having a better system of writing.

>>1741025
maybe, but another point I think to mention is Europe was much more divided than other areas of the world, which fostered in competition

>>1741024
From what I understand, the early Catholic church reduced slavery in Western Europe, because

>Christians shouldn't enslave other Christians

Combined with the collapse of trade networks and advent of serfdom making slavery unnecessary anyway.

There's a reason when the Portuguese managed to reach pagan Africa, they started buying all the imported farm equipment they could, and there's a reason slavery was so much more widespread in the New World than the Old World.

>>1741022
>The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture.
What did they mean by this?

>>1741036
it was much more complicated than that

read Tim O Neil's answer about the Gallileo Affair he goes into great detail

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-misunderstood-historical-event

>>1740992
Humans are quite stupid apes anon, the idea of a human that wants to learn for their own pleasure is alien to most people and often comes with the nerd or geek terminologies. The guys in India or Chang that wanted to learn more about the world probably couldnt get the resources needed to do so because the rest of the population cared the now and not the future.

>>1741004
This OP
Idk about the slavery one though. Certainly slavery delays technology, but I can't see Christianity being the biggest player in that. I would simply pin it on the black death in binding serfs from their land. Serfs were by mist definitions of the time slaves. Slavery, with plenty of exceptions, was usually not chattel.

>>1741011
>but China actually invented the Printing Press before Europe did.
It's a great invention that becomes worthless with their retarded, sorry excuse of an alphabet.

How about you use 20-something symbols to write and print everything instead of thousands? Chinks were too stupid to think of that.

>>1741047
Unbinding*

You would have to be a fool to believe that the merits of one culture equal demerits to every other culture.

Some cultures made bounds that others did not, and some cultures built off of the work other cultures had produced. You seem to be under the impression that there is an end result to history, and we are all on the clock to see who reaches it first. This is absurd. If the genius who perfects the Fusion drive ends up being born in North Korea, would we praise their totalitarian culture as superior to our own? Sometimes the stars align as if by chance, not because a race is destined to achieve something.

A few intellectual elites cannot represent an entire continent, so comparing the value of entire cultures this way is absurd. Your question is valid, but the way you stated it sounds like you are salty about it for some reason.

In any case, I would say to your question that the culture of Europe at the time was abnormally open to research and scientific reform, and that the speed of communication had increased within Europe to the point where knowledge from previous cultures was readily available, and a discovery could be quickly put to practical use by other contemporaries.

>>1741047
So the Arabic World declined because of Islam fundmanetalism started to creep in and the Mongol Invasions

so why didn't China and India, why weren't they able to keep up with Europe?

>>1741047
As far as we can tell, chattel slavery was universal in Europe in late Roman times, then they collapsed, most of the written accounts stopped, and next thing we know it's the High Middle Ages and serfdom has replaced chattel slavery

As far as I can figure, it's down to the sudden increase in the cost of transportation, along with the Christian church, a young, idealistic organization, being the only trans-national power left in Europe.

>>1740992
Because that part of the world was experiencing prosperity?

>>1741053
India got occupied by Moguls.

China for Mongol'd and then Qing'd.

I suspect that even without these events, the more collectivist cultures of the east would have lagged behind the west, because an absolute monarchy is structurally incapable of promoting innovation the way a republic does.

Answer is the Mongols pretty much decimated the Islamic world allowing Europe to surpass them in scientific output

>>1741066
good point, also remember that Europe was much more divided allowing competition to flourish

going further

Why was Britain able to pretty much scientifically PWN the rest of Europe...Germany, Spain, Italy etc. etc.

#Angloexcellence?

>>1741090
Parliament, patents, and corporations.

The Dutch probably would have done the same thing if the Spanish didn't fuck everything up.

British society, especially after the Glorious Revolution, made it profitable to be an inventor in a way that was unprecedented in all of human history.

>>1741090
they raped the irish, safe on their island while the Europeans had to spend resources on warfare

>>1741056
Those accounts stopped with the fall if the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire's model of chattel slavery was one of those notable exceptions I was thinking about. The Germanics to the north and Latins to the South were not structurally centralized enough to support chattel slavery, as it required the conquest of other nations regularly and with low cost. It was rare for this opportunity to arise, so they reverted to a system similar to the Han model of public slaves.

This thread is reaching rationalization and explaining away levels that shouldn't even be possible! European (white) people are just that special. Deal with it.

>>1741112
As far as I can tell, there's some evidence of plantation slavery remaining in former Roman lands for a while after Rome itself collapsed.

It's a total mystery how Europe went from the Roman system to the feudal system, due to the near total lack of writing.

I'm guessing some combination of religion and economics.

After all, during the same period the church managed to crack down heavily on polygamy and consanguineous marriage, and have it eventually stick.

>>1741133
Then why weren't they special during the Bronze Age and neolithic?

If the factor is genetic, it should change so dramatically between the eras.

>>1741133
Yeah, special pets for the semitic master race

>>1741090
but is that even true

Newton didn't invent calculus, Leibniz did...yet Newton is much more well known mainly cause of Anglo centricity

not trying to hate on Newton, the guy is on the Mt. Rushmore of science, if there ever was one..but just saying

>>1741102
this, a hundred times this

>>1741158
Wasn't it a tie?

>>1741102
How did the Spanish fuck everything up? The Dutch btfo them and got extremely rich off East-Indies trade

>>1741158
they both developed it independently

while Leibniz calculus was more refined, Newton completed his work first and Leibniz actually took from Newton when developing his independent work


Newton is much more famous, not because of "anglocentricity" but he produced universal gravitation, work on optics, the reflecting telescope and much more..the dude completely revolutionized science

Leibniz did not have that effect

>>1741178
Leibniz was a polymathic genius though, the man mastered many fields

>>1741172
The Dutch spent a lot of their early days trying to keep the papists from destroying them, when they should have been revolutionizing science or something.

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>>1741182
And newton didn't?

>>1741206
i don't think Newton did more than one field?

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>>1741004
>The Black Death broke the back of serfdom in Western Europe
How did this happen exactly?

>>1741237
>suddenly about a third less people
>land goes from being overcrowded to underworked
>labor value skyrockets
>landed gentry has such an intense shortage of agricultural workers that they have to give them actual rights
>clergy's influence is wrecked, because they either did their duty, tended to the sick, and died, or ran when they were needed the most, and exposed themselves as cowards

>>1741257
But I thought that the whole part about the serf rights were exclusively affecting the western europeans and such measures were already present to a limited degree in England with the Barons, the Magna Carta and what not. Didnt the eastern europeans suffer similar states of loss like that of their western cousins?

>>1741278
The Magna Carta was about the nobilities rights.

No peasants allowed.

>>1741430
the church?

>>1740992
China and India didn't have the demand for it. They had enough wealth and populous that they didn't need to industrialize

Muslims were a case of bad timing note that the powerful empire of the time, The Ottomans, broke down at the same time as the Austrians which was also a power during that time.

>>1741004
>implying Greek and rome didn't had similar teaching institutions

>>1741035
>, and there's a reason slavery was so much more widespread in the New World than the Old World.
because the new world was being exploited for cash crops?

white intellectual superiority?

>>1740997
The Arab world was more of a backwater before Islam. The Islamic world invented shit like algebra and algorithms. The intellectual capital of the world at one point was Baghdad.

>>1744064
But it was invented by someone who wasn't very Muslim, just like lots of shit from the "Islamic" Golden Age. The Islamic world was just used to describe the general area and culture of the Middle East, just like Christiandom was meant to represent Europe, Indians were referred to as Hindu, East Asia was the Orient in general etc.

>>1741024
The end of slavery in Scandinavia seems to pretty heavily coincide with the introduction of Christianity. I'm no expert but I'd say there's a connection.