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 12 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 13 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 14 the authorities by moving away.
Technological innovations were as hard to suppress in Europe as was scientific inquiry. Competition between statelets provided a positive 15 for them to adopt innovations that might yield military or economic advantages 16 . (One such beneficiary was Christopher Columbus, whose schemes for ocean exploration were rebuffed in five states before he received backing from the sixth, Spain. ) 17 , China"s unity meant that the decision of a single emperor could 18 over the whole of China—the demise of China"s clocks, 19 fleets and water powered spinning machines being only the most flagrant instances.