It should be noted that the seat of scientific progress has moved around quite a lot. The Arab world can be thanked for fractional distillation to produce petroleum products, and for our numbering system. The Chinese invented gunpowder, probably the idea travelled to Europe via the Arab traders, while the French gunsmiths greatly refined its use with convenient pre-packaged brass cartridges, and I believe it was Benjamin Robins (an Englishman) who published “New Principles in Gunnery” advocating the use of a parabellum with rifled barrel.

Eventually Europe’s penchant for warfare resulted in the destruction of WWI and WWII, which left the refugees running to America and starting a whole new run of scientific and technological discovery.

I often think that the modern rediscovery of crystal gazing and abstract spirituality is not because people think that science doesn’t work, but because they clearly understand how damn well it does work and they are trying to run the other way.

He attributed the rise of the west to three pillars: in the economy, the market order; in the political sphere, the taming of the State; in intellectual life, autonomous science. His pointed to a number of factors which decentralised political power in Europe in contrast with the despotisms in Asia and Islam.

By contrast to the conditions which Asian and Islamic rulers were confronted with, European geography soils, geology, climates, etc. varies from place to place and core-areas are comparatively small. For European rulers it was far more difficult to project military power from the core-area to the periphery. Hence, the European states faced neighbors with roughly equal military capabilities, and the international game of power was characterized by a permanent and fierce competition (cf. Weede 1987, Eurosclerosis…; 1987, Ideas…; 1988, Sonderweg…). Competition in economic markets provided the need for an autonomy of technology and later of science. Historical accidents reinforced that development and one important factor was the power struggle between the State and the Church Competition between states together with practicable opportunities to exit facilitated the spread of innovations throughout Europe.