How the West Won

Why did the West rise?

I mean, if you compare Western civilization to the Far East, Muslim world, Africa, Asia, Native American Indians (both North and South America) and India, the West has really kicked ass in the development of civilization and society. The West has gone so far as to make ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome look like barbarians with Lincoln Logs or Legos. Egyptians built the great pyramids, the West walked on the Moon. The Greeks invented Euclidian geometry. The West invented calculus. Romans brought water to its empire via aqueducts. The west built the Panama Canal and the Hoover Dam. Want to talk progress? How about human flight?

Why did this happen?

For the past few years I've been studying early Christianity and the early Catholic Church. One of the books which I'm currently reading, "How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization" by Thomas E. Woods Jr., has some interesting ideas. Now, granted, Woods is a right-wing bomb thrower, whose greatest joy in life appears to be infuriating liberals in general, and political correctness (and the forced assumptions behind it, all evil was at the hands of white, European males) in particular, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong, or doesn't offer some interesting ideas, which he does.

This particular rant is not based solely on Woods' work, but also of several other books and authors I've read. Woods just happens to be on the top of my head at the moment.

Woods' theory, to sum it up in a word, is "science." His answer is that science developed in the West, but no where else, to any real extent. He places a lot of credit for that in the early debates during the formation of the Catholic Church, but more on that later. For starters, what is science? Woods' definition makes sense to me, so I'll use that. Science is the marriage of theory with empirical observations. That means, that not only does one think, but one experiments, then thinks about the results, then experiments more, then thinks some more, and so on and so forth. In other words, it's a neverending process to learn everything about any and every possible field of study.

This my analogy, I like it better than Woods'. Early humans learned that wood burns by empirical observation. Through tinkering over thousands of years, they may have discovered that certain wood burns brighter, or hotter, or others may give a better taste to food, while others just destroy roasted mastodon drum sticks. But how much more did they learn about it? Arabs and Jews in the desert learned that camel and cattle dung burns, and if you add a pinch of salt, it makes the combustion process more efficient, but not much more than that. While in the west, scientists studied it up, down, inside and out, everything about it. They studied the combustion process down to its molecular level, and have used what they learned to move the entire science to an entirely new process. Sure the Chinese discovered gunpowder. But the west moved the scientific process along to the point we now have nuclear reactors and solid rocket fuel capable of blasting a team of astronaut's asses to the moon and back. Now that's science!

Aristotle may have been the greatest mind of his time, but in retrospect, he leaves a lot to be desired. Aristotle believed that theory was sufficient. So sufficient, in fact, that empirical observations were unnecessary. One need only look at a large rock and a small rock to deduce the larger rock will fall faster. So therefore, no empirical observation was necessary, and even more so, a complete waste of his superior intellect. Yeah, right.

So the question then becomes, why did the West develop this anally retentive need to know absolutely everything about everything, and then some? And there is a reason this rant is found on a blog dedicated to promoting knowledge of the United States Constitution. It's because the answers to these very questions led to the formation of civilization that produced enough wealth to allow the rise of reason and enlightenment that helped bring forth the generation of the founding fathers who answered some of the greatest moral questions known to all humanity. Such as "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, and they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

So what set off this tidal wave of tinkerers and thinkers, makers and bakers, cynics and comics? According to Woods and other authors, it was the rantings of a crazed carpenter in Judea who just refused to stick with the status quo. Jesus, and the ancient Hebrews before him, laid out an interesting theory on the creation of the universe.

Pagans (and I've spent more time studying them as a D&D Dungeon Master than any grown adult would care to admit to) have a unique perspective on creation and the Gods. To them, the greatest creation is the universe. The gods and their minions exist within the universe, they are subordinate to it, rather than rule over it. And the gods are basically petty a**holes who portray the best and worst aspects of humanity. Why should one worry about learning and understanding the natural laws of the world, when the gods can change them at will? Monsters, dragons, demons, gods and goddess. They rule over man, so what ever they say goes.

[Editor's note: This point I don't understand. If the pagan's believe that the gods are subordinate to the universe, then how can they arbitrarily change the rules of the universe? On the other hand, if you believe that there is a God who created the universe, then that God could of course change the universe to His whim. Which view would reasonably lead to an attempt to understand the underlying rules of the universe?]

[Author's reply: The defining difference between the Pagan's view and the monotheistic view is the position of God(s) with respect to the power of the universe. Pagan gods are born, they die, they get recycled, they love, they hate, they fight, they win, they loose. And the cycle is never ending, though most pantheons have some sort of an "end of time" story. But they are subordinate to the universe in which they live, even though they are attributed with the powers to alter their universe, which they do at will, and frequently, hence: why bother studying the effects of gravity when Loki can just come along and reverse it for laughs. In the Christina/Hebrew version, there is only one God, who always was, and always will be. God created the universe, and made the natural laws that govern His creation. True, Christianity/Hebrew religion have references to miracles. But these miracles are extraordinary, as they are exceptions to the natural order of God's universe.]

How about India? Life is a never ending cycle of reincarnation. The goal isn't to improve one's life in the material, present world, but rather to prepare one's self for the next incarnation. China? The rules and order of this world are far too nuanced and sublime to be understood by the average Joe, so life needs to be spent in meditation to bring one's self closer to the real powers that control the world. Islam? Allah is all powerful. What ever he says goes. If tomorrow Allah decided the sky should be red and the oceans green, so be it. So why waste time learning what only appear to be repetitive phenomena, when Allah can change it all tomorrow?

So what set Jesus, the Hebrews and the Church up differently? Woods' theory - and I must admit, it is intriguing, is the Bible itself. In Genesis, there was nothing, until God created it. Therefore, God is above the universe, not subservient to it. God took chaos, nothing, a lack of anything and created something from it. He created order. And in a very specific manner and schedule. He knew football was coming, hence, rest on the seventh day.

As the stories of the Old Testament unfold, there are more references. God has a very specific plan, a very specific goal, and that is to bring human kind closer to God and salvation. God is unhappy with Sodom and Gomorrah because they will not heed to his rules, so God lets them and every one else know it, big time! Lesson learned. God cleansed the world of evil with the great flood, and then God shows his promise to never do it again embodied in the rainbow. God tells Moses to tell the Pharaohs "Let my people go." Then God makes it perfectly clear to Egyptians that it's in their best interest to do so while there is still an Egypt.

Whether you believe in the Bible or not, believe in God or not, there is a pattern here. And that is God has created a universe that is orderly, behaves, and who's rules can be studied, thought about, experimented with, and explained. It makes no difference that early scientists believed all powers and orderliness of the world emanated from God, they believed God had supplied them with a world that could be understood, studied, explained by mathematical and scientific principles, and then harnessed for their benefit. And that's just what they set about doing.

If some one has a better theory, or proof to the contrary, I'm more than willing to listen. After all, that's the way of my people.