Answer to Question #260544 in History for Bae

Question

With the minimum of 200 words answer the question below:

1. What do you think is the foremost reason why scientific invention were concentrated in the western countries particularly in most countries of Europe? Elaborate or cite proofs and examples.

Answer 1

Greeks in particular were the early ones to think in a non-holistic way, to decouple things from their environment and analyse them narrowly on their own. You see this approach in e.g. modern engineering, when if you want to analyse a phenomenon of which you know little, you describe it first as a product of separate one-variable functions which you then analyse individually.

As it turns out, everything is connected, so that Asians and others were in principle right in taking a holistic view, but the respective levels of influence, amplitudes etc. of different factors are disproportionate, and therefore to launch scientific progress the Greek approach was an absolutely necessary intermediate step, even though it was really only approximate.

Western thought is rediscovering the value of holism, and the built-in limitations of analysis by breakdown and reduction to individual components, but the intermediary methodology of analysis of mechanism of phenomena on their own was a essential step that few non-Europeans took - since they knew it was mistaken and it is amusing the way things work out from time to time.