Freedom & Finance
Epistemic growth in Western Europe and China
-
1000-1750
Master thesis
Comparative History
Bas Willemsen
0104450
18th of August, 2007.
Contents
Preface4
Introduction5
The internalist perspective5
Mechanical model & application of mathematics6
Experimental method, qualities and the geometrization of space8
Externalism & path dependency10
Research question & approach12
The T-shaped model15
Part I: The Western European case26
Western European education & interaction 27
Lessons & literacy27
Ius universitas31
Curricula & correspondence35
Science & societies44
Western European preservation & diffusion 47
Medieval times & manual labor47
Modern tools & mass-production53
Western European economic incentives 57
Accounts & academics57
Printing & payment62
Part II: The Chinese case67
Chinese education68
Education & examination68
Careers & control75
State & schools78
Chinese preservation & diffusion 84
Invention & influence84
Chinese economic incentives86
Studying & status86
Conclusion90
Freedom & finance90
Bibliography102
List of figures
Figure 1- The T-shaped model16
Figure 2 - Model segment on Western-European elementary education28
Figure 3 - Dutch, British & French literacy levels30
Figure 4 - Model segment on Western European universities’ legal status36
Figure 5 - Model segment leading up to Western European epistemic growth43
Figure 6 - Late medieval European manuscript production49
Figure 7 - Western European book production after 50049
Figure 8 - Model segment on Western European preservation & diffusion52
Figure 9 - European real prices of books after 146063
Figure 10 - Model segment on Western European economic incentives65
Figure 11 - Model segment on Chinese elementary education72
Figure 12 - Model segment on independence and Chinese epistemic growth83
Figure 13 - Chinese & Western European book production86
Figure 14 - Model segment on Chinese preservation & diffusion89
Figure 15 - Model segment on Chinese economic incentives95
Figure 16 - The reality of Western Europe97
Figure 17 - The reality of China100
Preface
This master thesis has been written as the final part of the master program of Comparative History at the Universiteit Utrecht. What started out as curiosity regarding the birth of modern science has grown into quite a large piece of paper. When first deciding to research why modern science first arose in Western Europe, rather than in China, I was still ignorant of the size of the task I had set myself. However, it did not take long for me to realize the mistake I had made. Soon, I became stuck: the subject was simply too large to deal with. After talking with my supervisors and reading some more of the available literature, I decided to throw half of the subject (namely the internalist point of view) overboard and started work on a social explanation of the problem at hand, focusing on structures which could aid the growth of episteme. This way I started to make some progress and after some time had the idea of constructing what has become the ‘T-shaped model’, which would make the subject more manageable. This master thesis is what resulted after working out the implications of that model.
I would like to thank my supervisors Jan Luiten van Zanden and Maarten Prak for their thoughts and suggestions, without which I would never have been able to finish this thesis. I would also like to thank my fellow students and all my friends and family who expressed interest in what I was doing these past few months or offered their aid. But most of all, I want to thank my girlfriend Annemieke for her unending support, despite the fact that I have been extremely busy these past few months while working on this thesis, and, on top of that,whilespending a lot of time for the benefit of my band Alerion and the completion of its forthcoming demo. Without her support I would not have accomplished the completion of either.
Introduction
The internalist perspective
During the 17th century, Western Europe experienced the Scientific Revolution, which had a significant impact on scientific development. The pursuit of science increasingly gained in importance and the existing pool of available knowledge grew ever larger. By the end of the 18th century, Western Europe’s level of science had surpassed that of Imperial China, which according to Joseph Needham and others had been the leading scientific nation in the world from late antiquity up to probably the 15th century A.D. Many scholars have been intrigued by the question why Western Europe’s science overtook China’s, or, conversely, why China fell behind.
Whether Western Europe started to overtake China during the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance or the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, all scholars agree that by the end of the 18th century Western Europe had achieved what one may call ‘modern science’. This was defined by Joseph Needham in his The Grand Titrationas ‘the application of mathematical hypotheses to Nature, the full understanding and use of the experimental method, the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, the geometrization of space, and the acceptance of the mechanical model of reality.’[1]
However, the fact that Western Europe was able to achieve modern science by the end of the 18th century does not automatically mean that China was completely on the wrong track or would never have been able to achieve this independently.
To approach the problem of why Western Europe was the first to arrive at modern science, despite China’s earlier scientific head start, by looking at purely scientific and conceptual factors only, is commonly referred to as the internalist perspective, as opposed to the externalist view which focuses primarily on the non-epistemic aspects of the issue.[2] These scientific and conceptual factors are defined by Joel Mokyr when he writes of propositional knowledge, episteme, or “what” knowledge, about natural phenomena and regularities, describing the world around us.[3] The focus in the internalist explanation thus lies purely on the progression of scientific theories themselves, with little attention for any non-scientific, or social, factors.
The factors mentioned by Needham in his definition of what constitutes modern science could be viewed as a summary of the main aspects that determined the different development of science and scientific thought in China and Western Europe, viewed from within science itself. Both regions developed along different paths, which is to some extend expressed in the development of the factors mentioned in Needham’s definition. A great number of books and articles have been devoted to these developments, leaving little room for new insights. Therefore the presumption will not be made to add any significant new ones. However, knowledge of what is commonly taken to constitute modern scienceas well a brief overview of the paths by which modern science may have been achieved is important. This forms the core of the internalist perspective on the development of science. Needham’s definition will therefore now serve as a guideline to shed some light upon the nature of some of the more important scientific developments that took place in China and Western Europe.
Mechanical model & application of mathematics
A central aspect to the birth of modern science comes from the belief that nature is governed by certain laws, by causes and effects, which can be discovered by science. With regard to the predicting capabilities of heavenly phenomena, this belief has existed since antiquity. However, regarding things happening in nature, in the ordinary world around men, the belief that there were laws controlling everything did for a long time not exist in both China and Western Europe.
In Western Europe the theory of the Four Elements as first introduced by the Greek Empedocles, namely Earth, Water, Air and Fire, had a large influence on the view of the world. These four represented not only their basic equivalents, such as the sea or a garden for Water and Earth, respectively, but also the metaphors Dry, Cool, Moist and Warm.[4] As metaphors the Four Elements were long thought to be the driving force behind many things. This was expressed in four phases, the first of which was Moist and stood for spring rains, youth and rapid green growth. The second phase was Warm, standing for the hot summer sun, maturity and individuality. Thirdly, the phase Dry stood for dry autumn leaves, the beginning of decay and of aging. The final phase was formed by Cool, which represented winter chill, the loss of identity and, ultimately, death, after which the cycle started anew.[5] The influence of the Four Elements in Western Europe was maintained for a long time, at least up to the Renaissance, when there was still a lot of interest in alchemy, to which the theory of the Four Elements was central, and much of medicine was still influenced by the Four Elements as well.[6]
All this changed, however, after the Middle Ages. Copernicus started by putting the sun, rather than the earth, in the center of the universe, although still attributing this to the royal importance of light. A century later however, Kepler would discover that the planets in fact moved in an elliptical, rather than in a natural, circular, way around the sun, and would use the term ‘law’.[7] Gradually, the belief would rise in Western Europe that nature functioned according to certain laws, which could be discovered. This belief was most likely based on the fact that Christianity provided Western Europe with God as a Divine Legislator, who designed the world and its accompanying laws.[8] A view of nature being governed by laws of cause and effect, by a mechanical model, arose.
A similar, although by no means equivalent, view on the world existed in ancient China, in the form of the Five Phases, which were Earth, Water, Fire, Metal and Wood. The Five Phases, as well as the more famous duality of Yin and Yang, could be applied to explain complex phenomena, varying from subjects relating to history or philosophy, to subjects relating to medicine or nature as a whole.[9]
However, in China both the Five Phases and Yin and Yang remained central aspects of life as well as of China long after Western Europe had ceased to view the theory of the Four Elements as such. In fact, the Chinese maintained an organic view of the world, in which all things happened for a reason and everything was in harmony.[10] Nevertheless this does not necessarily imply that the Chinese did not come to a certain concept of natural law. The Chinese, in the in Imperial China dominant Neo-Confucian philosophy, interpreted the Heaven that one obeys and the Way that one walks as li. Li was identified with a decree from heaven, and represented general principles, either moral, political or natural.[11] It could therefore be taken as the Chinese equivalent of natural law, or something very close to it. This implies that, although an organic view of the world was dominant in China, some sense of natural laws governing the world did none the less exist. In time, this may therefore have led China to a mechanical view of reality as well.
Mathematics were first and foremost important as a tool to quantify nature. Units of measurement, such as those used to measure mass, volume, pressure or temperature, were vital in the development of science and to be found both in China and Western Europe. Also very important were the attempts made to use mathematical hypotheses to explain natural phenomena, made possible due to the mechanical model of reality.[12] The law of gravity, as discovered by Isaac Newton in the late 17thcentury, is a prime example of this. Another obvious example is formed by the calculations numerous astronomers made, both in China and Western Europe, to predict the movement of the planets.
Experimental method, qualities and the geometrization of space
Experiments were conducted in both China and Western Europe for centuries before the Renaissance. Some of them, in China particularly, could according to Needham even be repeated at will to produce the same results.[13] It was not until the Renaissance, however, that the ‘Galilean breakthrough’ occurred. Galilei was the first to conduct experiments in a fully controlled, reproducible, way, and to use the results to formalize mathematical proof. He did this à posteriori, he used his experiments to interpret the validity of his hypotheses.[14] Subsequently, Galileo’s methods became widely used in Western Europe and proved to be the main mechanism by which countless scientific discoveries were made. It was mainly the formalization of mathematical proof that seemed to be missing in China.[15]
Needham’s definition of modern science also spoke of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities of objects. Primary qualities, according to John Locke, are utterly inseparable of an object, they are the fundamental properties of a thing. Examples of this include volume, mass and motion. Secondary qualities, on the other hand, tell little about the world around us and usually of much less scientific significance. They are merely the effects of primary qualities. Examples include color, taste and smell.[16] The distinction between primary and secondary qualities of objects helped to determine appropriate subjects of scientific investigation and thus aided the development of science.
Geometry, as first thoroughly worked out by the Greek mathematician Euclid, was to play an important role in the development of science. In 1637 René Descartes published a treatise called La Géométrie,in which he published his invention of analytic geometry.[17] Descartes developed a system of coordinates on three axes, which enabled him to point out the exact location of any object in any place. By combining this discovery with algebra, which during the Middle Ages had been enriched by the Arabs, Descartes was able to produce mathematical functions and it became possible to calculate curves and surfaces of any object.[18]
The physical world, both the world around us as outer space, was thus opened up to analytical interpretation. This formed a crucial difference between China and Western Europe. The former, while very advanced in algebra, never developed a system of geometry comparable to that of Descartes or even that of Greek antiquity.[19]
Externalism & path dependency
The short summary of the different factors within Needham’s definition of modern science has hopefully made the most important epistemic aspects of the development of modern science, and therefore of the internalist perspective, clear. Conversely, the externalist view on the evolution of science focuses primarily on the non-epistemic aspects of the issue and argues, for example, that scientific society changed its nature when scientists became professionals instead of amateurs.[20] Sociological aspects are therefore of great importance in the externalist view. In what follows it will not be attempted to provide any kind of explanation from the internalist perspective. Neither will the externalist perspective be used the way it generally is to explain the birth of modern science in Western Europe. Rather, instead of stating the obvious outcome that China was overtaken by Western Europe, and explaining it, an attempt will be made to investigate solely the mechanisms at work in the development of episteme. By determining which mechanisms would have aided epistemic growth in an ideal situation and determining to what extend the realities of Western Europe and China corresponded to this ideal, new light might be shed upon the birth of modern science. The idea of path dependency might be very useful in this approach, as will be demonstrated.
An influential definition of path dependency, from the hand of James Mahony, has been described by Kathleen Thelen to be about ‘an interesting but quite rare set of phenomena’ and reads thus: ‘path dependence characterizes specifically those historical sequences in which contingent events set into motion institutional patterns or event chains that have deterministic properties.’[21] When this definition is translated to the problem of the birth of modern science and the question why science developed differently in China and Western Europe, its suitability to the topic might be noticed.
The pace of epistemic progress, the pace by which the total pool of available propositional knowledge grows each year, might in fact be cumulatively path dependent. Joel Mokyr, although mostly writing about technology, describes the European experience as cumulatively path dependent after writing: ‘…upon the slow but relentless progress of the Middle Ages, the engineers of the Renaissance built further achievements, which in their turn paved the road for the inventors of the Industrial Revolution and for the complete technological superiority that Europe had attained by 1914.’[22] Subsequently, Mokyr goes on to supply several possible explanations why China was unable to achieve the same over a similarly huge expanse of time.
Leaving aside technology and turning back to episteme, or propositional knowledge, alone, the path dependent model seems very promising. In fact, the development of propositional knowledge arguably followed a cumulative path as well. Starting in the Middle Ages, certain structures, such as schools, were set up, which in turn gave birth to new idea’s and structures, or made it possible to increase the diffusion of propositional knowledge, and so helped to speed up its development.