Is/Was there something "unique" about Western Civilization

that led it to the forefront of the world...

or was it simply the result of geographical determinism, luck, etc.

is there a uniqueness about Western Civ compared to other civilizations?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions#Pre-Shang
s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_exploration#Indian_Ocean_and_beyond
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Yes.... The University

If there is any unique innovation in Western Civilization, that propelled it self to dominance in intellectual fields, its the university

first "true" university being the University of Bologna in Italy circa 1088 followed by Oxford, Salmanca etc. etc.

Note: there were institutions of learning in Ancient Greece, Persia, China, Rome, Byzantium,Islamic World etc.,

but they were much different in structure than the medieval European university which is the FOUNDATION of the modern university today

Capitalism

Well, for starters, the western civilization was quite close to the start of agriculture, and could therefore quickly start farming themselves. However, contrary to the people in the Fertile Crescent, where temperatures were quite mild, winters could be difficult, and thus, something was needed to store food. In winter, there was not much to do, and thus, there was time to think and improve their way of life. Other parts of the world either (1) did not have harsh winters or (2) were far away from the Fertile Crescent or (3) were still sailing in their logs to some of the more shitty islands in the Pacific.

However, other civilizations have risen and fallen before the rise of Western civilization. The 'special' thing about Western civilization is an abundance of resources like iron and wood, easy acces to grains and horses and a willingness to explore.

All in all, Western civilization is nothing special, we have had it very good while developing and continued this advantage well into modern times.

Well, I would say that the Ancient Greek and especially Roman centres of learning were the start of the European medieval universities. Without a will to imitate and even outdo classical writers (a product of their centres of learning) and the knowledge about the artes liberales, it is hard to imagine European universities being on the forefront like they have been.

White people.

true....but most scholars tend to believe that the modern university stems back from the first "true" university, the University of Bologna in Italy

of course its all subjective on what you consider a "true university"

but the white race has never produced a genius on the level of W.E.B Dubois

No. Plenty of things about Western civilization are unique, as are plenty of things about every civilization, but no one thing propelled the West to dominance. A mix of geography, culture, certain inventions and institutions, competition, cultural inheritance, and so on all contributed to the West's rise, and none of it was inevitable. Trying to attribute it to one thing is always retarded, but people like short, simple answers like that.

The invention of peanut butter isn't that impressive...

Of course, but it is all a continuation of earlier centres of learning. Therefore one cannot simply state that the FOUNDATION of the modern university lies with one university in Italy, even though one could say that this university continued and improved on the old formula. The foundation of modern learning is much more broad then just one university, and should not be discredited as such.

For instance, another reason education continued from the fall of the WRE to 1066, was clerical learning and Christian libraries. Even today, a lot of universities in Europe still have decidedly Christian roots.

but what about the idea that the Catholic Church was always anti-science, that i often hear

or just anti-secular knowledge in general

I don't see why this matters. Medieval universities became the basis for modern universities because the civilization which hosted them became dominant. That doesn't mean Western universities caused that dominance. Universities had nothing to do with the rise of colonialism, the invention of the caravel, heavy cannon and muskets, or the rise of the printing press.

oceanic climate and med

t. geographic determinist

it can be argued that the western model of the university was a success cause it led to things like the scientific revolution and the enlightenment

lol get that jewish shit out of here

Diamond has already been debunked

Vril force obviously

This is not entirely true. While the Church at large (as in, the leaders, the people with true power) of course wanted the plebs without higher knowledge in order to have greater control over their people, and thus more money and more power, they were not anti-science. However, science needed to be used in the common goal of spreading the word of Jezus Christ, so most inventions were either militaristic, linguistic or had to do with easier farming methods and other ways to make life easier. Higher education was off limits to most people, but joining the church would allow you to study various languages, including Latin, read philosophers and even engage in scientific discourse with Islamic philosophers.

The idea of a 'Dark Ages' after the fall of the WRE has been discredited, for instance, while most people would not go outside their villages their entire life, everyone with even the slightest ounce of education would know that the earth is round and you cannot fall of it.

Not really. The scientific revolution and enlightenment happened because of the printing press. They were certainly shaped by universities, since universities were the most important educational institutions of the time, but the universities themselves didn't cause them to happen and there's no reason they couldn't have happened in a civilization with a different kind of educational institution.

Increasing returns meant that the first place to come out ahead shot way ahead. That's all.

If that made any sense then Iraq and Egypt would rule the world.

Or China. Or Persia.

>because le zebraman has been debunked this means enviroment has 0% effect
proof?

God was with it.

are you trolling? I pray you troll

Enlightenment

No.

Enlightenment as welll

The classical academies were much different, true, but the Muslim Madrassa was probably the closest in function and spirit to the University and probably why they were so successful before the rise of Medieval Europe.

But I think it goes beyond that. What makes Western Civilization unique was its urban politics, its cities, which I think had a lot to do with the other unique advantage of Western Europe - the lack of militarized nomads on its immediate borders.

>What are Slavs?

They're not the same. The Greek and Roman schools were more like trade schools meant to produce a constant flow of intellectuals who shared the same mindset, philosophy, and skills for the express purpose of staffing a bureaucratic apparatus. Both the Madrassa and the University had very different origins and purposes.

What about them?

I hear people say that geographic determinism has been debunked or discredited all the time, yet I never hear any arguments against it.

Textbook example of how less advanced Western Europe would have been if it shared a border with the steppe like Eastern Europe, which only started doing better than places like Iran or China thanks to continuous influence from the West.

mercantilism was the economic model of the european powers during the colonization period, which I think is mainly why the west was so successful. It managed to export its culture much further than any others.

But I'd agree that it's the shift to capitalism that allowed western culture to keep a hold abroad when colonialism and mercantilism was no longer economically/politically viable. The longer you can project soft power, the stronger your cultural influence and the west has been pretty good at reinventing itself for the past 500 years.

It all starts

with this man

>that led it to the forefront of the world...
The fact that China had the world's first nation state in the 200s BC (Qin dynasty), a standardized civil service soon after in the Han dynasty a standardized civil service was created. The creation of paper and woodblock printing in the first century AD made them even more efficient, as did the invention of the printing press (MOVABLE TYPE) in the 11th century. This only came to Europe in the 15th century.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination

China had the ancient culture of philosophy and invention that the Ancient Greeks had but people forget about it, because it makes them more comfortable to imagine white people as always being at the forefront.

It has always had a huge population that they could sustain efficiently, up until the 18th century when it grew too much, and bad weather resulted in famines that ultimately destroyed them.

afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/imgs/poptrend.gif

The Chinese also explored the old world extensively, far earlier than the Europeans did, and in fleets far greater. They could have easily colonized Africa, the spice islands, etc but chose not to. They didn't see any need, as their massive population and diverse climate gave them everything they needed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He

This instinct to reject everything outside of their borders is shown very amusingly in their response to a British embassy's proposal for trade, even when their empire was declining in the late 18th century:

"Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders. There is therefore no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our own produce."

It seriously irritates me that people always forget about China, when they have, for most of history, been at the forefront in overall prestige. The only thing that lead to European dominance was a huge investment in a Chinese invention: gunpowder.

then why did Europe have a scientific revolution and not China........
pretty much all of modern science and mathematics is distinctively European

I reached the character limit, so Ill post this as a reply:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions#Pre-Shang

I would recommend people read more on China, as their history is seriously fascinating. Their GDP will soon surpass that of the USA's, (2018 is the earliest prediction) which kind of provides testament to what I'm saying:

Our (white European) being at the forefront of civilization is really only a blip in history, lasting from the late 18th century to the present day.

I think the invention of the printing press helped the west a lot too in that department. Not sure how quickly it spread in other civilizations of that time. I know the ottomans were quire reluctant to adopting the practice because there was some original scandal about western expats in the middle east who tried to innocently print the quran, made some mistakes in the calligraphy and got BTFO hard.

I kind of implied it in my original post:
>It has always had a huge population that they could sustain efficiently, up until the 18th century when it grew too much, and bad weather resulted in famines that ultimately destroyed them.

After that, Europe and America cuckolded them completely.

My people, the eternal anglos that we are, literally gained a foothold on them through subversively supplying their population with huge amounts of Opium. When they banned it, we fought a war with them that we won by having perfected their own technology (gunpowder).

funny thing is that China had the printing press way before Gutenberg

yet it didn't have anywhere near the same influence that it had in Europe

always perplexed me why that was

Chinese culture is inherently stagnant, which is why they discovered gunpowder, and the printing press, and did dick all with it. Literally medieval stasis, the country. Dunno why, some mix of Confucian philosophy being too stagnant, and Daoist philosophy being too go with the flow. No middle ground philosophy that gives structure but allows for creativity. Something like a theology that claims a divine order in the world that can be found out because of God's love.

China btfo

>my people, the eternal anglos that we are

t. Shang Xioa

exactly...it seems like China might of been the first one to come up with some of the most important inventions like gunpowder

but Europe actually took those inventions and actually put them to practical use and upgraded then by an large

It's very, very hard to learn the Mandarin script.

The script is done through individual characters representing words, which is useful when you have a lot of dialects, because then everybody understands each other in writing.

But then again, literally who can learn 60,000 characters of by heart? Definitely not a rural peasant; good luck reading fine literature, ling ding, reading is reserved for professional scribes and the nobility.

You might think so if you live in the west or have been indoctrinated by it's culture but really it depends. To some tribesman in the Amazon it probably doesn't mean much and isn't anymore unique than their own community.

>Europe actually took those inventions and actually put them to practical use and upgraded then by an large

The printing press: "Europe" is a strange way of spelling Ottomans.

Technology is adapted to serve a purpose. The OTTOMANS and middle easterners invested heavily in gunpowder artillery to defeat castles that look like pic related, not the link i'm giving you now.

s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/98/71/e5/9871e52bbc09c525af21b8f6471eab15.jpg

Well it could also have something to do with . I don't know too much about china apart from the vague order of their dynasties and some of their main "-isms". How did legalism last? That was basically some sort of chinese proto-shogunate or something where access to science and knowledge was restricted away from the common man?

>muh ebil anglos
We dindu nuffin. The ruskies did worse during the grand game tbqh.

>tfw the Finno-Korean Hyper War was real

But in all seriousness, if I were to throw out a guess, I would say it was many, many years of internal warfare and strife combined with the justification of political and religious philosophical disagreements. Either one by themselves probably would not create the product of European global superiority for the time that it has (and still does to an extent) and would just keep the fighting internal ad-infinitum. The internal strife and political ideologies eventually turned outwards and began projecting itself to outside of Europe.

A counterexample to this would be like Africa, where they're fighting almost all the time, but with absolutely no ideology whatsoever behind their fighting. It's just senseless violence with no moral justification, and thus Africans never bred the strength of mind to project their strength outside of their own local territories, much less their continent of Africa.

Of course, this is all just conjecture.

So the issue is that China created a bureaucracy with a linguistic barrier to entry to ensure quality. Said linguistic barrier prevented them from developing advanced technology. Therefore China is superior. Eurocentrism btfo.

That's the fucking point,Xiao. China is too fucking stable, its in a state of relative equilibrium that doesn't allow for huge advancements. Aka 6 gorillion years of unbroken history, unbroken political systems, unbroken philosophical systems. The Chinese are good, and a beautiful culture, but they can only optimize, never create.

>They could have easily colonized Africa, the spice islands, etc but chose not to. They didn't see any need, as their massive population and diverse climate gave them everything they needed.
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He
Nice try CIDF
The empire made it illegal to build ships with more than 2 masts around the same time period and that basically killed your sea exploration.

Meanwhile the euros were building transatlantic ships to get around the ottoman/Venetian stranglehold on trade routes with the east. That helped a lot later when it came to dominating world trade.

Also we literally struck gold with america.

Cultural Inheritance of Roman Empire?

>Inherit a bunch of crumbling ruins
Greek texts were more important
and the reformation lead to widespread literacy in protestant nations

>Linguistic barrier
There wasn't one. If you read what I said properly, then you'd see that they have a logograph. Dialects and the native languages of incorporated foreign but illiterate lands were not a problem as a result of this writing system and their bureaucracy

>China is too fucking stable
It's really not, they're growing massively. They will surpass the US GDP in 2018 at the earliest.

Do you know anything about 20th century history? China was like the least stable country on earth in that period.

>Never create
Earlier in the thread there is a Wikipedia article with their inventions. The only thing that halted their progress was the famines that ensued due to overpopulation and freak weather in the late 18th century.

You're right in that Confucianism and Chinese philosophy has had an effect on their behavior and culture, but wrong in that it has has resulted in some sort of "Russia during Brezhnev" situation.
Their centralized bureaucracy, formed around the same time as their nation state in the 2nd century BC, long before Europeans had any concept of this, was completely and utterly efficient as a result.

>What makes Western Civilization unique was its urban politics, its cities
This.

Western Europe's high literacy, economic productivity, scientific research, dynamic law and political theories, and basically everything else you can think of that put it ahead of all other contenders comes down to the evolution of the Medieval City.

so what? it's the fucking city charters? but that started real early, like the 1200s. why would it only come to fruition many centuries later?

>like the 1200s
Incidentally also when the West starting building monumental structures, started expanding into the Eurasian Steppe and North Africa, started outpacing the Middle East and China in academia, and began to overtake everyone else in GDP per capita.

It didn't come to fruition many centuries later, it was slowly building on it since then.

I'm not actually a chink, this is just prep for when China cucks us all, and goes through our internet history.

Can I get a source for the two mast thing? It sounds interesting, but I Zheng He's treasure ships had only two masts, and effectively brought back giraffes and whatnot from Africa, and spices from the East Indies.

Bare in mind, that the Chinese did not have to cross vast open stretches of open ocean, so the two mast limit would not be too much of a hindrance if it was strictly enforced as a law.

You are right though, America was a fucking goldmine.

I like to imagine what it would have been like to discover it, by imagining that Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin, while going to the moon, discovered a planet in between it and Earth. On this planet was a less advanced civilization, but one who looked just like us, joked around, made art, etc.
The Chinese were really

In my opinion it is the natural development and time in certain places that may have been a sort of uniqueness to Western Civilizations than others.

Well, first we need to see the definition of western civilization. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary it is, " a high level of taste and enlightenment as a result of extensive intellectual training and exposure to the arts ." So, let's talk about china and Europe as an example as these two do correspond to the definition. Europe is the birthplace of ancient western civilization and modern western civilization. Some may argue, however, that china was the first birthplace of western civilization with it's intellectual advances that it reached way longer ago than Europe did. It's public education that it reached, military advances, legalism and basic court law, bureaucracy and aristocracy have been found there since it's beginning, it may veyr well be the birthplace. However I do think a bit of bias was put into which was better as china's documents couldn't be read that well in Chinese and even in china today the language is very broken from Tibetan, steppe land, and law-land Chinese are still frequent languages in china that are spoken, and in Europe many languages were known like Latin, Arabic, and ancient Germanic were all languages Europeans could adapt to, especially Latin in those days. So it's a big argument but in my opinion it was Europe that founded modern western civilization as we know it and it depends on the documents and language as well as the fact that Europe was in a better state than china during those days and might have effected peoples outlook in the Americas and Europe. Plus emperor Qin Shi Huang burned a lot of documents and so we will never truly know.

Linguistic barrier
There wasn't one. If you read what I said properly, then you'd see that they have a logograph. Dialects and the native languages of incorporated foreign but illiterate lands were not a problem as a result of this writing system and their bureaucracy

>China is too fucking stable
It's really not, they're growing massively. They will surpass the US GDP in 2018 at the earliest.

Do you know anything about 20th century history? China was like the least stable country on earth in that period.

>Never create
Earlier in the thread there is a Wikipedia article with their inventions. The only thing that halted their progress was the famines that ensued due to overpopulation and freak weather in the late 18th century.

You're right in that Confucianism and Chinese philosophy has had an effect on their behavior and culture, but wrong in that it has has resulted in some sort of "Russia during Brezhnev" situation.

What is Western Civilization?

Honest question. Where does it begin/end? What are its defining characteristics? What is/is not western?

The ideal to strive above and beyond what nature has dictated upon mankind.

I found the source just by looking up chinese exploration on wiki that was at the bottom of the link you posted. Like I said in another post, I don't know much about China.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_exploration#Indian_Ocean_and_beyond

.From 1405 to 1433, large fleets commanded by Admiral Zheng He—under the auspices of the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty—traveled to the Indian Ocean seven times. This attempt did not lead China to global expansion, as the Confucian bureaucracy under the next emperor reversed the policy of open exploration and by 1500, it became a capital offence to build a seagoing junk with more than two masts.[16] Chinese merchants became content trading with already existing tributary states nearby and abroad. To them, traveling far east into the Pacific Ocean represented entering a broad wasteland of water with uncertain benefits of trade.

You'd have to check the sources and see if they're good enough.

>>Our (white European) being at the forefront of civilization is really only a blip in history, lasting from the late 18th century to the present day.

>Talk about Europeans and the West

>Always conviniently ignored Greeks and Roman Empire

>Focus on "muh white piggus only went ahead of us superior chinks at 18th century"

Everytime, Xiao

I did not ignore the Greeks. I said that when people talk about the Greeks and civilization, they mention philosophy and inventiveness at around 500BC to when they got cucked by the Romans.

The Chinese were doing the same things, but in a Nation-State, which was formed in the 200s (BC).

As for the Romans? Greeks, but more organized.

this guy gets it

Romans and Greeks are part of Western Civilization. Claimed that Western Civilization is only the forefront civilization at a short time, during 18th century, is false.

The true is that it's always been.

Not him, but Western Civilization actually starts with the early Medieval Franks, and bits and pieces of a separate Classical Civiliation i.e. Rome and Greece were adopted later by Western Civilization.

the early medieval frank upper class was basically constituted mostly of gallo-romans. You can still make a clear link to the roman empire from there.

You can make some links, but in the same way you could do the same for Islamic civilization which includes Classical and Persian elements. It's Frankish Christianity and urban culture where things really diverge to become uniquely Western.

>It's Frankish Christianity
Roman emperors adopted Christianity and make it state religion

It's hard to pin it all on the franks to be fair. the holy roman empire moved to germany, there was still the byzantine branch of the roman empire, etc.

But yeah, I guess the weird alliance between salic law and christianity is definitely what led to feudalism. And the church didn't mind since they got to function as the glue holding the rising western kingdoms until feudalism died.

also this. While constantine converting is pretty much confirmed to be an historic meme, theodosius definitely did convert and made it the official faith in the late 300s.

And Frankish Catholicism was slightly different from Late Roman Christianity, which the Byzantines also shared as an influence.

The HRE was still a product of the Franks, and the Byzantines were their own distinct culture from Western Europe.

>Glue holding western kingdoms
Except most of the ruling elite of western europe were related through blood being offspring of Charlemanges prodigious loins

>the offspring of Charlemanges prodigious loins
I forgot about based karl. he was related to clovis wasnt he? if so, you are correct and I stand corrected on the frankish influence.

>And Frankish Catholicism was slightly different from Late Roman Christianity, which the Byzantines also shared as an influence.

Due to the fall of Western part of Roman Empire. Which leads to the development of Catholic in the west and Orthodox in the east of Europe. But they have the same root.

Partially. The nature of Frankish aristocracy and the influence it had on Western Christianity means Roman Christianity - like Roman law - is only part of the story. Early Medieval Europe in my opinion is more culturally Frankish/Germanic with some Roman influence on its laws and religion than the other way around.

Citation m8?

The enlightenment happened hundreds of years after imperialism began and after the renaissance

Lots of empires are imperial, the enlightentment and Newton gave europeans the tools to create the industrial revolution

The west had stronger guns, German and Steele

t. cream ofsumyungguy

But the west still dominated and dominates today

White Genetics

How did the Ottomans invent guns first, if they lost to Europe in WW1?

A combination of geographic location and genes.

The same as everything, nature and nurture always contribute to success.

You take that back snownigger.

China's GDP will surpass Americas by the end of 2018 at the earliest, and soon after so will India's.

Once again, Western supremacy was a blip in history that started in the 18th century and will end early this century.

That's eurocentrism talk.

First true large scale university was in Taxilla. Law, science, martial arts, medicine, religion, history, etc were taught in the ancient Taxilla university. Length of proficiency given the subject at that university was around 8 years.

You either pay the money front up if you're rich, or have the kings support you through scholarship. There was even work for education programs where if you're poor you could also work for the teachers for certain years and you would pay the debt.

That was before Alexander the Great's conquest to India. There couple dozens of these universities throughout the Indian world, another famous one is Nalanda, which was a Buddhist oriented university with full stock of teachers/lecturers/students from all across the Buddhist world(India/China/Burma/Srilanka/etc). It also had hostels for the student/teachers in the vicinity. That was also 500+ years before the "first" modern european university.

china is already a wasteland, india or china won't be a superpower even when your buzzfeed news prediction says so

superior genetics

Ur dum m8.

China already surpassed American GDP in 2015 (PPP) wise. For nominal, that won't happen till 2030s.

India for example wont surpass US GDP (PPP) until 2050s. And their Nominal won't surpass until atleast around 2080s

>What is Takshashila and Nalanda ?

Printing makes copying easier, which they didn't make much use of. They made as much copies of scripts as arabian scribes would produce in their manufactures with writing

Ottomans were on the forefront of gunpowder use in the 16th century