Dear Jim,
thank you for your book, i hope to find their counterarguments to my list of
factors, but i would also be grateful for clarifying some points in your
elixir message
> From: james m blaut <70671.2032@CompuServe.COM>
> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
>
> Nikolai is throwing all sorts of weird ingredients into his witches' brew in
> hopes of cooking up the magic elixir that will explain the European Miracle.
no objection, i keep in mind here that real creative thinking is akin to magic
acts, so thanks a lot
>Its a waste of effort. There is no such elixir.
what you say here means that there is no plausible scientific explanation of
European dominance. i suspised the same but you know Western literure much
better, here i believe you
but does not it mean that it is a noble task to create 'an
explanatory elixir' which still does not exist?
> There was no miracle.
even if i told of the 'miracle' anytime, i had in mind only that one
civilization living on a small north-western edge of Afrasia managed to grasp
politically, economically, culturally almost all other peoples and
civilization on the globe during some centuries,
but isn't it a historical fact?
those who doubt in it can
ask a simple question: what foreign languages are studied by children in all
over the world? i don't know precise statistics (and would be very grateful
for delivering it) but i am sure that English, French and German cover more
than 70-80% (maybe only Arabian can somehow compete within Islamic
world). But there are HUNDREDS of live languages on the globe!
Dear Jim, isn't it a real miracle that only 3 languages of many hundreds
envaded almost all this area which is so important culturally, politically
and economically?
were their in History other similar miracles? sure, and they all were
mentioned in our discussion: Rome, China, Arabs, Mongols, Russians,
Ottomans (Americans should be treated as the third wave after Spanish-
Portugal and Holland-French-English waves of expansion). Anyway the global
scale of European-American success has no previous precedences in history
(but maybe in future? - i mean China of course)
> Before 1492> Europe had ->nothing<- -- no ingredient or combination of
ingredients -- which
> would explain its later rise to world hegemony. It all started at Palos.
partly right, because European expansion as a bunch of dynamic strategies
created new effective factors as intermediatory results, some or even many of
my factors really appeared after 1500 and some secondary factors appear even
after 1800, 1900, 1950
but an entire rejection of any ingredients of European success before the
first wave of expansion seems to me extremely strange
isn't it you, dear Jim, who tells us about magic miracles if the envasion of
the whole globe had its genesis in nothing?
best regards, nikolai
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Nikolai S. Rozov # Address: Dept.of Philosophy
Prof.of Philosophy # Novosibirsk State University
rozov@cnit.nsu.ru # 630090, Novosibirsk
Fax: (3832) 355237 # Pirogova 2, RUSSIA
Moderator of the mailing list PHILOFHI
(PHILosophy OF HIstory and theoretical history)
http://wsrv.clas.virginia.edu/~dew7e/anthronet/subscribe
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