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British publications love to explain how British culture is responsible for British scientific achievements. Fact is, scientific powerhouses have appeared throughout history in different cultures. What factors contribute to a scientific golden age? I’m unimpressed with an analysis that looks like a puff piece for British culture, and contains a supposed “cautionary tale”, but fails to do any do any comparative work or look at the places where Britain has faltered. (The “cautionary tale” is something that you insert partway down the article to make it seem less like a feel-good story about how awesome Britain is, you see.)
Why was Baghdad such a shining star of scientific and technological achievement for four centuries? How did it appear in the first place, and why did it end? Was it uniquely tied to Islamic cultures of the time?
How about classical antiquity? China?
Why did Britain make the jet engine and sonar, become the world leader in computing, and then within 30 years, strangle their computer industry into near oblivion? Why did America, one of the countries with the most cultural ties to England, succeed?
I get the feeling reading this article that all I am supposed to do is feel good about Britain, and not ask any of these questions.
> I get the feeling reading this article that all I am supposed to do is feel good about Britain, and not ask any of these questions.
The article - a review of a book about Victorian science - specifically says that "This epochal transformation in public consciousness was forged in 19th-century Britain, continental Europe and the United States." It's not attempting to be a comparative history of science, and given it's subject, it is not fair to criticise it for not discussing prior scientific hubs. It specifically references the views of an American, Mark Twain.
> it is not fair to criticise it for not discussing prior scientific hubs
I don’t see why that’s unfair. By narrowing its focus to a specific time and place, and ignoring parallels with other times and places, it seems so easy to draw false conclusions or just tell a chronology of events rather than do the interpretive work expected of a historian.
I see this as a trend in historical works—the study of historical writing is called “historiography”, and if you pull up an article on historiography you can see the trends that I am talking about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_United_K...
There’s even a name for this kind of puff piece about UK history. It’s called “Whig history”, and Whigh history has its own history (or historiography), which is fascinating in its own right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history
I don’t see how it’s possible to say with confidence what the Victorians gave us without understanding what it’s like to not have a Victorian history.
I’m unimpressed with an analysis that looks like a puff piece for British culture [...] I get the feeling reading this article that all I am supposed to do is feel good about Britain, and not ask any of these questions.
I think you've completely misread it, it was more about the transition of scientific mindset in the West generally from Victorian times.
Anytime one finds oneself in a society which lies near the centre of an extensive trade network, one can find oneself treated to many dinners by the simple expedient of concocting a little story about how it is (not their geographical-economic situation but) their culture which is responsible for their affluence.
But what leads to the extensive trade network? Looking at a world map[1], why should Britain be near the centre of anything? We’re on the west edge of Europe, only accessible by water, as far north as Canada. Britain’s trade was related to understanding of scurvy[2] which lead to more long sea voyages, steam ships from the industrial Revolution which was also a British thing some time after cutting down all the trees to make ships and having to find coal asa fuel instead of wood, and relentless cruel and exploitative colonisation to extract riches and desirables from all over. Whether that part is cultural or not I have no comment, but you can’t really go to “large trade network not culture” without explaining the large trade network and why other countries didn’t build the same but could have - or apparently could have.
And trade doesn’t seem to explain things like the discovery of penicillin, or John Snow’s tracing of cholera to a water pump and starting epidemiology; were they doing that to profit? What about when Rutherford split the atom in Manchester in 1918, but the atomic bomb and atomic fusion both came from America decades later, did trade have to move to support that? Why didn’t that instead contribute to Britain leading the world trade in atomics?
[1] https://onewayuk.com/wp-content/uploads/Inflatable-Globe.jpg
The "only accessible by water" part meant that Britain had a much stronger naval tradition than - say - Germany. That tradition also looked westwards to the relatively open opportunities provided by the Caribbean and eventually Canada and North America, more than it looked towards South America (too far away) and the Mediterranean (already saturated.)
Originally the tradition was based on outright state-sanctioned piracy. But that's incidental.
Establishing a strong Atlantic trade gave Britain the technology, the money, and the economic and military traditions to colonise India and parts of Africa. Trade also drove the Industrial Revolution at home, because there was insatiable demand for goods and they also had to be transported across the country. So: mechanised factories, ships, and railways, and traditions of engineering, research, investment, and military organisation to support them all.
The failures of WWI started to undermine the empire, and WWII all-but killed it. Technological dominance fell with it. The UK was basically bankrupt after WWII and the US took over as a hegemon. After a few humbling experiences - especially Suez - the UK lost its imperial sense of self. Technological decline followed.
The UK's ruling class has never been able to come to terms with loss of empire, which is why we have silly spasms like Brexit - a small country trying to pretend to itself that it's a much bigger country.
Ironically the UK still punches above its weight in a number of areas, including the arts, finance, law, and STEM. But instead of promoting those talents, the ruling class has damaged them even further in search of a fantasy of empire that hasn't been current for over a century.
> including the arts, finance, law, and STEM
Well, most of it because their heirs kept their language. And cultural products in English are easily exportable
So yeah, still some gains from their empire days. Now the main export of their Monarchy is celebrity gossip
Look at an ocean-centric world map[0], and you will see why Britain could waive the rules[1], back in the day when she ruled the waves[2].
[0] https://porteconomicsmanagement.org/wp-content/uploads/Map-P...
[1] the Royal Navy of the time had a substantial advantage: its ships cruised needing to put into port only for food & water. The US Navy needs oil.
[2] ever since Suez, however, the mantle of Oceania has firmly descended upon the States, and Britain has been demoted from empire to Airstrip One.
That doesn't help me see why compared to any other coastal country. OK India has a harder time reaching USA, but are you saying that trade and an "empire of science" comes down to ease of connectivity with the USA? And then why not Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Italy, etc?
The use of sailing ships also wasn't a British-only thing; a reason the British Navy could sail unusually far is suggested in the article I linked - an understanding of scurvy prevention which other countries didn't have.
Continental europe was (a) army rather than navy focused, and (b) had traditionally used trade routes running through the Med, to Venice and Genoa, etc.
So continental europeans had neither budget nor reason to develop long range cruising, whereas Britain, out on the very end of the existing trade chain and maintaining a large navy against invasion, had both.
That leaves Spain, Portugal, and Ireland. Spain is well known for having succumbed to the resource-curse from New World metals; Portugal had (due to the papal agreement) to go the other way, and I was under the impression they were very successful doing that until something (what? possibly british pressure?[0]) cut them off[1].
That leaves Ireland. (who may not have been so worried about specifically catholic invasions, but...) I don't know about that case; will poke into why Ireland has never popped up as a naval power!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Empire#British_Ulti...
[1] and of course, using scurvy prevention and accurate longitude determination to go directly to the other end of the traditional trade routes meant that London cut those off as well; by water to London and then to Rotterdam or other ports was in a sense "shorter" than the slow overland trip to the Med from Asia that had been traditional.
Edit: aha, the dutch did the portuguese in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Empire#Iberian_Unio...
(and the dutch/english rivalry is well attested by all the pejoratives left in the language: dutch oven, dutch treat, dutch uncle, etc.)
I remember a piece posted to HN some years ago—some kind of scientific paper, by Indian authors, explaining why Indian food tastes good in some kind of scientific sense. I have not stopped thinking about that paper.
Please do share!
Whether or not stories are told has zilch to tell us as to the facts of the matter. But nevertheless, congratulations on a nice dinner party riposte.
There are so many places that fail to become scientific powerhouses that it might still be that only certain cultures have the capability to take on the challenge. Obviously it would be a mistake to try and see scientific progress as uniquely British, because it isn't. But the culture of empiricism and willingness to nurture it probably were cultural.
The Baghdad that was a shining star of achievement probably had a very different culture from today - it'd be interesting indeed to see if it was closer to Britain in the 1800s or Baghdad in 2020. And whether the subculture that was responsible for the actual progress was the same or different from the circles of intellectual muscle that backed the British empire.
>> But the culture of empiricism and willingness to nurture it probably were cultural.
If it was, then that culture wasn't British culture but some kind of central-European culture that flourished around the time of the Industrial Revolution. I was in Paris, recently, in the Museè des Arts et Mètiers, and I stood half a meter from a collection of Pascalines, the first machines capable of performing arithmetic operations, created by a Franch mathematician, Blaize Pascal.
Modern science and technology did not grow in one place, or in one go, and in any case, as we all know, it all started with the Greeks, ευχαριστώ πολύ. And then there was the Middle Ages.
[Incidentally, do visit the Museè des Arts et Mètiers and do visit the Science Museum in London, if you can. They are not nearly as well-known as the natural history museums but that just means they're not nearly as crowded. You can find ancient computers in both, it's like they evenly split the spoils of an era of experimentation with automating computation. Paris has the Pacalines and Vaucanson's loom, London has (a model of) the Difference Engine. They have more modern machines also; in London I saw a PDP-10, I believe, in France a Fridden Flexowriter right next to a drum memory. They are places to be lost in, if you like that sort of thing. Also: entire rooms filled with models of steam and hydraulic machines.]
modern science and technology owes nothing to the ancient greeks. modern science and technology is based on accepting experiments as sources of truths/facts of the universe. ancient greek philosophy which prioritized the ideal explicitly shun any knowledge that could be arrived at by observation (i.e. through our senses). the battle to admit experiments into the criteria of truth was mainly waged in britain, from locke onwards. so, while the ancient greeks bequeathed us the immense inheritance of philosophy and the search after truth, we wouldn't be here if we didn't disrespect their strongest argument that truth arrives by cerebration alone.
>> How did [Baghdad] appear in the first place, and why did it end?
We know why it ended. First, fire was discovered. Then horses were tamed. Then the Golden Horde sacked the city, and destroyed all the libraries.
> British publications love to explain how British culture is responsible for British scientific achievements.
That's really not the usual position of the New Statesman.
Yes, and in case anyone doesn't know of the New Statesman, it's very much the reverse. An not just that publication, self-hating & self-despising Britons are very much in the ascendant. Quite the evil empire in their view.
I feel that while the article makes some accurate remarks linking Victorian ethos to our current technological prowess, it's too simplistic to assume that today's scientific achievements are not instead part of a multicultural advancement continuing from millennia.
I did found very interesting the anecdote around 1820 with the shift from the "old guard" on the British Royal Society. But it led to me to wonder why such an importance is given to specialized knowledge. It's like reducing every problem to be solved by a depth-first search algorithm.
> The role of technoscience – the fusion of scientific research and its technological applications – in driving social change, for good or ill, is central to thinking about the future.
This, to me, is the central issue with science, and also cuts to the core of why I have lost faith in its methodology and output.
Questions to consider:
Whose vision of the future?
Its not my vision. It is some sort of techno-governance monstrosity, which sounds hellish.
Who is funding the science?
Its not scientists, they undertake the work for which they can get funding. Ultimately, its bankers, via government and corporate institutions.
With that in mind, it is also possible for the individual to answer whether 'technoscience is driving social change for good or ill'.
Britain was a beneficiary of Indian mathematics (zero, number system, geometry, algebra) and medicine (ayurveda).