Annihilation from Within by Fred Iklé (best book series to read TXT) 📕

Helm, 1985), 106; and of Donald J. Munro from his The Imperial Style of Inquiry in Twentieth Century China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies, 1996), 7–8. Joseph Needham’s The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969), although based on his magistral study of early Chinese discoveries and inventions, fails to reach a convincing answer to “the fundamental question” (finally posed on page 150!): “why did modern science not arise in China?”

3.   According to Paul Mantoux, “science came later [in the emergence of the Industrial Revolution] and brought its immense reserves of power to bear on the development which had already begun, thus giving at once to partial developments in different industries a common direction and a common speed.” Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1961; original French edition in 1906), 475.

Joel Mokyr observes that “the fruits of the Industrial Revolution were slow in coming. Per capita consumption and living standards increased little initially, but production technologies changed dramatically” (The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress [New York: Oxford University Press: 1990], 83). Mokyr also notes that after 1850, “science became more important as a handmaiden of technology” (113.)

Many scholars have offered explanations for the intriguing question of why industrialization and modern science first arose in Western Europe. For a richly documented overview, see Jack A. Goldstone, “The Rise of the West—or Not? A Revision of Socio-economic History,” Sociological Theory (July 2000): 175–94.

4.   I am in agreement here with Samuel P. Huntington’s list of characteristics of “Western” society: the classical legacy, Catholicism and Protestantism, European languages, separation of church and state, social pluralism, representative government bodies, and individualism; but not science and technology. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York; Simon & Schuster: 1996), 69–72.

The contrary argument—that modern science and “Western” culture are organically linked—has been advanced both by scholars who are optimistic about the future of “the West” and by those who dwell on its decline. In his famous The Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler maintained that the concept of numbers is culturally conditioned: “eine Zahl an sich gibt es nicht” (Der Untergang des Abendlandes, 23d ed., Munich, 1920), 85. Arthur Herman in his book The Idea of Decline in Western History (New York: Free Press, 1997) discusses several connections between declinist interpretations of Western culture and an interpretation of modern science and technology as something specifically lodged within Western culture (228–29, 401–402). The optimistic view of the linkage between Western values and modern science is alluded to in Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992)—for example, his observation that “scientific inquiry proceeds best in an atmosphere of freedom” (93).

5.   Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, first published in 1963 in France as Le Monde actuel, histoire et civilizations, here quoted from Richard Mayne’s translation (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), 9. As Braudel points out, the noun culture has been appropriated by anthropologists to denote primitive societies in contrast to the “civilizations” of more developed societies. But he adds that “the useful adjective ‘cultural,’ invented in Germany about 1850, suffers from none of these complications. It applies, in fact, to the whole of the content of a civilization or a culture” (9).

6.   Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era (New York: Viking, 1970), 52. Perhaps the best known of Jacques Ellul’s many writings is The Technological Society (New York: Knopf, 1970); first published in 1964 as La Technique: L’enjeu du siècle.

Some readers might recall C. P. Snow’s lecture The Two Cultures and a Second Look (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), and because of the title might assume that it is related to this chapter. It is totally unrelated. The gravamen of Snow’s lecture is that those Western “intellectuals” who are interested in literature, history, and art fail to learn anything about hard science.

7.   The distinguishing characteristics of a nation are not self-evident. A sophisticated exploration of the meanings of nation and nationalism is Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991). Other important contributions are Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1960); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983); and E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

8.   The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia’s History is the title of Geoffrey Blainey’s book about the history of Australia (Melbourne: Macmillian, 1975). The evolution of Australia’s society, culture, and economy illustrates dramatically the transforming impact of technological advances in the means of transportation.

The Battle of New Orleans, actually a series of battles ending on January 8, 1815, was fought between British and American soldiers with the commanders on both sides unaware that a peace treaty had been signed in Ghent two weeks earlier.

9.   On the coordination of an international telegraph system, see Daniel R. Headrick, The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics, 1851–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 13. On the synchronization of time zones, see Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 12–13.

10.  John Gray, Al Qaeda and What it Means to Be Modern (London: Faber & Faber, 2003), 110.

2. Science Pushes Us Over the Brink

1.   Letter of John Paul II to the Elderly (1999), §9. It is difficult to arrive at a practical definition of natural death. See Stuart J. Younger, Robert M. Arnold, and Renie Shapiro, eds., The Definition of Death: Contemporary Controversies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). Various experiments have been reported where scientists tried to keep an animal’s head alive by substituting artificial devices for the heart or lungs (24–25). Had these experiments kept the head alive indefinitely, would veterinary science have made the animal immortal?

2.   The beliefs regarding mortality vary among different faiths. The ancient Greeks and Romans understood immortality as a privilege reserved for gods. In Christianity, Islam, and other religions, human mortality is foreordained, and the vision of “eternal life” refers