- This topic has 4 voices and 4 replies.
-
Posts
-
I’m going to throw this theory out there and see if anyone else can add examples that think are fitting.
History shows us that climate affects the way regions operate, and not merely on a superficial level. It seems that colder climates tend to produce more engineering and scholarly pursuits, whereas warmer climates produce more in terms of the arts and community.
In Europe, for example, colder-weather Germany is considered the home of neatness, orderly efficiency. It's no wonder that Hitler was able to undergo such mass production of tanks, planes, and other military vehicles during WWII, and even today German engineering is perceived as top notch. Germany has also given us systematic philosophers as Hegel and Kant, who have created some of the most intellectually rigorous philosophies the world has ever known. In the milder climate of Italy, the story is different. While historical achievements in engineering (e.g. during the Roman Empire) here should not be overlooked, over time the region has come to be known for other things; the arts, gastronomical excellence, and fashion. Similiar things can be said of mild areas in Spain and France as well.
In the United States, the same may be true as well. During the Civil War, the North and the South differed in terms of industrial strengths.
The differences that climate can have on a culture are significant even in strategic planning today. Corporations, universities, and other institutions should learn from history in determining which type of organizational environment they want to nurture when they consider moving to colder or warmer climate regions.This is a topic discussed at length in the book “Mainsprings of Civilization” by Ellsworth Huntington. His research indicates what he calls the “northward and stormward” march of civilization. The great civs of the old world move steadily north: from Egypt to Greece to Rome to Northern Italy to France, Germany Austria and England. I don't have the time to synopsize all of his points, but suffice to say you're on to something here: climate played a major and inextricable role in certain historical, cultural and societal events.
Interesting – I may have to check that book out.But do you think there's an obvious answer to it? Cold weather is obviously going to be more conducive to spending time indoors, and perhaps this creates more of an atmosphere of study and learning, which brings technological advancement. Warm weather, meanwhile, is more conducive to barrierless entry, and more social interaction among people could be the result. With "southern" living, man is forced to look outside himself for fulfillment. This benefits entertainment and the arts, but not the sciences.Of course, I'm not sure if what I'm saying has merit, but it seems like it may be the case. I don't know of many politically free, poor cold-weather nations (except for maybe Russia). The number of poor warm-weather nations, however, is astounding.
You may be on to something. You're not the first to notice the correlation between rich/north and poor/south. Huntington would say that climate is a major factor but only one of others. The culture and societies of the peoples that inhabit the various climes also play a role. You could put the aborigines or African pygmies in the middle of Europe and they would not have produced the success of European societies did. Likewise, Huntington points out the well-known phenomenon of Europeans “going native” in tropical locales: turning lazy, forgetting about their original religions, not working hard, taking on a life of leisure, etc.
I disagree. Please refer to Rodney Stark's work on Christianity being the single spark that engendered Science – not climate. The coincidence that Christianity abounded in Europe which had cold climatesmay be more impoortant than temperature. There was plenty of people in cold climates who never embraced science and technology, but as soon as Christianity reached them, they also climbed the ladder of scienctific progress. Perhaps religiosity being the impetus of modern thought is not readily apparent because such a jaded attack on religion has been made by Atheists who misstated history to paint religion opposite to how it was. They created untrue attacks that showed religious believers are vapid dupes wrapped up in magical preachments that allow bigotry, bias, and hatred to flourish in the name of Church and God. After all, hasn't religion been the root cause of all wars throughout history, and the cause of the Dark ages that destroyed civilization, until Liberal atheistic elites appeared, giving birth to the Rennaissance?Why were we taught in school that Columbus almost never discovered America because the religious zealots said he was a heretic? We all learned in school that the church decreed the Earth was flat and that was that. Going back farther, who hasn't learned that the great enlightened civilization of Greece and Rome ended when the Church entered the picture, and then began a "Dark Ages" That lasted until The Rennaissance? This disinformation is all wrong, yet believed devoutly by the Left. Rodney Stark in How Christianity (and Capitalism) Led to Science presents the accepted and unargued true history that is unreported in school books.
It was Andrew Dickson White who wrote:The warfare of Columbus [with religion] the world knows well: how the Bishop of Ceuta bested him in Portugal,; how sundry wise men of Spain confronted him with the usual quotations from Psalms, from St, Paul, and from St. Augustine; how, even after he was triumphant, and after his voyage had greatly strengthened the theory of the Earth's sphericity... the Church by its highest authority solemnly stumbled and persisted in going astray... the theological barriers to this geographival truth yielded but slowly. Plain as it had become to scholars, they hesitated to declare it to the world at large... But in 1519 science gains a crushing victory. Magellan makes his famous voyage. He proves the Earth is round, for his expedition circumnavigates it... Yet even this does not end the war. Many conscientious [religious] men oppose the doctrine for two hundred years longer.Every history book recounts how Columbus fought the religious extremists who used the Bible to decree the Earth was Flat. Name anyone who knows any different! White lied. He was running for President of Cornell and admitted he wrote this to "get even with his Christian critics of his plans for Cornell." Every educated person of Columbus's time knew the earth was round. This includes Roman Catholic theologians. The Venerable Bede (ca. 673-735) taught that the Earth was round, as did Bishop Virgilius of Salzburg (ca. 720-784). Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), and Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274), and all four became Saints. It was part of an ages-old conspiracy of atheists to portray Religion as being anti-Science. Columbus was not argued out of sailing off the edge of the world. The scientist of his day knew the world was round - but much larger than Columbus estimated. He put Japan at being only 2,080 miles from the Canary Islands, but the "sundry wise men of Spain" knew it was over 14,000 miles. Had Columbus not run across an unsuspected continent - his crew would have all died at Sea.But then again, the entire "Dark ages" is a crock. Christianity actually inspired science. There was no science in ancient Greece or Rome. Aristotle thought the weight of objects were proportional to the speed with which they dropped. A simple test by dropping two different weights off a cliff never ocurred to him. Guesswork without empiricism is not science. It was only at the birth of Christianity, that a wise God appeared who fostered the idea that science could be done and should be done. The Church understood there was a duty to understand God's handiwork, the better to marvel at it.As for a time of barbarism, superstition, and widespread ignorance - there was no "Dark Ages." The march of progress was sure and steady, and sparked by the Christian concept of the world as an understandable creation following understandable laws which needed to be studied. The phrase, "Dark Ages," was a myth, first used in the early 19th century by atheists to claim credit for a sudden "enlightenment" that occurred against the Church's wishes. In fact it was the Church that fostered science. Quintus Tertullian instructed in the second century, "Reason is a thing of God, inasmuch as there is nothing which God the Maker of all has not provided, disposed, ordained by reason?? nothing which He has not willed should be handled and understood by reason." The success of the West, including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians.Yet, every good Liberal knows Gibbons wrote The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and blamed the Fall of Rome and the rise of barbarism on Christianity. Historians disagree - yet the schools still distort the truth. The New Columbia Encyclopedia (1975) says the term "Dark Ages" is no longer used by historians because this era is no longer thought to have been so dim. The Encyclopedia Britannica concurs.Well done Wm Lambert. Christianity was the stimulus that created the technological revolution that became Europe. Islam also contributed later as Christendom had to defend itself from the encroachment of the Muslim armies. Desperation breeds innovation. Then the wars between Christians during the Reformation pushed printers to get out their version of the Bible to win the hearts and minds of the masses to their respective cause. Islam has been traditionally monolithic compared to Christianity basically because there is no ecumenical structure like that of Christianity which reduced the possibility for fratricidal infighting. With no such conflict, the Muslim World became stagnant and complacent. Yet it must not be forgotten that the Arabs gave us Algebra and our current numeral system. The Chinese, with their isolationist culture kept themselves from being exposed to the innovations of other nations, but Marco Polo brought back many things from his journeys of a society that was clearly more advanced architecturally and linguistically……….and don't forget the Chinese invented gun powder. The Mongol hordes of Ghengis Khan overran the Asian Continent with swiftness and efficiency, and they didn't use technology to do it. They willed their way to victory because they were culturally conditioned for war and mentally disciplined to practically live on horseback. Their culture did not value technological advancement to help them achieve conquest, they valued their learned abilities and their steeled discipline for the glory of war. The environment did not make their cultural disposition, they did that themselves. But climate can influence cultural evolution a great deal, but it is not the deciding factor.
