Scientific Revolution: Why in Europe?

A lecture by Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy

Chinese, Hindu, and Muslim civilizations produced great scientists but the Scientific Revolution owes to Europe. Why?

6 COMMENTS

  1. Furthermore, I wonder if colonisation, empire etc also had a major part to play in this – we know for example that in ancient India, surgeon had invented plastic surgery to counter the cutting off of the nose etc. Perhaps you could explore this aspect of this sudden progress in industrial and scientific thinking in Europe?

  2. This is a great website dedicated to Science, rationality, equality of human beings and social transformation.
    Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy is so persuasive in his argument ! One thing, why Scientific revolution was brought about by Europe, it seems to me, is continuity and consistency. Hindu and Muslim societies – if not Hinduism and Islam – discouraged individual’s freedom to think. That blocked our science.

  3. I don’t know about the Arab, Chinese, or Hindu civilizations, but here is what Carl Sagan had to say as to why the renaissance flourished in 16th to 19th century Europe rather than the ancient Greek civilization:

    “Ordinary people were to be kept ignorant,” Sagan says of the Pythagoreans’ work. “Instead of wanting everyone to share and know of their discoveries, they suppressed the square root of two and the dodecahedron.” And Plato loved the elitism and secrecy, equally, as he argues. Plato was hostile to the real world, experiments, practicality, etc.

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