首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
David Landes, author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor, credits the world’s economic a
David Landes, author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor, credits the world’s economic a
admin
2011-01-08
77
问题
David Landes, author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor, credits the world’s economic and social progress over the last thousand years to "Western civilization and its dissemination." The reason, he believes, is that Europeans invented systematic economic development. Landes adds that three unique aspects of European culture were crucial ingredients in Europe’s economic growth.
First, science developed as an autonomous method of intellectual inquiry that successfully disengaged itself from the social constraints of organized religion and from the political constraints of centralized authority. Though Europe lacked a political center, its scholars benefited from the use of a single vehicle of communication: Latin. This common tongue facilitated an adversarial discourse in which new ideas about the physical world could be tested, demonstrated, and then accepted across the continent and eventually across the world.
Second, Landes espouses a generalized form of Max Weber’s thesis that the values of work, initiative, and investment made the difference for Europe. Despite his emphasis on science, Landes does not stress the notion of rationality as such. In his view, "what counts is work, thrift, honesty, patience, [and] tenacity." The only route to economic success for individuals or states is working hard, spending less than you earn, and investing the rest in productive capacity. This is his fundamental explanation of the problem posed by his book’s subtitle: "Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor." For historical reasons -- an emphasis on private property, an experience of political pluralism, a temperate climate, an urban style -- Europeans have, on balance, followed those practices and therefore have prospered.
Third, and perhaps most important, Europeans were learners. They "learned rather greedily," as Joel Mokyr put it in a review of Landes’s book. Even if Europeans possessed indigenous technologies that gave them an advantage (spectacles, for example), as Landes believes they did, their most vital asset was the ability to assimilate knowledge from around the world and put it to use -- as in borrowing the concept of zero and rediscovering Aristotle’s Logic from the Arabs and taking paper and gunpowder from the Chinese via the Muslim world. Landes argues that a systematic resistance to learning from other cultures had become the greatest handicap of the Chinese by the eighteenth century and remains the greatest handicap of Arab countries today.
Although his analysis of European expansion is almost nonexistent, Landes does not argue that Europeans were beneficent bearers of civilization to a benighted world. Rather, he relies on his own commonsense law: "When one group is strong enough to push another around and stands to gain by it, it will do so." In contrast to the new school of world historians, Landes believes that specific cultural values enabled technological advances that in turn made some Europeans strong enough to dominate people in other parts of the world. Europeans therefore proceeded to do so with great viciousness and cruelty. By focusing on their victimization in this process, Landes holds, some postcolonial states have wasted energy that could have been put into productive work and investment. If one could sum up Landes’s advice to these states in one sentence, it might be "Stop whining and get to work." This is particularly important, indeed hopeful, advice, he would argue, because success is not permanent. Advantages are not fixed, gains from trade are unequal, and different societies react differently to market signals. Therefore, not only is there hope for undeveloped countries, but developed countries have little cause to be complacent, because the current situation "will press hard" on them.
The thrust of studies like Landes’s is to identify those distinctive features of European civilization that lie behind Europe’s rise to power and the creation of modernity more generally. Other historians have placed a greater emphasis on such features as liberty, individualism, and Christianity. In a review essay, the art historian Craig Clunas listed some of the less well known linkages that have been proposed between Western culture and modernity, including the propensities to think quantitatively, enjoy pornography. and consume sugar. All such proposals assume the fundamental aptness of the question: What elements of European civilization led to European success? It is a short leap from this assumption to outright triumphalism. The paradigmatic book of this school is, of course, The End of History and the Last Man. in which Francis Fukuyama argues that after the collapse of Nazism in the twentieth century, the only remaining model for human organization in the industrial and communications ages is a combination of market economics and limited, pluralist, democratic government.
"This school" (para. 5) refers to people who ______.
选项
A、believe in the absolute superiority of Western culture
B、hold drastically different views from Landes
C、are very cautious in linking Western culture and modernity
D、follow in the footsteps of Nazism and communism
答案
A
解析
该题要求理解最后一段的内容。其他历史学家也试图解释西方文化和现代文化之间的关系,但他们的观点有一个前提,即欧洲的成就是欧洲的文明带来的。这表明了他们的一种优越感。例如Francis Fukuyama认为,在纳粹主义消亡之后,工业和信息时代人类组织模式将是西方的市场经济和有限的、多元的和民主政府的组合,因此选项A为正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/23eO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
AftersomanyyearsofstudyingEnglish,youmaystillgetconfusedlikeyoufirstcomeherejustbecauseoftheslangthestude
SuccessPersonalityAccordingtoaGallupsurvey,anumberofqualitiesarecommonamongsuccessfulpeople.Herearefiveof
Norms:TypesandAcceptanceSociologistsfindthattounderstandaculture,itisveryimportanttounderstanditsnorms.Ⅰ.
Science,inpractice,dependsfarlessontheexperimentsitpreparesthanonthepreparednessofthemindsofthemenwhowatch
Britain’sSystemofEducationTheBritishCommonwealthincludesaquarteroftheworld’spopulationinone-sixthoftheworld
Britain’sSystemofEducationTheBritishCommonwealthincludesaquarteroftheworld’spopulationinone-sixthoftheworld
BasicCulturalTypesAsbusinessgoesglobal,businessmenhavecometofindthepeopleindifferentculturesactquitediffer
Theold-agepaternalismofsouthernCanadiansoverEskimoshasdiedmoreslowlyintheruralvillageswhereEskimoshavebeenmo
A、EasternEuropeB、NorthernEuropeC、WesternEuropeD、SouthernEuropeA
NewYorkwasoncethemurdercapitaloftheworld.Thankstothezero-tolerancepolicingpolicyintroducedbyGiuliani,themean
随机试题
Marketresearchshowsthatfewconsumersactually________pricesbeforeselectingtheirgroceriesinthestore.
碱及碱性氧化物易吸收()而变质。
阅读下面的诗句,回答问题。我愿是一所小草棚,在幽谷中隐藏,饱受风雨的打击,屋顶留下了创伤……只要我的爱人是熊熊的烈火,在我的炉膛里,愉快而缓慢地闪烁。A.这节诗的主要表现手法是什么?B.“草棚”与
下述甲状腺疾病中哪一种必须手术
M公司与N公司签订了购买梅花牌照相机500台的买卖合同,单价800元/台,2011年10月1日交付,除约定10万元定金,还在合同中约定如果一方违约,则需支付给非违约方总数为合同标的额10%的违约金。合同签订后,M向N支付10万元合同定金。后M与1签订了向其
下列定额中,属于企业定额性质的是()。
一位境外客人在商店购物时钱包被盗,内有现金、信用卡等物。导游员的错误做法有()。
一个罐子里装有黑球和白球,黑、白球数之比为R:1,现有放回地一个接一个地抽球,直到抽到黑球为止,记X为所抽的白球数.这样做了n次以后,我们获得一组样本:X1,X2,…,Xn,基于此,求R的最大似然估汁.
RockforteFinanceLtd.Wearecurrentlyacceptingapplicationsforthepositionofchieffinancialanalystfortheofficeofthe
Lookatthelistbelow.Itshowsthecontentsofamagazineforsmallbusinesses.Forquestions6-10,decidewhichpartofthe
最新回复
(
0
)