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 economics
David Landes, author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor, credits the world’s economics
admin
2009-08-13
25
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 economics 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 two unique aspects of Europeans culture were crucial ingredient in Europe’s economic growth.
First, 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, 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 the fundamental explanation of the problem posed by his hook’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.
Second, 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 Europeans 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 common-sense 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 Europeans 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.
选项
A、they lack Work ethic.
B、they lack rationality.
C、they are scientifically backward.
D、they are victimized by colonists.
答案
A
解析
本题是推断题。第二段第四句提到:The only route to economic Success for individuals or states is working hard...,最后说明“Europeans have, on balance, followed those practices and therefore have prospered”,既然Landes认为欧洲之所以与众不同,主要是因为勤劳,由此可以推断贫穷国家是因为缺乏正确的劳动观而致贫。故[A]为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/lBvO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
WhatdidPETAaskHamburgauthoritiestodoinitsletter?
Accordingtopsychologists,acompulsivespenderwantstospendalotofmoneybecause:
WhichofthefollowingstatementsisNOTtrueaboutHarbinaccordingtothespeaker?
ArecentstudybytheCenterforEconomicPolicyResearchsaysthat,inordertoeaseimbalances,theEuropeanUnionneedstoma
WhichofthefollowingisNOTtrueaboutthenewcapitalaccordingtothereport?
Whichofthefollowingstatementsistrueaccordingtowhatyouhear?
Whichofthefollowingstatementsistrueaccordingtowhatyouhear?
MillionsofbooksandanInternet-basedcampusnetworkareavailablefortheUniversitystaffandstudents.
U.S.andEurope’sapproachtoforeignstudentsistowesternizetheminawayofeducatingfutureleaders.
China’sfourthnationaleconomiccensuswillbecarriedoutfromJanuarytoJunein2019.
随机试题
在报火警时,应当精简清晰地说明火灾发生情况和火灾信息,其中不包含的是()。
()是指由梁和柱以刚接或铰接相连接成承重体系的房屋建筑结构。
随着孩子的长大,他们往往能比成年人更快地接受新的社会信息,会把他们的文化传递给自己的父辈,社会学学者把这一影响作用称为___________。
税收收入的来源;即各种税收收入的最终出处,称为()
何谓目标监测?
在我国上消化道出血最常见的病因是
头围是指自眉弓上方最突出处,经枕后结节绕头的周长。()
()队成为首支进入亚冠足球联赛决赛的中超球队。
社会体育,是由企业、事业单位职工,国家机关工作人员,以及城镇或农村居民等不同的群体,为达到健身、健心、健美、娱乐、医疗等目的而进行的内容丰富、形式多样的身体锻炼活动。根据上述定义,以下哪项活动不是社会体育活动?
以下民事法律关系中属于物权法律关系的是()。
最新回复
(
0
)