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
2012-05-18
14
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 fpr 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.
According to Landes, the main reason that some countries are so poor is that______.
选项
A、they lack work ethic
B、they are scientifically backward
C、they lack rationality
D、they are victimized by colonists
答案
A
解析
细节判断题。根据文章第三段,Landes认为,欧洲之所以与众不同,主要是因为人民勤劳。个人或国家主要在经济上取得成就,必须辛勤劳动、勤俭节约和投资再生产,作者认为这些品质从根本上解释Landes著作的副标题所提出的问题。work ethic意指“劳动观”。因此选项A为正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/nkiO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
WhichofthefollowingwordsdoesNOTcontainonemorpheme?
AuthorEmmaHeathcote-Jameshasspentnineyearslookingintoreal-lifeghoststories,collectingtalesfromhundredsofpeople
AuthorEmmaHeathcote-Jameshasspentnineyearslookingintoreal-lifeghoststories,collectingtalesfromhundredsofpeople
Duringthe1970’sand1980’spoliticalextremismandterrorismfrequentlyfocusedon"nationalliberation"andeconomicissues.
Historically,executionhasservedasasignificantformofpunishmentfordeviancefromsocialnormsandcriminalbehavior.Cap
LanguageFamiliesThereareover【1】languagesthatareusedthroughouttheworldtoday.Almostalloftheselanguagesbelongt
Athrongofbeardedmen,insad-coloredgarmentsandgraysteeple-crownedhats,intermixedwithwomen,somewearinghoodsandot
A、Bothwerewearingdarksweaters.B、Neitherwaswearingglasses.C、Bothwereaboutthesameage.D、Oneofthemwasmarkedbya
Athrongofbeardedmen,insad-coloredgarmentsandgraysteeple-crownedhats,intermixedwithwomen,somewearinghoodsandot
Athrongofbeardedmen,insad-coloredgarmentsandgraysteeple-crownedhats,intermixedwithwomen,somewearinghoodsandot
随机试题
某患者在输液过程中,出现呼吸困难、气促、咳嗽、咳粉红色样痰,听诊两肺有湿性啰音,你认为:(1)病人出现何种反应?(2)发生的原因是什么?(3)护理的措施有哪些?
以下不属于定性风险分析成果的是()。
某工业厂房工程,工程合同价格为9000万元,工期为18个月。根据《建筑工程施工许可管理办法》规定,到位建设资金至少要达到()万元,方可申领施工许可证。
会计职业道德教育的途径包括( )两方面。
甲、乙双方签订了买卖合同,在合同履行过程中,发现该合同某些条款约定不明确。甲、乙双方不能达成补充协议,且按照合同有关条款或者交易习惯仍不能确定。下列说法中,符合规定的有()。
下列不属于运动员心脏结构功能特点的是()
以下与“小米和丽丽是舍友”判断不同的是()。
反映美国精神的影片《阿甘正传》深受观众的喜爱和__________,这也是主旋律。主旋律不过是为作品的叙事提供了一个基本__________,而在此基础上,如何做得漂亮,则取决于创作者对艺术的态度,认真去做,主旋律也能拍得动人,拍得好看。填入画横线部分最恰
一次最大吸气后,尽力尽快呼气所能呼出的最大气体量为
辱算符函数调用格式的表达式“y/x++”与表达式“y.operator/(operator++(x,0))”的含义相同,由此可看出()。
最新回复
(
0
)