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
2011-02-11
80
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 Fuknyama 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.
The cultural elements identified by Landes ______ those identified by other historians.
选项
A、subsume
B、contradict
C、glorify
D、complicate
答案
A
解析
细节归纳题。根据文章第五段,Landes等学者的研究目标是要确定欧洲文明中的哪些普遍性因素使欧洲得以强大和现代化,而其他学者所列举的是一些更具体的因素。因此A为正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/pLYO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
ChinawitnessesgreatsuccessineconomicaldevelopmentafteritsadoptionOfthepolicyOfreformandopennesstotheoutsidew
A、thefiercerivalryofthecurrentratings"sweep"B、TVdramas’growingtendencytotransformnewsintofictionC、writers’incr
Thecomingoftherailwaysinthe1830stransformedsocietyandeconomiclifebyproviding,forfirsttime,masstransportforp
A、readingpassagesB、theverbalpartC、thequantitativepartD、writtenskirlsD
Whoistheauthorof"CommonSense"?
HumanitiesDisciplinesInmanypeople’seyes,thehumanitiesdisciplinesseemtobedyingout.However,actually,students
HumanitiesDisciplinesInmanypeople’seyes,thehumanitiesdisciplinesseemtobedyingout.However,actually,students
ModernExaminationsIntheschoolsofancienttimes,themostimportantexaminationswerespoken.Usuallythestudentswere
ModernExaminationsIntheschoolsofancienttimes,themostimportantexaminationswerespoken.Usuallythestudentswere
随机试题
钳工场地必须清洁、整齐、,物品摆放()。
调制行为的主体是【】
氯丙嗪长期应用,常见的不良反应有
被动体位见于以下哪类患者
电梯安装单位应提供的安装资料包括()。
2006年底,刘女士获得奖金150000元。如果这笔奖金尚未缴纳个人所得税,她还需向当地税务局自行申报并补缴税款。则她应补缴税款的额度为()。
用经典性言论,科学上的公理、定理或生活中的常理作论据来证明论点的方法叫()
一岁半的儿童想给妈妈吃饼干时,会说,“妈妈”“饼”“吃”,并把饼干递过去。这表明该阶段儿童语言发展的一个主要特点是()。
萎靡不振对于()相当于()对于食物
板印书籍,唐人尚未盛为之,自已后,典籍皆为板本。中,有布衣毕昇又为活板。其法,用胶泥刻字,薄如,每字为一印,火烧令坚。先设一铁板,其上以松脂、腊纸灰之类之,欲印则以一铁置铁板上,乃密布字印。满铁范为一板,持就火炀之,药稍镕,则以一平板按其面,则字平如。若止
最新回复
(
0
)