首页
登录
职称英语
David Landes, author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Ri
David Landes, author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Ri
游客
2023-12-11
54
管理
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 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-sEuropeans 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 mom 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 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" oil 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. [br] The cultural elements identified by Landes ______ those identified by other historians.
选项
A、embrace
B、contradict
C、glorify
D、complicate
答案
A
解析
根据题干中的other historians定位至末段。首句指出Landes等人的研究目标: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。第二句指出:Other historians have placed a greater emphasis on such features as liberty,individualism,and Christianity.可见这里是更具体的一些因素,Landes的研究范围更大,故[A]为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:http://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3264976.html
相关试题推荐
Sinceitsfoundationin1954,theUnitedNationshaswrittenintoitsmajor
Sinceitsfoundationin1954,theUnitedNationshaswrittenintoitsmajor
Sinceitsfoundationin1954,theUnitedNationshaswrittenintoitsmajor
Sinceitsfoundationin1954,theUnitedNationshaswrittenintoitsmajor
Sinceitsfoundationin1954,theUnitedNationshaswrittenintoitsmajor
Thesupremelaw-makingauthorityinBritainis______.A、ParliamentB、CabinetC、Su
From1649to1658Englandwascalledacommonwealth,ruledbyOliverCromwellas
ThecommonwealthofAustraliacameintobeingon______.A、Jan.1st,1901B、Jan.1
______isthepseudonymofWilliamSidneyPorter,theauthorofMaggie’sGift.A、H
______authoredTheWrathofGrapes.A、SteinbeckB、FitzgeraldC、HemingwayD、Faulkn
随机试题
ToyLearnisanexcitingstart-upcompanythathasdevelopedalineofeducat
(中国矿业大学2007年试题)TheIndiansrisesoonasitislight,thechildrenrundown
[originaltext]WeallfindthatlearningEnglishtakeseffortanddedication
下列关于木地板楼地面铺设施工的说法中,正确的是()。A.安装木搁栅要严格做到整
滑车神经支配下面哪条肌肉A.上直肌 B.下斜肌 C.提上睑肌 D.上斜肌
以下关于银行收取承担费的规定表述不正确的是().A.变更提款不应收取承担费
维新派与顽固派争论的焦点不包括()。A.要不要实行维新变法 B.要不要实行
所有境外投资者对单个上市公司A股的持股比例总和,不得超过该上市公司股份总数的(
(2018年真题)根据《证券公司为期货公司提供中间介绍业务试行办法》,证券公司从
编辑会计科目。账套:001北京正保科技有限公司(一般纳税人企业)会计年度:201
最新回复
(
0
)