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
2023-12-08
16
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 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, and 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 mm 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, enjoys pornography, and consumes 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 and communism 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] Landes believes that ______.
选项
A、Europeans set out to bring civilization to an unfortunate world.
B、the Europeans dominated other countries simply because they were strong.
C、the desire of Europeans to colonize other countries stemmed from specific cultural values.
D、the colonized countries themselves were to blame for being victimized by Europeans.
答案
B
解析
该题要求理解第4段前半部分的内容,在解释欧洲殖民问题时,Landes依靠的是常识,即弱肉强食。在欧洲在科技上的进步使得它们以征服世界上其他地方的人民。因此选项B为正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3255901.html
相关试题推荐
ModernExaminationsIntheschoolsofancienttim
ModernExaminationsIntheschoolsofancienttim
ModernExaminationsIntheschoolsofancienttim
ModernExaminationsIntheschoolsofancienttim
ModernExaminationsIntheschoolsofancienttim
Theauthorof"AuldLangSync"RobertBurnswasagreat______folkpoet.A、Englis
Whilemanynationshaveagingpopulations,Japan’sdemographiccrisisistr
Whilemanynationshaveagingpopulations,Japan’sdemographiccrisisistr
Whilemanynationshaveagingpopulations,Japan’sdemographiccrisisistr
Whilemanynationshaveagingpopulations,Japan’sdemographiccrisisistr
随机试题
WhenyoumeetJohnthisafternoon,don’tforget(tell)________himaboutourcas
Intheworldofentertainment,TVtalkshowshaveundoubtedlyfloodedevery
错图中对向来车越线占道行驶,遇到这种情况要减速慢行,必要时停车,不能向左占道行驶。
互易二端口网络满足()。
按人们对教育法律现象的认识分,教育法律意识分为:()A.教育法律心理
下列有关大椎穴主治病证的叙述,不正确的是A.热病、疟疾 B.风疹、痤疮 C.
陈老师在教学时引用徐霞客的诗句“五岳归来不看山,黄山归来不看岳”,有学生产生了疑
下列物质中,两个氢原子的化学性质不同的是()。 A.乙炔B.甲酸C.甲醛
患者背部红肿,多个脓点,有波动感,糖尿病病史( )。A.疖 B.痈 C.丹
在职业健康安全管理体系与环境管理体系的维持过程中,组织对其自身的管理体系所进行的
最新回复
(
0
)