Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton. Impossible to list them all.
What scientific advancements in Europe did non-Christians make? Heck, who in Europe even knew how to read & write, other than Christians?
;j
Well, of the four of them, only Copernicus was a priest. Kepler did have a degree in theology, though, and probably could have become a Lutheran pastor had he so wanted, but he preferred mathematics to theology.
Captain amazing:
Good ones. I didn’t know about ol’ Nicolaus until now.
But still, I think we can agree, that it’s not correct to say that “christian priests did most of the advancement.”
Levdrakon:
Those guys you mention (except Copernicus) were not christian priests, they were just christians.
And this, in fact, is in large measure dumb luck. For most of historical civilization the Far East has been significantly more technologically advanced than Europe; it was the result of internal political pressures that resulted in technological and literary stagnation during or soon thereafter European expansion.
As for Africa: I’ll reinforce the claim that Jared covers this in exhausting detail, but it was a variety of factors–the lack of large work animals, no long-standing transcontinental trade routes (especially natural waterways), the lack of development and maintenance of literacy, poor agricultural resources, the lack of semi-defensible geography of Europe and Asia, et cetera–which prevented aub-Saharan Africa from developing industrial civilization. (The nations of North Africa, on the other hand–particularly Egypt and Carthage–were as developed technologically and politically as contemporary nations in the Mediterranean and more advanced in their time that the nations of Northern Europe.)
The Americas serve as kind of a convenient baseline for this; populated by a genetically constrained group of people (who presumably had about the same level of innate intellectual capabilities), those who settled in areas rich in resources developed more advanced civilizations with high population densities (witness the Aztecs), and others remained less developed; the almost complete lack of indigenous work animals left the American aboriginal people at a disadvantage when it came to competing with the Europeans in dense agriculture and military prowess, but when given the opportunity to obtain domestic species the Americans demonstrated a comperable aptitude for their use.
As for Africans being intellectually inferior as demonstrated by evaluation of IQ: it’s not that this is non-PC that makes this misguided; it’s the fact that IQ tests are by nature biased toward the group they’ve been developed to test, i.e. literate peoples of developed nations. Nutrition may play some impact in the development of intelligence (as measured by an IQ test), but more influential is early childhood development, cultural and intellectual literacy, and an educational basis similiar to that anticipated by the test-makers. If one were to develop an IQ test based upon the applied intellectual talents required by semi-nomadic tribal existance it would probably involve things like being able to identify local herbs and wildlife, reading weather patterns, navigation across featureless savanahs, ability to locate water, et cetera, and your average or even intellectually extraordinary resident of a developed nation would flunk it badly. The people of Polynesia used to navigate thousands of miles in dugout canoes using the stars and ocean currents, a feat so intellectually complex that authorities in the field are still trying to figure out how they did it, and yet there are no notworthy Polynesian cartographers or mathematicians.
There is no indication of significant innate intellectual differences between people of different ethnic backgrounds when seperated from sociological influences. That’s not Politically Correct, it’s just correct.
Stranger
I’d say the opinion is skewed by our viewpoint in time (and the fact we live in a western centric society)… If you asked this question a millenia or two in the past or in the future (you need special the SDMB previlleges to unlock this feature 
) then the basic assumptions you make about the relative “primitive-ness” of Africa compared to the rest of the world, would be incorrect…
The current western technological advances have only really happened in the last few hundred years, and are pretty unique amoungst world civilizations. Being at the “wrong end” of these advances (several hundred years of slavery and colonialism) can certainly do alot to explain the current state of Africa. Some other civilisations which we’ve crossed paths with fared even worse (the Meso-american civilisations being a case in point), some fared better (Indian, for example, which is on the verge of being a super power).
In classical times african societies (Nubia and Ethiopia) would have been considered part of the “civilised world” whereas the hinterlands of western europe (which encompass most of the european world powers, such as France, Britain, and the Netherlands) would have been the realm of uncivilised barbarians.
If Christianity was a indicator, or cause, of “civilisation” then African empires, such as Axum, were sophisticated christian kingdoms, with plenty of preists and such, long before Christianity reached western Europe…
While clearly mis-matched compared to European (and some middle-eastern empires) the African civilizations such as Axum and the later Zulu kingdom (very brutal but actually quite sophisticated militarily), could have certainly held their own against many world empires (in some hypothecial global empire cage match ). At Islawanda Zulus managed to defeat a large british army armed with weaponary not too different to early 20th century armies, imagine what they could have done against medival army or a aztec army ?
Ah, you’re pinging on the word “priest.” I don’t mean the guy in robes who conducts Sunday mass. I’m mostly talking about the upper class, wealthy, royalty, nobility, ruling leisurely classes in any civilization who had the time to learn to read & write & contribute to technological & scientific advancement.
What do you call those guys who hung out with the pharaohs & told 'em about the stars? What do you call those guys who did the same thing for the Mayans? The Aztecs? The Chinese Emperors? Basically, they were priests. Call them “Her Majesty’s Royal Mathematician-Astronomer Dude,” instead of priest, if it helps.
A civilization has to get to that point before much technological advancement beyond pointy spears takes place. In Europe, Christianity certainly played some role in organizing society in a manner that allowed the leisurely pursuit of science? They borrowed much from Greece & Rome, but they had their own leisurely, literate, noble classes too, right?
And the [post=7262535]Muslims[/post].
Stranger
Which makes no sense at all in light of the facts.
First, very few major diseases are tropical. Sleeping sickness is about the most serious of diseases restricted to the tropics. Other diseases that many people think of as ‘tropical’ such as malaria are in fact cosmopolitan but have been eliminated from many temperate areas precisely because those areas developed the technology to do so. IOW the lack of these diseases is the result of the technology level of temperate areas, not the cause of it.
Secondly it has been the very prevalence of major diseases in temperate areas that allowed those temperate regions to become so dominant. It’s a bit pointless arguing that disease prevents technological advance when the most advanced societies inevitably have far more diseases than the less advanced.
Thirdly temperate areas are far better regions for disease spread because of enforced indoor living in cramped conditions during the winter.
Fourthly and most importantly there have been major technologically advanced cultures in tropical America and Tropical Asia. If the tropics were inherently antipathetic o technology we would need to find some way to explain those away.
I have no idea where people get this idea that the climate of the tropics is more friendly to disease generally. I guess it’s a Eurocentric viewpoint brought about by early travelogues that never quit vanished. Because many tropical diseases were new to many Europeans they couldn’t; cope with them and wrote about them extensively, leaving people with the perception of the tropics as a disease ridden region. All the while of course people were ignoring temperate diseases like influenza, smallpox and measles that were killing millions of people each year, because they weren’t really diseases
Add Mendel to the list
I think you need to appreciate that for long periods the only people keeping most knowledge intact in Europe were Christian persists. Very few secular libraries or universities existed.
Many people including myself find the word “nigger” to be an offensive term for black people. However, Africa contains many people who are not black people.
i.e. the explanation that doesn’t offend your values
Yes, I agree. I was trying to argue against christianity being a large factor in the European dominance, and the statement that “christian priests did most of the advancement”, not trying to say that the monks and priest did no good whatsoever
Levdrakon:
I don’t get what you are saying now. Are you saying that christianity significantly contributed to European science, by more systematically making some people wealthy and other people poor? Or what?
While Jared touches on this topic, this is the central thesis of McNeill’s Plagues and Peoples, and is widely accepted as the reasons the Europeans were so able to readily expand into the Americas, whose residents had less genetic variability and essentially no domestic animals from which diseases could cross-infect. (Many, if not most major viral diseases such as smallpox and measles have their origins in domestic livestock.)
In terms of development, a certain amount of challenge is good. It creates defenses against embedded threats (which can then be used as a defacto weapon against other groups), and winnows out those less able to cope with new alien organisms. In the case of Europeans and Asians, it also let them develop military tactics of overwhelming large formations instead of the kind of strafing tribal warfare practiced by the Africans and Americans.
Stranger
It could be that it is because Africa is the ‘cradle of life’, well human life anyway. Since we ‘came about there’, which I think is in dispute, but lets go with that, we should be able to survive there pretty darn well. As we moved out we were not in our native enviroment, and had to adapt. This adaptation had to happen quicker then evolution could keep up with, so technology took up the slack.
Christians didn’t invent, or even perfect the concept of making some people rich and other people poor. That was invented long before.
What Christians in Europe did was use some of that wealth to collect, preserve, and advance science.
I don’t understand what you mean when you ask whether Christianity significantly contributed to European science. There was no European science without the church, unless you’re talking about the odd herbal brew whipped up here & there, or a mysterious stone structure that may or may not have has some astronomical - rather than astrological - significance.
I’m not sure you appreciate just how big and diverse Africa is. A species that evolves in savanna in South East Africa is no more in its native environment in rainforest in North West Africa than it is in deciduous forest in South America.
There is absolutely no justification in saying that humans should be able to survive pretty darn well in deserts, swamps, savanna, grassland, alpine regions and forests simply because all those environments are on one massive continent. This is the equivalent of claiming that since horses evolved in North America they should be able to survive pretty darn well in Alaskan tundra and Louisiana swampland.
It doesn’t work that way. Species evolve to cope with an environment, not a continent. A species copes far more poorly with radically different environments on the same continent than with similar environments on different continents. Humans are no exception. We can’t just survive well in African deserts, swamps and jungles because we evolved in African savanna.
Levdrakon:
Yeah. In the period in which everyone had to be connected to the church, of course there was no science without the church. But this doesn’t mean that christianity was a helpful factor.
Im not sure how to make this any clearer. Perhaps this analogy:
In the time when the black plague reigned in europe, there were no scientists who didn’t have problems with that. But that doesn’t mean that the plague was good for science.
Really? How surprising that you then continue to keep trotting out your link to what appears to me to be a blatant pile of racist nonsence.
Most sites seem to set the ‘sub-normal’ threshold of an IQ at between 70-84. According to the Wikipedia list, no less than 7 African countries have an average IQ of less than 70, meaning that one would expect the average inhabitant of those countries to be pretty retarded, with a few local geniuses reaching the IQ of the average Westerner. Equatorial Guinea is listed as having an average of 59. If this were true (rather than one of the many data points which were created or in error), and if IQ scores were directly measuring useful intelligence (which is debateable), then people in that country would barely be smart enough to operate a frying pan, let alone raise kids, cook meals, make clothes, operate machinery and all the other things which they demonstrably do every day. How is that supposed to work?
I never realised England used to have malaria. You live and learn.
Blake, I find myself wondering not about just the types of diseases common to Europe and Africa, but about the nature of the diseases. The thing about the European diseases of influenza, smallpox, measles, etc. is that for most people, you get the disease and it either kills you or you get well again. On the other hand, many of the diseases of the tropics – malaria, schistosomias, onchocerciasis, etc. – are chronic, and affect wide swaths of the population. So to generalize, it would seem that in Europe, people would fluctuate between sick and well, whereas in Africa they would fluctuate between being acutely ill and being somewhat under the weather. Any thoughts?
The bell curve itself claims that we don’t have any data sufficient to make any guesses about the IQ of people who lives on the african continent. And this list claims to even have data for specific countries. That seems absurd to me.
However, even if this list is flawed, the factor of IQ might still be important. And there is some evidence that the people from africa at least have somewhat lower IQs on average.
Somewhat, I’ll buy into, and happily discuss why that might be, whether it’s measurement effects, lack of familiarity with a technical environment, genetic, nutritional/environmental. There would be country-to-country and region-to-region variation for various reasons.
But 40% variation isn’t ‘somewhat’, and even though Wikipedia has some howlers in it, that list is ridiculous.