India not ready for space travel and missles... 1849

Kamal R. Prasad

You will find similar things in -The Genius of China- by Robert Temple. The Chinese were doing stuff b.c.e. that Europeans, who were mostly covered with poo, could scarce dream of. The main original european contribution was the axiomatic method, invented by the Greeks. In terms of practical technology there were several eastern cultures light years ahead of the Greeks. The Greeks had the gift of gab, but the Persians, Hindis and Chinese had the skill of the hand and the head well integrated. Empirically based science and technology had its origins and earliest glory in the East, not the West. Western science did not surpbutt the East until around the time of the renaissance and the follow on enlightenment. The East, for some strange reason. never produced an Isaac Newton. In the case of the Chinese, it was because they were inclinded toward holism rather than reductionism. Westerners were more inclined to tear Nature apart at the joints than were their Eastern brethren. This reductionism not only shows in science, but in politics and philosophy. The Chinese are inclined to circle a problem and catch it in a net, whole and alive. Westerners are more likely to do a frontol buttault. Western impatience manifests itself in many ways.

One of the unfortunate side effects of Eurocentrism is historical ignorance, a kind of NIH (Not Invented Here) bias. Fortunately, Marco Polo had no such prejudices when he visited Cathay and stayed there for some decades. He knew good stuff when he saw it. He stole it and brought it back home to Europe. As a result Europe became heir to specie backed paper money, gunpowder, moveable type and most important of all --- pasta.

These is a general underappreciation of cultural diffusion in the history of Mankind. It was cultural diffusion that saved homo sapien in the cold grip of the last ice age. The main difference betwee H.S and H.N was that the Neanderthals did not network efficiently and it led to their extinction. Any idea is good if it can be used and it does not matter one bit who thought it up first.

Bob Kolker