![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This keeps coming up in speculative fiction and it bugs me. I'm not a historian, and I know it's wrong (and the more history I learn, the more obviously wrong it becomes). If there's some actual historian debunking this narrative somewhere I can link to I would be very grateful!
EDIT: So apparently this was named and described in 1931: Whig history. And yet people still use it! (Well, that isn't exactly what I'm talking about. But it's certainly close)
The myth says:
Truth is a single objective thing, and one can judge a civilisation by it's understanding of Truth.
In the beginning noone knew much Truth. Some primitive societies like the Egyptians managed to figure out a few bits of Truth but didn't really know what they were doing.
Then the Ancient Greeks discovered philosophy, and started searching for Truth properly. They tried to spread this Truth to the other more primitive cultures, who were sadly ungrateful and stubbornly ignorant. The Greeks morphed into the Romans who became decadent and fell to these primitive tribes.
Knowledge was safeguarded in monasteries etc until civilisation could rise again.
In the Renaissance, people in Europe began to pay attention to Truth again and learned it from the knowledge saved by the monastaries.
Europeans tried to spread this Truth to the rest of the world, though they had become a bit decadent so there was some slavery and colonisation etc that happened in the process.
Since then Western Civilisation has surpassed the Greeks and gone on to find even more Truth, and it's light spreads to most of the world, who fit along a continuum from "Mostly western" to "Mostly primitive and ignorant".
Unfortunately, Western Civilisation is getting a bit decadent, and may fall (Europe is already so decadent it produces little new Truth and the mantle of Truth Seeking Light of Civilisation has fallen mostly to the US). Who will safeguard the Truth then?
And now to criticise each of these steps. I am no historian, so if anyone has better or more complete arguments I would be very glad to hear them!
Truth is a single objective thing, and one can judge a civilisation by it's understanding of Truth.
No, it's not, unless you define "truth" in a circular tautological way. Even in the high faluting world of pure maths there's the Axiom of Choice which cannot be proven but mathematicians have decided is true because the alternative is too counterintuitive (note: the same logic used to "prove" that Euclid's axioms hold for the observable universe (which they don't)). And for softer types of study things get a lot more ambiguous and subjective (of course some people say that makes these "truths" less important, but imo that's just circular logic again: the Truth is what we can be certain of, and we can be certain of the Truth) To give an arbitrary example I came across recently, The Americanization of Mental Illness.
And given that "truth" and the right way to pursue it is somewhat arbitrary, it's really parochial to judge other cultures purely by how much they think like yours (I'm not saying you can't judge other cultures, but there's a difference between "You believe things which are clearly untrue" and "You don't use the scientific method as I recognise it" etc). Also, if we actually compare "advanced" cultures to "less advanced" ones by any commonly held metric of "goodness" they don't line up in any neat line from "civilised" to "uncivilised", there are at best general trends like "very small societies are likely to be egalitarian".
In the beginning noone knew much Truth. Some primitive societies like the Egyptians managed to figure out a few bits of Truth but didn't really know what they were doing. Then the Ancient Greeks discovered philosophy, and started searching for Truth properly.
So..it didn't count until white people started doing it? That's a pretty arbitrary line. And what about all the stuff going on in Asia?
They tried to spread this Truth to the other more primitive cultures, who were sadly ungrateful and stubbornly ignorant.
I saw this great documentary about Alexander the Great. The Iranians see him as this horrible mass murderer who destroyed their nice civilised cities and imposed his uncivilised militaristic dictatorship on them. (Or something like that. I Am Not A Historian)
The Greeks morphed into the Romans who became decadent and fell to these primitive tribes.
I vaguely recall it being a lot more complicated than that, don't ask me how :)
Knowledge was safeguarded in monasteries etc until civilisation could rise again.
No. For a start, Europe in the "dark ages" was apparently not as dark as all that. But also there was a LOT of science and philosophy etc going on in India, China, the Middle East etc. They invented gunpowder, the printing press (Gutenburg later either invented it independently or got the idea from the Koreans), algorithms, our modern numerical system, all kinds of stuff.
In the Renaissance, people in Europe began to pay attention to Truth again and learned it from the knowledge saved by the monastaries.
Yay! White people started caring about this stuff again, so it counts!
Europeans tried to spread this Truth to the rest of the world, though they had become a bit decadent so there was some slavery and colonisation etc that happened in the process.
Lol. No. This whitewashes the horribleness of colonisation and slavery (*insert graphic reminder of exactly how horrific they were here*), as well as the way that they were intimately tied to the vectors of "civilisation" being spread. And the flow of what we now consider "good" information definitely went both ways. See for example African Fractals. And Western Europeans enforced plenty of "bad" ideas, such as the sexism, racism, and homophobia they forced on cultures who had previously known much better by modern standards. Lots of bad science too, like all the unhelpful medical practices. I mean, afaict (and I am open to correction) in some cases the colonised/enslaved people are happy to have been introduced to certain individual Western European ideas in and of themselves (cultural exchange can be a good thing!), but there are definitely better ways they could have been introduced to them.
Since then Western Civilisation has surpassed the Greeks and gone on to find even more Truth, and it's light spreads to most of the world, who fit along a continuum from "Mostly western" to "Mostly primitive and ignorant".
The world has learned a lot since then. But how "advanced" a society is in terms of science, egalitarianism, etc (however you define "truth" and "civilisation") is definitely not directly proportional to how Western it is. To give one example, Japan is doing a lot better than Australia at science and technology.
Unfortunately, Western Civilisation is getting a bit decadent, and may fall (Europe is already so decadent it produces little new Truth and the mantle of Truth Seeking Light of Civilisation has fallen mostly to the US). Who will safeguard the Truth then?
I'm not going to go into Why America Is Not As Awesome As It Thinks because there's enough rants out there along those lines, but seriously: people outside America, and outside the West/Global North etc do actually have brains and reason and can come up with clever insights all by themselves. They/we do it all the time! If Europe and/or America collapses into ruin it would obviously be disastrous for economic etc reasons and people in other countries might be get distracted dealing with the aftermath, but they wouldn't be all "But who will we rely on to invent the future so we can copy them?".
So. I am open to correction on points of history and anywhere my own Western-ish POV is skewing my argument etc. I'm not going to be very fast responding to comments though. (And in case it comes up: no metafandom please)
EDIT: So apparently this was named and described in 1931: Whig history. And yet people still use it! (Well, that isn't exactly what I'm talking about. But it's certainly close)
The myth says:
Truth is a single objective thing, and one can judge a civilisation by it's understanding of Truth.
In the beginning noone knew much Truth. Some primitive societies like the Egyptians managed to figure out a few bits of Truth but didn't really know what they were doing.
Then the Ancient Greeks discovered philosophy, and started searching for Truth properly. They tried to spread this Truth to the other more primitive cultures, who were sadly ungrateful and stubbornly ignorant. The Greeks morphed into the Romans who became decadent and fell to these primitive tribes.
Knowledge was safeguarded in monasteries etc until civilisation could rise again.
In the Renaissance, people in Europe began to pay attention to Truth again and learned it from the knowledge saved by the monastaries.
Europeans tried to spread this Truth to the rest of the world, though they had become a bit decadent so there was some slavery and colonisation etc that happened in the process.
Since then Western Civilisation has surpassed the Greeks and gone on to find even more Truth, and it's light spreads to most of the world, who fit along a continuum from "Mostly western" to "Mostly primitive and ignorant".
Unfortunately, Western Civilisation is getting a bit decadent, and may fall (Europe is already so decadent it produces little new Truth and the mantle of Truth Seeking Light of Civilisation has fallen mostly to the US). Who will safeguard the Truth then?
And now to criticise each of these steps. I am no historian, so if anyone has better or more complete arguments I would be very glad to hear them!
Truth is a single objective thing, and one can judge a civilisation by it's understanding of Truth.
No, it's not, unless you define "truth" in a circular tautological way. Even in the high faluting world of pure maths there's the Axiom of Choice which cannot be proven but mathematicians have decided is true because the alternative is too counterintuitive (note: the same logic used to "prove" that Euclid's axioms hold for the observable universe (which they don't)). And for softer types of study things get a lot more ambiguous and subjective (of course some people say that makes these "truths" less important, but imo that's just circular logic again: the Truth is what we can be certain of, and we can be certain of the Truth) To give an arbitrary example I came across recently, The Americanization of Mental Illness.
And given that "truth" and the right way to pursue it is somewhat arbitrary, it's really parochial to judge other cultures purely by how much they think like yours (I'm not saying you can't judge other cultures, but there's a difference between "You believe things which are clearly untrue" and "You don't use the scientific method as I recognise it" etc). Also, if we actually compare "advanced" cultures to "less advanced" ones by any commonly held metric of "goodness" they don't line up in any neat line from "civilised" to "uncivilised", there are at best general trends like "very small societies are likely to be egalitarian".
In the beginning noone knew much Truth. Some primitive societies like the Egyptians managed to figure out a few bits of Truth but didn't really know what they were doing. Then the Ancient Greeks discovered philosophy, and started searching for Truth properly.
So..it didn't count until white people started doing it? That's a pretty arbitrary line. And what about all the stuff going on in Asia?
They tried to spread this Truth to the other more primitive cultures, who were sadly ungrateful and stubbornly ignorant.
I saw this great documentary about Alexander the Great. The Iranians see him as this horrible mass murderer who destroyed their nice civilised cities and imposed his uncivilised militaristic dictatorship on them. (Or something like that. I Am Not A Historian)
The Greeks morphed into the Romans who became decadent and fell to these primitive tribes.
I vaguely recall it being a lot more complicated than that, don't ask me how :)
Knowledge was safeguarded in monasteries etc until civilisation could rise again.
No. For a start, Europe in the "dark ages" was apparently not as dark as all that. But also there was a LOT of science and philosophy etc going on in India, China, the Middle East etc. They invented gunpowder, the printing press (Gutenburg later either invented it independently or got the idea from the Koreans), algorithms, our modern numerical system, all kinds of stuff.
In the Renaissance, people in Europe began to pay attention to Truth again and learned it from the knowledge saved by the monastaries.
Yay! White people started caring about this stuff again, so it counts!
Europeans tried to spread this Truth to the rest of the world, though they had become a bit decadent so there was some slavery and colonisation etc that happened in the process.
Lol. No. This whitewashes the horribleness of colonisation and slavery (*insert graphic reminder of exactly how horrific they were here*), as well as the way that they were intimately tied to the vectors of "civilisation" being spread. And the flow of what we now consider "good" information definitely went both ways. See for example African Fractals. And Western Europeans enforced plenty of "bad" ideas, such as the sexism, racism, and homophobia they forced on cultures who had previously known much better by modern standards. Lots of bad science too, like all the unhelpful medical practices. I mean, afaict (and I am open to correction) in some cases the colonised/enslaved people are happy to have been introduced to certain individual Western European ideas in and of themselves (cultural exchange can be a good thing!), but there are definitely better ways they could have been introduced to them.
Since then Western Civilisation has surpassed the Greeks and gone on to find even more Truth, and it's light spreads to most of the world, who fit along a continuum from "Mostly western" to "Mostly primitive and ignorant".
The world has learned a lot since then. But how "advanced" a society is in terms of science, egalitarianism, etc (however you define "truth" and "civilisation") is definitely not directly proportional to how Western it is. To give one example, Japan is doing a lot better than Australia at science and technology.
Unfortunately, Western Civilisation is getting a bit decadent, and may fall (Europe is already so decadent it produces little new Truth and the mantle of Truth Seeking Light of Civilisation has fallen mostly to the US). Who will safeguard the Truth then?
I'm not going to go into Why America Is Not As Awesome As It Thinks because there's enough rants out there along those lines, but seriously: people outside America, and outside the West/Global North etc do actually have brains and reason and can come up with clever insights all by themselves. They/we do it all the time! If Europe and/or America collapses into ruin it would obviously be disastrous for economic etc reasons and people in other countries might be get distracted dealing with the aftermath, but they wouldn't be all "But who will we rely on to invent the future so we can copy them?".
So. I am open to correction on points of history and anywhere my own Western-ish POV is skewing my argument etc. I'm not going to be very fast responding to comments though. (And in case it comes up: no metafandom please)
no subject
no subject
no subject
History in schools and hence in the general populace bears as much relationship to 'real' historical analysis as the times-table does to the sort of maths you understand.
I do think your rebuttal underplays the extent of Western cultural hegemony. Yes, non-Western scientists and thinkers are coming up with things all by themselves and would continue to do so without any further Western input, but the methodology they are working with has spread across the globe through Western influence and is irredeemably stamped with the patterns of Western thought. Yes, there is a lot of Arabic thought underneath it, and other deeper influences under that, but you can't take the West out of the equation. It will take a long time before those Western traits fade into the background sufficiently as to be the least important influence.
Further nitpicks, elaborations and possible food for thought:
1) The Roman world was not limited to Europe but extended across vast swathes of the Near East and North Africa. As such, the Arabic scholars were not inventing something brand new but continuing the traditions which were lost in the West. 'Eastern' culture was just as if not more 'Roman' than anything experienced in Britain or France. Remember that when Constantine decided to move his capital, he decided to move it eastwards, never north or west. A decision that made perfect sense at the time. The whole idea of any fundamental divide between West and East only evolved as the Roman Empire fractured and then became entrenched as first Christianity and then Islam spread. For a Roman, the distinction between northern 'barbarians' and southern civilisation would have been far more meaningful.
2) Let's not get carried away by notions of the advanced state of non-Roman Western cultures. They were iron-age farmers. In most cases they were significantly behind the Romans in technological advances and organisational ability, that's why Rome beat them. Go and stand in a reconstructed Iron Age round house. Then go and stand in a reconstructed Roman villa. There really isn't much contest.
3) The Renaissance of learning (as opposed to the arts) was about the rediscovery of Roman and Greek texts, combined with the later work the Arabs had added to them, largely reintroduced from the East following the fall of Constantinople (though some stuff came much earlier thanks to the cultural exchange during the Crusades) thus making them available again to Western thought. The fall of the monasteries was a phenomenon limited to only certain parts of Europe (the Protestant countries, and nowhere took it as far as England did) and is now considered to have had only a very limited effect on wider educational patterns.
4) Empire had both benefits and disadvantages for everyone on the planet. Anyone who denies either side of this (or the 'whole planet' part) needs to go away and study harder and come back when they are past their prejudices. Some of the disadvantages were horrendous, some of the benefits were wonderful. There really isn't much else one can say about the whole business in a DW post :D
5) Slavery wasn't the result of decadence, or for that matter what we would now recognise as racism, it was the outcome of some very hard-nosed economic realities combined with a difference of outlook as regards the nature of cruelty which is utterly foreign to us. Decadence and racism may have come about because of slavery, but they didn't cause it. The idea of 'decadence' being relevant probably comes from abolitionist propaganda which was trying to link into well known tropes about the fall of the Roman Empire.
6) That sense of 'utterly foreign to us' comes down to a revolution that occurred in Western though due to the ideas that emerged during the Enlightenment, which I mentioned earlier. You really should read up on that because it is the root of our relativistic morals as well as ideas like the common humanity of man. It should help you understand what is Western about your thought patterns.
no subject