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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)
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