Almost every position the left has, is actually just an attack on Christian beliefs?

srsly78 wrote: »

You know that whole rennaissance thing? Go check where they got the inspiration from.

Eh, the Classical world of Greece and Rome? The clue is in the word, "rebirth". There was more than one renaissance thing too.

It's not about credit, it's about having a basic grasp of history.

Indeed.

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

al-Khwarizmi gave us algebra as a subject in itself. Sure he built on what was already there but he approached it in a much more rigorous way and constructed proofs of his work. Another persian gave us the algebraic geometry that we use in the west.

Certainly they were giants of the subject, but they were heavily influenced by the Greeks as in turn Europeans were influenced by them. They most certainly didn't invent it and without them humanity would have lost traction in the science but we wouldn't be without algebra. Just like if the Indians hadn't defined zero they way they did, we'd have no zero today.

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

But i still think the claim that 97% of all scientific discoveries were by europeans or north americans is bull****.

Oh I'd agree with that alright. Attributing out of the blue discoveries to any single group is silly, whether that group be Europeans or Chinese or the Muslim world. Though all of the above are often quick to claim such. Like the list that was doing the Facebook rounds a few years back along the lines of "What Islam did for us" with forty odd "firsts". There were about five that had any legs.

Innovation happens all over the place, often at the same time with no connections and the epicentre of innovation changes over time. Broadly speaking the majority of innovation has generally occurred within relatively temperate and politically stable areas, almost always within empires(cultural and actual) and rapid innovation usually comes on the back of external competition. Historically the main areas of innovation have been the Middle East(and long before the Abrahamic religions came along), the Far East mostly centred within the Chinese empire and Europe, both imperial under say Rome and post imperial internal competition which was fierce. Sure we certainly had innovation in places like Mesoamerica and almost none in places like Australia, but If we removed Greece, Persia and China from the timeline we'd likely be still running about in horses and carts.

One reason Europe(and its later colonies) raced ahead was that internal competition I spoke of earlier. They had to innovate to compete. The Muslim world stayed a little too stable as did China. Cultural aspects were also very much in play. EG in China there wasn't near the level of social mobility as there existed in Europe, so a peasant coming up with a better mousetrap wouldn't get very far if he wasn't a mousetrap maker. Even simple things like alphabets make a difference. Take printing. First invented in China, with later help from Korea and it was used quite a bit, but didn't make that massive a shift in thinking. The Chinese alphabet was/is extremely cumbersome. It passes through the Islamic world where a mixture of the alphabet being extremely cumbersome and an old empire idea of not invented here meant it had near zero impact.

But then it hits Europe. Only twenty odd letters were required to print a page in any European language and it was walking into the oncoming storm of the Reformation where intense internal competition was going on. Near perfect soil for it to grow and what had been a quirky Chinese thing to print religious scrolls and banknotes became one of the biggest information revolutions in history. Even the difference between scrolls and books makes a difference. The latter being easier to rattle off in larger numbers. Within 50 years the cultural, intellectual, religious and philosophical landscape of Europe was changed. Even little things we take for granted like indexes came with European printing. Those old hand done manuscripts religious or no? They had no indexes, they rarely had titles. You had no real idea what was in a book until you read through it. Specialisation was another result. Again those old books could have all sorts of subjects between the covers all mashed up.

Look at something as "simple" as glass. Both China and Europe had the stuff, but the Chinese could make fine porcelain, whereas Europe was all earthenware, so they refined glass making. Doesn't seem like much and could look like the Chinese were ahead, but glassmaking give you optics, extra bits of chemistry, refinement of furnaces etc. Optics was huge. Add in all the European states trying to blow seven shades of shite out each other and innovations kick off like mad. Look at Descartes. We think of him today more about "I think therefore I am stuff, but his main gig was ballistics and the like(using the old algebra again). Guns give you better steel, better engineering and production methods and also leads to more of the physics of things and so on.