Perhaps the strangest manifestation of the Eurocentric approach to the history of military technology is .. the attempt to discern fundamental cultural roots in the distant past that have resulted in the perceived current Western dominance of the world. This essentialism attempts to contrast ancient Greek logic and philosophy with the less rationally minded philosophies of the non- West. Modern science and technology, in this view, is a simple jump from ancient Greece to early modern Europe. . Peter A. Lorge
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The Euro-centrism approach of the author of the paragraph is an attempt to contrast ancient Greek logic and philosophy with the less rationally minded philosophies of the non-West. The author also makes the claim that modern science and technology is a simple jump from ancient Greece to early modern Europe. While this is true, it is not an accurate description of how we got where we are today. The reality is that science and technology did not come out of Greece and Europe in some straight line.

These two things had a long and complicated history before they were eventually produced in Europe and Greece. It would be more accurate to say that early modern science and technology was an attempt to take what was already there on its own terms [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science#Early_modern_science

Source: The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder To The Bomb

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More Quotes By Peter A. Lorge
  1. European historians have often, though not unanimously, assumed that European modern warfare was the one true path, a system that developed logically and inevitably from the nature of the advancing technology of guns. Since Europeans by their own definition were the most rational and logical...
  2. Guns neither initiated nor enabled larger changes. Economic, political, and social development preceded and laid the foundation for the invention and use of the gun, not the other way around.
  3. Technology is often portrayed as an objective measure of development, and its advancement as something that can be examined outside of politics. But the history of technology, particularly military technology, has been deeply inflected by nationalist sentiment.
  4. ..the modern bias in contemporary Western scholarship (which has spread to the rest of the world as well) insists upon focusing all attention on the formation of the modern world and ‘‘modernity.’’ By directing attention to a time period rather than to a region, Western...
  5. Perhaps the strangest manifestation of the Eurocentric approach to the history of military technology is .. the attempt to discern fundamental cultural roots in the distant past that have resulted in the perceived current Western dominance of the world. This essentialism attempts to contrast ancient...
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