Why the West?

Steven Dutch, Professor Emeritus, Natural and Applied Sciences, Universityof Wisconsin - Green Bay

The Goldilocks Factor

In the fairy tale, Goldilocks found that the big bowl was too hot, the medium-sizedbowl was too cold, and the little bowl was just right. We'll ignore the physical problemof why the medium-sized bowl cooled faster than the little one. Planetary scientists speakof the "Goldilocks Problem" when describing Venus, Earth and Mars: Venus is toohot, Mars is too cold and Earth is just right. We can also find a striking variety offeatures of Western history that managed to avoid extremes.

• Change: Europe was challenged by outside forces but never subjugated so completely that it lost its identity, or defeated so badly that it was traumatized. At the same time, Europe was challenged enough to avoid stagnation. The Classical world fell apart, but Europe never entirely lost sight of its past, nor did Europe ever fall so far that its ancient past was out of reach. Thus, achieving or surpassing its ancient glory was a powerful stimulus to the Renaissance.
• Isolation: Europe was marginal to the ancient civilizations of the Near East, and to the Arab world during the height of Islamic civilization, but not so marginal that it could not take advantage of their innovations. At the same time, it was remote enough to avoid being assimilated or overrun by its more advanced neighbors. The pattern of a peripheral society learning from and eventually overrunning a more advanced core civilization has played out repeatedly in Europe: Greece (and Persia) were conquered by Alexander the Great, whose empire in Europe was conquered by Rome, which in turn was overrun by Germanic tribes.
• Fragmentation: Europe was fragmented enough to prevent any one system from achieving total hegemony, but never so fragmented that it totally disintegrated. Even after the fall of Rome, when Europe most closely approached complete disintegration, there were institutions that provided continuity across space and time. Later, when Europeans began challenging ancient traditions, the lack of a single central authority meant that there were always enclaves where unorthodox and innovative ideas could survive.

Synthesis

One conspicuous feature of western history is its repeated synthesis of ideas.

• Language English seems to have been hybridized at least twice. The first time was about 900 A.D. when the Vikings conquered northeastern England. Their language was similar in vocabulary to Anglo-Saxon but different in grammatical details.
• Tradition versus Innovation: When new ideas collide with old traditions, one of several things can happen: You can discard the old ideas, reject the new ideas, combine the two without regard for consistency as it suits your convenience, or try to mesh the two harmoniously. In a number of key moments in Western history,
• Foreign Influences
• Recovering the Past
• Attitudes toward Change: Change can be desirable, it can be managed, it can be deliberately initiated.
• What is Money For? It's not overly hard for a complex society to generate wealth. It may be a lot harder to figure out what to do with it. In the ancient world, for example, we find wealthy benefactors financing roads, piers, theaters, and other useful structures, but equally often we find them constructing things that are astounding for their pointlessness: triumphal arches or yet one more public bath. At the same time, we almost never hear of anyone financing a public library, a public school, decent public sewers
• Autonomy

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Created 18 September 1998, Last Update 18 September 1998