Darin Sunley wrote:
>
> "Raymond G. Van De Walker" wrote:
>
> > Apparently the industrial revolution in England was a very rare,
> > anomalous event, that almost didn't happen. By luck or a blessing of
> > God, England came late to the nasty wars of the 17th century, and all of
> > England's classes (Protestants all) were threatened with extinction (by
> > Catholic Invasion threats). The universal threat permitted progressive
> > taxation, including taxation of the nobles. The lateness and
> > progressive-ness of the war taxation permitted ENgland to save up reserve
> > capital, enough, barely, for the industrial revolution to snowball into
> > Victorian England.
>
> Someone (I THINK it's Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,
> but I could be wrong) writes pretty much the same thing about the origin of
> science among the Ionians in Pre-Socratic Ancient Greece. It was apparently
> the combination of a maritime economy, the existence of a leisure class, and
> geographical isolations that allowed the Ionian philosophers (thales et al.)
> to fisrt try to reason about the world in a matieralistic manner, rather then
> attributing it all to Deity X.
>
> Something Pirsig DEFINITELY mentions is how fragile science was after it
> started. No one seems to have invented it other then the Ionians, and they
> did end up losing it. It was only the Arabs keeping it long enough for
> Western Europe to get back on track that allowed for the Renaissance and the
> Industrial Revolution, and hence, modern western society (aka, the Age of
> Wonders :)).
>
> It's perspectives like this that make me feel a little bit better about the
> Great Filter paradox. Eukaryotic cells are hard to do, and science is hard to
> do. Thus we can hope that the leap form eukaryotic cells with science to
> Powers is less then impossible.