4 ms·

The opinion is that the West fueled industrialization with the looted wealth from colonies.

Brakenshire 11y ago
I think that's almost certainly true, but again I'd go back to the example of Russia, where the elite continued to put their wealth principally into competitive status symbols rather than industrialization for almost two centuries after the industrial revolution started. Elites siphoning off wealth for their luxury, rather than investing in society or the economy, has been the rule, not the exception, for the majority of human history, and the Mughals certainly had been doing that in India for centuries before the British arrived. Empiricism and scientific enquiry also got going centuries before industrialization, I admit I don't know much about Indian intellectual life in the 17th century, but did they really have an equivalent of the Royal Society, or of Newton?
- shripadk 11y ago
  India had a more vibrant scientific society than the West. While the West was still figuring out if the Earth was flat or not, Indian scholars had already established that the Earth was not only a spheroid but also determined the age of the Universe (See: https://www.quora.com/What-does-Hinduism-say-about-the-shape-of-the-Earth https://www.quora.com/What-does-Hinduism-say-about-the-shape... and this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_time). We even had Metallurgy working way before Britain learnt about working metals. I can go on and on about Indian intellectual life way before Britain came to colonize India but it makes no sense in today's context because most of these facts are either unknown or is of little interest to the West. See what Professor Dean Brown (a scientist from the United States) says about India, Sanskrit and India's Scientific heritage in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Brv2FaOluU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Brv2FaOluU
  - Brakenshire 11y ago
    I didn't downvote you, but I do disagree very strongly with what you have written. I was talking about scientific culture in the 17th century and you reply with the achievements of Indian civilization from thousands of years earlier. No one doubts that India is home to one of the great world civilizations, but science is empiricism, it is observation taking precedence over everything else. If this had been created in the Hindu texts we would have settled separate star systems by now. You might as well say that 12th century England had a dynamic scientific culture because they read Aristotle and Galen.

I think that's almost certainly true, but again I'd go back to the example of Russia, where the elite continued to put their wealth principally into competitive status symbols rather than industrialization for almost two centuries after the industrial revolution started. Elites siphoning off wealth for their luxury, rather than investing in society or the economy, has been the rule, not the exception, for the majority of human history, and the Mughals certainly had been doing that in India for centuries before the British arrived. Empiricism and scientific enquiry also got going centuries before industrialization, I admit I don't know much about Indian intellectual life in the 17th century, but did they really have an equivalent of the Royal Society, or of Newton?

shripadk 11y ago
India had a more vibrant scientific society than the West. While the West was still figuring out if the Earth was flat or not, Indian scholars had already established that the Earth was not only a spheroid but also determined the age of the Universe (See: https://www.quora.com/What-does-Hinduism-say-about-the-shape-of-the-Earth https://www.quora.com/What-does-Hinduism-say-about-the-shape... and this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_time). We even had Metallurgy working way before Britain learnt about working metals. I can go on and on about Indian intellectual life way before Britain came to colonize India but it makes no sense in today's context because most of these facts are either unknown or is of little interest to the West. See what Professor Dean Brown (a scientist from the United States) says about India, Sanskrit and India's Scientific heritage in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Brv2FaOluU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Brv2FaOluU
- Brakenshire 11y ago
  I didn't downvote you, but I do disagree very strongly with what you have written. I was talking about scientific culture in the 17th century and you reply with the achievements of Indian civilization from thousands of years earlier. No one doubts that India is home to one of the great world civilizations, but science is empiricism, it is observation taking precedence over everything else. If this had been created in the Hindu texts we would have settled separate star systems by now. You might as well say that 12th century England had a dynamic scientific culture because they read Aristotle and Galen.