Why the West is different from Russia and China: ‘stages’ of development

For an explanation as to why the West is different from Russia and China, look no further than the Renaissance, which neither Russia nor China experienced. The West underwent at least three significant ‘stages’ of development that were absent elsewhere: artistic, scientific and political “experimentation”.  It all began with the Renaissance.

Developments nearly contemporaneous to Renaissance-era-figures like Leonardo and Michelangelo can be found in Russia’s “Ivan the Terrible” and China’s “Forbidden City” – examples more inclined to intimidate than encourage searching curiosity.  The Renaissance was more than a “re-birth” of classical humanism and individualism.  It represented - in the truest sense of the word – artistic “experimentation”.[1] Look to Leonardo who is remembered today for his art, but his notebooks observe everything from hydraulics to astronomy.[2]

This spirit of free enquiry was then translated from the artistic world into empirical research, notably by figures such as Galileo, resulting in scientific “experimentation”. His famous Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment, which determined that different objects fall at the same rate of acceleration, a story which every child knows, was central to introducing the world to the Scientific Revolution.  Essential to it was the study of planetary orbits, which gave rise to the understanding of a heliocentric universe.

The results of the Scientific Revolution then came to be associated with political “experimentation”.  We see it first in Machiavelli’s, The Prince (1513), but it is more notable in England during the 17^th century.  The English Civil Wars were, in effect, a break from the existing political mould, and they ended up putting King Charles I on the scaffold in 1649.  England wanted to ‘test’ something new, so its King was put on ‘trial’.  Soon afterwards Oliver Cromwell alongside his republican commonwealth was considered the way out, albeit temporarily.

There was a fourth exploratory dimension, in addition to the artistic, scientific, and political manifestations: religious “experimentation”.  We see this in Luther and Calvin and in the Protestant Reformation in general, where the Gutenberg Bible (translated in the vernacular) gave every man the apparent authority to make decisions on his own and no longer rely on the parish priest.  Catholic unity gave way to Protestant disunity.

I would also like to suggest that the Reformation, an early form of populism, was in some ways comparable to today’s populism, which is not confined to the West.  The trouble with today’s expression of populism is that it is fundamentally science-denying, and while the Gutenberg Bible of yesterday can be compared to the cellphone of today, current populism does not acknowledge the authority of science invested in the ubiquitous cellphone. This underlying lack of curiosity about something so everyday is a step away from the Renaissance ideal of “experimentation”.  The West, in other words, given Donald Trump’s second term of office as president, is now closer to copying modes of thought from Russia and China than ever before.

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[1] Max Weber, The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, tr. Hans H. Gerth (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1962), p. 151.

[2] William Fleming, Arts and Ideas (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1959), p. 373.