15. The Marriage of Science and Empire

From Harari — Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

In this chapter, the author argues that the advancement of science and the the advancement of expanding political entities through conquering other lands is closely linked. Essentially, the author argues that after the enlightenment period, the Europeans set their eyes on conquering the new lands, specifically the Americas. And as part of that mindset, they also quickly advanced in their scientific endeavors by sending people to learn from the new lands, and do scientific advancement. The author also says it is precisely because in in the East, those cultures and nations did not have a strong inclination to conquer new lands, their scientific advancement was stalled, because they kept to themselves. They could not explore new frontiers. They did not open up to new ideas and exchange.

This is a pretty bold claim, and there are similar arguments in the 20th century, where many people say that the two world wars resulted in many advances in modern science as well.

By and large, I agree with the author, but I do find that the author was quick to dismiss the contributions of science prior to the enlightenment period made by the ancient Eastern empires who were the most advanced in the world at the time. So if we look the arc of history, the past few hundred years is actually only an anomaly where these relatively newer nations are dominating, and even the author admits nations like China will likely quickly soon regain their economic standing in the world.

Going forward, I don’t think this marriage of science and empire will continue. Furthermore, it appears it holds only in these past few hundred years. In the past, it was not necessarily true, and in the future, the definition of empire itself is ill-defined. It’s not clear that the power structures of tomorrow will actually be political entities. Certainly today, power is intertwined amongst private companies and other organizations that are trans-national. How scientific advancement will evolve in this new world is not clear, and likely will not be as simple as being correlated to any dominant political entity.