Dear Friends,
Some of the notes on the list are definitely Eurocentric. The debate on the Bologna
treaty is a European debate if ever there was one.
Nevertheless, many issues here involve the large histories of many peoples.
The modern university in its current organizational structure was born in medieval
Europe, but research and research education date back millenia to Asia. The first
research centers were located in Asia in the centers for astronomy and applied
mathematics of the great hyrdaulic empires, and in the archival and historical
centers of imperial administration. Some argue that Plato's Academy and Aristotle's
Lyceum were the first institutions comparable to graduate research institutes, but
Greek science was also Asian when the Greek city-states spanned Asia in what is
now modern Turkey. The first state-financed graduate faculty were the professors of
the Museion, sometimes known as the library of Alexandria. At one point, the
Museum was staffed with roughly one hundred professors, all paid a public salary
for their scholarly and scientific work.
By the Middle Ages, Arabic cultures were guarding knowledge and developing the
work that would finally return to Europe as the university. The House of Wisdom in
Bagdad and the Academy of Cordova are two examples of Arabic university-level
research centers.
I do not know enough about the institutional structures for advanced research and
research education in China or India, but I do know that Chinese and Indian
scholars and technology made great advances advances well before the medical
school was established at Salerno in the ninth century or the law school at Bologna
in the eleventh century.
The dominant role of Western nation-states and the European hegemony are a
recent event dating back only five centuries. For 9,500 years before then, Asia was
the center of geopolitical power -- and the focal point of scientific research,
technological development, and education. For most of those 9,500 years, it was an
Asia-centric world. (One must also note that the great Asian empires were as
domineering and careless in their power as suzerain states and imperial or colonial
overlords as the great European powers were in their day and the United States is
now.)
It seems to me in discussing "Eurocentrism" that Europe has hardly done all the
heavy lifting. We all have a great deal to be proud of in terms of what the many
peoples of the world and all their many cultures have given to human history.
Beyond that, we all have a great deal to regret: most nations have abused their
power during their time as imperial masters or geopolitical hegomons.
Yours,
Ken Friedman
p.s. While English is a European language, the role it plays as an international
language for those who speak English as a second or third language is becoming a
significant force in the development of the language. English is decreasing as a
native language even while it is increasing as a common language of commerce,
science, scholarship, and technology. In this sense, it paralells the shift of Latin from
the living language of an empire to the lingua franca of different groups who used it
to communicate across national boundaries.
What's interesting is the fact that English is even becoming a second language in
nations where it was once the first language. This is visible the rebirth of Spanish in
California, of Welsh and Gaelic in parts of Britain and Ireland, of immigrant
languages in many communities in North America, Australia, or the United Kingdom,
and so on.
|