Acad. Quest.
(2015) 28:111–117
DOI 10.1007/s12129-015-9474-3
REVIEWS
How the West Won: The
Neglected Story of the
Triumph of Modernity, by
Rodney Stark. Wilmington,
DE: ISI Books, 2014, 455 pp.,
$27.95, hardbound.
Winning
Toby Huff
Published online: 10 February 2015
# Springer Science+Business Media New York
2015
For several decades now the
question of how the history of the
West should be taught has been much
debated. In some circles it is believed
that the study of Western civilization
has been supplanted by “global
history” that emphasizes finding
“connections” among all the world’s
cultural and geographical regions,
under the assumption that only
by considering such connections
can the major developments of
any particular civilizational area
be understood and explained. In
Toby Huff is research associate in the department of
astronomy at Harvard University and Chancellor
Professor Emeritus of Policy Studies at the
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, North
Dartmouth, MA 02747; thuff@fas.harvard.edu. His
latest book is Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific
Revolution: A Global Perspective (Cambridge
University Press, 2011).
some versions, global history
devalues Western commitments
and achievements, suggesting that
the culture of Classical Greece,
the European Renaissance, the
Reformation, and the rise of
parliamentary democracy as well
as the scientific revolution are not
unique. Beyond that, the globalists
want to believe—despite the lack
o f s upp ortin g evid enc e—that
Western achievements must be the
product of external influences.1
How the West Won: The Neglected
Story of the Triumph of Modernity, by
Rodney Stark, takes an entirely
different approach, one that seeks to
provoke and challenge what many
refer to as the new “multicultural”
stance, which regards all cultural
achievements as relative. Stark thinks
that many of the newer histories are
seriously biased against the West, not
to mention Christianity. According to
Stark, Distinguished Professor of the
Social Sciences at Baylor University
and co-director of its Institute for
Studies of Religion, students reading
these new history texts are “badly misled
by a flood of absurd, politically correct
1
For a good analysis of these trends, see Ricardo
Duchesne, The Uniqueness of the Western
Civilization (Boston and Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2011),
chap. 1, esp. 4–13 and 51–59. For the view rejecting
strong external influences, see my “The ‘Eastern’
Origins of Western Civilization?” Academic
Questions 27, no. 3 (Fall 2014): 286–99.
112
fabrications, all of them popular on
college campuses.”2 In the following
eighteen chapters, Stark attempts to
rectify what he sees as false accounts
and perspectives. In many respects How
the West Won is a refashioning of Stark’s
earlier books: For the Glory of God:
How Monotheism Led to Reformations,
Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of
Slavery (2003); The Victory of Reason:
How Christianity Led to Freedom,
Capitalism, and Western Success
(2005); and God’s Battalions: The Case
for the Crusades (2009).
How the West Won is divided into
five parts: “Classical Beginnings (500
BC–AD 500),” “The Not-So-Dark
Ages (1500 to 1200),” “Medieval
Transformations (1200 to 1500),”
“The Dawn of Modernity (1500 to
1700),” and “Modernity (1750– ).”
As he moves through these periods
Stark discusses a broad range of
questions about the rise of capitalism,
industry, trade, the scientific revolution,
colonialism, the Reformation, the
Muslim world, liberty and prosperity,
and finally, the long reach of
globalization. It is perplexing that the
subtext of How the West Won is based
on military history and technology,
from the Greeks to the Spaniards
c o n q u e r i n g t h e N e w Wo r l d .
Throughout the book Stark discusses
the ways in which Western armies—
2
Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected
Story of the Triumph of Modernity (Wilmington, DE:
ISI Books, 2014), 1. Further reference to this source
will be cited parenthetically within the text.
Huff
from the Greeks battling the Persians,
to the crusaders of the Middle Ages
fighting the Muslims, to crusader
troops defending the island of Rhodes
against the Ottomans (1480–1522), to
the Spaniards clashing with the
Aztecs—were superior in technology,
tactics, and valor. This may be true, but
the “triumph of modernity” is not
based solely or even mostly on
military achievements.
Despite this subtext, however,
Stark does broaden his conception
of modernity to “identify that
fundamental store of scientific
knowledge and procedures, powerful
technologies, artistic achievements,
political freedoms, economic
arrangements, moral sensibilities, and
improved standards of living that
characterize Western nations and are
now revolutionizing life in the rest of
the world” (2). He declares his interest
in ideas as well as material (economic
and technological) factors, and
does indeed provide the reader
with unusual perspectives on
technological advances and the
rise of industrial capitalism.
When dealing with Greek
philosophy and its later effects Stark
maintains two different views. On
the one hand, he asserts that “the
primary effect of Greek philosophy
on Christianity had far less to do
with doctrines per se than the
commitment of even the earliest
Christian theologians to reason and
logic” (38). On the other hand, “The
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truth is that science arose only because
the doctrine of the rational creator of a
rational universe made scientific
inquiry plausible” (40). This appears
to be Stark’s way of reintroducing
monotheism as the motivating factor
in the rise of modern science.
And yet, the idea of a fully rational,
coherent, and created universe
decipherable by human intelligence
must be credited to Plato’s Timaeus.
Long before monotheism arose in
force it was Plato who fashioned the
thesis that the universe is a coherent
whole based on “cause and chance,”
and that man is a rational animal with
the capacity to decipher the nature
of that universe. It is fair to say
that Christian theologians adopted
this position (unlike Muslim
theologians), yet it was the inherent
commitment to the tools of
philosophy, “the greatest boon that
mankind has ever or will ever
receive,” that allowed Christian
philosophers and proto-scientists to
carry on their work. 3 Indeed,
several of these medieval Christian
rationalists—influenced by the
Timaeus—turned their attention to
biblical criticism, showing that
certain passages of the Bible are
implausible from a natural science
point of view. It was not the belief in
monotheism, shared by Muslims and
Jews, who did not pave the way to
modern science, but the belief in a
3
Plato, Timaeus 47b.
113
rationally-ordered universe inhabited
by individuals possessed of reason
and blessed by the fruits of natural
philosophy that carried the day.
Coupled with that were Aristotle’s
natural books—on physics, the
science of motion, meteorology, the
study of planets and animals and the
heavens—that gave to the important
scholars mentioned by Stark their
scientific agenda, which was lacking
in both the madrasas of Islam and the
Jewish religious schools dedicated to
monotheism.4
Stark’s view of the Roman Empire
is surprisingly negative. He finds no
merit in the Roman experience, so the
fall of the Western empire (ca. 476) is
a good thing: “the glorious journey
toward modernity resumed” (66).
His sound trouncing of the idea of
“the Dark Ages”—“a complete fraud”
(71)—is welcome and insightful, but
because of his negative view of the
Roman experience, Stark is silent on
the most fully developed legal system
of the world, the Roman corpus juris
civilis. Consequently, when he
discusses the Medieval transformation
(part 3), and says, rightly, that “only
the Church gave coherence to
Europe” (105), Stark misses the
central importance of canon law that
4
For an analysis of these religious differences, see
my “Science and Metaphysics in the Three
Religions of the Book,” Intellectual Discourse
(International Islamic University of Malaysia) 8,
no. 2 (2000): 173–98, available at http://www-old.
physics.wisc.edu/undergrads/courses/206-f07/files/
reference_chapter05/huffid2000.pdf.
114
established the basic institutional
foundations of modernity: the rule of
law, a formalized system of due
process, parliamentary democracy,
commerce-enhancing devices, and a
host of other legal instruments still
in use today. Stark stresses that “if
there is a single factor responsible
for the rise of the West, it is
freedom” (138), but does not discuss
constitutionalism, parliamentary
democracy, the basis of freedom of
thought in the universities that
allowed open and public discussion
even among the laity, nor how
freedom of expression established
itself only in the West by the
invention of daily and weekly
newspapers from the 1640s to the
present.
Stark stands on much firmer
ground in chapter 8, “The Pursuit of
Knowledge,” when he declares the
drive to know and understand the
world to be “the fundamental key”
to the rise of Western civilization
(159). This chapter contains many
good insights, but again, Stark’s
approach afflicts his analysis. In
some circles it is fashionable to
claim that there was no “scientific
revolution,” and by taking this
position Stark appears to champion
the general ambience of the medieval
Christian church and its cultivation of
important thinkers who did, indeed,
pave the way for modern science.
Unfortunately, by taking this tack,
Stark ends up championing Ptolemy’s
Huff
Almagest (the great second-century
AD treatise on astronomy) while
declaring that Copernicus’s On the
Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres
(1543) got “everything” wrong (170).
Although the Almagest was the most
important work in astronomy, Arabic-
speaking astronomers knew that the
system had many problems; that
though the orbits of the planets were
supposed to be perfectly circular they
were not; that Ptolemy’s construction
did not have the planets revolving
around the geometric center of the
universe, but around a displaced
center (the equant), raising in
Averröes’s mind the question of how
the universe could have two centers,
and thus two earths. Furthermore,
the heavens periodically moved
backwards (retrogression). Averröes
threw up his hands and declared,
“Nothing of the true science of
astronomy exists in our time, the
astronomy of our time being only in
agreement with calculations…and not
with what exists.”5
C o n t r a r y t o S t a r k ’s c l a i m ,
Copernicus got most of it right.
He created the first coherent
astronomical system in which, for the
first time, all the parts fitted together
with the orbits governed by numeric
ratios, revolving around a heliocentric
5
As cited by A.I. Sabra, “The Andalusian Revolt
against Ptolemaic Astronomy,” in Transformation
and Tradition in the Sciences: Essays in Honour of
I. Bernard Cohen, ed. Everett Mendelsohn
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1984), 142.
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point close to the center of the universe,
along with a greatly expanded estimate
of the size of our cosmos. Furthermore,
though Copernicus did not have a new
database of observations, but solely
those of Ptolemy (and minor
observations of his own), his new
system was used by sixteenth- and
early seventeenth-century European
astronomers as a superior calculating
device, while omitting the heliocentric
orientation. Beyond that, Kepler could
not have devised his proof of the
elliptical shape of planetary orbits
unless he assumed Copernicus’s
sun-centered configuration.
Many chapters are riddled with
errors of commission and omission.
One example of the absence of proper
attribution of scholarly debt is Stark’s
use (138, 181) of the invention of
eyeglasses, “massed-produced by
plants in both Florence and Venice”
and shipped around the world in the
fifteenth century. Even now this is
hardly common knowledge. We
know about this because the late
Vincent Ilardi plumbed the obscure
files of Italian lens manufacturers,
finding fourteenth- and fifteenth-
century bills of sale for these and other
shipments. 6 But Stark does not
provide a reference for his claims—
which could have been encountered
in the pages of my Intellectual
6 9
Vincent Ilardi, Renaissance Vision from Spectacles
to Telescopes (Philadelphia: American Philosophical
Society, 2007), chap. 4, “International Trade in
Spectacles.”
115
Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution:
A Global Perspective, which he does
cite elsewhere.7
Likewise, Stark’s account of the
“Lutheran Reformation,” in which
he cites interesting very early
attempts to quantify the behavioral
results of the new doctrine to no
avail, is confusing. Historically and
sociologically, it is doubtful that one
can segregate the Lutheran and
Calvinist effects in discussing Europe
as a civilization. Many other scholars
have shown important effects of the
Reformation on income and education
(using census data for the district of
Wittenberg),8 social organization,9
and, of course, science. But this is
hardly the Archimedean point for
understanding all of European history.
Stark’s approach to the science
question lacks objectivity and
misrepresents Robert Merton’s classic
Science, Technology and Society in
Seventeenth-Century England (1938),
written by a twenty-eight-year-old
Harvard graduate student from a
Philadelphia Jewish family. Merton’s
book is not the narrow examination of
7
Toby E. Huff, Intellectual Curiosity and the
Scientific Revolution: A Global Perspective
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2011).
8
Sascha O. Becker and Ludger Woessman, “Was
Weber Wrong? A Human Capital Theory of
Protestant Economic History,” Quarterly Journal
of Economics 124, no. 2 (2009): 531–96.
Philip Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution:
Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early
Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2003).
116
the “scientific revolution” that Stark
makes it, but a multifaceted study
of the “the interplay between society,
culture and science” as well as
technology. How “do these vary in
kind and extent in differing historical
contexts?”10 The key here is that
Merton was talking about the
scientific movement (the very practical
pursuit of science with shifting
emphases) that occurred in
seventeenth-century England, whereas
it is perfectly fine to suggest that the
scientific revolution of Copernicus in
the sixteenth-seventeenth century (that
Stark has thrown out) was rooted in
“Catholic cultural areas,” as Benjamin
Nelson put it long ago.11
In addition to a selective choice of
research results, Stark makes claims
opposite to what his sources wrote.
He cites, for example, the authors of
The Price of Freedom Denied:
Religious Persecution and Conflict in
the Twenty-First Century, who worked
out a metric for measuring religious
10
Robert K. Merton, Science, Technology and
Society in Seventeenth-Century England (1938;
New York: Harper and Row, 1970), ix. The most
important repeat analysis of the seventeenth-century
data was by Charles Webster, The Great Instaura-
tion: Science, Medicine, and Reform 1626–1670
(New York: Holmes & Meier, 1976), while all sides
of the debate are well-represented in I. B. Cohen, ed.,
Puritanism and the Rise of Modern Science: The
Merton Thesis (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Uni-
versity Press, 1990). Neither work is mentioned by
Stark.
11
Toby E. Huff, ed., On the Roads to Modernity:
Conscience, Science and Civilizations: Selected
Writings by Benjamin Nelson (Totowa, NJ:
Rowman & Littlefield, 1981; Lanham, MD:
Lexington Books, 2012), chaps. 4 and 7.
Huff
tolerance for several dozen countries,
many of them neither Christian nor
Western. Stark wants to highlight
continuing Protestant-Catholic
tensions, when Brian J. Brim and
Roger Finke state that religious
freedom in Christian countries
between 1945 and 2005 increased.12
This stands in contrast to Islamic
countries, where there is less freedom
now than a century ago, but which
Stark does not mention, though he is
highly critical of Arabic-Islamic
civilization in his chapter on “Islamic
Illusions.”
In his last chapter, “Globalization
and Colonialism,” Stark makes a
good case that the era of colonial
imperialism did not primarily enrich
European actors while impoverishing
others (and no doubt many will contest
this), but spread trade, education, and
new technologies across the globe. But
despite the impressive historical sweep
of How the West Won, it stops short of
explaining for students the uniqueness
of Western institutions, the freedom
ensconced in the Western legal system
establishing constitutionalism, self-
governance, due process of law, the
idea of election by consent, and so
much more. With the collapse of
the so-called “Arab Spring” and
the extraordinary fracturing of the
12
Brian J. Brim and Roger Finke, The Price of
Freedom Denied: Religious Persecution and
Conflict in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press,
2011), 172.
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Muslim world, along with the
economic slowdown of China
and its turn away from democracy
and Western conceptions of due
process, it seems likely that a
younger generation will eventually
rediscover the unique riches of
117
Western cultural forms and their
indispensability in a world that at
least is trying through globalization
to create unity. We greatly need to
bring Western history and Western
civilization back into the curriculum
of American universities.