Welcome back.
We’ve been talking about European exploration.
We’ve sort of broken this up into three
short lectures.
We talked about Alfred Crosby’s argument
concerning the creation of little Europes
around the world.
We looked at Jared Diamond’s discussion
of those advantages that the Europeans had.
In this last lecture, I want to talk about
a relatively new book I just read a few months
ago – I think during spring semester.
It’s by Yuval Harari; it’s called Sapiens,
a Brief History of Humankind – a very provocative
book.
He ranges over the whole gamut of human history.
But there is a brief section here where he
talks about European exploration, and I want
to share this argument with you.
His basic argument is this – He says that
European curiosity and the acknowledgement
of ignorance is the key to European dominance
and the spread of western civilization after
Columbus.
So let me go through his argument for you,
it’s very interesting.
He says, both European scientist and conqueror
began by admitting ignorance.
They both said, I don’t know what’s out
there.
Therefore they both felt compelled to go out
and make new discoveries, and they hoped that
this new knowledge would make them masters
of the world.
And he gives a few examples here – He says,
when Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, he not
only took his army with him, but he took a
hundred and sixty-five scholars with him.
Among other things, they founded an entirely
new discipline, Egyptology.
They made important contributions to the study
of religion; linguistics; and botany.
Another famous example – 1831 – The Royal
navy sent the HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin
on board to map the coast of South America,
the Falkland Islands, and the Galapagos Islands
in the Pacific, and of course, we know the
results from this.
On the Origin of Species is published in what
– 1859?
It represents one of the great paradigm shifts
in human history, in our understanding of
life here on Earth.
Harari goes on – He says, in the 15th and
16th centuries, Europeans began to draw world
maps with lots of empty spaces.
Empty spaces, the unknown, and a willingness
to admit we don’t know what’s there.
One indication of the development of the European
scientific mindset as well as the imperial
drive of Europeans is this willingness to
admit that we need to go see what’s there,
or we need to conduct experiments in the scientific
domain.
These empty maps – according to Harari – are
sort of a psychological breakthrough, or clear
admission that the Europeans were ignorant
of large parts of the world.
This may sound commonplace, but it is not.
There is a sense of certainty with knowledge,
that everything there is to know is known,
or eves were ignorant of large parts of the
world.
This may sound commonplace, but it is not.
There is a sense of certainty with knowledge,
that everything there is to know is known,
or anything new or appears new can be folded
in to our already existing body of knowledge.
This is what’s being challenged here, is
this notion that we don’t know stuff, and
we need to go out and find out about it.
He goes on – He says, the idea that Columbus
had discovered a completely unknown continent
was inconceivable for him, as it was for many
of his generation.
This is a very good point.
You remember when Columbus gets to the Bahamas,
he’s certain that he’s in the Indies;
when he reaches Cuba, he knows where he is,
he’s reached Cipango or Japan, as you’ll
recall from our discussion of Columbus’
maps.
And of course, if he’s reached Japan, then
China just lies over the western horizon,
right?
Columbus always knows where he is, even though
he’s dramatically wrong; psychologically,
Columbus is quite certain of where he is.
There is a famous story of Columbus – They’re
crossing the Atlantic and there’s a hub-bub
on board.
Columbus goes out to see what the noise is
all about and his sailors are leaning over
the starboard side looking at something, and
Columbus looks over as well, and he sees a
manatee – or some sort of large sea mammal
– and he later writes in his journal that
he saw a mermaid today – although the mermaid
was not nearly as beautiful as he had been
led to believe.
Again, Columbus has seen something new, but
he incorporates it into the knowledge he already
has – of mermaids, in this case.
Harari goes on – He says, for thousands
of years, not only the greatest thinkers and
scholars, but also the infallible scriptures,
had known only Europe; Africa; and Asia.
Could they all have been wrong?
Could the Bible have missed half the world?
It’s very interesting; Harari goes on to
say that the first modern man was Amerigo
Vespucci, the Italian sailor who took part
in several expeditions to the Americas between
1499 and 1504.
Now we talked about Vespucci earlier when
we talked about Columbus’ maps, and you’ll
remember that Vespucci had sailed down the
Atlantic coast of Brazil and had seen something
that astonished him, the mouth of the Amazon
River.
He had an epiphany at this point, and suddenly
realized that the land mass over here to the
starboard side could not possibly be an island.
He said that no island could support a river
this big; this has to be a new continent – as
indeed it was, South America.
So here’s the difference between Columbus,
of the medieval mindset where nothing is new,
and Vespucci, of the modern mindset admitting
ignorance and willing to explore to find out
exactly what is going on here.
And of course, we remember that the German
cartographer, Martin Waldseemüller, took
Vespucci’s information as he depicted his
new map of the world.
I think it was published in what, 1507-1508?
And there, on the left side of the map, is
a New World – North and South America.
I believe Waldseemüller wrote Amerigo across
this new land mass.
Of course, we’ve since feminized it to America.
 
So Harari says the discovery of America was
the foundational event of the scientific revolution.
It not only taught Europeans to favor present
observations over past traditions – that’s
a key break in human psychology.
The desire to conquer new lands also obligated
Europeans to search for new knowledge at a
breakneck speed.
If they really wanted to control these vast
new territories, they had to gather enormous
amounts of new data about the geography; the
climate; the flora; the fauna; languages;
cultures; and histories of these new places.
Christian scriptures; old geography books;
ancient traditions, were of little help here.
So we were looking at new ways of knowing.
The European imperial expeditions transformed
the history of the world.
Indeed, I think you could say that western
civilization, instead of being a series of
histories of isolated peoples and cultures,
now becomes a history of a single, integrated,
human society – globalization.
So with that, I’m going to stop.
This is our final lecture on European exploration.
The second half of this course, 1122, will
pick up from this point and move forward into
the 20th century.
Thanks for your attention.
I hope you learned something.
