Prof Anis Bajrektarevic
Throughout the long and arduous course of human history, both progress and its horizontal transfer were an extremely slow, sporadic and tedious process. Only in the classical period of Alexander the Great and his magnificent Alexandrian library will the speed of transmission of our knowledge change; though modest, analogue, and backward—it still outpaced the snail’s pace of our discovery cycle.
When our occasional revelations finally proved more frequent than the speed of our own infrequent transmissions, it marked the moment of our separation. Simply, our civilizations began to differ significantly from each other in technical-agrarian, military-political, ethno-religious, and ideological aspects, as well as in economic settings. Finally, the so-called the great discoveries are the event that transform wars and famines – from moderate and local – into global, pan-continental phenomena.
Rapid cycles of technological discoveries, patents and knowledge first took place on the Old Continent. This event with all its reorganizing effects reconfigured societies. Ultimately, it marked the birth of powerful European empires and their (liberal) schools, and the overall, lasting triumph of Western civilization. It radically mobilised Europe, weaponized science. (On the very subject of history of ‘weaponisation’ of Europe, I refer the curious reader on my text: Imperialism of Imagination, Geopolitics of Peter Pan.)
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