ULT- #15 "Scientific Revolution: The Beginning of World Community""

Euguene Rabinowitch's article, "Scientific Revolution: The Beginning of World Community", makes a strong argument that it has been the technological developments and increased knowledge produced from the Scientific Revolution and onward that really began to draw the world into a global community. The pursuit of science and knowledge, from Galileo, Newton, and Voltaire to the modern day, has established itself as the common medium of nations and drawn the world closer together in a global community, ultimately enabling trade and a greater cooperation in knowledge. Many of the great minds of the Scientific Revolution have come directly from Europe: Sir Isaac Newton, Galileo, and Copernicus among others. Then there are the scientific thinkers such as Voltaire, Adam Smith, John Locke who revolutionized modern thought. All these men were European, but they were all from different nations and spoke different tongues. Rabinowitch makes the point that as a result of their contributions, and the subsequent spreading of that knowledge the world became more of a global community as seen in the present day. With industrial, agricultural, and technological developments (all of which came as a result of science), Europe and the rest of the world became a smaller and more productive place. For example, the Bessemer process created by the British Henry Bessemer revolutionized industry, causing greatly augmented production and, subsequently, trade among nations. Rabinowitch is essentially saying that without the Scientific Revolution, and the later developments that resulted from it over the course of several centuries shaped the world has we know it today: the economic theories of men like Adam Smith and the scientific developments of men like Newton and Bessemer were key in developing the global community. This helps us to better understand Europe as it  shows how the products of the Scientific Revolution created a new trade in "knowledge" (of technology, of theories, of ideas, etc) that enabled Europe to come closer together and establish relations that have evolved into modern-day entities like the European Union. Using developments like the steam engine, European countries were able to be more accessible to one another: more accessibility means more trade, more shared knowledge, and more alliances or enemies. Rabinowitch's article demonstrates that, in ways both monumental and miniscule, the Scientific Revolution modernized Europe and brought it closer together, beginning the transformation into Europe as we know it today.