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1、中国近代为何落后于西方，众说纷纭。近代中国的落后也是造成亚洲东部诸多问题的一大起因。若放眼全球，近代所有其它地区均落后于西方，中国并非特例。西方为何能够统治世界，实为史上一大显著事件。伊恩莫里斯（Ian Morris）教授的著作Why the West Rules For Now对此给出了独树一格的解释。该书行文生动，史料翔实，通过建立社会发展指数（Social Development）的简单数学模型，描述了自上次冰河时代末期以来约一万五千年的人类历史。该书亦通过对该指数的诠释，试图解析人类未来的发展，作者认为，未来三四十年间是一个关键阶段成则为康庄大道，败则大灾变再次降临一如历史的演变模式。
2、Why the West Rules for NowPrcis of Ian Morriss bookArchaeologist Ian Morriss book Why the West Rules for Now takes a look at over 15 000 years of history to offer fresh insights into why development differed in the East and West and what the future will bring. It looks at the patterns of history to
3、see what they reveal about the future. All his findings are based totally on archaeological digs that have been discovered and dated back to different time periods in history.Social development and the paradox of developmentIn it, Morris builds a central thesis that development is the process whereb
4、y lazy, greedy, frightened people are constantly looking for easier, more profitable and safer ways to do things, which results in changes that create successful developments. But these successes in turn create new problems that need to be solved this Morris refes to as the paradox of development. P
5、eople confront and solve these new problems every day, which is why social development has kept moving upward over time. However, at certain times, the process of development creates tough ceilings that will yield only to truly transformative changes. During these times, if societies fail to solve t
6、he problems that confront them, a terrible package of ills that Morris calls the 5 horsemen of the apocalypse are let loose famine, disease, uncontrolled migration, state failure and climate change causing developmental stagnation and ultimate decline.Throughout history the East and West have gone t
7、hrough the same stages of social development in the last 15000 years, in the same order, because they have been peopled by the same kinds of human beings who generate the same kinds of history. But they have not done so at the same times or at the same speeds. Morris suggests that biology and sociol
8、ogy explain the global similarities between East and West while geography explains the regional differences and explains why theWest rules for now.Throughout time East and West have faced disruptions in social development that were either manmade, such as violence and warfare, power struggles, polit
9、ical ambition, migration and regime changes, or initiated by nature. Climate change is beyond human control and usually caused much more severe disruptions than manmade challenges. History illustrates that when climate change, famine, state failure and migration join together with disease, social de
10、velopment disruptions can turn into collapses, driving social development down. We can also see that developmental collapse comes out of the interactions between natural and human forces and that bigger more complex societies generate bigger more threatening upheavals, increasing the risk that disru
11、ptions such as climate change and migration will set off collapse. In big complex societies, when one kingdom fell, it affected others and chaos extends and drags everyone down. This is familiar in our own age where the rise of international finance in the capitalist nations of Europe and America ha
12、ve helped to push social development upward faster than ever before. But these linkages have also made it possible for the American bubble in 2008 to shake virtually the whole world. Another point is that while bigger more complex societies generate bigger more threatening disruptions, they also off
13、er more and more sophisticated ways to respond to them.A look at human historyThe West can be defined as the modern day Middle East beginning with Iraq and Iran, together with Western Europe and the US. In history these were the ancient Ottoman Empires, Europe and the New World of the US.Looking ove
14、r history we notice a number of great geographical contrasts between the East and the West. Firstly, at the end of the Ice Age 15 000 years ago, global warming marked off a band of lucky latitudes where an abundance of large, potentially domesticable plants and animals evolved. In these latitudes de
15、veloped the first farmers who settled in villages and domesticated plants and animals starting before 9000 BCE (formerly BC). From these first farmers descended the societies of the West. 2000 years later people in what is now China moved the same way and from them descended the societies of the Eas
16、t.Because Westerners were the first to farm, and because people are all much the same, Westerners were also the first to feel the paradox of development in a serious way and the first to learn what Morris refers to as the advantages of backwardness. As farming spread far and wide, people in new lands had to adjust it to work in their environment and in this way found ways to make it more fruitful than the original agricultural regi
