Oceanic voyages expanded Europe’s economy, enlarged its world view, and transformed its state of mind. Huge profits were waiting to be made if ships could sail to distant lands and return home safely. For the first time in the history, prosperity did not depend on the blessings of the God or the good will of the king, but on the initiative of the merchants and skills of artisans and sailors. Maritime imperatives diminished the royal and the feudal holds; and enhanced the status of generators of new wealth and knowledge. The French physician Julien La Mettrie would famously declare in 1747 in The Man A Machine: “We are no more committing a crime when we obey our primitive instincts than the Nile is committing a crime with its floods, or the sea with its ravages”. Europe learnt that knowledge lay not in the past but in the future, not in the archives but out in the open. And knowledge meant survival and wealth. Had Europe’s economy remained self-contained, it would probably have had no particular reason to develop modern science.
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