I am pretty sure Germs, Guns and Steel, never implied anything remotely like that.
If you look at size as a main driver here, that does not match up with reality. South Korea, Japan, Singapore etc, neither of these countries are bigger than your typical mid sized to large european nation.
I think people are reading a bit too much into this. In the stage of development many asians nations are today, western nations also had a similar reverence for engineers.
What strikes me most when people from developing countries talk about unique cultural traits of their country, is that it merely represent a development stage. I can point to similar traits among earlier generations in my own country.
the UK has 65 million people and Japan 120, so there is quite a big difference. Many places in Europe are also densely populated, more so than Japan even like Belgium and Netherlands.
I didn't mean to imply that engineers are not needed. But rather that I don't think the reverence for engineering is linked directly to population density and scale of a country.
Germany is a good counter example since you bring it up. The strong position of engineering in Germany vs Britain as nothing to do with population size issues but rather to historical context. Each country has very different traditions and histories.
For Germany e.g. it could be mentioned that the medieval guilds lasted far into relative modern times. They preserved the status of crafts. Other factors is that in Britain finance and trade came to dominate due to the huge colonial empire, something Germany didn't have and instead had to rely on domestic production to build their nation.
One could go on for any time about all the myriads of different experiences and traditions.
It surprises me how often people just quickly explains any sort of issue with population size. Frequently differences between Europe and the US is also explained away as a function of population size, as if the vastly different historical developments isn't of significant importance.
Could you please provide references? Genuine question. I'm interested to know if American or British society was as obsessed with engineering and medicine at some point as we see today in India and China.
I am not commenting this as some sort of social scientist who has all the statistics and research on this.
I can only really speak about the experiences of my own country Norway. When I listen to people of my grandparents and parents generation it is evident that engineers and scientists were held in high esteem in their days. This is what boys often dreamed of being. Fathers of my parents generation would push talented kids to become engineers, architects etc.
In my parents generation these perceptions took a major change. E.g. my mother was a journalists which was not regarded very highly at all but which became very sought after in my generation.
If you look at media both in Norway and other western countries you see a clear utopian perspective where technology solves all sorts of problems for society. Think of the view on rocket engineers and atomic engineers in the 50s and 60s. Scientists and engineers come across as the heroes in the 50s and 60s.
As one gets into the 70s, there is a drastic shift and science and engineering seems to suddenly turn into the source of societies problems rather than the source of its solutions. You see the beginnings of an anti-technology political movement. All the pollution and urban problems that developed in the 60s and onwards is blamed on technology and science. With the hippies you get this sort of back to nature ideas.
Think about the Jetsons, and American cars which looked like they had rocket boosters. All the illustrated science magazines that popped up. Surely there was a technology optimism in earlier days you can trace in adds, TV shows and what not that simply does not exist today.
To me China looks like the 1960s west. You can even see the faint beginnings of the counter culture, where people are increasingly alarmed about all the pollution and environmental destruction.
There was that period known as industrial revolution. A lot of the great inventors were either born nobility or knighted. So Britain valued their best engineering minds.
If you look at size as a main driver here, that does not match up with reality. South Korea, Japan, Singapore etc, neither of these countries are bigger than your typical mid sized to large european nation.
I think people are reading a bit too much into this. In the stage of development many asians nations are today, western nations also had a similar reverence for engineers.
What strikes me most when people from developing countries talk about unique cultural traits of their country, is that it merely represent a development stage. I can point to similar traits among earlier generations in my own country.