Michael Turton's point is well taken. Culture is not monolithic, and he’s right to speak in terms of Chinese cultures, plural, since different regions of China have their own cuisines, their own architectural styles, even their own languages, as different from each other as Spanish is from Romanian. That said, it's hard to deny that Taiwan's dominant culture is Chinese. What I try to show in the book is that it could have turned out differently. In the early 1600s Taiwan's inhabitants were, as danstr noted in his post, Malayo-Polynesian (or Austronesian). The Japanese were landing there, as were Chinese pirates, Portuguese castaways, Spanish priests, and, most importantly, the Dutch, who established the first formal colony.

So it's odd that despite the fact that the Dutch were the first to establish political control (followed by the Spanish in northern Taiwan two years later), the island nonetheless ended up culturally and politically Chinese. In fact, Taiwan was the only overseas territory added to Late Imperial China. And the really strange thing is that Taiwan became Chinese thanks largely to Dutch colonial policies! So Taiwan's story has a lot to teach us about globalization and colonization. It also helps us understand Taiwan today, because the island’s current brand of Chinese culture is partly a result of the blending that began occurring way back then, in the early stages of Taiwanese history.

I think the posters are right that Newton is vital to the industrial revolution, but just as important are the thousands of people who propagated Newton to the actual inventors who made the industrial revolution, such as James Watts himself. Historian Margaret Jacob has written a wonderful book about this process called Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West. She starts with the Watts family, showing how they learned their science: through public lectures and popular textbooks. She argues that although science existed throughout Europe, other countries lacked England and Scotland’s scientific culture, by which she means a popular scientific literacy that was fostered by institutions such as the public lecture, science education, and local scientific societies.

This is an important lesson for the United States. We should be wary of losing our lead in science, and that does not just mean keeping up funding for experiments by academic researchers. Just having science at the rarified level of academics and research institutes is not enough. We need a scientifically literate citizenry, and we’re losing our way on that count. We seem to have created an anti-scientific culture, where disbelieving in Darwin is politically advantageous, and where industry groups are able to portray research that might interfere with their economic aims as “junk science.” (See Andrew’s recent posting on Rachel Carlson and the DDT issue.) We need to reaffirm America’s traditional embrace of science and science education.

I am so glad that people are up in arms about this ridiculous bailout. Paying $2,000 for each man, woman, and child in the USA to bankroll a plan that is likely not even to work? And with no strings attached? Outrageous! I agree with most of the (very articulate) people who have posted comments here: this whole thing needs a lot more discussion.