Part 1: Apparently there's a limit to these answer lengths? Lame. Part 2 follows.

Some discussion here from a thread on the same topic posted 16 days ago

I thought there was going to be tons on this topic but it seems this is such a vast and problematic subject that while it arises as a question periodically, it doesn't get very complete answers.

Disclaimer: I'm a historian of science with a strong interest in the crucial Early Modern period, but one with a distinctly Western viewpoint and knowledge base.

I think the first thing we have to talk about when talking about this topic is something that comes up in this comment thread. What "modern science" is and the view of it as the crowning achievement of society is a very perspective-driven view. Sitting as we are at the beginning of the 21st century, it is easy to say, "how come Europe/the West is ahead" or "how come Europe 'won' science?" whereas at different points in history and the future, we might ask the same question. In four hundred years, we might be saying, "how come the 'revolution' happened in Asia?" Which is not to say that's not a somehwat valid question (or that won't be a valid be a valid question), but that it's a question that can't just be asked now, but that can be asked at various time periods with varying levels of graininess. For example, a question that gets asked here sometimes is "Why was the US so scientifically/technologically prolific in the 20th century?" the discussion of which becomes part of the recent history of science and technology on Earth. It's all very complicated.

The fact that this is a very complicated question is probably why asking a question like this gets perhaps spottier answers than you might expect. It's such a broad question it's concerned with pretty much everything that happened in most of the world between the years 1000 and 2000.

I think the more manageable way that historians take to deal with this enormous question is to view it not as an "us and them" situation ("why us? why not them?") is to focus on what was happening in Europe around that time and ask what was going on that made Europe conducive to this kind of intellectual change at that time. There are a few factors that get talked about a lot:

1. Religion & Philosophy - Christianity, specifically the forms dominating in Europe, was more encouraging to investigation of the world than religions elsewhere during this specific period.

2. Politics - Political factors, such as political goals and structure of nations and how those with intellectual interests fitted inside nations, or not.

3. Key Inventions - Certain key inventions, combined with situational factors that made those inventions successful in context, triggered a snow-ball like effect in Europe. The moveable-type mass printing press would probably be the most central example of this.

4. Exploration - The discovery of the new world by European powers came at a convenient time to trigger interest in and a need for science and technology.

I am unable to expand very deeply on the first two of these. The latter two I am able to add some more information and perhaps someone more informed can add to the first two theories and perhaps add more of their own.

Much has been made of the printing press' role in the development of science in Europe. The argument goes something like this: Printing allowed much wider dissemination of ideas between thinkers. Books that had previously been available to only a few people were now widely available to be read and devoured by many more people. A radical new idea, or an interesting old one, could, instead of sitting in a few library, reach hundreds of minds and thus increase its odds of tripping another idea. The counter argument focuses on the fact that many supposedly influential books were not widely read, were biased towards powerful, wealthy writers (such as Tycho Brahe) and often not more accurate than hand-copied books. Elizabeth Eisenstein's book The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979) is the classic historical work on this issue. Adrian Johns' The Nature of the Book challenges her on the importance of what she calls 'print culture'.

Part 2: And now the exciting conclusion!

I think it's important to note that it's not exactly the printing press that was really important (and certainly not simply moveable type), but printing and publication as a whole process. Printing from almost the beginning was a scrappy process, printing and disseminating an unbelievable amount of forgettable, crappy literature, just as it does today.

Eisenstein's book, focuses on people like Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. Copernicus and other early modern astronomers, she argues, did have signficantly improved access to previous literature. He wasn't only observing, he was doing a heck of a lot of reading of a variety of texts. De Revolutionibus wasn't his own work, it was a reworking of Almagest according to new information. For her, print culture meant several things, including a certain amount of 'fixity'-- the persistence of content through mass-publication. Johns talks about the weaknesses of early printing: piracy (the printing of crappy editions by unauthorized publishers), for example, and the related problem of establishing some kind of authoritative authorship by which people could judge how to trust the content of books.

Both spend less time talking about the majority of the early publishing world: not the 'influential' works, but the mass-market drivel. I have read a fair bit of the more forgettable works from the 16th century that touch on scientific topics. I was struck by how so many of them are tied utterly inextricably to the explosion of exploration, whether it be navigation (techniques and technology) or accounts of strange things that have spurred re-evaluations of European truths. These books were very widely read and subscribed--if only in lip-service--to a 'testing' philosophy that perhaps (and here's my own opinion) carried more practical weight when there was a chance that a large portion of ships navigation specialists were going to use your ideas, than when an academic extols the same 'testing' virtues. Over time, this unacademic, technical work triggered more academic investigation--for example, a 1599 work on magnets, De Magnete, grew out of an array of earlier scrappier literature on navigation.

Freedom of the press (as we would term it) is central to this. Neither academic works nor the lowlier kind of technical literature can flourish where printing is heavily controlled. This is Elizabeth Eisenstein's primary point with regards to Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo etc. all of whom faced restriction on the publication of their works. This had a chilling effect (to steal another modern phrase) on thought in Catholic-controlled countries.

Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution (1983):

Whatever interpretation is placed on the edicts of 1616 and 1633, it can scarcely be doubted that they had an inhibiting effect on scientific publication programs in Catholic lands. When it asserted that the old world system had to be maintained as long as the new one was inadequately proved, and when it forbade further "attempts to demonstrate" that the new system was "true in fact," the church was not encouraging suspension of judgment or urging further investigation of the matter. The condemnations not only curtailed scientific publication programs, they also did much to block "thought experiments" based on envisaging the Copernican scheme as physically real.

Protestant printers, unaffected by Catholic restrictions, published more of these restricted titles than ever.

And perhaps this hints at the importance of one political and philosophical feature of Europe that was not always true of other places (for example, at certain points, China)-- the broken-up nature of the area. The Catholic church could restrict the dissemination of certain types of information where it had power. Outside of that area, where Europe was Protestant, the decrees had less power (but still influence in the sense that people published banned books where they could) and people still spread information around. Eisenstein points out that the exact details of the religious and philosophical reasons or arguments given aren't that important: the political suppression (and lack thereof) is.

To recap, even this badly researched, reductionist quick-step through printing and exploration and religion, philosophy and politics in Europe in the 16th and 17th century makes it clear how interlinked things were and how this question can rapidly become mind-bogglingly complex. I personally think Eisenstein makes a good argument for the power of printing with regards to the dissemination of ideas. However, I don't think the coincident explosion of exploration (as both an inspiring and driving force) can be overlooked, neither can the medieval scene-setting of other technologies (metal, glass, ships).

And if you accept this argument of printed material being crucial, ultimately, all of this has to be tied into the religious, philosophical and political reasons that meant Europeans were allowed/able to print, and print all kinds of material without censure that seriously affected people's ability to acquire books. And perhaps that gestures towards the answer as to why the rest of the world didn't suddenly change like Europe did: access to presses and therefore local (and non-religious/non-intellectual) printed material was significant reduced outside of Europe.

Postscript, with more speculation:

One of the reasons I like the printing argument is that it doesn't hinge on religion, philosophy or politics first. It presents a technology that generated practical problems that then had to be dealt with by religion, philosophy or politics. The proliferation of printed material, both intellectual works but also and more importantly (I think) widely-read drivel seems to suggest at a European failure to control the press (and also a situational interest in capitalise upon it for propaganda purposes, see Protestantism), rather than a deliberate achievement of philosophy which to me seems weak and of limited impact.

I hope this is helpful in some way.