He was really interested in how science and technology influence society and the development of civilisation.
Ever since Fernand Braudel, in 1949, published his groundbreaking work The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, historians have been alert to the role played by seas in the development of civilisation.
Again, this is where Marxist historical materialism is married up with the dialectic – and he sees the two as inseparable – by pointing out that the switch from the pleasure principle to the reality principle was absolutely necessary for the development of civilisation but that, in the process, the Eros of human fulfilment had to be sublimated.
Dr Drake suggests, therefore, that there might be only a narrow window of time in the development of civilisations, analogous to the past 50 years on Earth, during which noisy electromagnetic signals are generated in large amounts.It is, however, also possible that someone is actively trying to send signals to the Earth.
The government's first white paper on democracy in China, in 2005, began: "Democracy is an outcome of the development of political civilisation of mankind.
Surely Thomas Aquinas, Johann Sebastian Bach, St Francis of Assisi, to name but a few, have had a considerable impact on the development of Western civilisation.
He was an extraordinarily wide-ranging historian, producing more than 20 books that encompassed, between them, most of the cultural development of western civilisation.
Alongside his tirades against financial capitalism, he recalled that "capitalism is the system that has enabled the extraordinary development of western civilisation," adding firmly that "anti-capitalism offers no solution to the current crisis".
Paradoxically, it is also endangered by some cultural changes that undermine the historically established role of abstract thinking in the development of Latin civilisation.
The book chronicles the impact of Sufism on the development of Western civilisation and traditions from the seventh century onward through the work of such figures as Roger Bacon, John of the Cross, Raymond Lully, Chaucer and others, and has become a classic.
