Thanks. Hegel took the notion of the clockwork universe from the ancient Romans, in particular the stoics, who saw humans as helpless victims of fate that comes from outside the world. Soon, I have to write about how much stoicism has affected Western society and how disturbing it is to see it as a self-help fad today. Stoicism’s influence is why, as you point out, why Western society is so different. I see capitalism and its brother colonialism as the overreaction to stoicism. After centuries of being told we are the victims of fate, the pendulum swung to the opposite of extreme of the drive to control fate by dominating nature.