Weber's Universal History and Capitalist "Spirit"

1. When Weber began his Prefatory Remarks section he was inclined to give a lot of innovative credit to Western society, summed up in his term universal history. From art to technology to the sciences, other cultures were (to Weber) idealistically backwards compared to Europe -- without empirical thought and scientific deduction. But many of Europe's advancements started in other regions and the West only adopted Eastern thought and improved upon it. So is Western thought really the ultimate vehicle for innovation or was it merely the one that prevailed? Could the East, if given more time away from European hegemony, have devised a completely different but equally effective method or thought or are we at the structural peak of theorizing?
2. Looking back at Marx's example of the early capitalist and how pay effects their magnitude of productivity (more equals less), does Weber's definition of the capitalist “spirit” supplant this thought as an unsound representation of a capitalist worker. Marx's example was of a Jamaican man just released from his role as a forced laborer and given the opportunity to work merely for sustainability; of course, as a pre-capitalist living in a capitalist world he would have no incentive to do more than the barest minimum it takes to survive -- but this argument is a fallacy because a pre-capitalist (especially one who was enslaved) would have no reason to adhere to a system he was never before involved in. In contrast, Weber's “spirit” worked past necessity so as to maximize his capital intake. So, really, if you paid a capitalist more how would that be a detriment to his productivity and not a greater incentive to want to keep the well paying job and extract even more income?