introduction
As long as you talk about the five thousand years of ancient Chinese civilization, your heart will be filled with pride. Both culture and technology are ahead of the world. In particular, the four major inventions represent the highest achievements of ancient Chinese science and technology. However, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the rise of modern science in the West, China was far behind the West in both system and science and technology.
Needham asked
As one of the four ancient civilizations and with a long history of culture, why has China been surpassed by the West in science and technology? This question was first raised by the Western scholar Needham, which is the famous "Needham problem".
Needham was a Professor and famous Sinologist in the United Kingdom. After studying the development of ancient Chinese science and technology, he began to reflect on why ancient China, which had a civilization of thousands of years, did not produce modern science, but in Western Europe. After he raised this issue, it triggered countless controversies and discussions.
Needham
Was there any advanced technology in ancient China? Of course, the four great inventions of ancient China are the best examples. In his book, Needham also highly praised the scientific and technological achievements of ancient China. In the 3rd to 15th centuries AD, China was undoubtedly the leading in the world. For example, Zhang Heng's ground motion instrument, Song Yingxing's "Tiangong Kaiwu", Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" and so on are the best examples.
Under the impetus of the Industrial Revolution, Britain greatly increased the productivity of the time, and then the scientific and technological revolution emerged in an endless stream. And China is drifting away from it under a rigid system.
Like the continuous improvement of technology in agriculture, in fact, it is just for the sake of normal subsistence. Since ancient times, China has maintained the "people take food as the sky" the concept. In order to improve production efficiency and feed more people, ancient Chinese people invented techniques such as blowing wind and water drainage.
A natural economy of self-sufficiency
Cultural limitations
The reason why ancient Chinese technology lagged behind the West can actually be explained in many ways. Some reasons can be seen from the perspective of the ancient Chinese system. Ancient China has always lived under the autocratic rule of kings. Like Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming Emperor at that time, he could be said to be a very intelligent person, and he knew what he should do as a king. Therefore, after he succeeded to the throne, it was an absolute monopoly both ideologically and culturally.
The same was true of the foreign Qing Dynasty, which practiced a high-intensity literary prison in culture, and the imperial examination was a rigid eight-strand script. Therefore, the ancient Chinese technology and economy were also strangled in the swaddling. In the Qing Dynasty, although some people praised the "Kangqian prosperous world", behind the Kangqian prosperous era, people were extremely rigid in both ideology and economy.
Let's look at ancient Chinese thought, attitudes towards science and technology. Ancient China had its own system of thought, and regarded the ordinary natural science as a flood beast. The idea of divine right of kings and the doctrine of providence has always been in people's minds. For example, if the house of the emperor's family is struck by lightning, it will be regarded as a punishment by the heavens, of course, these strange phenomena will not be thought of from a scientific point of view in the hearts of Chinese.
Judging from China's treatment of science and technology, China still has serious limitations. For example, the "Nine Chapters of Arithmetic", which we often praise, has been produced as early as the Qin and Han Dynasties, and the solutions to mathematical problems can be said to be very exquisite. But from this work, it is still to solve the practical problems in life.
The study of astronomy in ancient China also has a long history, and there have been the habit of observing astrological signs throughout the ages. Looking at the purpose of observing the stars, it is generally to predict the auspiciousness, which inevitably adds a layer of mystery.
Differences in thinking
Of course, there are also excellent mathematicians such as Eurydice in the West, and the Greek sages are also shining with speculation. The Axial Age was a relatively magical era, with a hundred schools of thought in China, and Greece also gave birth to famous thinkers such as the famous Greek Three Sages. And what Chinese thinkers are arguing about is how to better unify the six kingdoms in a chaotic world for China's rulers.
Compared with the sages of ancient China and Greece, their thoughts were relatively pure, pursuing absolute truth, and reaching conclusions through rigorous reasoning. Although the West has ruled in religious theology for a long time. But the later revival of Western culture was born on the shoulders of Greek philosophers, which is what we know as the Renaissance, which is the difference between the Western and Chinese national characters.
And there are also great differences in the way of thinking in both the East and the West. China has been in an environment of reunification and division for a long time, and there has been no fault in both system and ideology. Even foreign rulers try to integrate into Chinese culture. This is both the great richness of Chinese culture and its limitations. And the pattern that China has been forming has not been broken.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, although missionaries came to China, the rulers also showed no regard for it and could not get out of the rigid system. It was not until the foreign ship cannons that the ideas of China and the West collided. This shift in ideology is forced, not spontaneous. Of course, this kind of thinking is still there, so China's Nobel Prize in Science and Technology is still very rare.
epilogue
Needham's question is one that we have been thinking about ever since. Of course, from a broader point of view, apart from Europe, there are no conditions for other peoples to arise. Of course, in the eyes of the ancient Chinese, there was a scientific concept? The answer is no, at best technical.
bibliography
Needham: A History of Science and Technology in China
Meng Decheng and Shang Hui, "Cultural Interpretation of The Backwardness of Science and Technology in Ancient China: The Trap of Cultural Institutional Force"
author
Jinnian, a freelance writer and history enthusiast, devotes himself to the study of history. It is expected to use history to teach and learn from the precepts, to shape the collective memory, and to learn from the past.