This article was published in sanlian life weekly, No. 46, 2020, the original title of the article is "From "Needham's Question" to the future question", it is strictly forbidden to reprint it privately, and infringement must be investigated
When we look back at the "Needham Question" in the 21st century, we will find that at this time, we will explore the timing of the birth of Chinese culture, the soil in which it was produced, and the characteristics of The Chinese culture created by it, and then compare it with other cultures, especially Western culture. What we need to do now is to modernize the Needham Question.
Chief Writer / Miao Qian
In 1934, students of the Cambridge University Railroad Club posed in front of a steam locomotive
A brilliant biochemist at the University of Cambridge, who began by falling in love with a female student from China, gradually developed a strong interest in Chinese culture. He completely changed his research direction, began to study the history of ancient Chinese science and technology, and began to be known to the world as the Chinese name "Needham". One of the questions he posed in the 1930s became known as the "Needham Question".
Why did the Chinese civilization, which has always been leading in science and technology, not produce modern science? Nearly a century after the birth of this question, on the occasion of Needham's 120th birthday, from the "Needham's Question", we seem to have more questions: "Does Needham's Question" originate from a Western-centrist perspective? Can the emergence of science be largely classified as an accidental phenomenon? In the 21st century, has the "Needham's question" been dissolved? Starting from Needham's question, how should China integrate into the future of scientific development? To answer these questions, it seems that we should first return to the beginnings of civilization.
In April 1962, students at the Royal Military Institute of Technology made observations in class with the help of weather balloons
The establishment of the White Horse Temple
In the eleventh year of yongping (68) of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Han Ming Emperor ordered the establishment of the White Horse Temple in Luoyang, which became the first buddhist temple in China, and was revered by the Chinese Buddhist community as "Shiyuan" and "Ancestral Garden". Like many stories in history, such an iconic event also has a legend with the emperor as the core: "The Hanming Emperor Liu Zhuang slept in the Southern Palace at night, and the head of the dream god released white light and flew around the palace." The next day, when he learned that the dream was a Buddha, he sent his envoys Cai Yan and Qin Jing to the Western Regions to pray for the Dharma. Cai, Qin and others invited Buddhist monks to come to China to preach Buddhism, and used white horses to carry Buddhist scriptures and Statues of Buddhas, wading through mountains and rivers, and came to the capital city of Luoyang in the tenth year of Yongping. The Han Ming Emperor ordered the construction of monasteries in the style of Tianzhu . In order to remember the merits of the White Horse Riding Sutra, the temple was named White Horse Temple. ”
According to historical records, Buddhism was introduced to China in the post-Han Dynasty. In fact, Buddhism was introduced to China through unofficial channels long before the Han Dynasty. Liezi once quoted Confucius as "hearing that there are saints in the West, who do not rule and are not chaotic, who are self-confident without words, who do not transform themselves, and who are incompetent and incompetent", and in the era in which Confucius lived, he had already heard about the emergence of Buddhism. Before the King of Qin became emperor, there were already sand gates and Buddhist scriptures arriving in the Qin kingdom. By the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Buddha statues had already been introduced to China. It is conceivable that Emperor HanMing's eventual permission to officially introduce Buddhism and establish official temples was only a political statement under the reality that Buddhism had already entered China on a large scale.
Chinese culture was born on the East Asian continent, with the vast Pacific Ocean to the east and grasslands, deserts and mountains to the west and north, and for a long time it was only possible to communicate with the rest of the world through the Silk Road. Will the Chinese culture created by such a geographical environment be inherently closed? Often compared to Chinese culture is the ancient Greek civilization, which is thought to have given birth to Western culture. This maritime culture, born in the Aegean Sea, enabled frequent exchanges between Greek city-states and gave birth to many thinkers.
On a timescale of thousands of years, the geographical determinism of culture is too simplistic. From the very early days of its birth, Chinese culture began to accept and assimilate Buddhism, gradually evolving Buddhism into Zen Buddhism unique to China. Nowadays, Buddhism has become one of the background colors of Chinese culture. On the other hand, the introduction of Buddhism also had a huge impact on the birth and development of indigenous Chinese religions, such as Taoism. Eventually, traditional Chinese culture became a special culture in which Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism were interdependent and mixed. Chinese has been infiltrated for thousands of years, forming a special cultural temperament.
Needham famously wrote in The History of Scientific Thought, Volume II of Science and Civilization in China: "Although Taoist philosophy contains various elements of political collectivism, religious mysticism, and the cultivation of individual immortals, it has developed many of the most important characteristics of scientific attitudes, and is therefore of paramount importance to the history of Chinese science." In addition, the Taoists acted according to their principles, and for this reason, East Asian chemistry, mineralogy, botany, zoology, and pharmacology all originated from the Taoists. He further commented: "Taoist thought is the foundation of Chinese science and technology. To some extent, it can be said that this is also deeply related to the introduction and assimilation of Buddhism in China.
Despite being insulated by oceans, grasslands, deserts and mountains, Chinese culture has demonstrated an extroverted character of tolerance and assimilation from the early days. As Xu Zhuoyun wrote in "Ancient Rivers": "China" with the Yellow River Basin as the core is moving step by step towards "China" in world culture. At each stage, "China" has to face other groups of people and the culture they have created, and after continuous contact and exchange, or greeting or rejecting, it has finally changed itself, and also changed the culture of those neighboring ethnic groups, and even "itself" and "others" have merged into a new "self". This interaction between "oneself" and "others" has enabled Chinese culture to continue to grow and occupy a larger geographical space.
Chinese culture has shown openness from an early age, with the characteristics of being good at synthesis and integration. But to discuss why there was no germ of systematic scientific research in ancient China, on the one hand, it may stem from the fact that Chinese culture and imperial power are too closely integrated, and in the political structure of "outer Confucianism and internal law", even the changes in celestial phenomena must be understood as some kind of instruction to imperial power, and the power center of imperial power in China will not encourage or tolerate the germination of a new culture independent of the will to power; on the other hand, because of the intentional neglect or blurring of the boundary between man and nature, emphasizing the "unity of heaven and man", Chinese culture has historically neglected to summarize methodologies for observing the natural world– which led to the ming dynasty's hope that until the Ming Dynasty, people would still hope to achieve a deep understanding and self-examination of the natural world through the ambiguous "knowledge of the lattice objects".
Needham in the lab
How to "Know by Grid"
The so-called "knowledge of qualities and things" originates from Confucian thought, and was first derived from the "Book of Rites and Universities": "Those who want to know the truth and virtue in the world in ancient times will first govern their country; those who want to rule their country, first qi their homes; those who want to cultivate their homes, first cultivate their bodies; those who want to cultivate their bodies, first correct their hearts; those who want to correct their hearts, first be sincere; those who want to be sincere in their intentions, first give them knowledge; and those who want to know in the qualities." The so-called "lattice object" can be understood as the understanding of external things, and "zhizhi" is sublimated to the level of rational thinking. The problem is that although the Book of Rites juxtaposes man's political pursuits, life pursuits, moral pursuits, and desires to understand the objective world, when it comes to the methodological question of how people should rise from "lattice" to "knowledge", this classic work does not make a clear explanation.
In the Song and Ming dynasties, theoreticians such as Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi made an approximately mechanized interpretation of "lattice objects", comparing the process of human understanding of the natural world to reading and studying. For example, Cheng Yi wrote: "One thing today, one piece tomorrow." Accumulate a lot of habits, and then get rid of their own penetrations. From a modern perspective, this kind of "lattice" method, which lacks neither a certain logical basis nor methodological guidance, is difficult to help people have a deeper understanding of the natural world.
Wang Yangming, who is considered one of the few geniuses in Chinese history, was influenced by Zhu Xi's teachings in his early years and tried to understand the "zhizhi" of all things by observing the bamboo planted in his father's official office, which is also known as the "Yangmingge Bamboo"—this almost performance art attempt to achieve knowledge of the lattice object finally failed after seven days and seven nights of contemplation. Since then, Wang Yangming has also moved to the opposite of mechanized lattice knowledge, synthesizing the achievements of his predecessors and creating another school of Confucianism, "mind science". He emphasized that "the mind is the truth" - that is, the highest truth does not need to be asked for, but can be found from one's own heart.
Whether it is the hollow and didactic qualities that appear empty and preachy without any effective and reliable method guidance, or the psychology of giving up the observation, thinking, and summarizing of the external world, but believing that through introspection, from one's own heart, we can understand the theory of the unification of everything in the universe - we can see that the buds of modern science could not be produced in the cultural soil of China at that time.
Modern science is based on formal logic, based on mathematics, and developed through the classification and division of the external world, and through the study of effective scientific means. It is difficult to say that this research method and form of thinking happen to be the characteristics of Western culture, but it can only be said that Western culture realized the particularity and independence of science and the scientific method earlier. Einstein once made it clear that since China has neither formal logic nor experimental methods, it is impossible to produce science in China. Needham also wrote in Science and Civilization in China: "When the Greeks and Indians carefully considered formal logic very early on, Chinese always tended to develop dialectical logic. ”
Later Chinese, of course, also realized the nature of the problem. For example, Lin Yutang made this comment in the Biography of Su Dongpo: "The school of philosophy in the Song Dynasty is called Science. Under the influence of Buddhist metaphysics, Confucians withdrew their attention from the formal forms of politics and society and instead sank into the mind and the universe. With the help of Indian mysticism and metaphysics, they began to talk about the word 'reason', roughly speaking, the 'reason' or 'law of nature' in nature and human nature, or the 'inner spirit of all things'. Song Ru was confined to Chinese had no ability or no love for abstract metaphysics, and they did not have a deep understanding of the study of "reason" as a 'law of nature', but they fully believed that behind the shape of all things there was a ubiquitous force, either spirit, or 'reason'. ”
Hu Shi was also aware of the nihilism of traditional Chinese philosophy due to the lack of a correct methodology. His comments were more direct. He once recalled to Hu Songping: "A few days ago, when Gao Pingzi's grandson came, he quoted Zhang Zai's four empty words: 'Establish a heart for heaven and earth, establish a destiny for the people, continue to study for the saints, and open up peace for all the worlds.' I asked him, 'What is the name of the heart for heaven and earth?' You explained it to me. I said to him, 'Your grandfather was an astronomer, and you should not quote these incomprehensible words.' ’”
If we want to talk about the so-called personality and characteristics of culture, we may say that the "Great Unification Theory", which is analogous to the "Great Unification Theory" that physicists today pursue and can explain all the physical phenomena in the universe, Chinese at the beginning of civilization, has begun to hope to explain everything in the universe, including the human mind, through a set of "great unification" theory that mixes religion, philosophy and political science. But such an overly broad pursuit inevitably becomes hollow in an era when there is no correct guiding ideology and research means.
Chinese culture is self-contained, but it doesn't seem to have found a path to modern science. On the other side of the world, European thinkers who had gone through the long Middle Ages and the Renaissance also felt political, moral, and cultural dilemmas. Europe also needs the infusion of foreign cultures to solve its own problems. Both politically and morally, from the 17th century onwards, some European thinkers believed that Chinese culture from the East could be a necessary complement to European culture. A violent collision and fusion of Chinese and Western cultures began, what role did this play in the development of European science?
One of the members of the fundamental physics group, Fritschev Capra
Leibniz and Chinese Philosophy
Europe in the 17th century was in some sort of crisis. If European societies that had broken free from the Middle Ages were to move forward, they needed to break free from the traditional European feudal and rigid Christian traditions and replace them with a more liberal system. Western culture, with Christianity and the divine right of kings at its core, does not seem to be able to liberate the soul, and Europe needs an infusion of a new culture of ideas.
At least two people have invariably set their sights on China. The knowledge of these two thinkers, who had never been to China, came only from the library, as well as from the Jesuit missionaries who traveled back and forth between Europe and China. They believed that this country in the East, which was completely different from the Western world, not only fascinated them, but also contained the inherent power that could change European society.
Voltaire (formerly known as Fran?ois-Marie Arouet) is the spiritual leader of the French Enlightenment. He believed that China's history began earlier than Europe, and because the historical records of Chinese were based on astronomical observations, it was more credible; China's scientific and technological started earlier than Europe, and the reason why China's science and technology was later surpassed by the West was because Chinese had an incredible reverence for what had been handed down from its ancestors, believing that all ancient things were perfect. In the famous book "On Customs", Voltaire even wrote affectionately: "When you understand the world as a philosopher, you first turn your eyes to the East, the East is the cradle of all art, and the East gives the West everything." ”
If Voltaire's admiration of China at that time was partly due to the desire to take advantage of the opportunity to promote the transformation of French society, then another great man in Europe at that time believed that he had indeed benefited greatly from Chinese culture, and that his scientific inventions were nothing more than the development of traditional Chinese philosophy. The German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, known as Aristotle in the 17th century, invented calculus almost at the same time as Newton (Leibniz was published earlier, and the calculus notation that people use today was coined by Leibniz).
Leibniz's obsession with Chinese culture was related to the prevailing trend in European intellectual circles at the time, and also stemmed from his frequent correspondence with Jesuit missionaries who had been to China, which led him to an idealized imagination of China. In his letters to friends, he constantly mentioned China, which can be called the bridge between China and Europe in the 17th century. He was not only passionate about China, but also curious about the knowledge from China. Leibniz realized that Chinese civilization was an ancient and highly developed civilization independent of the Western world. In the libraries of Vienna, Hanover, Berlin, and the Vatican, he learned everything about China by reading the letters of Jesuit missionaries.
Needham was acutely aware of the similarities between Leibniz's philosophical ideas and Chinese culture. In Science and Civilization in China, he writes with some exaggeration: "When the time of Einstein came, it was found that a long list of philosophical thinkers had prepared the way for it—from Waiheid to Engels and Hegel, and from Hegel to Leibniz—and the inspiration at that time might not have been European at all." Perhaps the most modern European theoretical basis for natural science should be attributed to people such as Zhuang Zhou, Zhou Dunyi, and Zhu Xi, who are more than the world has so far recognized. ”
Leibniz was inspired by the enthusiastic study of the I Ching and invented binary mathematics. Thus, in a letter to a friend, Leibniz wrote that binary was not an "invention," but a "rediscovery." Needham commented: "China at least to some extent influenced Leibniz's algebra and mathematical logic, and the command system in the I Ching foreshadowed binary arithmetic. ”
Although it is difficult to say how much of the love of Qing Voltaire and Leibniz for Chinese culture stemmed from the romantic imagination of this distant and exotic culture, we can at least see the positive attitude of the European intellectual circles at that time in hoping to exchange and complement each other with China—this is what Leibniz described as the so-called "exchange of the light of civilization."
Although the lack of emphasis on logic and mathematics in Chinese culture makes it difficult to produce modern science from them, in Needham's view, 17th-century Europe, although it produced brilliant Newtonian mechanics, fell into a great conflict between the "spiritual theory" that believed that spirit was the source of the world and the mechanistic theory planned by Newtonian mechanics. Chinese culture has never been in such a dilemma of internal division, and the key point is that Chinese culture emphasizes spiritual and material unity. After the scientific revolution of the early 20th century, it was somewhat surprising to find that the complete unity of the chinese culture of spirit and matter, inner and outer, and the deliberate blurring of the boundaries between man and nature, may provide a new perspective for the development of science in modern society.
Fundamental Physics Group
Scientific development is not affected by the subjective wishes of man and is beyond the imagination of all. In the era in which Newton lived, he still had a very strong belief in "existence". Newton once wrote: "It seems to me that it is quite possible that God originally created matter into dense, mass, solid, impenetrable, and moving particles, and gave them such a size and shape, and some other nature, to occupy such a large part of space." But when we entered the field of quantum mechanics in the 20th century, the boundary between "existence" and "void" was no longer obvious, and the observer himself was involved—physicists, when studying microscopic problems, found that there was no clear line between the observer and the objective world, between the observer and the observed object, and the observer himself became part of the experiment. It can be said that we are part of nature, and our observations, and even our consciousness, will have an impact on the natural world.
That is why Einstein wrote: "All my efforts to adapt the theoretical basis of physics to this knowledge have failed utterly. It's like taking the foundation out of a man's feet, and he can't find a solid foundation anywhere to argue. Before that, physics has been developing upwards, its foundation is very strong, we do not have to doubt the basic concepts of existence and motion, but in modern physics after the 20th century, it is necessary not only to develop upwards, but also to develop downwards, because people suddenly find that the foundation of physics no longer exists.
Beginning in May 1975, in a classroom at the University of California, Berkeley, every Friday at 4 p.m., a group of physicists began to gather to discuss fundamental problems in physics. The influence of this discussion group, originally composed of two physics doctoral students, gradually expanded, and quickly attracted a large number of interested scientists, as well as doctoral students from major universities in the United States. This is why the group was named the Fundamental Fysiks Group.
It is difficult to say what remarkable scientific achievements these young people of the 1970s made, compared to the early 20th century, a group of young people who established quantum mechanics with the courage to abandon all traditions, these 70 years later later hope to find a philosophical method that can be relied upon, a trustworthy path of thought, to explain some of the basic problems in quantum mechanics. These young people want to change physics, but to a greater extent, it is their own destiny that is being changed. Some members of the basic physics team have since given up their scientific research projects and devoted their lives to the essential problems of consciousness, measurement, and other concepts.
Years later, Fritjof Capra, one of the members of the fundamental physics group, wrote a popular popular science book, The Tao of Physics, which began with discussions in the basic physics group and told what he saw as the future of physics.
Capra believes that to solve some of the difficult problems in modern physics, people will most likely need to find answers from Eastern cultures. An important feature of Eastern culture is that philosophy and religion are not separated, and their ways of thinking and systems are very similar, and they are fundamentally different from Western philosophical systems. This fundamental difference is that Eastern philosophy relies primarily on intuition beyond language and logic to understand the nature of things.
Capra argues that when Eastern philosophers communicate, their discourse in language is often specious and full of logical contradictions. This is a characteristic of mysticism, and it is precisely the characteristic of modern physics. For example, the wave-particle duality described in quantum mechanics — that matter can be a wave or a particle depends on how people observe it — is an inherent contradiction that goes beyond logic. Eastern philosophy, on the other hand, is accustomed to using a contradictory discourse to express a feeling that transcends language. In the Tao Te Ching, there are many seemingly contradictory statements, such as "the five colors are blinding, the five tones are deaf, and the five tastes are refreshing." Similar statements can be found in the Zen cases and in the Hindu scriptures that Eastern philosophers use language to communicate to create contradictions.
It is precisely because the eastern philosophers understand the truth, beyond language and logic, that it is necessary to deliberately create contradictions between language and logic. When one tries to analyze the nature of things with reason, the nature of things will appear very absurd—we can also say that human reason has limits, and that the true meaning may exceed reason.
Chinese culture has always been accustomed to treating man's own existence and the outside world as a whole, the so-called "internal affairs of the universe are their own internal affairs, and their own internal affairs are cosmic internal affairs." Although this way of thinking seems too precocious, because of the lack of effective methodology and hinders the emergence and development of science in China, in the 21st century, when science is highly developed, this holistic thinking that includes the observer himself may not be able to guide the development of science in Western culture.
When we look back at the "Needham's Question" in the 21st century, we will find that at this time, we will explore the timing of the birth of Chinese culture, the soil in which it was produced, and the characteristics of the Chinese culture thus created, and then compare it with other cultures, especially Western culture, which is of little practical significance. What we need to do now is to modernize the "Needham Question" and think about what unique angles and ways of thinking Chinese culture can provide for the development of human science in the era of globalization. For example, Chinese culture has always emphasized the unified relationship between people and the outside world, which will have some reference significance for the study of quantum mechanics and the exploration of the nature of consciousness? Although the "Tao" pursued by Chinese since ancient times cannot be described in detail in words, can it provide new ideas for scientists to study the "great unification" of physics?
Chinese culture has become a part of world culture. We can think that the exchange, complementarity, and integration of Chinese and Western cultures began as early as the era of Leibniz and Voltaire hundreds of years ago, but it is clear that the golden age of cultural integration is far from coming. Chinese culture has not historically produced natural science independently. Needham put forward the "Needham Question" out of love for Chinese culture, and out of the same love for Chinese culture, we should now explore more, perhaps how Chinese culture, after merging with other cultures in the world, with its characteristics, will affect the development of human science that was previously dominated by Western culture.
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