

Why did China’s scientific innovation, once so advanced, suddenly collapse? - robg
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11496751&fsrc=RSS

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1gor
Most often heard explanation is that China had too much cheap labour to be
interested in developing labour saving technologies. Fine crafts for the
ruling class were quite innovative, but everything else could be done cheaper
by employing people.

There is a good comment that summarizes this point on
<http://www.economist.com/members/persona.cfm?econUId=2970938> (
_economist.com_ does not allow linking to individual comments).

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pxlpshr
Couldn't agree more with the two points:

1\. the absence of a mercantile class to foster competition and self-
improvement; the sheer size of China compared with the smaller states of
Europe whose fierce rivalries fostered technological competition.

2\. an education system that fails to emphasise improving “character”.

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btw0
As a long time Hacker News reader and a native chinese student here under
chinese education system, I have to point out that the education system
(especially higher education system) in China has big problems compared with
that in western countries, this definitely will affect the future of China.

1\. Decisions in universities should be made by professors, not by government
officials.

2\. Many professors simply are not qualified. I see this a most critical
problem. The top students prefer to go to industries rather than to be a
teacher in schools.

3\. Students should not be forced to take a course on Marxism, a course on
Thoughts of Mao, a course on Theories of Deng. From my experience, nobody
listens to teachers on these classes, nobody will take these courses
seriously, they just try to remember them a few days before the exams. This is
really a waste of students' time, students should learn serious economics and
philosophies instead.

It's not that we are not smart, or not diligent, it's just the current system
that hinders our advancement.

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bokonist
Except that China the Chinese economy is growing at a far greater clip than
the US. Perhaps top students going into industry is the reason the Chinese
economy is doing so well. Remember, the during the strongest period of growth
and technological advancement in the US ( 1870 to 1930 ) the research
university was practically non-existent.

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poutine
China is undergoing incredible growth mainly due to urbanization. It is moving
towards 60-70% of the people living in cities from around 40-50% now. It's
about half way along the process right now and will complete in ~15 years
bringing it to the level of developed nations. Exact figures vary based on who
you believe.

Interestingly this growth stops around the time they run in to the demographic
brick wall with more older people than younger due to the single child policy.
Not going to be pretty in the late 2020's for China I think.

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rkowalick
I'm also curious what happened to the Middle East in terms of technological
development. They seems to be at the top of there game several centuries ago,
but there doesn't seem to be as many technological or scientific ground
breaking research being done. Anyone know why this occured too?

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astine
The Crusades and Islam. It wasn't so much the effect of attacks themselves as
the fact that they lead to a rapid backlash against the sciences and secular
pursuits. It was believed that no gains made by Allah could be lost and when
the Holy Land was lost to the Europeans, it was seen as a result of secular
science and law which was considered corrupt by the Islamic leaders.

Thought to fair, It is actually a myth that Islamic empires where as advanced
as they are sometimes represented. Most of the scholars that you read about in
school were actively persecuted in their day and with the fall of Jerusalem,
the Islamacists had the excuse they needed to end their activities for good.

~~~
johnyzee
Islam was not originally anti-science, as evidenced by the fact that the whole
body of basic sciences builds upon Muslim scientific tradition (certainly true
of medicine, chemistry, optics and astrology, most of basic math etc.).

It is not that the Muslims invented these disciplines, but they preserved and
expanded upon works from earlier nations such as those of Hellenistic Greece,
which would be unknown today if they had not been preserved by the Muslims and
later translated to European languages.

There was not the same schism between religion and science as there was in the
West. In fact most of the eminent Muslim scholars were as prolific in theology
as in temporal studies. Consider f.ex. Avicenna, father of modern medicine,
who was also a big theologist and had memorized the entire Quran.

There are many such examples, f.ex. try reading about Averroes who basically
revolutionized European philosophical thought and at the same time was one of
the world's leading experts on Islamic law.

~~~
astine
You need to distinguish between Islam and the society that grew up with it.

Averroes may have been an Islamic scholar, but his true god was Aristotle. He
was quite explicit in his belief that Aristotle's was the hight of human
knowledge and that religion (meaning Islam) was a sort dumbing down meant
purely for the masses. Averroes was a pretty crappy Muslim by today's
standards. Avicenna had a similar viewpoint, though he was more orthodox.

That said, we do owe a lot to these thinkers.

~~~
johnyzee
> Averroes was a pretty crappy Muslim by today's standards.

Today's standards are the problem.

The above mentioned scientists did consider themselves religious Muslims
(Averroes reconciliated Aristotle with Islamic thought in the face of attacks
from traditionalists, and more generally was a very very accomplished
religious scholar). They just didn't accept the narrowness of the clerical
representation.

The eminence of these scholars were not flukes but a result of a successful
effort by many caliphs to promote science and learning across the empire
(f.ex. Harun al-Rashid who is widely recognized for this).

As for admiring Hellenistic thought that is universal to earlier Muslim
scholars. That is what allowed them to be great, the ability to assimilate
foreign ideas.

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astine
Sure, but today's standards have been _THE_ standard since at least the siege
of Jerusalem and were widely held before that. Whether or not these standards
are the correct standards would require a much deeper understanding of Islam
than I currently have, but the fact that this understanding has always had a
strong presence and the fact that it has dominated since the 12th century does
explain what happened.

~~~
johnyzee
Later caliphs f.ex. among the Ottomans were quite progressive particularly
politically. But you are right. I just note that there have been different
standards, and for a time the prevalent standard was not opposed to science,
learning and culture.

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jeremyw
Kevin Kelly in The Next Fifty Years of Science
(<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6119231548215342323>) has one
answer: the Chinese never developed the leverage of the scientific method, and
corollary, all such civilizations are stuck at the level of clever technology,
never able to make knowledge multiples.

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dangoldin
Let me take a stab at it.

I think the lack of scientific innovation is due to the culture of
memorization/book smarts that seems to be still ingrained in China. In the
past, a lot of people were aiming to become officials but in order to do so
they had to take these standardized tests that required years of preparation
and memorization where you would have to read and memorize text from old
thinkers.

But by going through this entire process of memorization/studying one would
start to think like them and not come up with any original ideas. Maybe parts
of this are still around today and are focusing more on memorization rather
than on creativity.

As an aside, another reason I thought of would be the Communist state would
hinder thinking for oneself and stifle creativity that way. Why I dismissed it
was that the Soviet Union had an equally oppressive regime yet they were able
to compete with the US during the Cold War just fine for a few decades.

I'll glady take criticism of my ideas; very curious as to what others think.

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danohuiginn
Here's a 40-minute radio discussion about this question:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_2006...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20061019.shtml)

[it's In Our Time, hence contains a decent amount of content]

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defen
Because their innovations were based on an intuitive, rather than
mathematical, understanding of the world. You can only get so far that way.
They didn't have a Galileo.

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zasz
Excuse me? The Chinese had their own proof of the Pythagorean theorem a long
time before Pythagoras did. You cannot accuse them of a lack of mathematical
intuition.

<http://www.visual-euclid.org/chinese/>

~~~
defen
I wasn't saying they were bad at/didn't have math, just that they didn't apply
it to understanding the physical world.

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kirse
Maybe it stopped when they decided to start putting more effort into pirating,
counterfeiting, and reverse engineering everything created by other countries
rather than doing the work on their own?

