
In Search of Chinese Science (2009) - fitzwatermellow
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/in-search-of-chinese-science
======
kazinator
Most of what we understand as science has occurred within the last couple
hundred years which is is a tiny interval out of the period that Homo Sapiens
alone has been on the planet. Asking why science happened mostly over here,
but not over there, seems pointlessly akin to asking, why did the column of
effervescence start in this spot on the champagne glass, and not this other
spot over here.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Asking why science happened mostly over here, but not over there, seems
> pointlessly akin to asking, why did the column of effervescence start in
> this spot on the champagne glass, and not this other spot over here.

But that question is both interesting and significant. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleation)
for the phenomenon, and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheating)
for an immediate consequence. In the other direction, and with less physically
threatening consequences, we get
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercooling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercooling)

------
megaman22
Needham's Science and Civilization in China volumes are a fascinating
resource. Particularly interesting, and somewhat inexplicable, is that China
was poised on the verge of an industrial revolution during the Song dynasty,
in the 12th century. Steel production reached levels not surpassed until the
English and American mills ramped up in the 19th century. The Grand Canal was
possibly the greatest transportation project ever completed, before the
invention of railroads. The banking system used by Song merchants may have
been the most complex before the modern era.

Much of this progress was destroyed by the combination of the Mongol conquest
and the subsequent wave of rebellions that unseated them and brought about the
Ming dynasty. It's possibly the most destructive series of wars in history.

------
Jun8
Very interesting piece (and serendipitous for me since I was reading _The Man
Who Loved China_ [very well-written bio, btw]).

"Thus Joseph Needham acquired what administrators at lonely outposts in the
British Empire used to call a 'sleeping dictionary.' ”

It has often been commented that one of the fastest ways to learn a new
language is to have a partner bilingual (or even better, monolingual) in that
language; however, I had never heard of this interesting term before!

As for Needham's Question: Many, _many_ pages have been written on this topic.
As is briefly touched upon in the article the problem of moving from empirical
to "modern" science is not unique to China. Similar comments have been made
made on how the Babylonian math (that survives) is a list of algorithms to
(sometimes surprisingly complicated) mathematical problem instances and not an
attempt at general theory, cf. to be compared to the Greek advancements in
geometry.

As it's stressed in the article cultural factors are often cited as the cause.
Sayings similar to the Japanese proverb "A nail that sticks out will be
hammered" ([http://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-the-Japanese-
pr...](http://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-the-Japanese-proverb-The-
nail-that-sticks-out-shall-be-hammered-down)) are commonly used in Middle East
and Asia. There's a pervasive culture of not standing out both because it's
found to be tasteless but also because it may bring danger to oneself (and to
the family).

And it's not a question about geographical location, i.e being in the East,
either, as is demonstrated by the examples of prominent outlier ports given in
the article:

"Wesson put forward the late Roman and Byzantine empires as instances. He
calls the latter “exceptionally uncreative,” and points out that the Byzantine
trading port of Galata, controlled by the Genoese, was by the end of the
fourteenth century producing seven times as much revenue as Constantinople,
the imperial capital. The parallel with Chinese treaty ports like Hong Kong is
hard to miss."

However, if this is the most satisfactory answer then we have the updated
Needham Question: Why did such a culture develop in these societies?

~~~
tjradcliffe
The creation of science depended on a large number of random factors, from
Judeic monotheism (or something like it) to the disasters of the Reformation
and Counter-Reformation, and even (plausibly) the English Civil War and its
aftermath. Those random accidents--including the founding of universities in
the late Middle Ages--created a set of conditions where people with the brains
to create science were given access to institutions that let them think and
investigate at the same time when they had both the social freedom and the
technological capacity to publish their work, and the freedom to engage in
institutional innovation to create things like the Royal Society, whose
founding should be considered the final act in the birth of modern science:
once it existed, it would be extremely hard _not_ to get something like
science going.

So on this view, the reason why science happened here and not there was the
same reason why hominids with the capacity for general, tool-using,
representational intelligence and language happened in Africa and not the
Americas: such developments depend on a confluence of multiple unlikely
factors and as such are very unlikely to happen at all, much less multiple
times. If science hadn't been created in Western Europe in the 1600's it might
never have happened. It only looks inevitable because it did.

------
unabst
The book "Objectivity [0]" has many clues related to this topic. The history
of science is closely tied with the history of how our sense of objectivity
has been honed and culminated. Today, we take objectivity for granted, and the
subject-object distinction is baked into English, also the Lingua franca of
science.

\--

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Objectivity-Lorraine-J-
Daston/dp/18909...](http://www.amazon.com/Objectivity-Lorraine-J-
Daston/dp/189095179X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441744887&sr=8-1&keywords=objectivity)

