Science and Technology in the Middle Kingdom

July 18, 2009

Here is a transcript (sort of) of my report in STS (Science, Technology and Society) about the history of science and technology in the Middle Kingdom.

 

 

你好 Solano 教授! 你好先生们小姐们! (How are you professor? How are you ladies and gentlemen?) I’m Jeric Lawrence M. Mina, a 4th year BA Social Science (Area Studies) student. Today, I will be presenting a report on the social history of science & technology in the Middle Kingdom.

 

My report begins with a brief introduction of China. In the second and third parts of my report, following the classic Chinese exposition style of balance, I present the achievements and failures of Chinese science and technology. A short conclusion follows. So, let’s begin!

 

CHINA

 

The Middle Kingdom, or zhong guo in Mandarin Chinese, is China. The Chinese of antiquity believed that though other lesser kingdoms existed, theirs was the most important and occupied a central position in their universe.

 

Here is a 1910 map of the Chinese empire – barely two years before the last Chinese emperor was deposed and the Republic of China proclaimed. The bright yellow areas are the 19 or so provinces that constitute what we call China Proper or the cultural heartland of the Chinese. Combined with the outlying pale yellow areas of Tibet, Manchuria, Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan, China is the roughly the size of Europe. Even just China Proper, where more than 70% of the population lives, is several times larger France.

 

THE CHINESE

 

The Chinese refer to themselves by a variety of names, but the most inclusive reference is zhong guo ren or people of the Middle Kingdom. The Chinese are dominant not only in the People’s Republic but also in Taiwan and Singapore. Sizable Chinese communities exist all over Southeast Asia, Korea and the United States. There are around 1 billion Chinese, making them the world’s greatest nationality (although projections suggest that India is soon to surpass China in population size). China has held the “world’s most populous country” title for more than 2,000 years since the Qin founded the Chinese empire in 221 B.C.E.

 

THE CHINESE LANGUAGE

 

The Chinese speak a lot of mutually unintelligible languages. However, the Chinese characters that correspond to the words or thoughts are fairly uniform all over China, giving cohesion and a sense of national unity among the Chinese. Called zhong wen or middle speech, it is the defining feature of Chinese civilization.

 

CHINESE SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

 

I take up from the article “Poverties and Triumphs of the Chinese Scientific Tradition” by noted Chinese historian Joseph Needham. I will be giving an overview of the successes of China with regards to science and technology, and why, yet, it failed.

 

WRITING

 

Basic to the development of larger civilizations is an improved way of communication, invariably through writing. Writing evolved independently in China. Like the Sumerians and Egyptians, the Chinese writing system is ideographic, but unlike the other two, written Chinese never simplified phonetically or syllabically to become an alphabet. Reading Chinese is very different from reading Filipino or English, and to be able to read a Chinese newspaper, one must memorize at least the 5,000 commonly-used characters. Chinese is sometimes considered the world’s most difficult language, and yet, China produced a formidably large literature.

 

MATHEMATICS

 

The Chinese excelled in practical mathematics. They devised an early counting machine, the abacus, considered as the world’s first computer, to speed up arithmetic calculations. Chinese mathematics is profoundly algebraic rather than geometric. During the Sung and the Yüan, Chinese mathematicians led the world in the solution of equations (binomials and quadratic), and use of negative integers and decimals or fractions. The Chinese knew of Pascal’s Triangle centuries before he was even born. It is known in China as Liu Hui’s Triangle in honor of the mathematician who discovered it.

 

PAPER & PRINTING

 

China is a classic “paper society” with paper itself invented in China. Paper allowed for the maintenance of records necessary for ruling such a vast empire and perpetuating traditions that still exist today. In the 7th century, the Chinese invented block printing, greatly lessening the human effort that goes into the manual copying of books. Aside from government documents and literary works, block printing was also employed in the mass production of medical and pharmacological treatises, often with detailed illustrations. In the 1400s, movable type, similar to that invented by Gutenberg, was invented by the Koreans, but using Chinese characters first before they eventually shifted to hangul, the Korean scientific alphabet.

 

EARTH SCIENCES

 

Chinese astronomers are very acute observants of celestial phenomena, in part because the stability of the state depended on interpreting Heaven’s pleasure. To accurately predict astronomical phenomena, the Chinese devised several types of clocks, the most complex being similar to those we use today. Chinese meteorologists collected weather date to anticipate repairs in the hydraulic systems and prepared tide tables for seafarers. Because China sits on a geologically active region of the world, compounded by the fact that Chinese cities are very big but made of brittle materials, there is a need to anticipate earthquakes, or at least, mitigate the damage they cause. In the 2nd century C.E., Zhang Heng devised the first seismoscope.

 

FOOD & AGRICULTURE

 

China’s shift to rice cultivation, and government support under the Sung, contributed much to China’s demographic boom during the 11th century. The Chinese also domesticated a number of animals, the most important being the pig, the most cost-effective source of meat. An effect of the population boom is the sudden depletion of coal and firewood; the Chinese responded to this crisis by developing the technique of stir-frying or the cutting up of food in small pieces and briefly cooking them in high heat.

 

ENGINEERING

 

China had its share of engineering feats like Changcheng or the Great Wall, and the Grand Canal, an artificial waterway linking Beijing with the garden city of Hangzhou, 1100 miles to the south.

 

CARTOGRAPHY

 

Chinese map makers created highly-accurate maps of the Chinese empire by using various grid systems, including the Mercator projection with the unequal spacing of latitudes. Their voyages to the “Southern Seas” or Nanyang yielded valuable maps of the principalities of pre-colonial Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka and even as far as Mozambique in Africa.

 

PHYSICAL SCIENCES

 

The Chinese of antiquity knew of the magnetic qualities of magnetite and used it to invent the compass. Ironically, the compass was first used, not in navigation, but in Chinese geomancy or feng-shui. Later on it proved valuable to the expeditions of Admiral Zheng He in the Indian Ocean during the Ming. The Chinese also mastered the science of iron casting 1,500 years before the Europeans did, using iron for their weapons and agricultural implements. An offshoot of alchemy, gunpowder was first employed as a device to ward off demons before security threats found it use as offensive weapons.

 

MEDICINE

 

Chinese traditional medicine, like the Ayurvedic medicine of India, is a holistic healthcare system unlike Western medicine. Chinese traditional medicine rests upon the theories of entirety, yin-yang, the five elements (fire, wood, earth, metal and water) and qi (energy of life). Face reading, herbal medicines, acupuncture, taiqi qigong and “guided eating” are among the Chinese prescriptions for a balanced body in harmony with nature. Medicine is considered a very noble profession and a public service (for free); to enhance the profession, countless medical texts and botanical and zoological encyclopedias were prepared.

 

MILITARY SCIENCES

 

The Chinese has always commanded the world’s largest army. For a long time China resisted invasions because of its sheer size and military innovations like the crossbow and cheaper weapons like iron swords and lances. Explosive cannons, exported by the Mongols to the Islamic empire and Europe to the west, helped end the feudal age of castles.

 

OTHER TECHNOLOGIES

 

The Chinese are also credited with practical inventions like silk, porcelain ceramics, kites and umbrellas.

 

FAILURES OF CHINESE SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

 

Despite China’s illustrious records in science and technology, there’s no denying that China was a technologically backward country come the 19th century. China lost the Opium Wars to Britain, relinquishing control of Hong Kong. Western powers controlled the “Whore of the East” or Shanghai, held the imperial palaces hostage in Beijing, and demoralized Chinese society with the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions. Horror of horrors to the Chinese, China lost twice to Japan, losing control of Taiwan and its number one vassal, Korea, and suffering from Japanese atrocities during the Second World War. This must be seen in the light that Japan, for a long time, were mere copiers of Chinese culture, barbarian brothers to the civilized people of China.

 

China acquired the image of the dirty, poor, superstitious and desperate Chinaman, peddling illegal stuff, if not himself, on the streets. Until today, this stereotype persists, that China is not innovative and excels only in making cheap yet dangerous substitutes and pirated DVDs. How come China slipped into this condition? Why didn’t the Scientific Revolution occur in China?

 

TYRANNY OF LANGUAGE

 

Some Chinese studies scholars attribute China’s backwardness to the difficulty of its language. With more than 50,000 characters, it is very difficult even for a bright layperson to express himself in writing. Even today, Chinese and Japanese students spend more time than their Filipino counterparts trying to achieve functional literacy (which, ironically, they do!). The tyranny of language ensured that only a cultured elite could read and write and propagate knowledge.

 

Chinese does not have approximate equivalents to the terms science and technology. The closest approximate to the word science is ke xue or “classification science”, implying that the Chinese don’t have a unifying concept of science that will bind all its separate disciplines of knowledge. There is no single Chinese word for technology, the closest being gong yi or “worker skills”, which suggests that the Chinese value technology as much as it value workers (just above slaves and women in traditional Chinese hierarchy).

 

BUREAUCRATIC SCIENCE & STATE CONFUCIANISM

 

The bureaucracy is China’s most pervasive social institution, controlling almost all aspects of social life, including science. Centralized administration discouraged any independent institution capable of thinking for itself and challenging imperial authority. All schools and universities in China depended on imperial patronage and can be closed at will. No school offered scientific scholarship or the practical arts. With every industry under state control, the only acceptable setting for a scientist or technologist is to work for the government. Though astronomers and physicians enjoyed high prestige, other scientists did not – it is more rewarding that they serve as officials or civil servants than state scientists. This had the effect of draining China of capable people.

 

China’s bureaucracy is anchored by Confucianism, a practical philosophy of ethical and moral behavior. The Confucian outlook is focused on family, humanity and society, not nature or the world outside of human affairs. Confucian values of submission to authority and justice (but not law) retarded science. Confucianism, along with esoteric literature, calligraphy and the humanities, were the content of civil service exams – not scientific principles or applications. Confucian scholars were great in memorization and recitation but poor in critical thinking, imagination, creativity and argumentation – important values for a scientist.

 

DAOISM

 

Daoism is China’s indigenous religious system (Confucianism is not a religion!). Daoism is especially noted for its concept of wuwei or non-action. Daoists view the world as an organism with humans but a part. Everything must be done so that man could live in harmony with nature, the emperor being the link between the two. Daoism prescribes against acting against nature because it is, like us, a living being. The objective inquiry of nature, much less experimentation, was considered a violation of nature and alien to Daoism. No natural philosophy arose from the Chinese.

 

PRAGMATISM & MATERIALISM

 

Arguably, the Chinese are the world’s most materialistic people. Though Confucians disdain profit-making, the Communist government stress social responsibility, and Buddhists preach piety, the lay Chinese is generally materialistic, working, praying and doing kind acts to get more material benefits. In the Chinese world view, anything that doesn’t have a practical end is useless. This stunted “pure science” because they don’t get the point of accumulating knowledge for knowledge’s sake or are too impatient to see the possible applications of pure research.

 

PASSION FOR JUSTICE BUT HATRED OF LAWS

 

Qin Shihuang, the ruthless emperor credited for the world’s longest cemetery (the Great Wall) and the founding of the Chinese empire, was a believer in Legalism, a political philosophy of imposing laws to create order. An allied group of the Legalists were the Mohists who emphasized logic, empiricism and deductive and inductive reasoning, values necessary for science. For a time they got their way and could have begun a tradition identical to the Greek scientific tradition. However, the Qin dynasty was a short-lived one and was replaced by the Han dynasty, one of the longer Chinese dynasties, but with a different take on things. They hated laws because they were brutal and do not factor human conditions (poverty, insanity, social contexts). They immediately banned Legalism and Mohism and replaced it with Confucianism and Daoism, as I have discussed earlier.

 

Furthermore, the Chinese were very secular and didn’t believe in an omnipotent God who issued fixed laws of nature. It made no sense for the Chinese to uncover the laws of nature or reveal God’s handiwork. In a way, their secular beliefs, unlike the religiously-motivated thinking of Muslims and Europeans, hampered science.

 

CULTURAL PRIDE, AMNESIA & PSYCHOLOGICAL WALLS

 

China’s golden age of science and technology were under the innovative and dynamic Sung and the internationally open Mongols. The Ming, which replaced the Mongols, was conservative and nationalistic. Like all dynasties, the Ming underwent a period of “cleansing” when past records unsupportive of their dynasty were destroyed. Book burning, destruction of libraries and the mass execution of loyal officials, including scientists, were regular every time a dynasty changes in China. In a way, China suffered from “amnesia” when society would forget about previous achievements.

 

The Ming was too proud and set a precedent that the Manchu would later copy – that the world needs China, but China does not need the world. They looked at how high they have reached, at how low were their neighbors, and concluded that China is indeed the center of the world. China became too isolated, physically, economically, politically and psychologically. China was stuck with its own traditional view of the world and ceased investigating or assimilating scientific knowledge from the barbarians outside the Chinese realm.

 

The world surged forward but China was trapped in time. By the time the great giant has realized how much it has slept while the world was awake, it was too late. Gunpowder, invented in China, tore down the Great Wall and barbarians plundered the Forbidden Palace, beginning an ugly chapter that Chinese historians call their “Century of Humiliation”.

 

In 1949, the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed and brought in a new age of sovereignty and national pride. Despite this, Mao Zedong’s leadership took a toll at the intellectual life of China. A semblance to Qin Shihuang’s “Year Zero” can be found in Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. However, this is being repaired by the current Chinese Communist Party leadership. In 2003 China launched its first space shuttle, Shenzou V, and was the third country to send a man to space. If the US had its astronaut and the Soviets cosmonaut, China called its man in space taikonaut from taikong or “great nothingness”. China is also the third country in nanotechnology, trailing behind Japan and the US. With millions of potential engineers and scientists, and a more open-minded society with regards to science and technology, it is expected that China once again be a major shaper of science and technology in the future.

 

CONCLUSION

 

By tracing the social history of Chinese science and technology, I hope that by now you have an idea of how a great civilization like China was humbled. The lesson here is that, both in science and society, we cannot stop and adopt a haughty attitude – we must be dynamic, moving forward, finding value in everyone, never becoming self-righteous and proud. There are certain attitudes and beliefs that may work today but eventually confine the mind in a mental straitjacket. I also hope that all of us find historical parallels in our lives and nation and do what is right to avoid the same mistakes – after all, history is the study of the past to chart a better future.

 

We must appreciate that science is not a Western product or that other cultures are not capable of indigenous science – China is just one of the examples. Scientific thinking is not, and never will, be the monopoly of Western society. In fact, Western science and society would not be like this without contributions from other scientific traditions, in this case, China.

 

Do you have any questions? If none, thank you very much for listening. 谢谢大家! (thank you everyone).

 

REFERENCES

 

Fairbank, John King. (1983). The United States and China (4th ed.). Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press.

 

McClellan, James E. III Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction.

 

Needham, Joseph. (1969). Chapter 5: Poverties and Triumphs of the Chinese Scientific Tradition. In The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West (pp. 178-189). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

 

Schlager, Neil & Lauer, Josh. (Eds.). (2001). Science and Its Times: Understanding the Social Significance of Scientific Discovery. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group.

 

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Running time: 21 minutes (6 minutes in excess of 15 minutes allotted time… missed again!)