Why there was no mechanics in ancient China

When we want to discuss the mechanics of modern China, it is natural for us to swing back to the mechanics of our ancient times. Yet modern mechanics did not arise in China, but by introduction.

China's famous physicist Wu Dayou (1907 -- 2000) said in a speech at Taiwan's Tamkang University in 1976, "Some people in our country think that science has already existed in our country in ancient times, and they were very happy to read Joseph Lee's book 'Science and Invention in China,' which lists a lot of technological inventions, some of which are centuries older than those in Western Europe, and which are sufficient evidence to prove that they are superior to those in Western Europe. However, reading the book, it is easy to see that China's inventions are mostly technical, observational, individual, and ...... If in the abstract, logical, analytical, deductive scientific system. For example, we have the invention of machinery, but have never been able to establish the abstract principle of dynamics; our optics has the observation of convex and concave mirrors and shadows, but has not had physical optics (the concept of light waves); our mathematics has applied algebra, but has not had the geometry of logic; we have had the application of magnets, but have never reached the quantitative law of magnetic action; the center of our philosophy is ethics, which is the relationship of man to man and man to society, but has not had the philosophy of Western Europe. Western European philosophy. In general terms, our national tradition favors the practical. We have inventions, we have technology but not science. This is the reason that after we lost contact with the West during the Qing Dynasty, we were very susceptible to the superficiality of the Western material civilization (machinery, armaments), not knowing that underneath the surface of these material civilizations, there was a scientific foundation."

What Wu Ta-you means by this passage is that ancient China did not have the natural sciences that produced precision measurements. And mechanics was the first precision science to be formed in the world, i.e., there was no precision mechanics, i.e., modern mechanics, in ancient China.

The end of the 19th century in China is committed to the introduction of the translation of Western scientific works of the British Fu Lan Ya (J. Fryer, 1839 -- 1928) in 1890, around the same time, in his preparation of the "Ge Zhi Zhi" of the "heavy learning" volume of the introduction, there is a paragraph as follows:

"As for the heavy learning, not only the people of today, that is, there is no one to speak of the ancient book The Chinese have no such study, and there is no name for it. The Chinese do not have this kind of study.

"Since the intercommunication between China and the West, there are Westerners who are proficient in both Chinese and Western languages, translating the book of heavy learning and understanding the two theories of gezhi and arithmetic."

The term "heavy learning" is an early translation of the Western term mechanics. This passage from Fu Lanya shows, first, that there was no mechanics in ancient China, and second, that mechanics in China was brought to us by foreigners. Later historical developments further illustrate that, thirdly, even when foreigners came to their doorsteps, Chinese acceptance was not painful, and even sometimes took a rejectionist attitude; the process of acceptance was slow and tortuous.

In fact, some of the most basic concepts of dynamics, such as velocity, acceleration, force, mass, frequency, and so on, were not developed in Chinese history, but were brought by foreigners. Not to mention some of the most important laws of modern mechanics, such as the laws of free-fall and parabolic motion, Kepler's three laws of celestial operation, Newton's three laws, the principle of virtual work, the law of conservation in mechanics, and some of the fundamentals of mechanics of continuous media. If we call these contents what we call mechanics nowadays, then we can simply say that there was no mechanics in ancient China. This is what FuLanYa said, "As for the heavy learning, not only the present people have no speakers, that is, the ancient books also regardless of and, and no its name."

From the Yuan and Ming Dynasties onward, why China's science and technology have long lagged behind the West has been a topic of endless discussion among modern Chinese intellectuals. In fact, before Yuan, the so-called advancement of Chinese science and technology also refers mainly to the advancement of technology. In Chinese history until nowadays, science and technology have never been generalized as science and technology without any distinction. In fact, any nation with underdeveloped science had technology in ancient times. That is why our scholar Gu Jun (1915--1974) said, "Chinese thought has only moral precepts. There is no logic, no philosophy in China. There is the Zhou Thigh Scripture, but it is not on the table. It is as if China had many good crafts but could not develop precision science."

Albert Einstein said, "The development of Western science was based on two great achievements: the invention of the system of formal logic by the Greek philosophers (in Euclidean geometry) and the discovery that it was possible to find out the relationship between cause and effect by means of systematic experimentation (during the Renaissance)." Whitehead said, "Greece is ultimately the mother of Europe." Generally speaking, on a world scale, the origins of present-day natural science are thought to come from ancient Greece, especially ancient Greek logic. In order to figure out why there was no mechanics, and thus no precision science, in ancient China, for this reason we have to review the situation of natural science in ancient Greece.

The reason why the science of ancient Greece occupies the most brilliant page in the history of mankind is fundamentally due to the fact that there existed a democracy of aristocracy in ancient Greece for hundreds of years.

Ancient Greece was composed of many independent city-states. From about 800 B.C. to 100 B.C., Greece was politically an aristocratic democracy. The military head of the city-states was the king, but the king's power was weakened or restrained by a strengthened council of elders. Occasionally, some ambitious men (usurpers) conquered other city-states and established a politics of alternate usurpation. Even if the politics of usurpation emerged, the power of the usurper could not be compared with that of the later European monarchs and the Chinese emperors. Because, the title of tyrant is a derogatory term indicating that his power was not legally obtained but stolen, secondly, such power could not be naturally inherited by his descendants, and thirdly, it was mostly unlikely that it would last long and be replaced by the oligarchy or democracy of the aristocracy.

Because Ancient Greece practiced politics based on the democracy of the aristocracy, decision-making and deciding things relied mainly on debates to persuade the people involved in decision-making to gain a majority. The 700-year-long democratic political atmosphere gave rise to many debaters. The popularity of debate led to the development of the laws that must be followed in order to conduct a debate and the study of how to win a debate, which is called logic. Aristotle's work "Treatise of Instruments" is the great success of ancient Greek logic. As a result of the development of logic, ancient Greece produced the mathematics of reasoning. The ancient civilizations of the world have their own mathematical traditions, there is the ancient mathematics of Egypt, there is the ancient mathematics of India, there is the ancient mathematics of China, however, the only place where reasoned mathematics was produced was only in ancient Greece. Euclid's Geometry is a masterpiece of ancient Greek reasoned mathematics. The work of Archimedes on mechanics is a good example of the combination of ancient Greek mathematics and mechanics to produce the germ of modern mathematics, and the modern natural sciences in Europe in the 17th century, which started with mechanics, are the result of the inheritance and development of the ancient Greek scientific tradition represented by Archimedes. Thanks to the Arab translation and preservation of the scientific literature of ancient Greece after its destruction by Rome, it came back to play a role in the later European Renaissance.

If anything, Western science began to spread in China from the time Matteo Ricci came to China as a missionary in 1582. It took 300 years of twists and turns until the establishment of the Tongwenkuan in Beijing in 1862 before the subject of mechanics could be openly taught in China and a group of students could learn about it. After that, the development was still very slow, in the 20th century in France, Germany, Russia and other industrially developed countries, there have been specialized training in mechanics, while China until the People's Republic of China can not talk about the establishment of the State. China's scientific development is largely in step with the democratization of society. The development of mechanics in China was mainly after the founding of the People's Republic of China, and it began to develop with the state's proposal to establish an independent industry.

Why was there no mechanics, and thus no sophisticated natural science, in ancient China? Fundamentally, it was because of China's thousands of years-long feudal dictatorship.

China is not only the continuation of the authoritarian system for a long history, and more and more later to strengthen the trend. If in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, decisions on important matters were made by a majority based on three conclusions: divination, the opinions of ministers and the will of the emperor, then the emperor, despite being the supreme ruler, was subject to a number of constraints.

During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, China had a situation in which many small states were divided, though annexation by force resulted in the establishment of Qin's monolithic and authoritarian world. This was followed by Qin Shi Huang's burning of books and burying of scholars and Han Wu Di's dismissal of all schools of thought and exclusive respect for Confucianism, which allowed the emperor to dictate, and feudal autocracy continued for thousands of years.

Under feudal autocracy, all words and deeds were based on the "Three Programs" (i.e., the king as a subject, the father as a son, and the husband as a wife) as the standard, even if your "program" is said to be unjustified, but also have to be absolutely obeyed, there is not the slightest refutation of the room. Not to mention the fact that there are a series of dogmas that rule the dead over the living, such as "three years without changing the father's system is called filial piety".

If anything, the Renaissance movement in Europe was a revival of ancient Greek democracy and science. From its beginnings as a literary glorification of humanism's contempt for theocracy, by the 14th and 15th centuries Europe's theocracy and monarchies faltered, ushering in the scientific boom of the 17th century. In contrast, during the same period, China was in the Ming Dynasty, and feudal autocracy was strengthened in an unprecedented and barbaric way after Zhu Yuanzhang gained power. 1380, Zhu Yuanzhang killed the prime minister Hu Weiyong for conspiracy, implicating 15,000 people, and took the opportunity to abolish the prime minister, leaving the emperor with sole power. The Prison of Words was a way of persecution of intellectuals by feudal rulers for thousands of years. Beginning with Zhu Yuanzhang and continuing for hundreds of years after him, the literal prison was developed to the most brutal point. Zhu Yuanzhang strengthened the politics of secret service by organizing the Jinyiwei, which was directly under the command of the emperor, and was dedicated to monitoring and dealing with the ministers, who were the first to be punished with the "court cane" for insults. As a characteristic of slave society, the system of human martyrdom in China gradually disappeared after the Qin and Han Dynasties, but Zhu Yuanzhang revived the barbaric system of human martyrdom, and when Zhu Yuanzhang died in 1397 (the 30th year of the reign of Hongwu), 46 concubines were martyred.

The first evil of feudal autocracy made it impossible for China to produce the logic needed for sophisticated science, and thus the mathematics of reasoning.

There was also a phase of cultural prosperity in China during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, when the style of verbal argumentation was also prevalent. Corresponding to this short-lived style of argumentation, there was also a germ of logic like the one described in the Mojing. The logic in the Mojing cannot be compared with the logic in the Treatise on Tools. The latter was so complete that in 1787 the German philosopher Kant said in the preface to his Critique of Pure Reason that "since Aristotle, logic has not been able to go one step further, and it therefore seems as if logic were finished and over." Under the feudal dictatorship, all important decisions were made by the emperor, "I am the truth", there is no room for refutation and argument, and there are no "axioms", "definition", "The first is that the emperor's decision was made by the emperor, and the second is that the emperor's decision was made by the emperor's decision.

The importance of logic to precision science can be seen from the introduction of logic, Yan Fu said, "is the study of all the law of the law, all the study of the study". The American sinologist Fei Zhengqing believed that the failure of Chinese science to develop was related to the fact that China did not have a more perfect logic. In the absence of logic, Chinese mathematics has always been stuck in the calculation, so China since ancient times, mathematics is called arithmetic. Chinese mathematics lacked reasoning and argumentation, which are essential for sophisticated science. Prof. Zhu Zhaoxuan of Peking University said, "The laws of motion and gravity given in the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy could not have been derived from the inherent Chinese tradition of science and technology. There has never been such a concept as acceleration in Chinese historical documents, and traditional Chinese mathematics, too, has not yet provided the necessary tool, the theory of conic curves, to produce the concepts of acceleration and gravity. Galileo used the properties of the parabola when he generalized the concept of acceleration from the laws of free-fall motion. Newton needed the properties of an ellipse to derive the law of universal gravitation from the laws of planetary motion. In Europe, the tool of conic curve theory was readily available. As early as ancient Greece, Apollonius listed 400 propositions in his monograph Conic Curves. In China, the word "ellipse" for ellipse may be found as early as in the Measurement of Quanyi (1631) and in Aixinjueluo. Xuan Ye (Kangxi, 1662 -- 1722), an abridged translation of the Geometric Principles in the Mathematical Essence, while the term 'parabola' was not used until the time of Li Shanlan (1811 -- 1882)."

The second evil consequence of the feudal autocracy, the feudal autocracy could not create the external demand conditions for the development of modern science and technology, i.e., there was not and could not be a market economy. Due to the lack of market demand, many inventions in China could not be noticed by the whole society, and quite a lot of inventions were only to meet the needs of the imperial power and the court. For example, and mechanics-related inventions were in the incense burner, the water transport instrument platform, the memory of the drum car has been lost; China's four great inventions of gunpowder, long been used in fireworks and firecrackers, but not in the expansion of the market needs of weapons. In addition, because of the need for imperial power, certain fields of study as a forbidden area, not allowed to the general public involved. Such as astronomy, after the Qin and Han dynasties, not allowed to folk research, astronomical works are listed as banned, not allowed to folk engraving and printing and private storage, many of China's ancient astronomical works will be lost. That's why Joseph Lee, a British scholar, said, "Whoever wants to explain the failure of Chinese society to develop modern science would do well to start by explaining why Chinese society failed to develop commercial and later industrial capitalism".

Under the autocratic system, the emperor sometimes advocated a policy of "rest and recuperation" and "prosperity for the people and the country" and paid attention to the development of production. Some scholars believe that the development of production will naturally lead to capitalism and the formation of a market economy. Gu Zhun puts it well: "Some of us talk extravagantly about how capitalism can grow naturally from within, forgetting that capitalism is not purely an economic phenomenon, but also a system of legal power. The legal system is a kind of superstructure, not only the economic base determines the superstructure, the superstructure can also make what kind of economic structure grows or does not grow."

In fact, by the end of the Qing Dynasty, some big businessmen also arose in China, but due to the powerful and cunning feudal autocracy, these businessmen could only serve as vassals of the imperial power, and could not influence the policies of the authorities, let alone shake the rule of the imperial power. These merchants could only rely on bribery to get a little bit of pathetic business rights from the feudal autocracy. Joseph Lee said: "Capitalism is a social system that the Chinese people have never been accustomed to, do not need, and are increasingly unwilling to accept. In fact, instead of saying that the people are not used to it, I would rather say that the people in power or the system of thousands of years of feudal autocracy does not accommodate it.

The third evil of feudal autocracy, under the rule of autocracy, from the theoretical understanding of the formation of the tradition of contempt for science and technology.

Because of the strong feudal authoritarian rule, the ancient Chinese intellectuals were divided into two categories: one was dependent on the rulers, to climb the road of "learning and excellence"; the other was away from the rulers, to take the road of hermits. The intellectuals of these two paths each formed their own theoretical system.

Confucianism, represented by Confucius and Mencius, is the theoretical basis for the former path. The so-called "cultivate one's body, unify one's family, rule the country, and pacify the world", "if you want to achieve something, you should first achieve it", "loyalty, forgiveness", "benevolence, righteousness A series of teachings such as "loyalty, forgiveness, benevolence, righteousness," etc. are all in the service of this path.

The Confucian classic Shangshu (The Book of Changes), in judging the Shang dynasty emperor Zhou, said he "made strange tricks to please women". Kong Yingda commented: "strange skills is called strange skills, obscene and clever is called excessive work, the two are the same. But the skill according to the person, the skill refers to artifacts for the different ear". Here, "to please the women" refers to the court amusement. China's traditional view of science and technology as "wondrous skills and wonders" is here. In fact, under the authoritarian rule, there was a group of people who wanted to rely on the invention of the emperor's approval to achieve the purpose of the official. In ancient times, there were many inventions that could only be used for court amusement in the absence of a market economy. For example, inventions related to mechanics were Zhongjian incense burners, Kongming lanterns, ships, firecrackers, rockets, fireworks, kites, bamboo dragonflies, chimes, and so on were all of this kind. The above Confucian writings hold the view that the path of seeking promotion by such inventions is an insufficient path, not the right path to a career. The proper path of the career path is to read the scriptures and take the examination.

The doctrine of Taoism, as represented by Lao and Zhuang, served the hermit's path. They advocated a "clear mind and low desire" and "doing nothing to rule".

They advocated "doing nothing" to what extent, in "Zhuangzi. The Outer Part. There is a passage in "Heaven and Earth" that reads: "Zigong traveled to the south of Chu, and then to Jin, where he passed through Hanin, where he saw a square foot of land that would be used as a nursery bed; he chiseled a tunnel and entered a well, and held an urn to irrigate it; in the last few days he used a lot of force, but he did not have much success. Zigong said, "If you have a machine here, you can dip a hundred beds in a day, and you will do very little work but see a lot of success. For the nursery looked up and said: "Why?" He said, "Chisel the wood for the machine, the back heavy front light, take the water like pumping, the number is like anonymous soup, its name is Pulley." For the nursery for the wrath of the color and smiled and said: "I heard of my teacher, there are machines must have organic matters, organic matters must have organic mind. Machine heart stored in the chest is pure white is not ready. Pure white is not ready for the God is born uncertainly, God is born uncertainly, the Road is not carried. I am not unaware of it, but I am ashamed not to do it." Zigong hid himself and was ashamed, and stooped down and did not respond."

This passage profoundly reflects the Taoist attitude of inaction towards technological innovation. In order to keep the Tao "pure and white," he was ashamed to use any advanced tools. Let alone to diligently conduct scientific and technological research.

In Lao Zi's Tao Te Ching, it says, "Five colors make you blind; five sounds make you deaf. The five flavors make one's mouth feel good, and chasing the fields and hunting makes one's heart go crazy" and "If the people have many sharp tools, the country becomes fuzzy; if the people have many skills, the strange things rise up," are clear objections to the pursuit of materialistic pursuits.

There is a line in the Zhou Dynasty work "I Ching" that reads, "To prepare things for use, and to set up a tool for the benefit of the world, there is nothing more important than the sages. Kong Yingda commented, "To prepare the things of the world for the use of the world, and to establish and accomplish the tools of the world for the benefit of the world, only the sages can do so." From ancient times, China has had a strong tradition of "applying what we learn", which probably started from here. Under the guidance of this understanding, the only purpose of human activity is to "apply", and the activity of recognizing and discovering the laws of nature does not have any status. In other words, if you want to do something, you have to ask, "What is the use? If you can't answer the question of what is the use of it, you will be regarded as "not aiming at anything", and this is considered to be the most powerful weapon against scientific research. Moreover, the "application" here is often interpreted as the promotion of a title, the development of wealth, and so on.

All in all, the ancient Chinese intellectuals under the feudal autocracy, whether they were in the imperial court or in the opposition, disdained science and technology. Despise science and technology is their **** the same understanding. Even for those who valued science and technology, they only valued the application of artifacts, and cognitive science had no place. This is the cognitive root of the contempt for science and technology under the feudal autocracy.

The fourth evil consequence of the feudal autocracy was the formation of a complete education system under the feudal autocracy, which was the imperial examination system. China's imperial examination system began in the Sui Dynasty and was perfected in the Tang Dynasty.

The imperial examination system tied the study and research of learning to officialdom. It was not so much a form of education as it was a form of micro-training for the minions of the people under the emperor's rule. The imperial examination system required people to read the Four Books and Five Classics from childhood, to study the art of becoming an official, and to learn to write essays praising the emperor. In the Ming Dynasty, when feudal autocracy was strengthened as never before, this kind of writing developed and was characterized as the eight-legged essay. Eight-legged essay caused China to praise the past but not the present, praise the upper and lower, empty and useless style, and then never implemented the examination involves science and technology content. All of these seriously affect the dissemination and development of science and technology.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Italian Matteo Ricci and Xu Guangqi translated the Western mathematical masterpiece Geometry. Xu Guangqi felt the need to popularize this kind of knowledge in China, he said in the preface: "This book is extremely wide, at this time especially in urgent need", it "can make the learning of theory, practice its careful; learning things from its fixed method, the development of its ingenuity, so the world is not a person not learn. " He predicted: "I think that a hundred years later, everyone will be practicing it". But these words of his more than two hundred years, in the authoritarian system under the imperial examination system system, failed to realize, until the end of the Qing dynasty Li Shanlan in the same cultural hall set up the arithmetic hall, only to stipulate that "geometry originally" for the mandatory reading. As for the geometry, physics containing Newtonian mechanics as the content of popular education, that is after the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty.

So many reform thinkers in modern China advocated the abolition of the imperial examinations and the reform of education. Yan Fu criticized the imperial examination system, "the eight shares to get a scholar, so that the world to spend years in the useless place, degeneration of the bad ZhiJie in the obscurity, long people false pride, faint people's wisdom, not enough to support the country, not enough to capitalize on the next matter of livestock, the destruction of talent, the country with the poor and weak." Liang Qichao denounced "the eight stocks and all learning is incompatible, and science in particular." And called for "the change of law. And called for "the basis of change in the education of talents, the rise of talents in the opening of the school, the power of the school in the change of the imperial examination."

The fifth evil of feudal autocracy, under China's feudal autocracy, the emperor has supreme authority and arrogance. Even a fool, once mounted on the throne of the emperor, will become a know-it-all, everything can be all-around talent. His words are "golden words", people have to bow down and listen. This fostered a foolish sense of superiority in the emperor, calling himself the Son of Heaven, calling the country he ruled the Kingdom of Heaven, and denigrating all other countries as barbarians. This was evident to Matteo Ricci when he came to China at the end of the Ming Dynasty. He commented: "Because of their ignorance of the size of the earth and their arrogance, the Chinese think that of all the countries, only China is worthy of envy. As far as the greatness of the country, the political system, and the fame of scholarship are concerned, they regard all other peoples not only as barbarians, but also as irrational animals. In their opinion, there was no king, dynasty, or civilization elsewhere in the world to boast of; and the prouder this ignorance made them, the more inferior they became once the truth was known." Subsequent historical developments proved Ricci's comment to be apt.

China originally had no mechanics, but if one is humble enough to learn from foreign countries, one can still learn quickly. However, the arrogance of this night and day, closed-door arrogance and for foreign academic exclusion of all attitudes, resulting in hundreds of years China's mechanics has been backward. So far this effect can hardly be said to have been cleared up, "Cultural Revolution" in the thermodynamics, relativity is not to be judged? Not in the judgment of the "foreign pander to foreigners" under the banner of the incitement of blind xenophobia?

In the above, we said that there was no mechanics in ancient China. Mechanics is the earliest of the natural sciences to be precise, and modern natural science can be said to be primarily mechanics. From this it can also be said in a certain sense that there was no precise natural science in ancient China. That is why the British philosopher A.N. Whitehead said: "From the point of view of the history of civilization and the breadth of its influence, the Chinese civilization is the greatest civilization in the world since antiquity. The endowment of the Chinese for research is unquestionable in the case of individuals, yet Chinese science is, after all, insignificant. We have no reason to think that China could accomplish anything in science if it were so left to its own devices."

Through the above discussion, we can conclude that the absence of mechanics in the true sense of the word in ancient China, and thus the absence of precision science, was closely connected with the feudal despotism in China. That is to say, ignorance was connected with feudalism. Therefore, after the Xinhai Revolution, the revolutionary intellectuals led by Chen Duxiu called out the slogan of "democracy and science". Science and democracy are ****born, and modern science is impossible without democracy. Now we revisit these historical facts, still has practical significance:

First, recognize our ancient backwardness, can inspire us to move forward.

Secondly, analyzing objectively the reasons for the backwardness of our ancient mechanics, the shadows of which can still be seen in the many factors that hinder the progress of modern mechanics, which also hinders the progress of science and technology as a whole, and from which can be revealed the direction of the reforms that we need.

So the history of modern mechanics in China is actually the history of the introduction of modern mechanics from the West and the introduction of modern mechanics from the West by the Chinese.