71 Why modern science could not be produced in China

The ruling class, represented by Confucianism, discriminated against science and technology and scientific researchers, and regarded science and technology as a strange and unorthodox skill.

Chinese ancient craftsmen were classified as artisans and lost their personal freedom, and their motivation to work and invent was suppressed.

Ancient advanced technology and scientific research results were monopolized to serve the minority class and the inheritance of through the internal Chuanwai and so on and finally often lead to the loss of technology.

Scholars generally believe that China has an ancient history of science and technology culture, but the true meaning of modern science has failed to produce in China. This question was first raised by the famous British science this Dr. Joseph Lee: "Why modern science (as we know since the 17th century Galileo era) does not arise in the middle of Chinese civilization (or Indian civilization), but only in Europe developed?" [1] This question is also known as the "Joseph Lee Dilemma". It should be said that for any researcher on China, this is a difficult problem that cannot be bypassed. We must understand that, although this problem has caused a kind of historical embarrassment and regret to the people of China, it has, to some extent, guided us to further reflect y on the shortcomings of our own culture, and guided us in the future development of how to create a favorable environment for the progress of science. Therefore, the study of this issue also has its practical significance. This article has not collected too much information in this regard, here, only a little of my personal views on the issue.

To answer this question, we must be clear about the "science" and "science and technology" difference. Obviously, the word "science" is divided into disciplines and heavy learning, its main direction lies in the abstract theoretical thinking, and its empirical, pragmatic attitude is far away, it is a purely intellectual truth-seeking attitude; "science and technology" is divided into disciplines and heavy technology, its main direction lies in the specific The term "science and technology" is divided into disciplines and emphasizes technology, and its main direction lies in concrete practical application, which is empirical and pragmatic technology, and it is a kind of more rational pragmatism. Science is more on the formal level, a branch of philosophy or close to it, while technology is more on the formal level, the use of a tool or skillful creation, close to life. It is in this sense that science is often also called natural philosophy, while science and technology are tools for survival. Science is the basis and prerequisite for the development of science and technology, and the real-world use of science and technology can have a strong need for scientific development and motivation to stimulate.

Since the development of science and technology can stimulate the demand for science, but modern China has not produced a real sense of science? The reason for this is based on the following:

1. The single cultural circle. When we look at a certain historical phenomenon or major event, we should first place it in a broad context and vision to see the basis of its occurrence. On the whole, the early primitive forms of various cultures focused on the pragmatic and empirical level, but correspondingly developed the theoretical abstraction and summarization of these experiences and practical life, and this is due to the different degree of development of various cultures for their own reasons. The competition and exchanges between cultural circles often stimulate the need for that kind of abstract theoretical thinking. Early culture circles were mainly the Chinese culture circle, the Indian culture circle and the Mediterranean culture circle. The first two were complete self-contained systems, lacking equivalent cultures around which to compete and exchange. The Mediterranean cultural circle is the opposite of this, here there is a plurality of parallel and competing cultures, such as Egyptian culture, Babylonian culture, ancient Greek and Roman culture, Jewish culture, these cultures have a slight difference in the order of time, but they are all about to compete with each other and communicate in a more open and equal environment, there is no complete export of a certain culture without import, the development of this cultural openness determines the Western cultural ecology of the next two thousand years. This development of cultural openness determined the cultural ecology of the West for the next two thousand years. This decisive cultural ecology is the victory of the ancient Greek culture and the Jewish culture in this competition. The former culture is based on the intellectual exploration of the world, and the latter culture is rooted in the religious transcendence of existence, and both attitudes nurture a scientific spirit. Of course, the general view is that religious attitudes suppress science, and several examples can be cited of the destruction of science by Christianity in the Middle Ages. But in reality, this view looks at the phenomenon rather than the essence. Christianity is the rejection of science that it does not like, such as the kind of math and physics that jeopardizes religious beliefs. But the transcendental spirit of religion was the fertile ground from which science sprang, enabling man not to remain at the level of worldly affairs, but to search for the mystery of the eternal enigma beyond the limited life of man himself. The ontological proof of God in medieval theology was the refutation and criticism of religious skeptics, and the development of a kind of intellectual discursive spirit of learning. The Chinese cultural circle was also open in the early days, such as the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period, there were many regimes in this region, and they absorbed each other culturally, but fundamentally, the inner spirit of the cultures of these different countries was homogeneous, and they all belonged to the legacy of the culture of the Three Dynasties. Only the culture of Chu differed greatly from that of the northern states, and this period of cultural pluralism and competition resulted in the first brilliant and axial era of Chinese civilization. The greatest absorption of foreign culture by Chinese culture was the introduction of Buddhism, an exchange between two parallel cultures, which contributed to another boom in Chinese culture. However, after the decline of Indian culture, Chinese culture, as a dominant culture, became a dominant culture in the Asian continent, and it was difficult to have a real cultural input, so the formation of such a closed cultural independence and self-contained body was inevitable. Because of the feeling that there is no rival to their own cultural superiority will inevitably result in the emergence of a dynasty power mentality. But on the contrary, the Mediterranean civilization in the Middle Ages, although Christianity has a unity of the world's glory, but there is no unified state in Europe, to the 14th and 15th centuries and the development of each country's distinctive national culture, such as British culture, French culture, German culture, Italian culture, Spanish culture, the culture of these cultures and the formation of a spatial parallel competitive situation.

Cultural competition and exchange can be said to be the fertile soil for the germination of scientific spirit.

2. Geographical closure. Some wise scholars, when examining human civilization, have found that the earlier the period, the more powerful the role of regional factors in shaping and stereotyping culture. Of course, the pros and cons of regional factors change with history and the transformation of time. For example, Venice and Florence became the most active and prosperous European cities when the transportation between the East and the West was well developed, but when the Ottoman Empire blocked this road, its advantages disappeared. Similarly, in the ancient and medieval times, the barbaric East Barbarians and Lingnan region of China became the first to develop in modern times because of the economic and cultural exchanges between the East and the West. In a broader sense, geographical factors often constrain the development pattern of a cultural circle or a country, and this is particularly obvious for China. In the early days, the Chinese cultural circle was confined to a relatively closed area, bordered on the east by the vast and turbulent Pacific Ocean, which is not as tame and calm as the Mediterranean Sea, and bordered on the west and north by the inhospitable Gobi, deserts, and plateaus, and on the south by the tropical jungles, all these unfavorable conditions were not conducive to cultural exchanges in the early days, which was also an important reason for the homogeneity and closure of the Chinese cultural circle.

3. The existence of absolute imperial power.

The true academic freedom and the spirit of science arose in the cracks and fringes of power. Absolute power first caused personality slavery and spiritual bondage, and its indirect consequence is to cause the closure of the ideological community and the lack of scientific spirit. This also explains why modern science has not only failed to emerge in China, but also failed to emerge in any region outside of Europe. Since ancient Greece and Rome, a natural balance of power has been formed in Europe, which is the soil of modern European democracy. In Europe, there has been no absolute royal power, phallic power and religious power, but rather the mutual checks and balances of the three forces of kingship, religious power and aristocracy. The rise of the commercial economy and the sprouting of capitalism can easily be produced in the checks and balances and statutes of this power. And this checks and balances and statute is the premise of the law. Every power seeks a stable system to protect it, in the power of the agreement, the normative law, especially the civil law is of great significance, it has the most basic protection of capitalist business. And the development of capitalism was the really powerful motive force for the emergence of modern science.

4. The suppression of mercantilism by agrarianism. China lacked both an effective mechanism for the flourishing of commerce and the germination of science, and the ideological soil for their rise. On the whole, the Chinese people's thinking is influenced by the Confucian spirit of agrarian pragmatism, since the Spring and Autumn Period, the scholar-agricultural-commercial hierarchical ordering of the Chinese society has determined the development of the historical vein of thought. Successive Chinese rulers have pursued a policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce, believing that agriculture is the real production, while merchants are only consuming, self-interested parasites. This agrarian-oriented thinking made the roots of China's commercial development insufficient. In Europe, there is the opposite situation. Since ancient Greece and Rome, the government and civil society have attached great importance to the commercial economy. Merchant power has always been an important force in society. And business is also the most active force, which impacts on all ready-made, stagnant production structure and cultural mechanism. Like the flow of water, it is everywhere, and wherever it goes, it brings in fresh ideas and takes away the most advanced local ideas. Many people think that business is about real profit and science is about true knowledge, so they are not compatible at all. This is actually only seeing the surface of the problem. In fact, the spirit of science is a kind of rational spirit, pay attention to order, law, discernment, and this is extremely useful to businessmen to analyze the market, management of the economy, in addition, the business has to carry out a longer period of time, a wider space turnover, which has a very strong demand for technological updating. And this kind of technology in the commercial boom, can no longer rely on the traditional slow accumulation of experience, but to rely on a truly scientific spirit of technology to carry out a comprehensive modernization. It can be said that mercantilism and commercial mobility is another fertile ground for the birth of scientific spirit.

5, the lack of logical thinking. There is a saying that the Chinese are not afraid of simplicity and the Indians are not afraid of complexity. This is to say that the two cultures are divided. Indian Buddhism is extremely complex learning, the degree of its complexity so that the Chinese people regarded as a fear of the way. But in this complexity lies a strong spirit of logical discernment, and this spirit of logical discernment is an important factor in stimulating the emergence of science. Of course, Indian science did not arise, there are many other factors, but if this spirit is lacking, there will certainly not be a truly modern sense of science (heavy analysis of science). However, once the Indian traditional thought and this modern science meet, its development advantage suddenly highlights, this is an important reason for the development of its software industry. Logical thinking is especially developed in Europe. From the time of Aristotle in ancient Greece, logic has become an independent study, and as early as Plato when the creation of Plato's Academy has pushed the spirit of scientific discourse in the West to a peak. Mathematics is known as the science of sciences, is the most discursive discipline, it can not rely on any real thing and can make the deepest deduction, and even can be pushed to the fundamental violation of the reality and think that in the reality of the impossible things, but this does not prevent it in the mathematical existence. The long-term development and prosperity of mathematics is the basis for the birth of modern science. And the spirit of mathematics is fundamentally a discursive spirit.

6, the discipline is not divided. We have to be clear, the so-called modern science is not the whole of science, ancient China has science but not modern science. Because modern science is only the science of heavy analysis or heavy empirical evidence. This kind of science can make an extreme in-depth analysis of a certain phenomenon, a certain thing, without regard to the rest, pay attention to the point of entry, the face of the expansion, but do not pay attention to the grasp of the system and the study of complex phenomena. In contrast to the analytical and empirical science of modern science, there is also the modern systems science and the latest chaos and fractal science. There was science in ancient China, but not modern science, of course, we can't say that China had system science or chaos science, but we can think that ancient Chinese science is far from modern science, but close to modern system science and chaos science. Ancient Chinese disciplines were undivided and chaotic, which originated from Chinese people's understanding of the universe, i.e., a kind of cosmic view of the unity of heaven and man, and the harmony between heaven and man. This cosmology and the systems theory of modern science are compatible in several aspects. From this cosmology, man is a small universe, self-sufficient and self-satisfied, which has a natural correspondence and match with the big universe. And this latest fractal science fits. In the view of fractal science, anything from its whole to its localization has a kind of primitive self-similarity, just like the British coastline, any of its localization is similar to its whole, even if it is cut to a smaller size, it has the curved arc of the coastline, and there is no such thing as what the recent science thinks that when it comes to a very small localization, it can be considered as an ideal straight line. In the view of fractal science, this ideal straight-line state does not exist, but of course this similarity between the localization and the whole is not absolutely the same, but always roughly similar. Similarly, in the universe, a solar system as a local is self-similar to the galaxy as a whole, and the galaxy as a local is self-similar to the universe as a whole. As small as a human being, it is also similar to this universe. This is the Chinese saying, "The sparrow is small, but all its organs are complete". Therefore, no part of the human body can be viewed in isolation from the body as a whole. Western medicine has made a mistake in this respect, as it regards human beings as an inorganic material body, and each localized part of the body can be viewed individually, which can treat certain physical diseases, but not completely cure the whole body. This is because the localized part of the human being and its whole also have self-similarity, and only by treating it as a whole can it be truly cured. This is the strength of Chinese medicine.

Of course,

China has ancient systematics and chaos science, but also because of its too much emphasis on unity and harmony, resulting in a lack of specific analysis, leading to the discipline is difficult to independent, which caused the birth of a truly modern science is difficult. Without experiencing the baptism of modern science, we can not simply equate it with modern systematics or chaos fractalism, but should see the shortcomings, find the fit between traditional Chinese science and modern science, and carry it forward. This is where the true spirit of science lies.