Why did China's science and technology gradually fall behind in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties?

China once led the world in the invention of handicraft technology, but it has been lagging behind in science and technology. According to a book 100, the greatest invention of mankind, written by an American scholar, China has two things in it, one is a compass, and the other is papermaking. Gunpowder and movable type printing are thought to have been invented by Europeans first, but in any case, they were also created by China, which can prove the wisdom of China people. In addition, there are plows, looms and waterwheels. They were all invented by China people themselves, representing the highest intellectual invention of mankind at that time.

However, although there were prosperous Han and Tang Dynasties in China, the economic aggregate was the first in the world at that time, but science and technology never took the lead in the world. Since the ancient Greek civilization more than 2,000 years ago, China and western civilization have parted ways, and it is impossible to develop modern science and technology within China civilization. Although most of the major scientific and technological inventions in the west have been concentrated in the past 500 years, they are the result of long-term accumulation of western science and technology, and they are not accidental.

? A hundred schools of thought contend belongs to humanistic ethics, and ancient Greek civilization provides a tool for scientific exploration. Although the origin of human beings is very early, the civilization recorded in writing is very late. Around 2500, East and West established their own civilizations almost at the same time. A hundred schools of thought contended before, which represented the golden age of China's ideology and culture. A large number of sages such as Laozi, Confucius, Mencius, Mozi and Han Feizi appeared, and ideological systems such as Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism, Legalism and famous scholars were established. However, the thought of a hundred schools of thought contend has basically no scientific content, and it has not provided a thinking tool for future generations to explore nature. Mohist and famous artists have a little flash of logical thought, but they are neither systematic nor rigorous.

Very different from China's civilization tradition, many Greek philosophers such as Aristotle, Euclid, Pythagoras, Plato and so on. It's a scientist They initiated modern western science and provided a logical tool for future generations to explore nature, such as Aristotle's On Tools. Moreover, Euclid's Principles of Geometry, a model for establishing a scientific system, appeared, which was established by relying on several simple axioms and using strict logical reasoning. It is no exaggeration to say that without the civilization founded by ancient Greece, there would be no western technology today. Modern science and technology developed gradually from Greek civilization.

This cultural difference between the East and the West has been affecting today's education. Even the China students studying in Europe and America still have obvious gaps in critical thinking ability and the establishment of scientific system.

? China did not develop a systematic mathematical thought in ancient times, so it lacked effective tools for scientific research and development. I read the ancient and modern mathematical thoughts written by Klein. From ancient times to modern times, there are almost no people in China. Mathematics has more than 65,438+000 branches, such as geometry, algebra, topology, set theory, graph theory, statistics, probability theory and so on. Not only is none of them mature in China, but not even a mathematician from China has made a pioneering contribution in these disciplines. The American magazine Science published an article about the history of mathematics, bluntly saying that China's contribution to mathematics in history was lackluster, and he had no systematic mathematical thought, which was far less than that of Arabs and Indians. Objectively speaking, there were also flash mathematical discoveries in ancient China, such as Pythagorean theorem, pi, and secant, but they were not systematic. You know, the lack of effective mathematical tools will restrict the invention and creation of science and technology. A country's mathematics level determines a country's science and technology level.

? China people are better at inventing than discovering. Throughout the history of science and technology in China, great achievements are inventions, such as the compass and gunpowder. However, China people have not made any significant scientific discoveries that have a far-reaching impact on science and technology. Although China people invented the compass, they didn't know the principle of the compass and didn't find any natural phenomena such as electricity and magnetism. Electromagnetic phenomena's discovery is the foundation of modern science and technology. Inventions sometimes come from accidental coincidence. However, it is difficult to find that the supported inventions are lasting, let alone systematic. The invention of gunpowder came from coincidence. China people didn't understand the chemical elements in it, and didn't make any contribution to chemistry, because without chemical knowledge, there would be no later inventions. Because there is no real scientific discovery in the history of China, it is difficult to establish a scientific system, which leads to a long-term stagnation of inventions, or even retrogression.

? China lacks a mass base that loves science and technology and is good at rational thinking. What kind of mass base there will be outstanding talents in what fields, not only in the fields of science and technology, but also in the fields of sports and literature and art. The enduring reason of Brazilian football is closely related to their strong mass base of football. Many important scientific discoveries in the history of science were actually made by the general public. The generation of scientific masters can not be separated from a suitable ecosystem, which is the mass base.

In the traditional values of China people, the inventor of science and technology is not taken seriously at all. Sacred Amethyst is a textbook that had the greatest influence on children in ancient China. It is a kind of poetic style in itself, which advocates the values that only poetry sees wisdom, such as "Cai Wenji can argue the piano and Xie Daowen can chant". She is a clever woman and a man. Be a policeman. ""Ying is eight years old, can recite poems, secrete seven years old, and can play chess. He is enlightened, people are amazed, he is young and knowledgeable, so he should be effective. " Here, playing the piano, reciting poems and writing poems are clearly regarded as aspects of judging wisdom, and ignorant children are encouraged to emulate their learning talents in these aspects. Therefore, there are many bachelor of arts in history, which has formed a situation of "Jiangshan produces talents". However, if the content here is changed to scientific and technological inventors, such as seismograph invented by Zhang Heng, papermaking invented by Cai Lun and pi calculated by Zu Chongzhi, young people will be encouraged to make efforts in the direction of scientific and technological inventions. In every generation, there may be people like Zhang Heng, Cai Lun and Zu Chongzhi, and there are countless inventors or thinkers in history!

? China is short of a scientist and there is no science question bank. In the history of Europe, scientists have long been formed. They have no national boundaries and often exchange and discuss scientific issues. When a person puts forward a scientific hypothesis, it is not only the same generation of scientists who explore together, but also several generations who explore wave after wave and finally find the scientific truth. There is no such tradition in China. No one put forward meaningful scientific questions, no group of people who like scientific questions explored collectively, and no cross-century collective efforts to overcome scientific problems.

? Chinese characters limit the scientific abstraction ability of China people. The invention of Chinese characters is the crystallization of the wisdom of the Chinese nation, which made the first contribution to Chinese civilization and will be inseparable from Chinese characters in the future. However, we have to admit that compared with Latin letters, Chinese characters are clumsy and sometimes even impossible in expressing scientific laws, forming scientific formulas and deducing laws. This has made China people miss important scientific discoveries many times. Chinese characters are only suitable for the first level of abstraction, that is, from the real world to language symbols. For example, "dog" refers to all kinds of similar animals in the real world. But for the second level of abstraction, that is, from vocabulary to mathematical symbols, Chinese characters are powerless. For example, Chinese characters have no such symbols to express meaningless variables. But European languages are all alphabetic characters, first Greek letters, and later evolved into Roman letters. The combination of letters is the vocabulary of the language, which can be abstracted at the first level (such as "dog" in English). When letters are used alone, they can also represent meaningless variables, such as replacing any variables with x and y.

The expression, deduction and proof of scientific laws are inseparable from the writing system, and different writing systems will play an active or obstructive role in scientific exploration. Take Cao Chong as an example to illustrate. As for whether five-year-old Cao Chong has this wisdom, it is important that at least in the Three Kingdoms period, China people have known the specific application of the buoyancy theorem. However, the expression of buoyancy theorem cannot be explained by natural language, but it needs symbolic formula. With symbolic formula, people will further understand these important concepts of "buoyancy". As a result, people in China have been stuck in practice and have not found real laws. In the 3rd century BC, Archimedes, a Greek mathematician, accurately expressed the buoyancy theorem with symbolic formula for the first time, which was not unrelated to his convenient letter system.