Why is traditional Chinese thinking not adapted to the development of modern society?

Chinese cultural tradition has formed the characteristics of benevolence and righteousness as the inner matrix and rituals and music as the outer rituals. There are also some negative factors in Chinese cultural traditions that hinder and restrict scientific and technological innovation. Efforts should be made to overcome their negative effects and build a humanistic environment conducive to the development of science and technology.

The main manifestations of the negative factors of Chinese cultural tradition are summarized as follows:

First, the academic tendency to emphasize humanism over nature and humanities over science and technology.

Because of the influence of Confucianism, the Chinese cultural tradition shows a heavy human nature, humanities and science and technology tendency, the core of human beings, one-sided emphasis on the unity of man and nature, while ignoring the understanding of the natural world itself and transformation. In academic research, it failed to separate society from human beings, let alone society from nature as a whole, and did not develop theories with a rigorous logical structure, nor did it emphasize technically controlled experiments, craftsmanship, and skill. Science and technology were regarded as trivial skills or even "strange skills", and failed to develop a scientific culture in China, which is one of the major reasons for the backwardness of China's scientific and technological level in modern times.

Secondly, the traditional way of thinking and cultural concepts are rough and closed.

The traditional way of thinking focuses on intuition, ignores the theoretical, precise, abstract thinking, focuses on generalized intuitive comprehension, ignores the scientific experiments, rational analysis and expression to grasp the essence of the law of the matter, the formation of sticking to the old rules, self-enclosed, do not think about the inertia of innovative thinking. This is a great distance from the scientific way of thinking. Confucianism emphasizes "the use of the world", the pursuit of practical knowledge, affecting the nature, the real exploration of things themselves, it is difficult to form objective knowledge, it is difficult to produce the scientific spirit of truth and beauty.

Thirdly, the mediocrity-oriented values and conservative tendencies.

"Knowing enough is always happy", "contentment and self-control", "to be wise and conservative", "not to be the first" Conservative ideas such as "contentment", "self-control", "self-reservation" and "not being the first" have a negative impact on people. Traditional culture to seek the same and respect for the ancient as the basic value orientation, such as respect for the scriptures and scripture, seniority, righteousness rather than profit, the wise man, closed and conservative, etc., is contrary to the idea of innovation, which has brought a lot of negative impact on science and technology innovation, is not conducive to the cultivation of innovative talents, is not conducive to the development of science and technology.

Fourth, the emphasis on groups and rituals, and light on the characteristics of the individual.

Traditional culture attaches importance to the cultivation of human group and ****, requiring people to put the group value above the individual value, forcing the individual's needs to be subordinate to the needs of the group and society, casting the individuality by ****, opposing the self-expression, so that many people with the dependence, and lack of individuality and creativity. The development of autonomy and independence, freedom and diversity of personality is precisely the basis for the development of individual creativity. The cultural consciousness of "honoring the scriptures and ranking the seniority" has brought an invisible barrier to scientific and technological innovation, and the atmosphere created by the rule of authority and the mentality of conformity does not help to form a social environment that fosters individual creativity.

Chinese cultural tradition in the overall value orientation is to emphasize "Tao" over "tools", emphasizing "the world to use", but ignoring the theory of operability. Chinese intellectuals have never been able to get rid of the traditional ideas of the world, the unity of man and heaven, and have not been able to establish the scientific spirit of empirical evidence. China's ancient "four great inventions" and other technological achievements have led the world for many years, but in modern times after the stagnation, backwardness, the reason is multi-faceted, not just from the science and technology itself to find the reasons, but also from the long-term stagnation, closed feudal society, as well as cultural traditions to find the reasons.