The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth NYT 6.13.14 and video by Zhang Weiwei on the Joseph Needham puzzle

The attached article justified the existence of the US military industrial complex, published perhaps in mind the US preparation for the Ukraine war. Here is a Chinese language video dealing with an issue that is somewhat related.

Points from this video为什么科学革命和工业革命没有在近代中国发生？与张维为 文一 共同解开科学革命的密码！

This video addresses the issue raised in 1969 by Joseph Needham:

why modern science and technology developed in Europe and not in China, which was much more advanced than Europe from first century B.C. to 15th century A.D.

Modern science and technology developed in Europe from the 15th century because Europe underwent 300 years of continuous wars. Around 80% of the revenue of the European countries were spent for war. What distinguishes this period of history of Europe is not Renaissance art and music, but Dante ‘s inferno, depicting hell on earth due to continuous wars which caused millions of deaths, refugees and misery.

From 1500-1799, through war and conquest, 400-500 European countries were combined into 20-30 countries. Most of the time during this period, the biggest countries in Europe were at war. Spain was at war during around 80% of the time, and England and France were during around 50% of the time. This is because many of the countries were peer competitors and they needed to fight it out for control of territory and population. With war, these countries invested heavily in military technology. After they gained an upper hand in such technology, they turned this advantage to military conquest of lands outside Europe, for looting and slavery. Many groups other than kings also were interested in investing in scientists and technology, even among some cardinals. This provided a large talent pool for science and technology.

Galileo is known for his contribution in astronomy. Less known is the fact that he was the head scientist of the Venetian ordnance factory. He conducted many experiments on shelling to see where the shells fall. A slight error in the angle of the projectile of shelling can mean a shot off to left field which would be totally ineffective in war. From these experiments he discovered the law of falling bodies and that the trajectory of a projectile is a parabola.

The same applies to the manufacture of gun powder. Gun powder research led to the development of chemistry. One of the key components of gun powder is potassium nitrate which can be extracted from human and animal excrement. During the continuous European wars, potassium nitrate was very expensive (1 pound of potassium nitrate is worth 5 pounds of gold). Both England and France conducted mass mobilization to gather human and animal excrement to extract Potassium nitrate. Such demand for gun powder spurred the development of chemistry and provided a talent pool of chemists.

Another factor for rapid European science and technology revolution is the development of modern finance for financing the revolution that underpins wars and colonial conquests. The rich merchants of the city states such as Venice started to invest in war, by loaning to sovereign kingdoms. This practice was inherited by Holland and England. Money from taxing farmers cannot meet the demand for war spending. Money could only be obtained by looting resources and enslaving people from other parts of the world. European countries granted licenses to pirates to act as their navies for looting and pillaging. A triangular slave trade was developed. Modern finance also grew from financing such expeditions.

There is thus amble funding for developing military technology and the science on which it is based.

Here are the reasons why China missed out on the science and technology revolution:

Even though China was the first to discover gun powder, the demand for it fell during peace time in the Ming dynasty, and its technology fell behind that of Europe by the Opium War of 1840. Unlike Europe, China had no peer competitor for a long time and had no incentive to devote much of its resources for developing military technology. Its survival did not hinge on such advances. Its resources instead were devoted to improving people’s livelihood during peace time.

China had its own theory of the end of history, like Fukuyama’s for the US, namely that the Chinese system was the best in the world, and China had nothing to learn from any other parts of the world. From mid-Ming dynasty on, China cut itself off from the world and missed out on the first and second industrial revolutions and recognition of the importance of science and technology.

Many explanations have been offered to Needham’s puzzle thus far.

One theory taught that western civilization originated from Greece that had a tradition of pursuit of truth for its own sake, not for any practical purposes, and discovered geometry. When combined with the European tradition of thorough philosophical debate, this resulted in Newtonian physics. In contrast, China’s tradition is to pursue something only when it has a practical application. China lacks logical thinking. That is why even tough China had made many discoveries, it never had a scientific revolution. People holding this view further assert that China must not only learn western science and technology, but must totally embrace western civilization of rationality, democracy and western style modernity. Otherwise China can never catch up with the west.

Zhang Weiwei’s and his guest’s views:

Demand creates supply, and theory comes from experiments. The necessity of war with other countries in the same vicinity drove Europe to develop science and technology. China experienced peace during most of the time period from 1500-1799, and had no reason to devote much resources to military technology and the science that underpins it.

China discovered gun powder. But it is the European countries that turned it into a weapon of mass destruction during the hundred years of war.

China’s rapid rise in the science and technology in the last few decades has been driven from the need to throw off the joke and threat of imperialism. Henceforth, it will be driven by Chinese people’s hope for a better life.

China is now on par with the US during the current 4th industrial revolution. The poor and irrational response in the west to the COVID pandemic compared with the scientific and rational Chinses response bolstered our countrymen’s confidence in China’s approach and system. Which system is really more democratic, and resemble what is truly modern nation should look like?

Zhang and his guest referred to a quote from Bertrand Russell:

The fact that Britain has produced Shakespeare and Milton, Locke and Hume, and all the other men who have adorned literature and the arts, does not make us superior to the Chinese. What makes us superior is Newton and Robert Boyle and their scientific successors. They make us superior by giving us greater proficiency in the art of killing. It is easier for an Englishman to kill a Chinaman than for a Chinaman to kill an Englishman. Therefore our civilization is superior to that of China. (Russell 1993, 52)

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Kenneth J. Hammond Professor of History at New Mexico State University: This is an important topic, which has received considerable attention in recent scholarship. The work of Benjamin Elman in particular has shown pretty clearly that the idea that China’s development in science and technology somehow dropped off after the Song or perhaps the mid-Ming is simply unsustainable. His book On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550-1900 demonstrates the continuous transformations in knowledge production in China under the linguistic cover of 格物 gewu, often translated as the investigation of things. This is an ancient term, but from the 11th century on it was strongly associated with new insights into the workings of material world, what in the West was called “natural philosophy” and which has been retroactively designated as science. Needham was working in a Chinese intellectual environment shaped by the legacy of the May 4th Movement, which, while putting forth a radical critique of Western imperialism, also built on the New Culture Movement in the repudiation of traditional Chinese orthodoxies, viewing Confucianism and many other aspects of late imperial/early modern Chinese civilization as having held back China’s modernization. This was an important conversation in the context of the times, but more recent work in both China and the West has allowed a more nuanced understanding of the wide variety of thought and practice in the broad field of cultural production in Chinese history.

China did not have a “scientific revolution” because the patterns of thought, the investigation of things, which were the indigenous form of scientific endeavor in China, were already a well-established mode of intellectual inquiry, drawing on roots in the Classic 大學 Daxue, the Great Learning, a text which was originally part of the Classic of Rites 禮記 Li ji, and which became one of the 四書 Sishu, Four Books, during the emergence of 道學 Daoxue, Learning of the Way (often called Neo-Confucianism in the West) in the Song dynasty.

As with many other aspects of Chinese history, the misunderstanding of China’s distinctive mode of scientific inquiry, like the mischaracterization of late imperial/early modern China as somehow “feudal” has warped Western perceptions of China, and even the thinking of many Chinese in the 20th century and into our own times because of the influence of Western culture on China’s educational practices.