649 replies to this topic

[vinceliang]

When it come to talking about Chinese science, we always tend to talk about it's glorious achievement from its ancient times. Yet every now and then we are able to discover things which the West claims to have discovered or invented we already in Ancient China before the West even had it. Some examples would be golf, pasta, the discovery of America and the 1st global circum-navigation. Even the first machine gun was invented in China during the early Qing Dynasty.

Ok, so Ancient China was great when it comes to scientific achievements, so what about Modern China. Many people especially from the West think China's scientific era has come to an end but infact they are wrong. Just like Ancient China, Modern China too is an era of great scientific achievments. Some examples would be the building of the world's largest hydro-electrical dams, world's largest Airport (Beijing Airport), World's Longest Oversea Bridge, Worlds Heighest Railway (Qinghai-Tibet Railway), etc. We all know the 4 Great Inventions of Ancient China but what about the 4 Great Modern Inventions. They are hybrid rice, laser typesetting for Chinese characters, synthesis of bovine insulin and the discovery of artemether, an anti-malarial drug made from the Chinese herb qinghao.

So therefore the Scientific Achievement of China is beyond our imagination and is of course forever growing.

Edited by General_Zhaoyun, 23 July 2009 - 12:45 AM.

[General_Zhaoyun]

I do believe in the creativeness of the Chinese and possible future leadership of Chinese in science and technology in the future. However, at the moment, many of the current great engineering feats of Chinese exist only in China. They have not yet 'expanded' into the realms outside China to create such a global influence. What China needs is not just wonderful research, but also good marketing worldwide to 'spread such technology' around.

You can have many wonderful inventions, but it would be useless if you do not know how to market and sell it worldwide.

Also, the current international language for science and technology is English and not Chinese. Most of the dominant scientific journal were based in America and were written in English. Even Japanese or Chinese scientific paper were translated into English. That means a lot of scientists around the world are reading scientific paper in English, and not in Chinese. This 'dominant English status' probably won't change for the next 40 years, unless China overtakes America in all scientific research.

Edited by General_Zhaoyun, 23 July 2009 - 01:09 AM.

[DaWeiUK]

I currently proofread scientific articles in English: at a rough guess 50% are authored by Chinese researchers and maybe 25% by authors with English as a first language (<10% if India is excluded). I think it is inevitable that China will attain the No.1 spot within a few decades.

As for the language of dissemination, perhaps English will be around for much longer. Long after the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin continued to hold primacy in international communication within Europe. Even in the 18th century Euler was still writing in that language for publication.

English does have an advantage over Chinese of being simpler to learn, and as such it is the second language of choice for most key decision makers.

[General_Zhaoyun]

I currently proofread scientific articles in English: at a rough guess 50% are authored by Chinese researchers and maybe 25% by authors with English as a first language (<10% if India is excluded). I think it is inevitable that China will attain the No.1 spot within a few decades.

There are over 2,000 universities in China and a huge pool of researchers (engineers and scientists) in China. The large number of 'scholar manpower/talents' coupled with increasing research fundings from corporate and government has led China to progress rapidly in terms of research in science and technology these few years.

I'm not sure if the "50% Chinese Researchers" you're referring to are based in China. But a lot of Chinese researchers are actually based in America. But of course, there are also increasing 'return Chinese talents' from America. If this trend continues coupled with increasing research fundings from government/corporate, plus establishment of high quality research centers across China, China might overtake America within a few decade's time in terms of Science and Technology. As far as I know, many large multi-national corporate had established research center across China to leverage on the technology talents from China.

China's possible future leadership for science and technology should not be taken as something of a surprise. China had been a leader in science/invention from 200 BC till 1500 AD. Its lag in science to the Western world was due to a number of historical reasons, which we have discussed in CHF many times. Given China's long history of Scholarly tradition, there is simply no reason why Chinese scientists will not be able to achieve something great in the future.

If China were to lead the science and technology in 21st century, I forsee another technological revolution that might transform and benefit the world.

Edited by General_Zhaoyun, 23 July 2009 - 08:29 AM.

[Tibet Libre]

I currently proofread scientific articles in English...

In what field? :-)

[DaWeiUK]

In what field? :-)

Mainly Physics related, but really most fields apart from Medical.
My primary brief is checking the English, so they don't necessarily fall within my specialism (Optics).

[vinceliang]

Yes, I agree with General Zhaoyun about the positive future of Chinese Science. However China leading the world in technology did not end at 1500AD yet there were further progress.

Great examples such as:

Li Shizhen medical works, Bencao Gangmu (traditional Chinese: 本草綱目; simplified Chinese: 本草纲目; pinyin: Běncǎo Gāngmù; Wade-Giles: Pen-ts'ao Kang-mu), which contained nearly 1,900 substances, which included 374 that had not appeared in other works. His works were first draft in 1578.

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Li_Shizhen
http://en.wikipedia....i/Bencao_Gangmu

Song Yingxing (Traditional Chinese:宋應星; Simplified Chinese:宋应星; Wade Giles: Sung Ying-Hsing; 1587-1666 AD), works known as Tiangong Kaiwu (天工開物), or The Exploitation of the Works of Nature, published in May of 1637. It contains detailed records of the technology and methods used in Chinese agriculture and handicrafts. Over 200 valuable illustrations exhaustively portray the workings of a wide range of machinery and equipment.

http://en.wikipedia....i/Song_Yingxing

A kind of gun called 'huochong gun' and powerful artillery were invented in the late period of the Ming Dynasty. It is said that a man named Wan Hoo even tried to fly to the sky by sitting in a chair propelled by gunpowder sticks. Unfortunately, he failed and became the first sacrifice in human conquest of the sky.

http://zhidao.baidu....n/54568072.html

[The Stoic]

May i raise a question?

Is it necessarily coherent for any of us to speak of a nation taking a "leadership" role in the pursuit of the natural sciences? Especially in this age where the greatest scientific mysteries tend to be worked on collectively?

Case in point with the Large Hadron Collider - http://en.wikipedia....Hadron_Collider

More than 30 of the wealthiest nations agreed to participate in this experiment - as no one by themselves had the resource capacity or technical skills to "go it alone."

I can see an argument for the case of specialization in the sciences, but more often than not (unless there's some sort of national security issue involved), the modern practice of all the sciences tends to carry a very strong international flavor.

There seems also to be this notion amongst many scientists that their work transcends mere relationships to race/creed/color/nation/politics - what they do they do for Humanity as a whole.

Or at least that seems to be their internal perception of the matter.


EDIT - An objection could be raised about "corporate" science, after all for-profit ventures tend to be rather secretive about their data. But many of those corporations are already Transnational entities recruiting from all parts of the world whose market generally tends to be international in scope.

Edited by The Stoic, 26 July 2009 - 10:32 AM.

[vinceliang]

Hi all,
here is a good forum for those who are interested in China's contribution in science both ancient and modern.

http://bbs.chinadail...h...tra=&page=1

[vinceliang]

After many years of efforts, Director of Wuahn University Institute of Virology, YANG Zhanqiu sucessfully invented a compound that responds to respiratory tract viruses, including Hantaan and H1N1 viruses. After a mice, which is infected with takes Hantaan virus, takes the drug, its survial rate or survival time is lengthened, with less damage to their liver, kidney and brain.

The National Natural Science Foundation has funded scientists to work on the antivirus mechanisms of the compound. They believe that the compound can be a new drug for treating Hantaan and H1N1 virus infections in the early stage.

http://www.most.gov....90803_72155.htm

[vinceliang]

So Why Did Chinese Science Fall Behind the West in the Qing Dynasty?

Many people have stated their theories of why Chinese Science fell behind the west during the Qing Dynasty. Yet some people infact blamed the Confucian traditional culture for the failure that time. Yet I disagree and ofcourse, I do have a reason of my own. Since the dawn of Chinese civilisation and especially since China transformed itself to a Confucianist state China's science has consistently developed rapidly well that the nation was centuries ahead of the west before the European Rennnaisence and still led the world science before the industrial revolution. The Chinese were the ones who sailed to Venice in 1434 bring intellectual gifts which set the Rennaisence ablaze. Despite that, China continued to lead in Science with new inventors such as Xu Guangqi, Li Shizhen, Xu Xiake, Song Yingxing, etc. China still lead the world in science during the late Ming Dynasty, when the nation was at war with the Manchus. Yet firearms developed well during the late Ming that Chinese firearms have once again surpassed the west.

With the great firearms inventivemness of the late Ming, early Qing too had some success in firearms development. The first machine gun was invented by a firearms expert Dai Zi. Sadly this inventiveness did not last long. Though there was some development in science and technology, medical science, mathematics, the building, agronomy, etc. in Qing Dynasty. But in order to keep the dominant position of Manchu. The emperor of Qing Dynasty implemented the wrong policy on ethnic affairs. The Ming General, Yuan Chonghuan once killed the Manchu leader, Nauerhaci with their cannons, so the emperors of Qing Dynasty disliked firearms very much. The development of Firarms were then banned. Because the ruling Manchu’s were not Han. They had distrust on the Han majority. To hold their authority many of the Confucian Courtes were not given power yet they were unwilling serve the Emperor. It was not until the Taiping Rebellion when the Manchu government realize the necessity to hand some of their power to the Han people and allow them to take important affair of the government. Its was from then when the Qing government bagan to take importancy on science an technology with the self strengthening movement following up. However, Manchu Authorities like especially Ci Xi still were suspicious to the Han Confuacian Courteus which eventually brought the fall of the Qing Dynasty.

The Confucianist Culture of China is not at all responsible for causing China to fall behind. It is the wrong policy of the Manchus and their distust to Han Ethnic which cause this disastourous historical event.

http://www.china.org...enhe/132313.htm
http://www.mysteriou...9-qing-dynasty/
http://www.mysteriou...n-qing-dynasty/

[vinceliang]

A Modern Chinese Mathamatician

Su Buqing was born in Pingyang, Zhejiang Province, in September 1902. During his study in Northeast Imperial University of Japan, he dicovered that 4 times algebra cone-shaped surface in study of general bent surface. It was a breakthrough in geometry research. Mathematical circles of Japan and the world named it as Su's cone-shaped surface.

However Su's research and creative work didn't end there. He wrote more than ten monographs such asAffine Differential Geometry. He won the National Scientific Conference Award and the second prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award for his achievements in "Ship Lifting Program" and "Curved-Surface Production Procedure of Ship's Lines" respectively.

In 1952, he was appointed as Dean of Studies in Fudan University. In 1955 he was elected committee member of Mathematics and Physics Department of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Standing Committee of Academy. He specialized in the study and founded a school of differential geometry. In 1983 he became post of honorary president in 1983.

http://www.chinacult...ntent_26419.htm

Edited by vinceliang, 02 October 2009 - 09:55 AM.

[Howard Fu]

So Why Did Chinese Science Fall Behind the West in the Qing Dynasty?

I don't think that's very accurate to say Chinese science fall behind in the Qing dynasty. The exact time might be 17th century when Galileo, Descartes, Newton and Leibniz laid the foundation of modern science and mathematics.

[brightness]

Historically significant scientific discoveries and inventions are usually not isolated events/accomplishments like planting flags on mountain tops or on newly discovered islands as colonies. "Necessity is the mother of all inventions." There has to be a market place for the outcome of discoveries and inventions in order for the process and human endeavors in discovery and invention to continue. Absent such a positive market feedback, even if there were occasional random sparks, they tended to peter out. For example, ancient Greeks probably thought of the steam engine before anyone else, but there simply wasn't the developed coal market and coal mines to allow the first primitive steam engine to go through stages of efficiency improvement (the earlierst steam engines were burning so much coal for the little work they did that they could not be used profitably in any place other than inside the coal mines) . . . Vikings (Eric the Red and his band) were probably the first people, aside from native Americans, to land in North America, as they settled in Greenland and journeyed as far south as Cape Cod if not further south, yet due to lack of market driven follow-up's, that discovery meant very little before Columbus' trip.

Ancient mathematics were pursued to a very high degree in ancient China, mesopetamia, Greece and Egypt (not in that time order, obviously) due to religious needs. Those whose astronomers could predict the movement of objects in the "heavens" gained the political legitimacy to rule the peons on the earth.

Howard very accurately pointed out the importance of men like Galilei, Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, etc.. in the annals of European scientific advancement. And they were not isolated tinkerers either. There was a whole market for their discoveries and inventions. In generations before them, and during much of their own life times, most European university were still focusd on not science but on scripture-studying scholarsticism, dialectical reasoning applied to Christian scriptures! That was fundamentally rather similar to the Confucianist studies in China up through the end of 19th century. By the 1500's in Europe however, there was enough market demand for scientists and technologists for more and more students in the universities to divert from scripture-studies to the study of physical science and technology. Galillei was working on explosives chemistry and optics, Newtonian physics was preceded by impact physics (cannon balls) and architectual demands on physics. Descartes' dimentional analysis rapidly found use not only in physics but also financial/economic use. People nowadays often credit Galillei with the idea of "mathematical universe" . . . the idea that the world was described by math was propounded upon at least as early as Pythagorus, some 2000 years before Galillei. The economic implosion during the "dark ages" following the Roman unification meant PYthagorus' insight was forgotton until Galillei's rediscovery.

The problem with Confucian ruled China was that, the top-down society tried to make do with bureacrats replacing merchants as agents of exchange/collaboration. That inhibitted the growth of genuine competitive market place. Aside from when the country was broken down into pieces (such as during Southern Song), the market place was suppressed. Therefore, there wasn't much of a competitive market demand for brains to divert from their medieval scripture studies. Knowledge and study in physical science and technology did not help one climb the scholarstic ladders in either the Christian Church hirarchy or the Confucian scholar-gentry hirarchy. In other words, in terms of memic competitions, Confucianism suffered from its own success in controlling the entire society thoroughly.

Early Qing court did not ban cannons at all. In fact, Qing court retained Jesuits to help design and cast cannons in their campaings against both the Three Feudatories in the Southwest and the Russians at Nurchisk. After Qing eliminated those competitions, the entire dynasty simply atrophied.

I'm not sure what you meant by Chinese sailing to Venice in the middle ages. The Suez Canal wasn't dug yet until much later. I have my doubts about Gavin Menzie's claims about Chinese discovering North America in 1421. (It would have be about 500 years later than Eric the Red anyway, even if a landfall without historical consequence were made). His theory that Chinese explorers went all the way north past the North Pole to reach North America would have run into serious problems with anyone using a magnetic compass for guidance, as the Chinese had been since at circa at least 200AD (probably much earlier); the logistics of surviving a trip across thousands of miles of polar ice (not tundra but ice) is never explained. Sure, Chinese (and Arab) knowledge transmission probably had a lot to do with Renaissance (more importantly, IMHO, the market capital structure of the merchant Republic putting those knowledge to good use), but having enormous Chinese sailing ships pulling up in Venice harbor in 1431? How and why? How did they get the ships across the Suez land block / Ismuth? And why bother doing that since there was already well established Turkish, Venetian and Geonoese fleets on the other side of the Ismuth in the Mediterrenean. Columbus did not need a map to sail west: starting from Spain, sailing west, it would be nearly impossible not to set landfall somewhere in the Americas. The fact that he landed in the Bahamas first and called it India (not China, btw) goes to show that he probably didn't have the help of any map. Now, if we are to speculate that Vasco da Gama's trip rouding Africa Continent to reach India had some kind of help from Chinese, Arabic, or for that matter ancient Carthagian map/knowledge, that would be much more believable. Europeans knew that the earth was spherical since at least ancient Greek time (the idea was older than even Pythagoras). Even the diameter was caculated quite accurately (to within 10% or less error) by several different people based on surface curvature observation/caculation. Columbus thought the earth was much smaller than it actually is. If not for the Americas landmass stopping him, his merry band of explorers would have died at sea as they sailed into oblivion.

[vinceliang]

I don't think that's very accurate to say Chinese science fall behind in the Qing dynasty. The exact time might be 17th century when Galileo, Descartes, Newton and Leibniz laid the foundation of modern science and mathematics.

The foundation of mordern science and mathematics would definitely be laid by China.

Newtons first law of motion: Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.

This law was not stated on the 17th century but the 18th century.

Yet in the 3rd or 4th Century BC the book of Mo Ching states: The cessation of motion is due to the opposing force ... If there is no opposing force ... the motion will never stop. This is as true as that an ox is not a horse.

Newton was 2 melleniums behind.

As for Galileo who claims to be the inventor of the telescope. The Army of the Sung Dynasty were already using the telescope to spot their artillery. There are also records that it existed during the Yuan Dynasty.

http://bbs.chinadail...h...tra=&page=3
http://www.chinahist...mp;hl=telescope
http://www.chinahist...mp;hl=telescope

Edited by vinceliang, 12 August 2009 - 10:07 PM.