Add to the list below the study of the energy flows of the body and
acupuncture to treat dis-eases of the body (over 3500 years of use).
This style of medical intervention is still little understood by the
western world partly due to the arrogance of our scientific society and
the need for the present medical/pharmaceutical businesses to maintain
their grip on the lucrative resource at hand. Let's mention as well the
vast knowledge of the ancient Chinese of the medicinals of the natural
world *and* the Chinese achievements in astronomy.
The struggle to 'achieve' in anything (sports, technocracy,
business/economics, government, etc.) can lead to a blind arrogance
toward other aspects within a field or society or toward other cultures.
It is this unacceptance of 'differing ways and values' that can lead to
misunderstandings, conflict and disaster in the long run.
Darryl
On 1/8/2011 11:50 PM, Keith Hudson wrote:
Ed,
Yes . . . well I mentioned this in my piece. Over the centuries the
Chinese amassed a large number of inventions here and there in a vast
country which then drifted into Europe in the Middle Ages. The real
problem for China began at the time of the Ming dynasty (early 1400s)
when multi-masted ships (that is, international trade) was outlawed.
From then onwards they were no longer receptive to catalytic ideas
from the outside world. It's economy was large enough (and its
internal freight routes were adequate enough -- principally its grand
canal linking the 'export markets' of the north and south) for it to
remain viable, but it never made any great strides from then on. Its
culture and economy was largely locked and introverted.
The original problem (that the abstract scientific ideas of the West
from about 1700 onwards couldn't be immediately written down in
ideographic Chinese) doesn't apply any longer. (Now that they've
absorbed the ideas they can be written down in Chinese -- albeit in
railway length words!) The problem today (which, as I said, the
government is seriously worried about) is that their children and
young people are not curious or creative enough -- and they (not I)
put it down to the many years of intensive rote learning necessary to
acquire reading and writing.
Keith
At 12:28 08/01/2011 -0500, you wrote:
Interesting Keith, but despite the problem of their written language,
the Chinese do seem to have been able to come up with inventions in
the past. I recalled reading something about them having invented
gunpowder, so I looked that up on Wikipedia and to my surprise found
that they had not only invented gunpowder, but a host of other
things:<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
China <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China> has been the source of
many significant inventions <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention>,
including the */Four Great Inventions of ancient China/*
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Great_Inventions_of_ancient_China>: papermaking
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papermaking>, the compass
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass>, gunpowder
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder>, and printing
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_typography_in_East_Asia>
(both woodblock <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodblock_printing> and
movable type <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movable_type>). The list
below contains these and other inventions.
The Chinese <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_people> invented
technologies
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_China>
involving mechanics <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanics>,
hydraulics <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulics>, and mathematics
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics> applied to horology
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horology>,metallurgy
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy>, astronomy
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy>, agriculture
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture>, engineering
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering>, music theory
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_theory>, craftsmanship
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craftsmanship>, nautics
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_history>, and warfare
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warfare>. By the Warring States Period
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warring_States_Period> (403--221 BC),
they had advanced metallurgic technology, including the blast furnace
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blast_furnace> and cupola furnace
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupola_furnace>, while the finery forge
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finery_forge> and puddling process
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puddling_%28metallurgy%29> were known
by the Han Dynasty <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Dynasty>(202 BC
-- AD 220). A sophisticated economic system in <?xml:namespace prefix
= st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"
/><?xml:namespace prefix = u1 />China gave birth to inventions such
as paper money <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknote> during the
Song Dynasty <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_Dynasty> (960--1279).
The invention of gunpowder by the 10th century led to an array of
inventions such as the fire lance
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_lance>, land mine, naval mine
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_mine>, hand cannon
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_cannon>, exploding cannonballs,
multistage rocket <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket>, and rocket
bombs with aerodynamic wings and explosive payloads
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huolongjing#Fire_arrows_and_rockets>.
With the navigational aid of the 11th-century compass and ability to
steer at high sea with the 1st-century sternpost rudder
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudder>, premodern Chinese sailors
sailed as far as East Africa
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Africa> and Egypt
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt>.^[1]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions#cite_note-0>^[2]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions#cite_note-1>[3]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions#cite_note-2>
In water-powered clockworks, the premodern Chinese had used the
escapement <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapement> mechanism since
the 8th century and the endless power-transmitting chain drive
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_drive> in the 11th century. They
also made large mechanical puppet theaters driven by waterwheels
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterwheel> and carriage wheels
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoke> and wine-servingautomatons
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaton> driven by paddle wheel boats
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddle_steamer>.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions)
The quote mentions agriculture, but not the intensive agriculture of
the rice paddie. I recall reading somewhere that rice paddies were
partly a response to the need to feed vast armies.
Despite the problems raised by their written language, the Chinese
must have had some way of encapsulating their inventions because they
were quite widely used. And in the case of Europe, it wasn't so much
language that was essential to the spread of ideas. Rather it was
the invention of the printing press and the movement away from Latin
to the vernacular that swept ideas across the continent.
If their written language presents a problem currently, there is good
reason to believe that the Chinese will have no problem in adapting.
A few days ago, I saw a TV interveiw with Justin Yinfu Lin, Chief
Economist of the World Bank. The interview was in English, and Yinfu
Lin's responses were in English, but in an English so thick that I
had a lot of trouble understanding what he was saying. However, he
knew exactly what he was saying.
My point is that if there is a problem, I'm sure that the Chinese
will find a way around it.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Keith Hudson <mailto:[email protected]>
*To:* RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, ,EDUCATION
<mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:* Saturday, January 08, 2011 5:44 AM
*Subject:* [Futurework] Why China won't win in this century
The reason why China will never win hands-down in its current
economic war with America is the same as why Japan didn't succeed in
the 1980s when all were expecting that its corporations and banks
would eat America up (Americans included). The reason is that both
countries are good at copying ideas and technologies; neither is
good at inventing new ones.
It's their written language that's the main part of their problem.
It's non-phonetic. It means that in order to acquire a basic
vocabulary -- of, say, 2,000 or 3,000 words (the content of their
average newspapers) -- children have to learn uniquely-shaped
characters (whole words) which have no, or very little, relationship
with their utterance. A Chinese or Japanese child can learn to speak
his language quite as readily as children do the world over, but
learning how to read or write each individual word takes many years.
And there's only one way, unfortunately for children, and that's by
rote learning. And thousands of hours of rote learning over many
years under the strict discipline of slave-masters in the
schoolroom doesn't do anything for the creativity of young minds --
or for older minds for that matter because the basic mental skills
are aptitudes are thoroughly laid down before puberty.
The Chinese and Japanese governments are well aware of the damage
that rote learning is doing to them -- and say so quite frequently.
Although both countries can churn out ten of thousands of science
and engineering graduates every year, there's scarcely an
independent mind among them. Independent 'garage inventors', as we
have in the West, are as rare as hen's teeth in China and Japan. For
example, Japan has been industrialized for over a century -- only a
decade or two less than other Western countries -- yet it has only
won 15 Nobel prizes in the science subjects. Compare this figure
with those of America (261), the UK (91) and Germany (88). China has
only won 10! However, this comparison is unfair because China's have
only been won since it woke up in the 1970s. America's number also
needs to be modified because about a third of its prizes have been
won by foreign-born scientists who became American citizens after
migrating there.
It's all Emperor Qin Shi Huang's fault (yes, the same as is famed
for his terracotta army). Once Qin had conquered several countries
and unified China in 221BC, he standardized as many things as
possible from weights and measures and currency through to the
written language. All the various scholars throughout his empire,
speaking scores of different languages (some with and some without a
written form) were forced -- on pain of death -- to produce a
composite, but common, written language. And this could only be
non-phonetic, of course. Even the mighty power of Emperor Qin
couldn't force millions of his subjects to learn a new common
*/spoken/* language but he could certainly force his relatively few
scholars to produce a new common */written/* one. One popular
penalty in those days was to cut someone through his midriff, mount
him on a platter of hot tar and take him around the town,
gesticulating and shouting before he expired.
And herein lies a paradox, because the industrial revolution in
Europe would never have happened without starting from a basic stock
of scores of innovations -- such as canal locks, differential gears,
sowing grain in rows and so forth -- that had drifted in from China
along the Great Silk Road over a period of centuries. However, this
doesn't signify that the Chinese had been more inventive than
Europeans. But its common written language had meant that when one
innovation -- say a wheelbarrow (very important indeed for both
China and Europe) -- had been invented by a genius in one
tucked-away corner of China, then the local mandarin could write and
tell hundreds more all about this wonderful new device.
But what once had been an accelerator for both Chinese and European
civilizations actually became a retardant for China when the Western
Enlightenment and scientific revolution stirred into life in the
1600s and 1700s. The Chinese had no way of encapsulating these new
ideas. A Chinese mandarin visiting Europe in, say, the 1700s or
1800s, and learning about the new exciting scientific ideas (if he'd
learned Latin or another European language of course) had no way of
disseminating them widely in China because there he had no method of
writing them down in Chinese words that would have been instantly
recognizable by fellow Chinese scholars or engineers. He could only
convey the new ideas vaguely by speaking of them face-to-face when
he returned home.
Thus Japan (which had inherited thousands of Chinese words) and
China were left behind by the industrial revolution in England,
Germany and America. They didn't begin to catch up in earnest until
the the 1870s (the Meiji Revolution) and the 1970s (the Deng
Xiaoping Revolution) respectively. And this is still -- largely --
where they are today. Both the Chinese and Japanese governments are
trying to phoneticize their written languages but only very slowly,
such is the cultural conservatism of two thousands years to contend
with.
What might be significant in China (though not yet happening in
Japan), is that all their college and university entrants have to
learn spoken and written English these days. All their top
government officials speak English and most business and science
faculties in their universities use English widely in their
seminars. Also, thousands of their brightest young post-grad
scientists go to America or England for research experience and
qualifications. Indeed, once they are here for a few years they
become quite as inventive as Western scientists (if not more so when
you look at the authorship of many papers in heavyweight subject,
say genetics or particle physics). Unfortunately for the Chinese and
Japanese governments many, if not most, of the most innovative
scientific minds elect to stay in their adoptive countries rather
than to return.
But the problem is even more serious for China and Japan. Almost as
important as are the original ideas of innovative individuals is the
necessity of other individuals who will give a welcome to new ideas
and help to develop them. And it's this open-minded hinterland which
is still limited because of their deep, conservative, authoritative
cultures. Goodness knows, new ideas often have a hard time being
accepted in the West. Even here, the crazy ideas of yesteryear
sometimes have to wait until its die-hard opponents are dead and
buried and a brand new generation appears. Only then are the ideas
seen to be not so crazy after all.
There we are then. Japan came close to hollowing out America and
Western Europe 30 years ago with its superbly made
(Western-invented) products. China is threatening to do the same in
the coming years. But the innovative momentum is still with the West
and this sort of cultural momentum takes a century or two to die
down -- if it ever does -- or a century to acquire -- if it ever
does in China and Japan.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/01/
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/01/
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