Science and technology: concepts and applications

China vs. Europe

Compare the development of science and technology in these two civilizations: China and Europe. In what ways did cultural, social, and political factors influence development of science and technology?

It is easy to view scientific progress in a comparative fashion. Which power was 'better' at scientific progress, China or Europe, one might ask? But such a pairing of opposites is in fact a false dichotomy. Both civilizations saw, over the course of early modernity, tremendous technical as well as intellectual advances in their civilization's understanding of science. However, although Europe's religious and political intransigence to scientific discovery often presented itself as an obstacle, ultimately its greater openness and willingness to study and take into consideration advances of foreign cultures proved its 'making,' while China's geographical and political isolation, for all of its intellectual ferment proved its undoing in terms of becoming an early modern power of scientific discovery and innovation.

Europe, of course, was famous for persecuting Galileo for heresy, even though this great studier of the heavens and mathematics merely gazed through a superior telescopic eye than his predecessors, disproving the Vatican-approved Copernican system that placed humanity in the center of the heavens. However, in the Chinese understanding of the universe, political influences were hardly absent. The emperor, as the anointed "son of heaven," stood as the linchpin of the Chinese cosmology. China regarded itself as the middle kingdom among the four cardinal points of the compass.

Although weak in terms of its astronomical theory this heavenly reckoning of the Chinese cosmos was equally integral to the political and cultural conception of Chinese self-identity as was the centering of the earth in the middle of the universe to the Catholic, European conception of humanity and the soul. (132) Thus in both systems of cosmology, Chinese as well as European, astronomy was often subsumed to political and theological needs, and Chinese "counted out the hours and turned a bronze armillary sphere and a celestial globe in synchrony with the heavens," and edicts forbade private persons from possessing astronomical instruments or consulting astronomical or divinatory texts that could challenge the emperor-centric view of the cosmos. (131)

Of course, China is notable for a number of technical developments. Consider the priority of the Chinese over other civilizations of Europe for the wheelbarrow, the south-pointing chariot, lacquer, gunpowder, porcelain china, the umbrella, the fishing reel, suspension bridges, and other architectural, military, and domestic arts. (122) But while such firsts are interesting, it is also noteworthy that the Chinese civilization often failed to build upon these developments. The rigid civil service system of the Chinese political elite also did not encourage the fermentation of scientific progress in the form of debate. Although thinkers may have come up with great ideas, ideas were supposed to follow from preceding notions, rather than exist and develop independently from mentorship. Even speech was highly governed by social norms and governed by social assumptions and "spoken Chinese may have made it less than an ideal medium for expressing or communicating science." (137)

But most critical to China's failure to build upon some of its technical developments as well as its other arts of note was its lack of exposure to other ideas of other civilizations, and hence to the technology and developments of other civilizations. Unlike Marco Polo, the Italian adventurer no Chinese explorers extended similar expeditions into Europe, even after Polo brought many Chinese technologies back to Europe. (131) Chinese technical development within the civil service order of knowledge and learning was hierarchical and enclosed, much like its own political and social systems. Furthermore, even those who excelled at craftsmanship were devalued, despite the acknowledged importance of such innovations as gunpowder. "Craftsmen were generally illiterate and possessed low social status; they learned practical skills." (121) While this was also true of Europe, economically, the more mercantilist emphasis within Europe and the presence of protective fluids allowed technical craftsmen to profit from their technical and crafts-based scientific developments in a way that craftsmen could not in China.