Most often heard explanation is that China had too much cheap labour to be interested in developing labour saving technologies. Fine crafts for the ruling class were quite innovative, but everything else could be done cheaper by employing people.
I'm also curious what happened to the Middle East in terms of technological development. They seems to be at the top of there game several centuries ago, but there doesn't seem to be as many technological or scientific ground breaking research being done. Anyone know why this occured too?
The Crusades and Islam. It wasn't so much the effect of attacks themselves as the fact that they lead to a rapid backlash against the sciences and secular pursuits. It was believed that no gains made by Allah could be lost and when the Holy Land was lost to the Europeans, it was seen as a result of secular science and law which was considered corrupt by the Islamic leaders.
Thought to fair, It is actually a myth that Islamic empires where as advanced as they are sometimes represented. Most of the scholars that you read about in school were actively persecuted in their day and with the fall of Jerusalem, the Islamacists had the excuse they needed to end their activities for good.
Islam was not originally anti-science, as evidenced by the fact that the whole body of basic sciences builds upon Muslim scientific tradition (certainly true of medicine, chemistry, optics and astrology, most of basic math etc.).
It is not that the Muslims invented these disciplines, but they preserved and expanded upon works from earlier nations such as those of Hellenistic Greece, which would be unknown today if they had not been preserved by the Muslims and later translated to European languages.
There was not the same schism between religion and science as there was in the West. In fact most of the eminent Muslim scholars were as prolific in theology as in temporal studies. Consider f.ex. Avicenna, father of modern medicine, who was also a big theologist and had memorized the entire Quran.
There are many such examples, f.ex. try reading about Averroes who basically revolutionized European philosophical thought and at the same time was one of the world's leading experts on Islamic law.
You need to distinguish between Islam and the society that grew up with it.
Averroes may have been an Islamic scholar, but his true god was Aristotle. He was quite explicit in his belief that Aristotle's was the hight of human knowledge and that religion (meaning Islam) was a sort dumbing down meant purely for the masses. Averroes was a pretty crappy Muslim by today's standards. Avicenna had a similar viewpoint, though he was more orthodox.
> Averroes was a pretty crappy Muslim by today's standards.
Today's standards are the problem.
The above mentioned scientists did consider themselves religious Muslims (Averroes reconciliated Aristotle with Islamic thought in the face of attacks from traditionalists, and more generally was a very very accomplished religious scholar). They just didn't accept the narrowness of the clerical representation.
The eminence of these scholars were not flukes but a result of a successful effort by many caliphs to promote science and learning across the empire (f.ex. Harun al-Rashid who is widely recognized for this).
As for admiring Hellenistic thought that is universal to earlier Muslim scholars. That is what allowed them to be great, the ability to assimilate foreign ideas.
Sure, but today's standards have been THE standard since at least the siege of Jerusalem and were widely held before that. Whether or not these standards are the correct standards would require a much deeper understanding of Islam than I currently have, but the fact that this understanding has always had a strong presence and the fact that it has dominated since the 12th century does explain what happened.
Later caliphs f.ex. among the Ottomans were quite progressive particularly politically. But you are right. I just note that there have been different standards, and for a time the prevalent standard was not opposed to science, learning and culture.
My pet theory is current technology advancement in Europe, North America and Japan is part of benefit from capitalism. Other region that lacks of capitalism will start to get religious or political authority into innovation process and which just won't work.
Below is a joke when I was a teen to talk to my friends. When I watched those anime series from Japan and super hero tv cartoons from U.S. I found a big difference in villains. In animes from Japan, villains creates evil robots and organizations but no author ever clearly explained how villains sustain their criminal activity. And most villains goal is to conquer the world and it is never mentioned the financial obstacles. While most villains in american cartoons clearly state their intent is to get the money to enable their plan to conquer the world.
Are you sure you are not mixing up mathematics with astrology? The term 'mathematician' (or better - its equivalent in the day's languages) was often used as a synonym for astrologer.
Some theories I've heard suggest that certain Islamic rules of finance or inheritance made economic activities that helped the West a lot more difficult. Specifically, there are prohibitions on earning interest, and traditional inheritance laws made joint-stock corporations that could survive the death of owners hard to do. (Is this accurate? Does this persist today? I don't know.)
Yes it is. There was actually a scandal recently in Arab nations where special loans designed to skirt the interest issue and appeal to Muslims were demonstrated to not be what they claimed.
1. the absence of a mercantile class to foster competition and self-improvement; the sheer size of China compared with the smaller states of Europe whose fierce rivalries fostered technological competition.
2. an education system that fails to emphasise improving “character”.
As a long time Hacker News reader and a native chinese student here under chinese education system, I have to point out that the education system (especially higher education system) in China has big problems compared with that in western countries, this definitely will affect the future of China.
1. Decisions in universities should be made by professors, not by government officials.
2. Many professors simply are not qualified. I see this a most critical problem. The top students prefer to go to industries rather than to be a teacher in schools.
3. Students should not be forced to take a course on Marxism, a course on Thoughts of Mao, a course on Theories of Deng. From my experience, nobody listens to teachers on these classes, nobody will take these courses seriously, they just try to remember them a few days before the exams. This is really a waste of students' time, students should learn serious economics and philosophies instead.
It's not that we are not smart, or not diligent, it's just the current system that hinders our advancement.
It is not the problem for smartness. But a system that encourages innovators receive potential huge payoffs. As long as the system is out there, then just like old chinese saying "With money, you can hire ghosts to push mill wheel"
Of course there will be wealth inequality in such a system. So it is up to people to choose "everyone lives better but allow some huge wealthy guys" or "let every one poorer but more equal". As long as the existing wealth creators understand if they intervene the system in order to keep their power to control, then the payoff for new innovators disappears immediately and the system is screwed.So they will come to understand instead of abusing their power, they should just help fostering new innovators and keep the system working.
>1. Decisions in universities should be made by professors, not by government officials.
I think this is seriously a bad idea. In principle, government officials should make decisions that better the country. In principle, professors will teach as well as they can, and do research on whatever they find interesting. That's a good thing, but it needs to be constrained a bit, and professors will not be the ones to constrain it.
Read the following article, which illustrates why profs should not be running universities:
Except that China the Chinese economy is growing at a far greater clip than the US. Perhaps top students going into industry is the reason the Chinese economy is doing so well. Remember, the during the strongest period of growth and technological advancement in the US ( 1870 to 1930 ) the research university was practically non-existent.
China is undergoing incredible growth mainly due to urbanization. It is moving towards 60-70% of the people living in cities from around 40-50% now. It's about half way along the process right now and will complete in ~15 years bringing it to the level of developed nations. Exact figures vary based on who you believe.
Interestingly this growth stops around the time they run in to the demographic brick wall with more older people than younger due to the single child policy. Not going to be pretty in the late 2020's for China I think.
China certainly had a merchant class. The problem was that merchants were powerless compared to the official class, who could thus confiscate any surplus they generated.
Results: (1) The merchant class is unable to accumulate capital to finance new technological development. (2) Ambitious kids become bureaucrats instead of making something people want.
(Britain reproduced this result in the mid 20th Century.)
The 2nd result still has pretty big influence on Today's China and Taiwan.
Most current industrialists in Taiwan were kids treated by school administration as not worthy of higher education. While most government officials holds advanced degree from North America, Europe and Japan.
The absurd part is people with advance degree may not be capable in build up business empires but creating tons of bureaucrats that prevent entrepreneurs to move ahead.
-- edit --
I am not sure when the confiscation of merchant wealth exactly happened in Song dynasty. But in Ming, Qing dynasties (those not so innovative eras after Song), confiscation is a huge motivation for ambitious kids to get into government system. And in theory, all confiscation goes to Emperor, but in reality emperors allowed confiscators to get a cut from it.
I just got an epiphany after PG mentioned the merchant class in China. Big advancement such as gun powder, movable types was invented in Song Dynasty. Song Dynasty was in fact one rare period in China that had a pretty vibrant merchant class. But after Ming Dynasty, most Chinese historians judged Song Dynasty as a pretty lame era. ("smaller territory, continuous conflicts with northern enemies and finally lost to Mongol) But from economics history aspect, Song dynasty was a pretty well developed period.
-- Edit --
Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of Song Dynasty. And one reason for the economic development in Song was the government loosed regulations on market economy... Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Kevin Kelly in The Next Fifty Years of Science (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6119231548215342323) has one answer: the Chinese never developed the leverage of the scientific method, and corollary, all such civilizations are stuck at the level of clever technology, never able to make knowledge multiples.
I think the lack of scientific innovation is due to the culture of memorization/book smarts that seems to be still ingrained in China. In the past, a lot of people were aiming to become officials but in order to do so they had to take these standardized tests that required years of preparation and memorization where you would have to read and memorize text from old thinkers.
But by going through this entire process of memorization/studying one would start to think like them and not come up with any original ideas. Maybe parts of this are still around today and are focusing more on memorization rather than on creativity.
As an aside, another reason I thought of would be the Communist state would hinder thinking for oneself and stifle creativity that way. Why I dismissed it was that the Soviet Union had an equally oppressive regime yet they were able to compete with the US during the Cold War just fine for a few decades.
I'll glady take criticism of my ideas; very curious as to what others think.
Because their innovations were based on an intuitive, rather than mathematical, understanding of the world. You can only get so far that way. They didn't have a Galileo.
Excuse me? The Chinese had their own proof of the Pythagorean theorem a long time before Pythagoras did. You cannot accuse them of a lack of mathematical intuition.
I didn't forget him, Leibniz was later. By the time Leibniz and Newton were around, modern ideas about the relationship of math and the sciences were already gaining acceptance.
Maybe it stopped when they decided to start putting more effort into pirating, counterfeiting, and reverse engineering everything created by other countries rather than doing the work on their own?
There is a good comment that summarizes this point on http://www.economist.com/members/persona.cfm?econUId=2970938 (economist.com does not allow linking to individual comments).