USA vs. China Ways (8.0)

What’s the Role of Science in the Chinese Culture?

In its traditional culture, China didn’t produce much science. This is not saying China didn’t have scientists, but their social status was low and their achievements were deemed trivial.

For example, back in the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220AD), China already had a great scientist named Zhang Heng who invented a sophisticated device that could detect earthquakes in early time and quite accurate positions as well as degrees. But the incredible values of the scientist and his invention was not recognized and taken to wider applications then until very later years.

A lot of observers believe China was behind in scientific development was due to the economical factors, namely the traditionally agricultural society didn’t give much attention, encouragement, and motivation to science and technologies.

But that was only partially true. The more severe barrier came from the world outlook and philosophy. Throughout history, some cultures like the Chinese tradition believe the past is better, so their efforts and attention focused on how to restore things to the past. Some other culture believe life is a like cycle, no matter what humans do, things just circle around with no changes.

Then we have the Western cultures that from the 16th century on, believe things…