In order to disassemble this problem, I will divide the following contents into several subheadings and explain them in detail one by one.
Did the four great inventions contribute? We need to know what technology is. Does China Science Need "Family Tree"?
All right, let's get started!
Did the four great inventions contribute?
Many Zheng Wenfeng's supporters believe that the four great inventions are not only not advanced, but also meaningless. Modern gunpowder or paper is quite different from China's invention. I agree with this idea, which not only has, but also has made considerable contributions.
Opponents' ideas are quite extreme and one-sided, just like saying, "Because we have entered the new media era, people no longer read paper newspapers, so the publication of newspapers and periodicals in the past 100 years is backward and has no contribution." You know, in a society where illiteracy or semi-illiteracy accounts for more than 70%, how can so-called "new media" be born without the cheap and relatively timely cultural media such as newspapers?
Let's look at how the four great inventions have contributed to the progress of human civilization one by one.
The greatest significance of papermaking lies not in "being able to write", but in "being cheap and easy to use". Man can always find a medium for writing. There are murals in Lascaux Cave in France dating back to about 15000~20000 years ago. About 5500 years ago, Sumerians recorded tax accounts on clay tablets. In BC 1698, King Hammurabi of Babylon, Cuba, published the famous code of hammurabi, which was engraved on a piece of black basalt.
Ordinary materials are too heavy. What about lightweight materials? Both are expensive! About 5000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians began to make and use papyrus. Although it has the word "paper" in its name, it is actually something similar to an ultra-thin cushion. First of all, it is fragile and cannot be folded. Secondly, its production is complicated, and the origin of raw materials is limited to the Nile Delta, which is expensive. Parchment used in Europe before, but it's all sheepskin! What price can be imagined. And China's silk, its quality can be said to be the best in these "pre-"paper times, and of course the price is also the best, only emperors and nobles can afford it.
Murals, clay tablets, papyrus, silk.
What materials are used for papermaking in China? Bark, hemp head, rotten cloth and broken fishing net are all rubbish, but the quality of the paper produced is still quite excellent. Whether it is preserved or written, it is not worse than the previous "fake paper". The most important thing is that the price is low. It's an artifact! Without the carrier of culture, the progress of human civilization would certainly be much slower.
There is almost no possibility of controversy about the invention right of gunpowder, because there are almost no explosive things in nature, and whoever makes them first will certify the invention. There is no doubt that there is black powder in China: 1044. Ceng Gongliang and others in the Northern Song Dynasty recorded in detail the production methods of three kinds of gunpowder-gun gunpowder, tribulus fireball gunpowder and poisonous smoke ball gunpowder in the official military encyclopedia "General Outline of Jason Wu". The formula is quite complicated, with at least ten components.
Opponents saw that the invention right could not be laid hands on, so they started with the effect and pointed out that trinitrotoluene was widely used in modern times, and the power of black powder was too weak to make sense.
"Wu Yao", black powder, dynamite.
This kind of brain circuit is also quite strange. They don't seem to understand the difference between 0 and 1. It is precisely because of the black powder that Europeans will improve it and study better formulas. Explosives were invented in 1863, and black powder was always used in the war of three or four hundred years before that. There is a saying that "the biggest secret of making an atomic bomb is that it can be made." If black powder has never been widely used, who will have a clear goal to improve its formula?
The compass Shen Kuo (103 1- 1095) records in this book: "Fang Jia can be guided by grinding the needle with a magnet; However, it is often slightly eastward, not completely southward. The water floats and shakes badly. You can do it on the fingers and lips of the bowl. It runs very fast, but it's hard and slippery. It's best not to hang up. Its method: Take a single cocoon from a new cocoon, decorate the waist of the needle with mustard seed and wax, and hang it in a windless place to guide the needle. The grinding refers to the north. Family guides, all in the north. The guidance of a magnet, especially pointing to the west, cannot be original. "
There are several points worth noting in this document: 1. A compass is a needle, not a spoon. 2. The magnetic declination phenomenon is recorded. 3. The usage of four compasses is also listed.
Modern recovery, compass, compass, compass.
This document is a century earlier than the first mention of the compass phenomenon by Europeans, and the magnetic declination is 400 years earlier than Columbus. Two hundred years later, the Arabic book "The Complete Works of Merchants' Treasures" recorded the "magnetic grinding fish fillets" (that is, the one making gunpowder above) which is highly similar to the "The Collection of Martial Classics" by 1044, so scholars believe that the compass was introduced to Arabia and then to Europe through China.
Compass is a hard condition for ocean navigation. Without it, there would be no era of great navigation, and it is unknown whether modern science can develop.
The invention of movable type printing has the same significance as papermaking, which greatly promotes the spread of culture and makes the price of books very close to the people. Before the invention of printing, books were copied by hand, and monks in some temples copied scriptures all their lives; Not many people can read, and some people spend their time on this boring and repetitive work. The price of "handmade" books can be imagined.
Clay, wood, copper and block printing
The opponent's attack direction is China's poor application of movable type printing itself, and this technology was applied on a large scale only after it was developed in industrial revolution in europe. This is actually quite ridiculous, because of the characteristics of Chinese, movable type printing is actually not as easy to use and cheap as block printing. In Europe, the Latin language system is composed of letters, but there are at most 30 letters, so movable type is much more convenient.
Both block printing and movable type printing were invented by China. However, due to the characteristics of characters and the limitation of technology (relying on manpower) at that time, more advanced movable type is not as practical as block printing in theory, which is not enough to deny the significance of movable type printing.
We should know technology ≠ Science We have heard of "technology" since childhood, as if science and technology are naturally bound together, but this is actually an inaccurate concept. Of course, science and technology are inseparable today. Even the administrative work such as company management is now done by science. But almost a hundred years ago, science had not risen to such a high level. People's attitude towards scientists is more like that of sports stars or famous artists now: I respect your excellent ability, but you are just an ordinary cow.
World War I was meaningless, stupid and unfair.
Henry Moseley, a gifted physicist and chemist at the University of Manchester in England, was drafted into the army during World War I and died in the Battle of Garipoli in 19 15 at the age of 27. His death is meaningless. If he hadn't joined the army, he might have won the Nobel Prize in 19 16. After this incident, the British government issued a policy not to allow the arrest and killing of young scientists with outstanding achievements or great prospects.
Henry Moselle (1887~ 19 15)
I didn't expect that. Obviously, with the development of science for hundreds of years, a scientist will be so "used" during World War I. You should know that Americans commented on Qian Xuesen in those days: "No matter where Qian Xuesen goes, he is worth 3 ~ 5 divisions, and he must never be allowed to leave the United States." In fact, Qian Lao has contributed more than five divisions to our new China.
So what did people think of science and technology before that? Science can derive technology, but technology does not necessarily depend on science. Technology can also be a summary of human experience and skills formed in long-term production and life. For example, using fire is a technology that other animals don't have and can't get from their innate instinct. But our ancestors and extinct close relatives also used fire, which can be traced back to 800 thousand years ago and was quite popular 300 thousand years ago. You know, it only took 1.5 million years for Homo sapiens to really appear!
Ancient people used fire relics.
The improvement of most production tools in ancient times only depended on the accumulation of experience. For example, the textile machine, from the simple structure in Qin and Han dynasties to the complex structure in Qing dynasty, has undergone numerous improvements, but its main manufacturing materials have not changed, all of which are wood. There is no specific and meticulous science applied to improvement, but textile workers have been fine-tuning for many years, so it has become more and more complicated. Experience is the most basic way for animals to understand the world. Even fleas know how to adjust their height to protect themselves after hitting the wall continuously, which is quite different from science.
Now let's turn our attention back to the four great inventions. The invention of gunpowder originated from an alchemist's mistake. The alchemist showed people Feng Shui with a compass. Printing and papermaking are indeed invented technologies, but they still have little to do with science, but they are the accumulation and transformation of experience. Papermaking, for example, originated from silk floss bleached in sericulture. Some silk scraps will be suspended in water, filtered repeatedly by mats, and accumulated into fiber sheets, which can be used as paper after drying. Cai Lun's improvement is to replace silk with other fiber materials. Movable type printing is simpler and an improved version of block printing.
The predecessor of paper
What exactly is science?
A little friend once left me a message. She believes that as long as human beings strive for a better life, they must be considered scientific. Well, in fact, science does have a broader definition. Under this definition, many ancient civilizations have rich scientific achievements, and our ancient China is no exception. But to say that the spirit of "narrow science" is making human civilization highly developed, only ancient Greece and Europe after the Renaissance.
1, the origin of science
What is scientific spirit? This began in 3500 BC, when the most prosperous civilizations in the Mediterranean region were Sumerians in the two river basins (the middle and lower reaches of the Euphrates River and the Tigris River) and ancient Egyptians in the Nile River basin, because the rivers here would flood regularly, bringing fertile soil to the two sides, and agriculture prospered, becoming the earliest ancient civilization in human history.
Nile oasis
Regular floods have also brought some inconvenience. For example, every time the flood recedes, the earth becomes empty, and everyone can't tell which land they own, so an effective notarization method is really needed to divide the land, and the prototype of geometry was born here. Geometry (γ ε ω μ ε ρ α) means "measuring the earth" in Greek. For thousands of years, China was good at arithmetic without geometry in ancient times, while the Mediterranean coast was just the opposite. They are good at geometry, but not at arithmetic.
Geometric element
After the development of geometry for 3000 years, it came to ancient Greece. After the spread and development of Thales and Pythagoras, after the mathematician Euclid (ε υ κ λ ε ι ι) matured, he wrote a book called Geometry, which can be said to be the embryonic form of modern scientific spirit for the first time. At the beginning of the book, five axioms were put forward, which we all learned in junior high school:
Two points define a straight line. A line segment is a part of a straight line. The radii of these circles are all equal. All right angles are equal. A triangle has at least two acute angles. 2, geometry = truth
Do you still feel strange when you know this? These five sentences are very strange. I feel that the first four sentences are all nonsense, especially the concept that a straight line can extend indefinitely, which is simply unknown so.
So why write these five sentences at the beginning of this book?
Because ... all the theorems and laws in this book are derived from these five axioms! This is the best part.
I don't understand. What is the motivation? For example, if you are given five kinds of materials, namely iron, cement, plastic, water and stone, you can build a building. Do you need a hammer? Made of iron and plastic! Want a saw? Made of iron and plastic! Want a bucket? Made of plastic and iron! Want steel bars? Made of iron! Want concrete? Made of water, stone and cement!
These five substances are the five theorems, and hammers, buckets, steel bars, saws and concrete are all kinds of theorems and laws. Architecture is a difficult problem that geometry can prove and solve. This is a method of producing all complex conclusions by logical deduction with a few axioms.
Democritus (top 460 ~ top 370)
Now let's see how powerful this combination of geometry and logic is. Modern science tells us that matter is made up of atoms, but the name of atoms comes from ancient Greece. This concept was put forward by the philosopher democritus. He found a logical loophole: matter is a continuous whole. If it is correct, it means that it can be divided infinitely. But if you divide a substance indefinitely, what will you get? A bunch of tiny particles with dimensions? No, if so, it's not infinitely separable, so all that's left is some points without dimensions. Now if we put these points together, one, two, three, four, how much will it become matter? No matter how much you put, it is impossible to produce matter, because the point itself has no dimension, and no matter how many things without dimension are put together, there will be no dimension.
Not infinite division.
So democritus came to the conclusion that matter must not be infinitely separable, and there must be a smallest particle that is inseparable! This thing is called "inseparable", which is the original meaning of the Greek ×× tomos.
3. Why is it so effective?
2500 years ago, in the absence of any advanced observation means, the Greeks were able to find the truth of a universe through pure logical deduction. Isn't this a great surprise? Now, although humans have found that atoms, protons and even quarks are separable, they have also found a minimum length: Planck length, which is about equal to 1.6x 10-35 cubic meters, which is half the size of a proton. All matter can't be between this length, and matter can only jump and flash in this size, which is the true "inseparability".
The more knowledge, the less hair: Planck
Why is the geometric way of thinking the embryonic form of scientific spirit? Because only axioms can't be proved, they can only be obtained through observation, but they are extremely simple and can guarantee absolute correctness! All conclusions drawn from correct axioms and correct logic should be correct, which is the part closest to "truth" in human knowledge. Using this method to acquire or verify a knowledge can eliminate the influence caused by people's subjective feelings to almost no meaning.
It turns out that human beings know the world through experience, and people are not precise instruments. There are all kinds of fallacies caused by brain structure or mental state, such as "illusion", so that what we think of as "truth" is often not the case. For example, health care products with unknown ingredients have any effect after eating? Can't be verified. They can quarrel about such things, but they still tell each other, because personal feelings can't convince others.
The brain has been fooling you.
If we use scientific thinking to deal with this problem, we must first make clear some basic facts that everyone can recognize (for example, only admit observable phenomena), and then conduct experiments on this basis to eliminate all other possible interference factors to a minimum. Finally, we can get a conclusion that is closest to the truth.
It can be seen that this direction of thinking is obviously in the same strain as the core idea of geometry, and both aim to find "some truth that cannot be shaken by personal will", so geometry was called "God-given knowledge" in the Middle Ages.
4. What is science?
Is science one or two outstanding achievements? No, is science one or two difficult topics? number
In my words, science is a system, an organization and a world. The way to enter this world is to reach a basic understanding with the accepted axioms of this world and to know and explore this world according to the norms of this world.
The earliest formal scientific organization, the Royal Society of Science.
There are many people who seriously misinterpret science. For example, as the saying goes, "Many scientists also believe in religion, so science is based on theology." This is a typical mistake of confusing parts with machines. Scientists can be religious, of course, but if there is a "correct experimental result because I prayed to God, you should not be able to reproduce it" in his paper, then he will be kicked out of the scientific community immediately.
Use an image metaphor: science is like a mining company, and scientists are miners in this company. The ancients were equivalent to some passers-by who met mines. They may come to pick up stones to build houses in the mountains, pull out a ginseng on the hillside, or build a road to the outside world. In short, they also inadvertently acquired some treasures contained in the mountains. Can they be called miners? No, because they don't know why there are treasures in the mountains, and they don't know how to keep getting them. Besides, compared with treasure hunting, they still have to build their own houses or send ginseng to the market to sell, which is right.
Much like a scientist
Mining companies, on the other hand, are completely different. They not only know that there are treasures in the mountains, but also have a large number of equipment dedicated to excavating treasures. What miners have to do is to mine with machines according to the safety production norms. There may be some bad elements who eat inside and pick outside and cheat, but the workers are also discerning and will be fired and liquidated sooner or later. Clear purpose, correct method, orderly, day and night; This is the production state that a mining company should have, and this is also the operation state of modern science.
Does China Ancient Science Need "Family Tree"?
After reading these, I believe you can understand why I said "there was no science in ancient China".
In fact, this is not something worth saying. Except the Mediterranean, other ancient or prosperous civilizations have not developed science, because different civilizations have different trajectories. As far as Chinese civilization is concerned, due to the relatively superior and stable geographical environment, we have already completed the unfinished "great unification" in Europe. This makes Chinese civilization enter a "premature period", and people of insight in China mainly focus on the seven words of "ruling the country and leveling the world".
At the same time, our ancient natural philosophy is also quite distinctive, emphasizing a harmonious unity between man and everything. Take China's two thousand-year mainstream Confucianism as an example. Confucius once said "stay away from ghosts and gods". This is very representative. Since ancient times, China people's attitude towards incomprehensible natural phenomena has been "uninterested". We are neither disgusted nor curious, but simply too lazy to think about it and concentrate on practical things, which is also the root of our people's spirit of hard struggle for thousands of years.
"I am full of warmth and desire, and I want to be enthroned." After the reform, many people have become rich, and they are willing to spend money to repair their genealogy and find themselves a rich ancestor. This is actually a sign of inferiority. Why are you looking for your ancestors, or do you want to prove that you are not rich for no reason? "My ancestors were awesome people, and I was just recreating his glory."
South Korea, which has done the most in this respect, is a short-lived and weak client country in history, bullied by either the suzerain or Japan. Because they caught up with the good times and rose to be the four little dragons in Asia, they also began to stir up and wanted to stick some gold to their ancestors. But there was really nothing to see, and there was nothing to dig up, so I began to steal the history of China and came up with the theism that Confucius was Korean and Zhu Yuanzhang was Korean, which was satirized by China and Japan as "the universe is Korean".
This behavior can only be despised by others. We have been a kingdom in China since ancient times, and now we are about to become the world's first power again in our lifetime. Our concept and system have our advantages, and the only four ancient civilizations that never die are not paid by telephone. It is not shameful to admit that there was no science in ancient China, but it is more heroic. What the ancient west couldn't do was to unify, eliminate theocracy and make the world public. We did it in ancient China, and the modern west is proud of it, so we can keep up with the science that let them dominate for 200 years.