Who was Joseph Needham? What have you achieved? Causes of the Needham problem

Joseph Needham's question is generally referred to as the Needham problem.

Mr. Joseph Needham.

The Needham problem, posed by the British scholar Joseph Needham (1900-1995) and formally raised it in his 15-volume History of Science and Technology in China, with the theme: "Why did the scientific and industrial revolution not take place in modern China, despite the fact that ancient China made many important contributions to the development of human science and technology?" In 1976, the American economist Kenneth Boulding called it the Needham problem.

Many people have further extended the Needham problem, and there are questions such as "why is China backward in modern science" and "why is China backward in modern times". The debate over this issue has been very hot.

Qian Xuesen, a famous Chinese scientist, once put forward the famous "Qian Xuesen's question", which is the same concern for China's science and technology as Joseph Needham's problem. The Needham problem is also known as the Needham puzzle and Needham's question. "Joseph Needham's question" is one of the core topics in the field of Chinese studies.

Mr. Joseph Needham introduced.

The Needham problem is a two-paragraph formulation:

Joseph Needham's first paragraph is: Why did the ancient Chinese far more advanced in science and technology than their contemporaries in Europe between the first century BC and the sixteenth century AD? Why did the separation of church and state in China, the civil selection system, private school education, and the hundred schools of thought not emerge in Europe during the same period?

The second paragraph is: Why did modern science not arise in China, but in the West in the seventeenth century, especially in Europe after the Renaissance? The essence of Joseph Needham's conundrum is that the empirical science in ancient China was well developed, but why China did not produce modern experimental science is a question about the origin of the two paradigms of scientific research.

Why does science happen in Western societies? "It's the opposite of Needham's problem. The Needham problem is also known as the Needham puzzle and Needham's question.

Joseph Needham was a foreign scholar specializing in ancient Chinese crafts, and he once admired the ingenuity and superb craftsmanship of the ancient Chinese people. The Needham problem refers to the modern tense, and for more information, please see the link.

Joseph Needham's question refers to why in modern times, why did China's craftsmanship not progress far behind other emerging industrial countries, and why did modern science and technology not originate in China?

The conundrum he posed was why technology had not been developed in China.

And I think that's a question for all of us to ask.

Then in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, China's commodity economy had already sprouted, why did China's capitalism not develop, but developed in Britain and other Western countries.

The so-called Needham problem is: Although ancient China made many important contributions to the development of human science and technology, why did the scientific and industrial revolution not occur in modern China?

Why did modern science and the scientific revolution arise only in Europe? ......Why was it that until the Middle Ages, when China was more advanced than Europe, later let the Europeans be the first to whip? How could such a shift occur?

To be precise, this is called the "Needham Problem."

See here for details.

1. Resource factors. The ecological constraints of China's mountainous and semi-arid climate have prompted China to develop agricultural technologies that save energy and consume labor, rather than expanding resources and saving labor, leading to periodic ecological crises and cycles of chaos, and hindering the development of the division of labor.

2. Cultural factors. From the cultural competition model, it can be seen that the adventurous spirit is conducive to diversity and innovation, and the risk-averse tendency is conducive to stability and catching up. The dominant ideology of Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism in China is to avoid risks and protect oneself wisely.

3. System complexity factors. The development of the division of labor requires a stable environment, and the emergence of modern science and capitalism is not an extension of a single question, but the result of the evolution of a clash of civilizations. China is facing the worsening of the ecological crisis caused by a single small-scale peasant economy, the continuous shortening of the cycle of natural disasters since the Qin and Han dynasties, the continuous peasant uprisings and foreign invasions, and the changeable monetary and fiscal policies, all of which are not conducive to the maintenance of the division of labor.

Why does sticking to the economic barrier of intensive cultivation hinder the development of modern science and technology?

2.Did the imperial examination system stifle the development of science and technology?

3.What is the Needham Problem?

3 is the one that should be put first...

1 The agrarian economy is characterized by self-sufficiency and requires only a small exchange of necessities of life, so it is impossible to form a unified market and hinder the exchange of various localities, so it is not possible to produce the exchange of modern science and technology. Moreover, the agrarian economy is unable to accumulate a large amount of surplus wealth, resulting in insufficient social funds for scientific research.

2 The imperial examination system has consolidated the agrarian economic and social system, for the same reason as 1. Second, it attracted the best talents in society to the road of imperial examinations, so that no one cared about other practical knowledge, hindered the development of practical science, and thus stifled the development of modern science and technology.

3 The Needham conundrum is why ancient China, with its great scientific and technological achievements, was surpassed by the West in modern science. In fact, many people don't think that the Joseph Needham problem is a problem, and I think so too, because the premise is not valid, the fruitful scientific achievements of ancient China are actually mostly practical technology and lack of scientific spirit, so later after the whole society neglected the practical and emphasized the religion, practical technology was still developing slowly, but the Western science developed greatly

After decades of hard research and debate by Chinese and foreign scholars, some progress and results have been made in solving the "Needham Mystery". To sum up, there are probably more than 10 kinds of theories about the ancient Chinese system, geographical environment, population resources, ideology and culture, social organization structure, and imperial examination system, each with its own basis and reasonableness. Regrettably, however, the various theories are secondary, not the most important, and thus fail to solve the mystery of Joseph Needham.

Of course, Dr. Needham had his own version of the story, which he believed were due to two main reasons:

First, under the influence of ancient Chinese ideology and culture, the Chinese emphasize practicality over analysis;

Second, the ancient Chinese bureaucracy maintained the principle of "valuing agriculture and suppressing commerce", hindered the formation of mercantilist values, and did not combine the skills of craftsmen with the mathematical and logical methods discovered by scholars, so it failed to realize the transition to modern science. This argument seems to be convincing, but it does not stand up to scrutiny.

Ancient Chinese thought and culture originated from hundreds of schools of thought, and the content is very rich, so it has created brilliant achievements in ancient Chinese science and technology, and has been ahead of the world for a long time. The "Four Great Inventions" of ancient China (i.e., papermaking, gunpowder, movable type printing, and the compass) were merely the summaries of practical experience rather than the results of speculative analysis?

Some commentators have pointed out that the way of thinking of Chinese is indeed different from that of Europeans, but this difference does not explain why the Industrial Revolution did not happen in China. Because the formation of modern science was at least 100 years later than the Industrial Revolution, that is, the Industrial Revolution was not a scientific revolution. As for the bureaucratic system in ancient China, it is actually very similar to the bureaucratic system in the modern West, and it is not entirely in line with historical facts to say that it hinders the development and progress of commerce.

According to the research of Mr. Quan Hansheng's book "Research on Chinese Economic History" (Hong Kong New Asia Institute, 1976 edition), ancient Chinese commerce has a long history, and commerce has flourished in the Tang and Song dynasties, especially in the Song Dynasty, commercial taxes have accounted for a large proportion of the imperial court's finances. Textile, printing, minerals, navigation and other industries are also very developed, far ahead of the rest of the world. Therefore, Japanese academic circles refer to the Song Dynasty and later as the "modern era".

To put it simply, Joseph Needham believed that China during the Ming and Qing dynasties was the world's number one power, but why was it later overtaken by Western countries, and why did capitalism not appear in China at the earliest, and why did China lag behind so quickly.

In the past, ancient Chinese science and technology were always ahead of the world, why the industrial revolution first originated in the West in modern times.