Abstract
The belief in the power of science stands at the center of the ideology called modernity. The vision that useful knowledge could steadily accumulate in human society and that the application of scientific knowledge to nature and society could advance human civilization encouraged European philosophers like Fontenelle, Condorcet and Turgot to formulate the idea of progress. The belief in science and its capability in bettering man’s living conditions also induced Enlightenment philosophers and other Western thinkers such as Saint-Simon to propose modern projects. Why had no such philosophy been formulated and no indigenous modern science been created in traditional China? This is an important question in understanding China’s failure to achieve modernity in the past.
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Notes
See Liu Xianting, ‘Guangyang Zaji’, quoted in The Review of the Dialectics of Nature, 1983, p. 89.
Einstein, ‘A letter to J. E. Switzer of San Mateo California’, quoted in Needham, 1969, p. 43.
‘In every human mind there is the knowing faculty; and in everything, there is a pattern-principle. The incompleteness of our knowledge is due to our inadequacies in investigating the pattern-principle of things. The student must go to all things under heaven, beginning with the known principles and seeking the utmost. After sufficient labor has been devoted to it, the day will come when all things will suddenly become clear and intelligible’ (Zhu Xi, Shishu jizu (collected notes to the Four Classics, Chapter Five), quoted in Quian Wen-yuan, 1985, pp. 117–18). Both Jesuits in late Ming China and Chinese scholars in the late Qing used the term gezhi zhi xue (the learning obtained through investigation into objects) - a term that had gained its specific meaning from Zhu Xi’s abovementioned statement - to refer to the natural sciences of the West.
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© 2002 He Ping
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Ping, H. (2002). China’s Historical Stagnation: the Scientific Aspect. In: China’s Search for Modernity. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288560_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288560_3
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