The British scholar Joseph Needham once raised a famous question: "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?" Later this question The question is generally extended to: Why was China’s scientific and technological civilization so advanced in ancient China, but so backward in modern China?

I think, first of all, from an economic point of view: ancient China was a farming civilization, and scientific and technological inventions emerged in response to agricultural needs. Therefore, in the early and middle stages of agricultural civilization, our demand for production tools and scientific and technological achievements increased linearly. But farming relies more on experience. Therefore, when scientific and technological achievements basically meet the needs, we stop moving forward and rely on the experience passed down from father to son from generation to generation to work. Moreover, our economy is closed, and the food grown is generally self-sufficient, so there is no need to go to great lengths to expand the scale of production, and there is no need to have special expectations for new technologies.

Secondly, in ancient my country, people were divided into scholars, farmers, industry, and businessmen. People with high status were not scientists but officials. As the saying goes, "Everything is inferior, only reading is high." However, if you want to invent and create, you must have extremely high cultural literacy, and people with high cultural literacy often become officials rather than "professional technicians." Scientific and technological inventions are not taken seriously, and naturally few people pay special attention to them. For example, the ancient scientist Zhang Heng, we all know that he invented the seismometer, which is amazing. However, the fact that his name has been passed down is not mainly due to his inventions, but because he served successively as a doctor, Taishi Ling, and Hejian Minister in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and even served as a minister in his later years. Therefore, his name can be included in the "Book of the Later Han Dynasty" 》, and things like seismographs can only be regarded as his hobby and enter the history books. Another example is Bi Sheng of the Northern Song Dynasty, who created movable type printing, which is known as one of the "four great inventions" in ancient times. However, we found this invention in Shen Kuo's "Mengxi Bi Tan". In other words, movable type printing was not used at that time. People don't think it's that great. The ancients would never have thought that a thousand years later, descendants would be in full swing with South Korea over these "little tricks" and would be very happy.

Furthermore, ancient my country (and even modern times) was deeply influenced by Confucianism and Taoism. Confucianism advocated the cultivation of Qi and Zhiping, and despised agriculture, industry and commerce. Although Confucius also cultivated the southern acres, he always believed that a gentleman is not a good person. They should do this, and not only should they not grow food, but they should not even make food - "A gentleman is far away from the kitchen". As for Taoism, they mostly advocate the theory of indisputability and invent so many things. Isn’t this just for fighting against heaven, earth, and people? Taoism is opposed to this. “Because it is indisputable, no one in the world can fight with it.” ". Therefore, in our traditional thinking, there has always been a sense of alienation from science and technology.

Our country was far ahead of the world in science and technology in ancient times, mainly because our agricultural civilization was far ahead. At that time, the so-called Western powers were basically "barren lands", so we had the "Heavenly Empire" "country" feeling. However, with the rise of the modern West, we have been unable to completely transform and change the political, economic, and ideological traditions that have existed for thousands of years in a short period of time. Therefore, in the face of strong ships and cannons, we feel that the prosperity of the past has indeed been "all gone". It’s gone”~