First, the origin of Needham's puzzle
Tracing back to the source of Needham's puzzle, we will know that before Needham, some people raised similar questions. As early as the 17th century, the missionaries who came to China had noticed the "backward problem" of science in China. The Notes of Matteo Ricci China (1615), written by the early missionary M. Ricci 1552-161), is the first book to systematically and comprehensively introduce China's science and technology after the Spanish author Mendoza's History of the Great China. [1] Dominique Parrenin (D. Parrenin 1665-1741), a French missionary who came to China after Matteo Ricci, was the first person to put forward the "backward problem" in the early days. The introduction of China by missionaries and their comments on "China's scientific backwardness" even set off a "frenzy" of studying China in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. Some famous thinkers and scientists, such as Boyle, Leibniz, Cassini, Voltaire, Quesler, Hume, Diderot and Montesquieu, all paid attention to China's science and technology.
At the beginning of the 2th century, when the New Culture Movement in China reached its climax, "backwardness" became a hot topic discussed by China scholars. In 1915, Ren Hongjuan (1886-1961), the founder of Science Society of China and Science magazine, published an article entitled "Why there is no science in China" in the first volume of Science magazine in 1915. Since then, many China scholars have joined the discussion on this issue. For example, Liang Qichao and Feng Youlan both expressed their opinions on such issues.
In p>1944, when the Chinese Science Society celebrated its 3th anniversary, Joseph Needham attended the annual meeting held in Meitan, Guizhou, and delivered a speech on Science and China Culture. In his speech, he criticized for the first time some western and China scholars' arguments that there was no science in ancient China. He said that China's ancient philosophy was very close to scientific explanation, and China's inventions had a great influence on the whole world. Therefore, the basic question is why modern experimental science and its related theoretical system came into being in the West rather than in China. Here, Needham has actually put forward the so-called "Needham puzzle" very clearly.
On March 19th, 23, Mr. Gukley, the current director of Needham Institute, said in an exclusive interview with reporters that Needham's conclusion on this issue was that there was a feudal bureaucratic system in China in the past 2, which produced two effects. The positive effect is that China selected a large number of intelligent and well-educated people through the imperial examination system. Their management keeps China in order and enables China to develop science and technology very effectively. In this respect, China has obvious advantages over Europe from the decline of the Roman Empire to modern times. The negative effects are: the highly centralized system of power, coupled with the practice of selecting talents through the imperial examination, make new ideas difficult to be accepted by the society, and there is almost no competition in the field of technology development. In Europe at the same time, there was a strong competition in the field of technology development. In this respect, China since the Qin Dynasty is not only inferior to Europe in the same period, but even inferior to China in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, due to the competition between different vassal states in some areas, the whole China produced a large number of intellectual achievements. [2] In short, Needham's own answer to the Needham puzzle is mainly from the social system.
second, the status of China's ancient intellectual property system
(1) Copyright system
The concept of copyright came into being very early in China. Since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, most of the classical literature has the author's signature, and some works even take the author's name or the school's ancestor's name as their names. Plagiarists have been condemned by the society, which shows that ancient Chinese scholars have realized the author's personal rights such as the right of authorship, and at the same time, it also reflects the society's respect for these rights and reflects the hazy awareness of the rights of works. Of course, this awareness of rights is very simple, and there is basically no content of property rights.
in ancient China, before the invention of printing, culture was spread by oral and handwritten means, and works were difficult to become commodities. With the emergence of block printing and movable type printing, works have been widely spread and publishers have benefited. These businessmen began to seek legal protection in order to stop others from counterfeiting. According to relevant information, there have been records of copyright protection in the Song Dynasty. For example, during the reign of Xianchun in the Southern Song Dynasty, Zhejiang and Zhejiang published special articles to protect the rights and interests of four books, such as Fang Yu Sheng Lan. In the third year of Changxing in the Tang Dynasty after the Five Dynasties, the imperial court ordered Tian Min to preside over the revision of the Nine Classics in imperial academy and "print and sell it in a rigid way". This was the beginning of the official engraving of books, and it was the first "publishing house" in the world to print books on a large scale for sale at that time. In order to protect the original version of the Nine Classics, the court once ordered that ordinary people should not engrave the book, thus protecting imperial academy's exclusive right to publish the Nine Classics, which was equivalent to the franchise system that appeared in Europe later. All these can be the seeds of copyright protection in China.
since the song dynasty, there have been many examples of ancient China relying on the relevant documents of the central and local governments to protect the rights and interests of authors, editors and publishers and prohibiting unauthorized use of others' "copy rights". In China, the protection of engraving publishers in the form of prohibition has never been replaced by the comprehensive copyright protection of written law in history, that is, there has never been a nationwide copyright protection system. Until 193, when the Qing government and the United States signed the Revised Treaty on Sino-US Trade and Navigation, and the word "copyright" was used in Chinese, Emperor Guangxu still issued an edict to protect the exclusive right to reprint Jiutong Classification. In the late Qing dynasty, influenced by western culture, the Qing dynasty imitated the legislative system of European continental law system and compiled new laws. In 191, the Copyright Law of the Qing Dynasty was the first copyright law in Chinese history.
(II) Patent System
According to Han Feizi, in ancient times, a family whose profession was washing and dyeing developed a kind of medicine that didn't touch the turtle. A counselor bought a prescription with a huge sum of money, and later prepared it for his own soldiers to use, defeating a strong enemy, and the counselor also made an official knighthood. From this story, we can know that as far back as the Warring States period, China people knew the use value and value of knowledge and used it as a special property. But no independent intellectual property system was developed at that time.
in the mid-19th century, Hong Rengan, the leader of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, put forward the idea of establishing a patent system in his capitalist New Chapter on Senior Affairs after he took charge of state affairs in 1859. The specific patent form appeared in Guangxu period of Qing Dynasty. In 1881, Zheng Guanying, a bourgeois reformist, wrote to Li Hongzhang, the minister of Beiyang in the Qing Dynasty, demanding that the machine weaving technology of Shanghai machine weaving layout be patented for 1 years. Subsequently, some new processes and technologies have been filed for patents, and the number of patents approved is increasing. Under the impetus of the Reform Movement, Emperor Guangxu promulgated the first patent-related regulation in the history of our country in May 1898-the Articles of Association for Awarding Awards for Revitalizing Craft. The patent right here is essentially a franchise, which is different from the current patent right. Later, due to the strong opposition of the die-hards, the patent advocated by the reformists has not been put into practice. Therefore, the patent system was not established and developed in China until the end of Qing Dynasty. Strictly speaking, the establishment and formation of China's patent system began after the Revolution of 1911. In December, 1912, the then Ministry of Industry and Commerce promulgated the Provisional Articles of Association for Award Crafts. Legally, this is the first written law in China, which has some elements of the basic principles of modern patent law.
(III) Trademark system
Trademarks are special signs used on commodities. In the early days of natural economy, even if some products were added with some inscriptions and year numbers, they only played the role of expressing private rights, decoration or commemoration. With the emergence and development of commodity production and exchange, some marks have played a role in distinguishing product producers. From the unearthed pottery, although the meaning of the symbols at the mouth edge and bottom is not very clear at present, compared with those vivid images on the same object, they can not be considered as ornamental in terms of artistic skills or attached parts. On the contrary, the history since then has proved that they can only be used as an explanation to distinguish the owner and the maker of objects. This kind of mark, which only has the single attribute of distinguishing producers, does not have the function of promoting products and providing quality assurance. Although it cannot be regarded as a trademark in modern sense, it can be said to be the embryonic form of modern trademarks.
According to Han Feizi in the pre-Qin period, the earliest shop signboard in China appeared more than 2, years ago. It is a "flag" or "sign" made of cloth and silk, which is the shop sign with the function of marking and identification. Commodity exchange and market development during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period provided conditions for the emergence of ancient trademarks in China. During the Han and Tang dynasties, the use of marks on commodities was also common. With the development of commerce, China's trademarks were relatively complete in the Song Dynasty, and the number of famous brands and trade names increased. The earliest relatively complete trademark was the "Liu Jiagongfu Needle Shop" in Jinan, Shandong Province in the Northern Song Dynasty. The illustrated trademark "Recognizing the White Rabbit in front of the door as a souvenir" was used, and the copperplate printed with the trademark "White Rabbit" is now displayed in the China History Museum.
Since the Opium War, many foreign goods and foreign trademarks have appeared due to the invasion of imperialism. With the development of national industry, many trademarks appeared in modern China, and the trademark legal system began to form in modern China. In 194, the Qing government promulgated the first trademark law in the history of China-the Articles of Association for Trial Trademark Registration.
3. Understanding Needham's Difficult Problem from the Perspective of Property Rights System
The last section shows that the intellectual property system had sprouted in ancient China. So, what will this intellectual property situation in China give us to answer Needham's puzzle?
Mr. Zheng Chengsi believes that "all intellectual property scholars in the East and the West, without exception, believe that copyright appears with the adoption of printing." Furthermore, Mr. Zheng believes that "if copyright does appear with the adoption of printing, it should appear in China at the earliest." [3] However, the chronological order does not represent the logical reason and result. In fact, although China has a history of leading science and technology for thousands of years and put movable type printing into production practice at the earliest, China has not produced an intellectual property system in the modern sense. Science and technology is a prerequisite for the emergence of intellectual property system, but it is not a sufficient condition. It is generally believed that "intellectual property rights do not originate from any kind of civil rights, nor from any kind of property rights. It originated from the privilege of feudal society. " [4] At this point, China has the same or even earlier so-called "starting point" as the western modern intellectual property system. However, in fact, the result is that although China has similar feudal privileges, this feudal privilege has not been transformed into "private rights" in the end. Although at the same time, it can be considered that under the theme of ancient imperial control in China, the feudal privilege law objectively protected some private rights. [5]
As the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1993, D. North studied the evolution of various social systems in the West, and pointed out that the rise of the Western world in the past 2 years was due to finding an effective system to protect tangible property rights and intangible property rights, which greatly reduced transaction costs and encouraged commodity production and intellectual investment. Some scholars believe that "before North, the mainstream theory of modern history explained the industrial revolution and the subsequent modern economic growth, which was basically based on scientific discovery (such as the emergence of Newtonian mechanics), technological innovation, wave of invention, education and capital accumulation-but this theory can't stand scrutiny. A fatal criticism is that in the mid-14th century, the Chinese Empire, which was the world's number one power at that time, reached the level of science and technology, education and capital accumulation in Western Europe on the eve of the industrial revolution. In fact, the technological foundation that gave birth to the industrial revolution in Western Europe basically came from China. " [6] Interestingly, some economic historians have suggested that China failed to have an industrial revolution under the condition of high technology accumulation, mainly because China lacked an entrepreneurial class. North believes that "the condition for a society to emerge an entrepreneur class and make it grow and develop continuously is that the society needs to create a system to support the entrepreneur class." This system is the intellectual property system. "Economic historians have confirmed North's conjecture through empirical research. It is in Britain and the Netherlands that the patent and copyright systems as intellectual property protection systems were first established and developed. The reason why other European countries lagged behind these two countries in the industrial revolution was precisely because they lagged behind these two countries in the implementation of intellectual property systems." [7]
The emergence of the western intellectual property system has gone through hundreds of years of gestation. In the fierce transformation of social transformation, the development and changes in politics, economy, science and technology, ideology and culture have either constituted the mother land on which this new system depends, or provided the impetus for the birth of this new right. First of all, the emergence of new technology. Since the 15th century, with the formation of capitalist relations of production and the development of workshop handicraft industry, there has been a social demand in European countries to adopt advanced technology, manufacture and use advanced production tools and various machines, which has made great progress in technology. Among them, the greatest progress is reflected in the textile, mining, metallurgy and chemistry sectors closely related to the development of capitalist economy. [8] In the process of applying science and technology to social production, knowledge products and material products began to have the same commodity significance. These technological advances have laid a solid technical foundation for the emergence of industrial civilization and the emergence of intellectual property system with the mission of protecting industrial civilization. Secondly, it is the establishment of new cultural values. From 14th to 16th century, the Renaissance movement launched by the bourgeoisie in Western Europe inspired people to transform the world, study nature and attach importance to practical and useful knowledge. This new concept of cultural values put forward in the Renaissance provided the bourgeoisie with the necessary cultural and ideological preparations for using science and technology as a material weapon on the one hand and private rights as a legal weapon on the other. Thirdly, it is the sprout of new political civilization. During the British bourgeois revolution in the middle of 17th century, thinkers and politicians from Hobbes, Milton to Locke all advocated that sovereignty belongs to the people, equality and freedom, and emphasized the inviolability of private property. In particular, Locke's works clarified the principles of the bourgeoisie about property and political power, and summarized the disputes between the British bourgeoisie and new noble about property and political power in the 17th century. The gradual formation of the British bourgeois political and ideological system represented by Locke, as well as by