Science and Technology in China
up to the 19th Century
Patri K. Venuvinod
Professor (Chair) of Manufacturing Engineering
Department of Manufacturing Eng. and Eng. Management
City University of Hong Kong
Some classical Western views about China
• Jonas Hanway: “the most effeminate people on
earth.”
• Goethe and Lord Shaftesbury: Greek and Roman
empires had more to teach than ancient China.
• The hero in Defoe’s The Further Adventures of
Robinson Crusoe (1719): “contemptible herd or
crowd of ignorant and sordid slaves, subjected to a
government qualified only to rule such people.”
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But, until the Renaissance, the West
barely equaled the Chinese in S&T
China
Civil Service Tang era,
examinations A.D. 618-906
Paper
T’sai Lun, Han era,
A.D. 105
Molded
11th century
clay types
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The West
19th
century
1000 years later
Gutenberg, Germany,
A.D. 1450
3
Sun spots
discovered
28 B.C.
Inoculation Sung Dynasty
against
(A.D. 960-1279).
smallpox
A.D. 7
Edward Jenner,
England, the second
half of 18th century
First census A.D. 2
Steel
production
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~150 B.C. by
heating and working
together irons with
different carbon
components
~550 A.D., the first
description of open
hearth process (the
ancestor of SiemensMartin process)
4
Some Chinese Firsts in the World
• First treatise on trigonometry (221 B.C.)
• Publication of the first news paper, the so-called Beijing
Gazette in the reign of Tang (618-907) emperor Ming
Huang.
• Oldest mechanism for astronomical studies providing
continuous rotation (~8th century).
• First printing of paper money (Tang: 618-907).
• Gunpowder, already being used in firecrackers, was first
tried out in warfare in 1161. The Mongols learned from
the Chinese and used it against Hungarians in 1241.
• Using calculating rods to solve equations with several
unknown quantities (~13th century).
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Chronology
~500,000B.C.
~25,000B.C.
5000-3000
3000-2700
2700-2200
2205-180
1783-1134
1134-356
770-221
246-206
206B.C.-220.
‘Peking Man’
Cave man
Yangshao culture
3 Emperors
5 Kings
Xia
Shang
Xi Zhu
Dong Zhu
Qin
Han
220-265
265-316
3 Kingdoms
Xi Jin
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317-420
Dong Jin
420-589
Nan Bei
581-618
Sui
618-907
Tang
907-960
5 dynasties
960-1126
Bei Song
1127-1279
Nan Song
1279-1368
Yuan
1368-1644
Ming
1644-1911
Qing
1911-1949
Kuomintong, etc.
1949-present P.R.C.
6
Artisans at work
A late Qing
representation
Caption says:
‘Preparations for
all eventualities
will avert
misfortune.’
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Paper-block print icon of the
patron saint of artisans and
engineers.
In black on yellow paper, with
decorative bands of color in
pink, green, mauve and red.
Like other tutelary deities,
Kungshu Phan is enthroned as a
magistrate or governor.
The inscription at the top says,
‘Master Kungshu of Lu, our
teacher from of old.’
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Shang Period (1783-1134)
• Agriculture, hunting, animal husbandry.
• A writing system as evident from engraved
inscriptions on tortoise shells.
• Bronze metallurgy of highest workmanship.
• King was the head of the ancestor- and spiritworship cult.
• Royal personages were buried with articles of
value, presumably for use in the afterlife.
Hundreds of commoners, who may have been
slaves, were buried alive with the royal corpse.
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Shang Bronzes, etc.
• Found at excavations at An-Yang, Honan, etc.: Weapons,
vessels for worship, chariot fittings, harnesses.
• Complex and refined decorations with repeated motifs of
animals (first time), family coats of arms, etc.
• Varying proportions of copper and tin (5 to 30%) with 2 to
3% lead according to needed properties.
• Chariots similar to those in western parts of Asia (Anatolia
and Syria had domesticated horses and used chariots
around 1700B.C.).
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Different types of
Vessels connected
with worship
Shang (or Yin)
Dynasty (1384-1025)
[Gernet 1982, p.43]
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Ritual implements
Shang (or Yin)
Dynasty (1384-1025)
[Gernet 1982, p.48]
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Dept. of Collection,
Processing, Storage and
Distribution of Raw and
Semi-finished Materials.
Dept. of Manufacture
of Finished Products
Dept. of Establishment
of Standards for
Quality, Productivity,
etc.
Dept. of Storage and
Distribution of
Finished Products
Dept. of Inspection,
Testing and
Administration of
Standards
Western Zhou (11th to 8th century B.C.)
According to the Records of Etiquette of the Zhou dynasty, there existed a
system consisting of five departments to control the production of
handicrafts in state organizations. [Juran 1990]
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~Qin and Han (200B.C. to 300A.D.)
• Invention of the wheelbarrow.
• The central plain and parts of Szechuan:
continuously cultivated.
• Skilled husbandry: use of manure, distinctions
between different types of soils, attention to the
date of ploughing and sowing, drying out of
marshy regions, drainage of salty terrains. Several
recorded hydraulic engineers.
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• First great increase in population.
• First census known to history in 2 A.D.: 57,671,400
taxable individuals.
• Lack of copper and tin caused a shift to cast iron.
• Cast iron axes, spades, knives, swords,…
• Cast iron is more breakable and takes on a sharper edge
than bronze.
• Forging of steel.
• China had a lead of several centuries over the West in
terms of iron and steel technologies.
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• Double-action piston bellows appeared in the Han
period. The device uses valves to obtain
continuous current of air.
• Palace economy with its bodies of craftsmen
controlled by palace nobles.
• State monopoly of iron and salt industries in 117
B.C.
• Mass production using the same cast iron mold.
Molds with up to 3 identical cavities.
• Development of modern industry akin to the
factory system that appeared in Europe only at the
beginning of the industrial revolution. Some
workshops had thousands of workers.
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• Carts redesigned. 1 shaft to 2 shafts. Neck yoke to
breast yoke. Thus one horse could replace 2 to 4
horses.
• Measures of length and capacity, and gage of
cartwheels unified (standardization).
• First ever fixing of spokes at a slight outward angle.
• New class of merchant entrepreneurs (private
enterprise) using fleets of riverboats and large number
of carts. Economy grew beyond palace economy.
• Trade with Manchuria, northern India, etc. The silks
of ‘Ch’in (Qin)’ led to the name C’ina (the land of
silk).
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Economic
and
industrial centers
under
the first Han dynasty
(200 B.C. to 9 A.D.)
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Han Terracota Warriors: 3000 figures excavated in Shansi.
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Geared waterpower mill
Jin Dynasty
(265-420)
[ACTS 1983]
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A military map
of Qangsha area
Unearthed from a tomb of
Early Han period.
The locations of the rivers
Roughly coincide with
those on modern maps.
[ACTS 1983]
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KV Patri
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Diagram of a
chariot from the
site of An-yang
(end of 2nd
millenium B.C.)
[Gernet 1982, p.68]
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KV Patri
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Diagram of a
chariot from the
site of Hui-hsien
(Honan province)
(5th century B.C.)
[Gernet 1982, p.68]
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KV Patri
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Cast-iron hoes, ploughshare, sickles, axe, and knife
from the fourth-third centuries B.C.
[Gernet 1982, p.71]
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Calipers made in 9 A.D. They are graduated in ts’un
(tenth part of a ch’ih) and in fen (tenths of a ts’un).
The face shown on the right side bears the
inscription” ‘Made on kuei-yu day, on the new moon
of the fifth month, first year of Shih-chien-kuo’
[Gernet 1982, p.110]
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Pre-Tang and Tang Periods
• Aristocracy.
• Maturing of administration and codification of regulations.
• Wet rice-growing. Early ripening varieties. Chain with
paddles o lift water.
• New commercial routes for trading tea and salt, and
supplying food to armies in the north.
• New commercial techniques: the negotiable certificate, and
the banknote.
• Reproduction of texts and drawings by wood engraving led
to sudden diffusion of knowledge.
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KV Patri
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Calculation of
=355/113
As written in
Sui Shu
(History of the Sui Dynasty)
by Zu Qonzi (430-510)
[ACTS 1983]
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Diamond Sutra:
The earliest
printed literature
in existence.
Bearing the date of
the 9th year of
the reign of Xian tong (968),
Tang Dynasty
[ACTS 1983]
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~Song Period (~900-1300)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Sundial and water clock. One year has 365 385/1539 days.
First ever printing of paper money [Callis 1959, p. 91].
Chinese renaissance.
Growth in military technologies. Soldiers selected through
running, jumping, … tests. Tallest chosen for crack units.
Troops equipped with incendiary weapons, catapults, …
multiplied.
Invention of ballistae, repeating crossbows, a sort of tank.
Development o a substantial navy from 1127.
Boats with paddles (first references ~800) actuated by a
crank or by a system of connecting rods. The fist paddle
boats were used in Europe only in 1543.
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• First mention of gunpowder (coal, saltpeter and sulfur) in China in
1044 (in 1287, by Roger bacon in Europe).
• Daoist alchemists discovered it.
• Initially used for ‘flying fire’. Later exploited the burst capacity.
Propellant in a guided tube.
• Fists discovery of principle of rocket using thick bamboo.
• Iron or bronze tubes around 1280.
• New society. A class living on unearned income. Urban bourgeoisie
with land income.
• Growth in food production. New varieties of grain imported and
adapted from Champa (Vietnam), etc.
• Expansion of manufacture. Growth in mining (iron, copper, lead, tin)
• Pit coal replaced by charcoal. Hydraulic machinery to drive bellows.
Use of explosives in mining.
• Cast iron production in China exceeded 114,000 tonnes in 1078. It
reached only 68,000 tonnes in England in 1788.
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• Ceramics: Kilns all over.
• Regional specialization: Southern Hopei for iron;
Szechwan for paper; Hangzhou for printed books, …
• Gradual development of printing. Paper had become an
ordinary material by the end of Han age. “Use of stelae
bearing texts or drawings as stamps of blocks (with a coat
of damp paper, drying, inking, and reproduction on paper
with the help of a pad) [Gernet 1982, p. 333]” enabled
cheap and faithful reproductions.Seals made possible
impressions of written characters, drawings, or religious
pictures.
• The first important document reproduced by wood-block
printing was the ‘Diamond Sutra’ dated 868.
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• First movable types in 1086.
• 1313: The first turning case with characters classified in
rhymes.
• 1403: 100,000 Chinese characters cast.
• ~1600: blocks with up to five colors.
• Great progress in Chinese cartography, treatises on natural
sciences (on mushrooms, bamboos, chrysanthemums,
peonies, fruit-trees, birds).
• 1027: Vehicle for measuring distance traveled by road.
• 1090: Astronomical machine actuated by an escapement
system and by cogs and transmission chains.
• ~1100: Astronomical machine worked by a wheel turned
by successive filling of pivoting cups fed by a tanks with a
constant level.
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The water-driven
astronomical clock tower
As shown in the book,
Xin Yi Xiang Fu Yao
(New Design for
an Armillary Clock),
written by
Su Song (1020-1101)
[ACTS 1983]
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Printed text of the Sung period
The first page of
the first chapter of
the geography of
China and foreign countries
completed in 979 A.D.
[Gernet 1982, p.334]
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Astronomical chart of the south-polar projection of the
sky by Hsin-I-hsiang Fa-yao (1092, Western Hsia)
[Gernet 1982, p.340]
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Sung and Yitan
Mathematics: Notation for
equation
+2x3+15x2+166x1-4460=0
as given by Li Yeh (or Li
Chih) 1192-1279
[Gernet 1982, p.381]
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Pascal’s triangle (around
1640) as given in
An algebraic treatise by Chu
Shi-chieh (1303)
[Gernet 1982, p.381]
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Illustration of horizontal-wheel hydraulic bellows
in Wang Zhen Nong Shu
(Agricultural Treatise of Wang Zhen),
a book of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368).
[ACTS 1983]
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Ming period (1368-1644)
• Fashion for academic discussions.
• Multiplicity of centers with libraries.Revival of
interest in [practical knowledge: agronomy,
military techniques, hydraulics, astronomy,
mathematics, …
• The first classification of 33,179 Chinese
characters under 214 radicals.Translations of
Western mathematical and scientific works.
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Ming Technology
(1368-1582)
A sowing machine,
Picture taken from the
T’ien-kung k’ai-wu
(1637)
[Gernet 1982, p.443]
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Ming Technology
(1368-1582)
A Mill,
Picture taken from the
T’ien-kung k’ai-wu
(1637)
[Gernet 1982, p.443]
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Ming Technology
(1368-1582)
A machine for
reeling off thread,
Picture taken from the
T’ien-kung k’ai-wu
(1637)
[Gernet 1982, p.443]
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Ming Technology
(1368-1582)
A pottery workshop,
Picture taken from the
T’ien-kung k’ai-wu
(1637)
[Gernet 1982, p.443]
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Qing period (1644-1911)
• Manchu, “The enlightened despots.”
• The most extensive empire in the world.
• High watermark of agricultural techniques. Much
superior to agriculture in Europe. New crops:
sweet potato, the ground nut, sorghum, vegetables,
fruit (apart from the traditional wheat, barley,
millet, and rice). Fish farming. Industrial crops
(cotton, tea, sugar cane) too.
• China’s population growth outpaced that of
Europe.
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Qing continued (2)
• Craftsmanship on an ‘industrial’ scale.
• 200,000 textile industry workers in to the southwest of Shanghai alone.
• Tea production rose from 2.6 million pounds in
1762 to 23.3 million by the end of 18th century.
Supply to East India Co. from Guangzhou area.
• Export of porcelain objects to the world.
• Criticism of absolutism. The return of the
concrete.
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Einstein argued
Perhaps we should try to think why
something as unlikely and odd as
science has ever occurred anywhere
ever, rather than why something as
seemingly obvious (to us moderns) as
science didn’t occur elsewhere.
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Why China missed out on domestic
industrial revolution
Basically cultural reasons:
• Ideological orthodoxy.
• Stress on conformity and tradition.
• Interest in status quo of the dominant and
educated classes.
• Suppression of scientific invention by force
(as during the Inquisition in the West.)
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• Keeping the study of astronomy, botany,
engineering, and mathematics out of the
schools.
• The ‘tyranny of language’: ideographs do
not lend themselves to abstract
“theoretical” thinking.
• Lack of encouragement to develop laborsaving technologies owing to tremendous
pre-industrial population growth.
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Needham’s Thesis
[http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/gregory/325/handouts/h08_chi.doc]
• “The main reasons are to do with the nature of Chinese society,
in particular the stultifying nature of the Chinese feudal
bureaucracy in contrast to the rising capitalist democracies of
the West, and the narrow and secretive master/ apprentice
relations in all areas of Chinese learning.”
• ”The notion of physical law is clearly important. It may be that
the West derived this notion from Christian theology (the lawgiving God) which is absent in China, or that it came via Greek
notions in geometry applied to the world in the Renaissance
(Galileo; ‘The book of nature is written in the language of
geometry’). Chinese mathematics was more arithmetic than
geometrical.”
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Needham thesis 2
• “Within the Western tradition, it is easier to distinguish between
moral and physical law; this is not so in Chinese cosmology,
where everything has a place where it ought to be (but might not
be). In the West there has been a tradition of analytical and
causal thinking. We attempt to isolate those elements we believe
important, and then think in a scheme of cause and effect. The
mechanical world view is very conducive to this sort of thought,
as is the related motion of reductive explanation. However, the
Chinese tradition is one of thinking in terms of organic wholes
where each part is interrelated with each other and each part has
a place within the whole. Correlative and sympathetic modes of
thought, where the key notions are of principles and associations
linked sympathetically rather than causally are the central ideas
in this view.
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Some Historic Persons
c. 300 B.C.
372-289
551-479
1165?-1267
1866-1925
1887-1975
1893-1976
1905-1997
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Lao Tzu
Meng Tzu (Mencius)
Kong Qiu (Confucius)
Genghis Khan
Sun Yat-sen
Chiang Kai-shek
Mao Zedong
Deng Xiaoping
51
References
[ACTS 1983]
Ancient China’s Technology and Science, Institute of
the History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Foreign Language Press, Beijing, 1983.
[Callis 1959] Helmut G. Callis, China: Confucian and Communist,
Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1959.
[Gernet 1982] Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization,
translated from French into English by J.R. Foster, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 1982.
[Juran 1990] J. M. Juran, “China’s Ancient History of Managing for
Quality, Part 1,” Quality Progress, p. 32, July 1990.
www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/gregory/325/handouts/h08_chi.doc
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