Page 587 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

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ActA
Various explanations were adopted, among which the most common:
1) The so called “balance trap”: opportunities of technological change in agriculture
are considered limited and increase in population is considered to have shifted the
demand from non agricultural items to agricultural ones. Furthermore, pressure from
the population reduced availability of basic materials such as wood and metals,
limiting opportunity of technological change.
2) China’s ever growing reliance on rice, as main source of food might have caused
a lack of protein. Shifting from wheat harvest to rice, and consecutive southward
dislocation of the center of Chinese society could have overlapped with an average
decrease of nutritional levels (exogenous factors), also fertilizing fields with human
feces could have brought about the outbreak of parasitic diseases like schistosomiasis
which induced a slight form of lethargy to the population.
3) A 1922 paper entitled “why China doesn’t possess science”, highlights the mental
structure of the Chinese, prone to introspection and to the search of continuous harmony
within society and balance between human beings and the natural environment; the
belief of an only God that looks on with approval to the continuous exploitation of
material resources was unknown to China; the key word was harmony;
4) A possible scenario is the appearance after 1400 more or less, of a gradual change
in Chinese behavior toward nature, with the growth of a sterile version and strictly
linked to the tradition of neo- Confucianism, which could have led to replacing the
vitality in the T’ang and Sung eras, favoring an introspective culture and political
immobility which was reflected in many branches of science and technology.
5) A particular type of dominant logic among Chinese was also highlighted, a non
binary logic. Regardless of results reached in algebra, the Chinese didn’t look so
much interested in a stiff logical structure as “something is A and is not B”, on
the contrary they were attracted by a different sort of logic that today makes up
a pretty recent branch of math in which concepts like “maybe” and “in part” are
acceptable. Besides that, it regarded logic based on historical analogies and not on
the hypothetical-deductive method which will promote the development of science
in the west. The adaptations, experiments and discoveries based on trial and error,
with which the Chinese had initially taken their technological step, might not have
led to a systematic collection of basic knowledge, able to sustain itself and withstand
a continuous flow of more and more progressive applications.
6) The lack of increase of power of the middle class. In Europe, technology was strictly
related with the work of merchants who financed research to develop new kinds of
production and commerce.
7) China was and remained an empire under strict bureaucratic control. The absence of
political competition,like that existing in the european society as of 960A.D., didn’t
imply the impossibility for technological progress, but rather that any decision
maker could inflict a deadly blow to technology.
8) The disinclination to technological change and the rate at which these changes
occurred was due to the desire of Chinese society to avoid social conflicts which