Science in Ancient and Medieval China

This is admittedly a complex and controversial topic. On the one hand, about a century ago, there was a famous scholar of Chinese philosophy, Fung Yu-Lan (馮友蘭), who held an even more radical view than that of Lin (Reference Lin1977) quoted above. Fung (Reference Fung1922: 238) argued that “China has no science, because according to her own standard of value she does not need any.” Similarly, John Fairbank (Reference Fairbank1983: 75), a renowned Sinologist, argued that China never created “science as a persisting institution, a system of theory and practice socially transmitted, consciously developed and used.” On the other hand, the publication in 1954 of the first of the seven volumes of Joseph Needham’s mammoth work, Science and Civilisation in China, saw the rather common impression that China had been backward in science throughout its history despite its admirable civilization start to change. Needham and his team provided voluminous amounts of evidence in support of their claim that ancient Chinese scientists, engineers and artisans had achieved significant advances in a variety of fields, such as astronomy, medicine, pharmacology, chemistry, geology and mathematics. Most famous among these advances were the “Four Great Inventions” − the compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing − that had become known in Europe by the end of the Middle Ages. The isolated situation of scientific development in China ended when the Jesuit China missions introduced Western science to China in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

While the country’s achievements were remarkable, the mode of scientific development in ancient and medieval China was very different from that of its Western counterparts. In China, innovation and inventions were used mainly for solving problems encountered in everyday life or at work. For example, Chinese dynasties had specific institutions that were in charge of astronomical observation and calendar compilation. Astronomical observations were an essential part of imperial court rituals because they were used to determine auspicious times for a wide variety of important events, such as coronations, praying to heaven and military maneuvers, while the calendar guided the scheduling of agricultural activities by peasants. Some of these functions of astronomy created an interesting tension between astronomy and astrology (Sivin Reference Sivin1988). In China, astronomy had a practical focus and was not engaged in simply for the sake of satisfying intellectual curiosity about the motion of heavenly bodies. In contrast, ancient Greek civilization had a strong sense of wonder about the universe and presumed that nature could be understood by the discovery of laws. Even Needham questioned why modern science had developed in Europe but not in Chinese civilization − the well-known Needham problem or question.

Related to its focus on practical functionality was China’s interest in the “how” and the “what” rather than the “why.” For example, the oldest known book on Chinese herbal medicine, Shennong’s Materia Medica (神農本草經), classifies 365 species of roots, grasses, woods, furs, animals and stones into three categories:

• those effective for treating multiple diseases and maintaining and restoring the body balance, with few negative side effects;

• those whose consumption should be constrained and must not be prolonged; and

• those for treating specific diseases, in small doses only.

The book describes the therapeutic and side effects of each species. Since it was compiled in the third century, it is understandable that it does not explain why a species had certain effects. However, in subsequent centuries, Chinese physicians’ attention rarely shifted to this issue, focusing instead on examining whether the described effects were accurate and on identifying new effects. On the other hand, the drive to answer why-questions has always been much stronger in Western science. For instance, penicillin was discovered accidentally by Alexander Fleming in 1928 and saved many lives during World War II. Yet scientists were not content to stop there and continued to study the compound; its molecular structure was identified by Dorothy Hodgkin in 1945 and this helped further development of the drug. The chemical composition of Chinese herbal medicine, in contrast, started to be analyzed only in recent times.

As a result of pre-modern Chinese science downplaying the “why,” science in China developed precariously, without a solid theoretical foundation (Huff Reference Huff2017). Even when theory was proposed, it was drawn from Chinese philosophy, as discussed in the next section. Notable figures similar to Aristotle and Descartes, who excelled in both science (in its modern sense) and philosophy, did not exist in Chinese history and a title similar to “natural philosopher” was also nonexistent. Moreover, those conducting science and technology research received much lower social recognition than their counterparts in the West. While prominent scientists, such as Descartes and Newton, were well respected celebrities of their time in the West, in medieval and ancient China, “the celebrities were the amateurs who had made their reputations as statesmen or poets … or the learned teachers who had founded well-populated lineages of practice” (Sivin Reference Sivin1988: 55). In short, compared to its Western counterpart, Chinese philosophy played a less engaging role in the development of science.

The Role of Philosophy

Fung (Reference Fung1922: 259–260) stated succinctly the reason why China failed to develop a scientific method, pinpointing the nature of Chinese philosophy:

In other words, Chinese philosophy devoted itself to the cultivation of the mind (xin 心), which overrode or replaced interest in studying nature. Among the three major philosophical perspectives molding Chinese civilization − Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, Confucianism was the one adopted by rulers of most dynasties. Cultivation of the mind is clearly reflected in Confucianism. Mencius (孟子), a key scholar of Confucianism, said:

Since it is a lifelong endeavor to properly cultivate one’s mind in order to be a virtuous person, exploring nature has to take a backseat. This Confucian focus on ethics at the expense of ontology and epistemology is not conducive to the development of science because ontology and epistemology are intimately related to scientific research. A researcher’s ontological commitment influences their epistemological orientation and, together, their ontological and epistemological stances affect which methods they consider to be legitimate and appropriate in conducting empirical research (Tsang Reference Tsang2017). On the other hand, the relationship of ethics to science is mainly about how research can be conducted ethically or how research results should be used (e.g., Einstein’s most famous equation, $\mathrm{E}={\mathrm{mc}}^2$ can be used to make atomic bombs or to generate electricity).

Medicine is one major domain where there is a substantial degree of engagement between science and philosophy. Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (黃帝內經) is an ancient medical text that for over two millennia has been considered the authoritative source on Chinese medicine. A key characteristic of the book is its departure from the popular yet simplistic shamanistic belief in ancient time that disease was caused by demonic influences. Instead, it uses the Taoist theory of yin and yang (陰陽) and five phrases (五行) − gold, wood, water, fire and earth − to express the correspondence between the articulations of the cosmos and the body, specifically between heaven and earth. on the one hand. and the upper and lower parts of the body. on the other. Yin and yang are in constant flux and follow a pattern of five phases, which shows when and how yang will shift to yin and vice versa. Diseases are understood as states of yin and yang imbalance in the body. A doctor should focus on his patient’s balance of bodily functions and the propagation of functional imbalance. Unlike Western medical theory, such as the blood circulation theory, methodologically speaking, this theory of yin–yang and five phrases is very broad and has not been used to derive hypotheses for empirical testing in a scientific way. It is no wonder that a 2007 editorial essay in Nature stated that traditional Chinese medicine “is fraught with pseudoscience” (106).

Needham (Reference Needham1954) argued that Taoism, to which the theory of yin–yang and five phrases belongs, is both naturalistic and interested in natural phenomena. Also in the 1950s, Welch (Reference Welch1957: 134) provided a more specific description of the relation between Taoism and science:

Taoism is an extreme “nature” philosophy whose teachings can be summarized in a single phrase: “returning to nature.” This is because people are mostly happy in the state of nature. “The omnipotent Tao gives everything its own nature, in which it finds its own satisfaction” (Fung Reference Fung1922: 241). Since Tao (道) is already within us, what we need and ought to do is to understand and control ourselves. This inward-looking orientation corresponds to the cultivation of the mind mentioned above. Here, knowledge of the external world is of little use and can in fact do harm, as aptly pointed out by Zhuangzi (莊子):

Such a life attitude is clearly antithetical to scientific research, which aims to understand, explain and sometimes control nature.

Sivin (Reference Sivin1978) offers a detailed and trenchant rebuttal of the view held by Needham, Welch and others that Taoism favored or promoted science. One reason Sivin gives for this disagreement is that the terms “Taoism” and “Taoist” are vague and have been used to cover cases that do not in fact belong to the philosophy; another is the confusion between Taoism as a philosophy and Taoism as a religion. Sivin’s (Reference Sivin1978: 310) assessment is as follows:

Concluding Remarks

Chinese philosophers in general played a detached and somewhat aloof role in the development of science in ancient and medieval China due to their focus on the cultivation of the mind at the expense of exploring nature. It is thus unsurprising that a discipline similar to philosophy of science never emerged in China even after Western science had been introduced to the country in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As such, unlike its Western counterpart, Chinese philosophy is not well positioned to shed light on management research methodology. As for me, while I have learned a great deal from Confucian teachings about how to be a morally upright person (with implications for being an ethical researcher), I cannot, unfortunately, see how Confucian wisdom could help my research.

Although the above discussion may be disappointing to fans of Chinese philosophy, such as Peter Ping Li (who applies yin–yang theory to management research, as discussed in Chapter 5), it should not be interpreted to mean that I consider Western philosophy to be superior or more useful. My own experience of reading Western and Chinese philosophy is that they serve somewhat complementary functions for our intellectual and spiritual development, as suggested by Lin’s (Reference Lin1977: 85–86) comparison: