From: GBurch1@aol.com
Date: Thu May 10 2001 - 06:59:51 MDT
In a message dated 4/21/01 5:41:34 PM Central Daylight Time,
steve365@btinternet.com writes:
> The real story of technology in China is more chilling (and much more scary)
> than either of these scenarios. For most of history China was the most
> dynamic and inventive civilisation on Earth. Under the Sung (11th-13th
> centuries) they had an economy which had all the features you describe
> (rapid innovation etc). So what happened? After the Mongol invasions, the
> Ming Emperors systematically destroy many technologies and create a static
> society - "Chinese stasis" only really exists after that. Steve Davies
This seems right to me. Actually, I've always thought that the Tang (or as
old farts like me were taught to romanize it, "T'ang") represented a real
high-water mark for Chinese civilization, immediately before the Sung.
Deeply influenced by a robust and creative influx of Buddhism, the Tang were
horse-riding, clever, optimistic adventurers. Tang women were the most free
that China appears to have ever had; many being renowned poets and artists.
Tang sculpture - especially their wonderful equestrian works - expressed a
naturalistic yet distinctly Sinitic humanism.
You're right that the Mongol conquest was likely the catalytic event that
sent China into an introspective and deep conservatism. However, the seeds
of Confucian orthodoxy were already there. It only took the humbling
experience of conquest by the western barbarians to cause the phase-change of
ossification that locked China into almost a thousand years of stasis.
Interestingly, a similar phenomenon happened with Islamic culture. The
conquest of the Islamic heartland by Ghengis and his progeny also caused a
premature closure of the Islamic world to new ideas from outside and
innovation within their own cultural realm.
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://www.gregburch.net -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
ICQ # 61112550
"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
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