This is a fascinating short video featuring the science historian James Burke in which he explains a very convincing theory for why so many major inventions originated in China (often hundreds or even thousands of years before they became popularised in the West) and yet were never used in the way that Europeans used them. James lists a whole series of innovations that the Chinese had, but which became central to the Western domination of the world including gunpowder, blast furnaces, steel, printing, paper, pistons, cranks, and textile looms.
Why did these inventions, despite originating in the East, not create the kind of rapid change that was seen in the West? James talks about the difference in belief systems. The Taoist scholars in China had, through their desire to rationally understand the universe, originated the basis for many new technologies.
The Chinese however, believed that the universe was filled with ‘Shen‘, a spirit that connected everything. Their belief was that you couldn’t take one part of the universe and consider it in isolation to see how it worked without looking at everything. Which created something of an intellectual straight-jacket. In the Christian West however, the dominant belief system focused on understanding things in rational terms and using that learning.
But what was particularly interesting for me was his point about bureaucracy. A vast irrigation system developed in China 5,000 years ago needed centralised planning and a huge bureaucracy to make it work. This in turn created a highly integrated system of production, technology and bureaucracy but also meant limiting everyone to very specific roles (‘they pigeonholed everybody, and you stayed in your pigeonhole’). Thinking differently or creatively was not encouraged. The incentive simply wasn’t there for change.
By contrast, in medieval Europe the profit motive drove the broader application of these technologies in ways that the Chinese perhaps couldn’t have imagined without a similar mindset or enabling environment.
A giant reminder perhaps, of the importance of culture, beliefs and environment in enabling innovation. How many large modern organisations are effectively creating intellectual straight-jackets through an overly bureaucratic system and by boxing people into narrowly defined roles?
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