1000 years ago, China had the most prosperous economy and the most advanced technology, far ahead of the world. Rhodes Murphy described this in his History of Asia: "Both the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta have huge waterway transportation networks formed by canals and navigable rivers ... Promissory notes, letters of credit and a large number of official banknotes have adapted to the development of commerce ... Southeast coastal ports have prospered and a large number of foreign residents have appeared ... This is indeed an era full of confidence and creativity." At that time, China people already knew how to exchange high technology for raw materials and resources. In the Song Dynasty, people burned clay into exquisite porcelain, and they easily got a lot of gold and silver treasures with only clay. The Venetians in the richest place in the west couldn't help feeling when they saw China's ship: "The merchant ships in China are the biggest ships that people can imagine. Some of them have six masts, four decks and 12 sails, which can carry more than 1000 people. These ships not only have almost miraculous route maps, but also geometricians and astrologers, as well as those who are skilled in using natural magnets, through which they can find the way to the end of the land world. "
Dr Joseph Needham, a famous British expert in the history of science, introduced the inventions and discoveries in ancient China in his masterpiece History of Science and Technology in China, and said that "it can be easily proved that these inventions and discoveries in China far surpassed those in Europe at the same time, especially before15th century". And China, a country that "maintained the scientific knowledge level that the west can't catch up with from the 3rd century BC to the 3rd century AD13rd century", changed from being ahead of the west to being far behind the west from the late Ming and early Qing dynasties.
In modern science and technology, the performance of China people's creativity began to disappoint. Especially in the original innovation which is of great significance and has an impact on the overall economic development, we are not only backward, but also far behind. Until the 20th century, there were 65,438+000 major engineering and technical achievements in the world, such as plastics, wireless telegrams, radio stations, integrated circuits, computers, the Internet, supersonic passenger aircraft, antibiotics, satellites, nuclear reactors, etc. All of them were initiated by foreigners, and none of them was initiated or completed by China people. These scientific and technological achievements, which were first completed by foreigners, have become the basis and symbol of human social civilization today.
At the beginning of the new century, China Academy of Engineering organized the selection of "China's Major Engineering and Technical Achievements in the 20th Century", and nearly 100 academicians selected the 25 most significant engineering and technical achievements in China since 100. The first and second places are "two bombs and one satellite" and "Chinese character processing and printing revolution", followed by petroleum, crop production increase, infectious disease prevention, electrification and textile, and coal mining. However, experts pointed out that comparing China's major engineering and technological achievements with the world, except for the "Chinese character processing and printing revolution", other projects are not called "original innovations" internationally. In addition, we still lag behind developed countries in these projects to varying degrees.
Most scholars believe that as early as14th century, China had almost all the main conditions for the British industrial revolution in the middle of18th century. However, the industrial revolution happened not in China, but in Britain, so China quickly changed from a leader to a laggard. Why was China far ahead of other civilizations in ancient times? Why not take the lead in modern China? Why did China people's creativity disappear overnight? These mysteries make many people look for answers.
Ancient China lacked natural views and values suitable for the further development of science. In ancient China, people advocated "the unity of man and nature", believed that the five elements were mutually reinforcing and the way of thinking was cyclical, and few people tried to "deduce the principle". Therefore, many scientific theories in ancient China only have concepts without analysis, and their conclusions have no causal logic. They can only form scattered and systematic empirical knowledge, and the correlation between disciplines and knowledge is very poor, so it is impossible to form a rigorous scientific theoretical system through mathematical deduction.
In the history of China, the self-sufficient farming culture in feudal society for more than two thousand years formed China's extremely practical values of small-scale peasant economy, which correspondingly led to the practical orientation and values of ancient science in China. China's four great inventions are all practical, and most of the research fields involved in astronomy, agriculture, medicine and mathematics come from practical needs. Astronomy, for example, focuses on explaining the feudal system with astronomical phenomena and compiling and revising calendars. People in China pay too much attention to practicality, so many discoveries stay in the experience stage, just right, so that ancient China "has technology but no science".
The imperial examination system stifled China people's interest in exploring natural laws. Professor Lin Yifu, director of China Economic Research Center of Peking University, believes that ancient technological inventions are based on experience, and technological progress depends on the experience and accidental discovery of a large number of people. At this time, population is a key factor; The technological progress of the industrial revolution mainly depends on scientific experiments. At this time, population is not the key factor. For technological inventions based on experience, population size is the main determinant of technological invention rate. Due to the large number of Chinese in history, China was once ahead of the western world in technological inventions.
After the Song Dynasty, the imperial examination system was further improved, and "learning to be excellent is to be an official". The encouragement provided by the imperial examination system made being an official the first pursuit of scholars. "Everything is inferior, only reading is high." Intellectuals are bound by ancient books and fame and fortune and are unwilling to engage in scientific research. However, modern technological inventions are mainly obtained from science and experiments. Because intellectuals are keen to be officials through the imperial examination and lack interest in scientific research, China has not realized the transformation from the invention method based on experience to the innovation method based on scientific experiments for a long time, so the original empirical science cannot be upgraded to modern science, which makes China's agriculture and industrial technology linger for a long time, and therefore lags behind the western world in modern times.
China's traditional culture finally fell into a creative dilemma. The spirit of innovation is the personality foundation of creativity, and it is an attitude that people always keep a strong curiosity about the unknown and their determination to solve it. Davis, an American psychologist, summed up the general personality characteristics of innovation as strong independence, strong self-confidence, daring to take risks, strong curiosity, ideal and ambition, ignoring other people's opinions, being easily attracted by complex and unfamiliar things, artistic aesthetics, sense of humor and wide interests. Western ethical spirit attaches importance to people's curiosity and encourages adventure. Obviously, adventurous spirit is conducive to diversification and innovation, while curiosity and thirst for knowledge are the driving forces to cultivate innovative consciousness and master innovative methods. Contrary to the western ethical spirit, China's leading thoughts of Confucianism, Taoism and Legalism are all about avoiding risks, keeping rational and pursuing comfort, stability, conservatism and introversion.
Experts believe that the most obvious feature of people with innovative spirit is that they have a habit of suspicion that is almost conditioned, and it seems that they can only see the shortcomings of things. It is these people who look at things with such a skeptical attitude that they can find out the shortcomings of things and then carry out reforms. Different from the western culture of "individual development", the thought of "seeking common ground" in China's traditional culture emphasizes the whole and ignores the individual value. Therefore, China has a tendency to suppress and ignore personal values for a long time. As the saying goes, "When a gun shoots a bird, the rafters in the early days rot first", which leads to the idea and activities of innovation not being understood, and even fewer people are supported, and it is easy to be isolated. This obviously affects the development of creativity.
Creativity or creativity refers to the characteristics or ability to break away from convention and produce something of practical significance. Creation is to produce practical methods, theories, products and things on the basis of breaking the routine. When this reform was successful, a new and more advanced technology was born and society progressed. China advocated following tradition and rules in ancient times. As the saying goes, "Heaven remains the same, so does Tao", and the ethics of feudal society cannot be violated. Innovation, the behavior of seeking change, is obviously subversive to the existence of tradition, so society despises and refuses innovation and falls into long-term stagnation.
Lack of legal protection. Generally speaking, innovation ability ultimately comes from people's innovation activities. When entrepreneurs and scientific and technological personnel are not sure that they can enjoy their own innovation achievements, or lack appropriate, clear and stable rules to protect their innovation achievements, they will naturally lose the motivation to innovate. This requires an innovative activity guaranteed by the property right system, which is conducive to the competition between capital and other interests, can provide an incentive mechanism for the development of science and technology, and conforms to the goal of social change. This property right system rose in the modern western world and played a legal role in promoting scientific and technological progress. Some scholars pointed out that due to the lack of legal mechanism to restrict autocratic bureaucratic centralization in the sense of the rule of law, authoritarian bureaucratic centralization was above the society in ancient China history, and a continuous and effective private property rights system and private law system were never established, and the innovation achievements were arbitrarily deprived or stifled. The decline of modern science and technology economy in China is obviously related to its failure to establish an effective property right system, especially the intellectual property right system.
Therefore, instead of saying that China people have lost their creativity, it is better to say that the traditional system and culture lack the soil to cultivate creativity to a great extent, which stifles the creation of creativity. In order to awaken the creativity of China people, we should vigorously cultivate the social and cultural atmosphere of advocating science and creation, at the same time, establish scientific and technological institutional arrangements that can provide effective incentives, and form mechanisms and rules that can protect entrepreneurs' profit motives, so that China people's creativity can be revived in the process of generation.