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Peeling the Chinese onion

Nature volume 391, pages 433–434 (1998)Cite this article

There are many explanations for the technological decline of China at the end of the mediaeval period, and the coincident technological rise of Europe. One, in a word, is geography.

In mediaeval times, the region that led the world in technological innovation was China. By contrast, Europe north and west of the Alps was a backwater that had invented nothing of significance except for improved watermills. How did China lose its enormous lead in science and technology to Europe? Two papers by Graeme Lang1,2, rich with broad implications, address this paradox in terms of structural or ultimate causation.

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Figure 1: Sketch maps of Europe and China.

References

  1. Lang, G. in East Asian Cultural and Historical Perspectives (eds Tötösy de Zepetnek, S. & Jay, J. W.) 71-96 (Univ. Alberta Press, Edmonton, 1997).

  2. Lang, G. East-West Dialogue 2, 16–30 (1997).

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  3. Needham, J. Science in Traditional China: A Comparative Perspective (Chinese Univ., Hong Kong, 1981).

  4. Dorn, H. The Geography of Science (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore, MD, 1991).

  5. Huff, T. The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993).

  6. Diamond, J. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Norton, New York, 1997).

  7. Gascoigne, J. in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (eds Lindberg, D. C. & Westman, R. S.) 207-260 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990).

  8. Wittfogel, K. Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, CN, 1957).

  9. Cosandey, D. Le Secret de l'Occident (Arléa, Paris, 1997).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Department of Physiology, University of California Medical School, Los Angeles, 90095-1751, California, USA

    Jared M. Diamond

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  1. Jared M. Diamond
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Diamond, J. Peeling the Chinese onion. Nature 391, 433–434 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/35014

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