In response to Sargent=B4s mail, Juli Zhang wrote: The correlation between China's science and writing system, in essence, is that between scientific development and alphabet, so the questions now are very simple and straightforward: Is a non-alphabetic writing system efficient in developing science and technology? My answer to this question is 'NO'.
I have to confess that I haven't been following this discussion completely. But I have noticed that Zhang does keep to his claim cited above. The main problem of his claim is the presupposition of a correlation between science and writing system. My question is: Does there really exist such a correlation? What are the arguments for it? I remember that at the beginning of this century, some Chinese scholars, while confronted with the economic and scientific gap between China and the West, even called for the abolition of the "Chinese language", note that the abolition of the Chinese writing system is implied anyway, since they believed that there was a correlation between science and language. The arguments were that because there were a correlation between science and mind and because mind is related to language, thus, the direct inference is that there existed a correlation between science and language. Thus the Chinese language should be blaimed for the failure of the Chinese mind to trigger a scientific development in West style. Therefore, in order to develope the science one had to change the mind. In order to change the mind one had to change the language. The easist way was to abandon it. As writing systems are only secondary to the language, the claim of a correlation between science and writing systems seem to be even less justified. Jie Li Department of General Linguistics University of the Saarland, Germany
Jie Li's comments were quite interesting. I remember discussions with my Chinese students when I was teaching in Northern Mainland-- they would comment on the "timeless" aspects of the language, and we discussed the "ambiguity" from a western perspective of their way of thinking, which seemed to some so slippery. I remember specifically discussion of the problem some of them had in remembering the distinction between English 'lend' and 'borrow', and how they thought this related to something deep in their own way of thinking-- where context accounts for many distinctions which are also redundantly expressed in English. It seems to me that what constitutes "progress" is largely a relative matter, at any rate. One thing is gained, at the expense of the loss of another: is anything gained? Of course Chinese history is the repository of much unexplored or forgotten knowledge, and the principal objective must be exploration ... there is so much science lost in poorly understood texts, and this loss is not! because of imprecision in the language, on the contrary, it is the result of distortions come about in the course of the incredibly long time span of that historical record, distortions which may be accounted for only in terms of the very nature of time itself. In the extreme, the Chinese can take credit for the beginnings of the computer age-- in a very real sense, and without exageration-- in that their early philosophy bears the earliest evidence for the binary system which is at its core (Zhouyi). Leibnitz learned of it from Jesuits. So what have they done for us lately? You mean besides given us the foundation for unimaginable advancement of all mankind? Richard
I just want to add my five cents worth to this debate. I am not persuaded in the slightest that there is correlation between the writing system and the slow rate of progress of science in China in recent centuries. Actually, taking a longer view (i.e. going back to the Tang and the Song) Chinese science and technology were in advance of Western science and technology. It was the scientific revolution which started in about the sixteenth century which made the difference. My understanding of the movement for language reform in communist China is that one of the main reasons was to try and make the learning and writing of chinese an easier task. Progress in using computers in handling Chinese text have (somewhat paradoxically) taken the urgency out of this issue. Except for the very large issue of information searching, retrieval and archival, where letter-based writing systems have a decided advantage over character- based writing systems. In the eighties, there was a lot of discussion of series called "He Shang" where a Chinese intellectual put forward the view that the reason for cultural stagnation (and thus stagnation of science and technology) was due to the "suffocating" influence of Confucianism. After I viewed this series of programmes, I was convinced for a while too. However, there are many Western intellectuals who see the influence of confucianism upon Japan, South Korea and Singapore as being a positive factor in the modernization of those countries, since the end of world war II (and earlier). So much for these simple explanations over why some countries are more advanced in science and technology than others. Why am I so skeptical about this current hypothesis ? Two reasons:- 1. I think politics is much more important than culture in working out which countries will be more powerful than others at any particular moment in time. In modern times, there is a simple equation:- the state's power is proportional to its command of science and technology (particularly technology). 2. If we are to learn from history, I would be inclined to also see state power as being proportional to the level of organization of a country. If you think that it is hard to learn to write Chinese, I would suggest you try your hand at a "crash course" in learning to write Japanese. It is a lot harder to write Japanese than Chinese; but looking at today's world, most people would say that science and technology is much more advanced in Japan than in mainland China. Why the difference ? The answer is political: it goes back to decision made by Japanese to take their nation into their own version of Western-style economic, social and technological revolution, made during the Meiji revolution. I can't remember the exact date, somewhere around 1870. Rick Yuan University of South Australia
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