Useful Knowledge, Institutions and Diversity: Historical Lessons from China • Ting XU • School of Law
• Queen’s University, Belfast
Declining Diversity and Declining Societies: China, the West, and the Future of the Global Economy
Erik Reinert, Tallinn University of
Technology & Ting Xu, Queen’s
University, Belfast The Fall of China and the Rise of the West (1600s) – what happened?
China: diversity lost, unified regime, standardised procedures, colonial expansion stopped, paying the Mongolians not to attack. Europe: diversity gained, science & invention explosion, balance of countervailing powers, the golden rule, competition in war and luxury. Question: Are Europe and China changing places again, reversing the developments above? Sanftes Monster Brussels = Chinese Emperor??
At a crucial point in the history of human life, imperial China decided to scrap the technology of interoceanic shipping and navigation that, if pursued, might well have converted the central historical scheme of European westward expansion to an alternative tale of Oriental eastward exploration in the New World. Stephen Jay Gould (1941‐2002), Harvard biologist and historian of science. From Divergence to Convergence?
• Useful and Reliable Knowledge in Global Histories of Material Progress in the East and the West • The Eurocentric portrait (e.g., Landes 1998) of the long‐term backwardness of ‘the East’
• Recent scholarship on global history (e.g., Pomenranz
2000; Wong 1997; Rothenthal and Wong 2011)
a balance between a cultural and a socio‐
economic analysis
‘a world order need not be mainly economic. Its different registers, political, economic, social, intellectual and so on cannot be privileged a priori’.
• Adshead, S. A. M. 2004. Tang china: The Rise of the East in World History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 14‐15, italics original.
Major Dynasties
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Sui (581‐618AD)
Tang (618‐907AD)
Northern Song (960‐1127AD)
Southern Song (1127‐1279AD)
Yuan (Mongols) (1271‐1368AD)
Ming (1368‐1644AD)
Qing (1644‐1912AD)
Useful Knowledge and China’s Development Path
• The shift in the locus of the generation and application of useful knowledge may be crucial to the reason and timing of the subsequent ‘great divergence’.
• A decline in the Ming dynasty (1368‐1644AD)?
• China’s development and the generation and diffusion of useful knowledge Useful knowledge and economic growth
• ‘…the technological capabilities of a society [is] based on the knowledge it possesses and the institutional rules by which its economy operates’ (Mokyr, 2004: 3).
• Technology is ‘epistemological in nature’, and technological change is ‘something that takes place inside a human mind and from there is mapped successfully onto an object, a substance or an action’ (Mokyr, 1990: 276; 2004: 14‐15). • Mokyr, 1990, The Lever of Riches
• Mokyr, 2004, Gifts of Athena
Useful knowledge: definition and criteria from the European perspective
• Useful knowledge is the knowledge that could promote economic growth. • ‘ “Useful knowledge” is knowledge that deals with natural phenomena that potentially lend themselves to manipulation, and includes artefacts, materials, energy, and living beings’ (Mokyr, 2004, Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy)
Criteria for Useful Knowledge
• contestable
¾the knowledge is subject to adversarial practice, disputation, criticism and competition. • Accessible
¾the public can get access to knowledge, and cost of access should be gradually reduced
Criteria for Useful Knowledge (continued)
• transmissible ¾individual efforts could be transformed into collaboration, and knowledge could be passed on from generation to generation and therefore a collective enterprise
• economically motivated ¾with commercial incentives and the belief that such knowledge may enhance efficiency and economic profits
Mokyr, 2009, The Enlightened Economy
Useful knowledge in the Chinese context
• Most Chinese scientific discoveries and technological innovations were not ‘contestable’. ¾ a lack of diversity in the institutions that may facilitate disputation and competition
• less effective conduits through which scientific discoveries could be transformed into technological innovations
• Few scientific discoveries were economically motivated or applied to technological improvements.
A hierarchy of useful knowledge
diversity
morality
Knowledge for statecraft
Science and technology
institutions
culture
Diversity
Location of useful knowledge
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universities
academies
networks of intellectuals
libraries
markets the legal systems the publishing industry and the trade of books etc.
The Golden Age of Chinese Economy
• The Tang (618‐907AD) ‐ economically prosperous and politically strong ‐ the territory of China was extended and foreign trade expanded ‐ literature and arts attained high levels of sophistication
‐During the reign of Xuanzong (r. 712‐756), China took centre‐stage in the world economy, ‘the rise of the East in World History’ (Adshead, 2004) The Golden Age of Chinese Economy (continued)
• The Song (960‐1279AD) ‐economy experienced remarkable commercial, technological and urban growth, although it was not nearly as politically and militarily successful as the Tang. • Tang‐Song China has been widely perceived as a golden age for the Chinese economy (Hartwell, 1966 and 1967; Shiba, 1970; Elvin, 1973; Jones, 1988; McNeill, 1982). Water-powered wheels for irrigation
Block printing
Movable-type printing
Tang Pluralism
• imported and exported technologies
(including physical techniques and social
technologies)
• the mixing and transfer of cultures, ideas,
people and skills
The Tang central education system
Directorate of Education (guozi jian 国子监) for classical learning
Schools for Concrete Learning
School of Calligraphy (shuxue 书学)
School of Mathematics (suan xue 算学)
School of Law (lü xue 律学)
Imperial Medical Office for professional study
Six special medical schools including veterinary studies
Astronomical/Astrological Office for professional study Calendrical studies
Astrological studies
Water clock studies
The Examination Systems
Established under the Sui (581‐618) and early Tang
Promoted by the Empress Wu (r. 690‐705) Multiple examination subjects appeared on the syllabus
Three‐level examinations under the Song
‐The prefectural examination, the departmental examination, the palace examination
• Government schools and curricula were gradually subordinated to the civil service examinations
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Intellectual networks and alternative
centres of learning
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Intellectual networks
Religious networks Private education The education for women Learning in mountains The rise of neo-Confucianism
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Neo‐Confucianism: Lixue 理学 (li 理 principles), or daoxue 道学
(dao 道 the way)
‐ Zhu Xi 朱熹(1130‐1200)
‐ The introduction of the concept of li 理 (pattern‐principle)
‐ The investigation of the ‘things’ (gewu 格物) ‐ Shen Kuo (沈括 1031‐1095)
Notes Taken in Mengxi
梦溪笔谈
‐ One moral and natural spectrum
Nakayama (1973: 40) has argued, ‘moral issues and the law of nature remained undifferentiated; thus it played an inhibitory role in the development of the modern way of thinking’. Schemes of Classifying Knowledge
• ‘In China there was no single structure of rational knowledge that incorporated all the sciences. Knowing was an activity in which the rational operations of the intellect were not sharply disconnected from what we would call intuition, imagination, illumination, ecstasy, aesthetic perception, ethical commitment, or sensuous experience. The various sciences, unlike those of Europe, were neither circumscribed by the philosophies of their time nor subordinated to theology (which did not exist in East Asia)…’ (Sivin, 1990: 169). Ming‐Qing China
• The Chinese intellectual community
‘Concise learning’ or ‘substantial learning’ (shixue 实学)
‐ origin: the Song, gezhi 格致 the ‘investigation of things’ (gewu 格物) and the ‘extension of knowledge’ (zhizhi 致知)
‐ The evidential scholarship (kaozheng xue 考证学) in the 17th and 18th
centuries
• The interactions with the Jesuits
‐ The Western learning (xixue 西学) • A ‘demise’ in the transfer and diffusion of Western science Socio‐Economic Transformations in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
• The lower Yangtze Delta: the hub of commerce and intellectual life
• Urbanisation
• Merging literati and merchant interests: salt merchants as patrons
Rozman’s Urban Ratios for China from Tang to Later Qing
Source: Rozman 1973: 279, 280, 282, and 102; See also Maddison 2007: 39.
Dynasty
Reference Rozman’s Ratio of Year
Urban Cities Ratio (% with of total 10000 populatio inhabitan
n)
ts or over
Mid Tang 762
Mid Song 1120
4.7
5.2
3.0
3.1
No. of Cities with 10000 inhabitan
ts and above
50
91
Mid Ming 1506
Early Qing 1650
6.5
6.8
3.8
4.0
112
136
130
150
Later Qing
5.9
3.8
310
400
c. 1820
Rozman’s populatio
n Total for China (million)
100
120
Changes in Education
• Poor quality of governmental schools and proliferation of private academies and literary societies
• Civil service examinations
‐ Certain aspects of natural studies were included in the Ming syllabus including astrology, calendrics, and medicine
‐ The ‘eight‐legged essays’ (bagu wen 八股文) emerged in early Ming times
‐ Natural studies were banned from public discussion in the Kangxi reign (r. 1661‐1722) except historical geography. • Fierce competitions for official positions
Establishment of Private Academies during the Song, Yuan,
Ming and Qing Dynasties
Source: Elman 2000, Table 1.6
Dynasty
N. Song
S. Song
Undated
Song
Total: Song
Yuan
Ming
Qing
No. of
Academies
56
261
108
Years
166
153
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Annual
Index
o.34
1.71
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425
320
926
4,365
319
88
250
267
1.33
3.64
3.70
16.35
Jin-shi by Reign Period during the Song, Yuan, Ming
Dynasties
Source: Elman 2000, Tables 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5.
Dynasty
Years
Duration
in Years
No. of
Exams
No. of
Jin-shi
Jin-shi by
year
Song
9601279
12801368
13681644
319
118
39,711
124
88
16
1, 136
13
276
89
24,594
89
Yuan
Ming
Institutional Support
• Urban centres in Lower Yangtze
• The increase in private academies
• Literary societies: e.g., the Fu She (复社 The Society of ‘Returning to Antiquity’
• The publishing industry • Patronage
‐by merchants
‐vertical patronage from Beijing (e.g., the completion of the imperially sponsored the Complete Collection of the Four Treasuries 四库全书 in the 1780s)
A Surprising Resemblance?
Concise learning in 18th century Lower The Scientific Revolution in Europe
Yangtze Delta
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Philology and Translation
Urbanisation
Financial support
Publications (shegao 社稿)
Academies (shuyuan书院)
Literary societies (she 社) •
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Philology and Translation
Great metroplis
Financial support
Journals Academies
Coffee houses
Missing Elements?
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Interactions between theoretical and practical knowledge?
Instrument‐making?
Experimentation? Widening and Reordering of knowledge? A revolution in the mode of thought? The Nature of literary societies and private academies?
‐ William Atwell, ‘From Education to Politics’
‐ supplement to local official schools
‐ literary societies: initial purpose was to bring the names and writing styles of the members to the attention of future examiners
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