Science Must Learn from Chinese History
Subject
Science Cannot have Creeds
Religious creeds are a great obstacle to any full sympathy between the outlook of the scientist and the outlook which religion is so often supposed to require ... The spirit of seeking which animates us refuses to regard any kind of creed as its goal. It would be a shock to come across a university where it was the practice of the students to recite adherence to Newton's laws of motion, to Maxwell's equations and to…
Example/Illustration
Object
Chinese Cultural Innovations Turned to Ritual
When Europeans first arrived in China, three hundred years a^ago, they found that almost all the arts had reached a certain degree of perfection there, and they were surprised that a people which had attained this point should not have gone beyond it. At a later period they discovered traces of some higher branches of science that h had been lost. The nation was absorbed in productive industry; the greater part of…
Why they relate
The Chinese were an incredibly advanced civilization, with writing, printing presses, and medicinal knowledge, but their discoveries turned to rituals without understanding or new growth. If science education becomes ritual, through rote memorization, it will suffer the same fate. Science is a process, not a body of knowledge.