The technologies developed in ancient China are staggering, the more so as they'd been largely fogotten by / rendered invisible to the Chinese themselves.
A find of the past few years has been Joseph Needham's truly epic Science and Civilisation in China. Begun in 1954, still in production -- the series is not yet completed, 7 volumes, 27 books. Simon Winchester (also author of The Perfectionists, mentioned in this thread, has an excellent biography, The Man Who Loved China.
I had heard another other issue cited as a possible culprit - that their alphabet wasn't very suited to it given their vast number of characters not gaining as much.
It brings to mind one artifact of letter construction being based upon the writing method - cuneiform vs ink pen letters for instance.
In _My Unwritten Books_, George Steiner has a go at Needham for hypocrisy in using his authority on Chinese civilization to make false statements about the Vietnam War
A find of the past few years has been Joseph Needham's truly epic Science and Civilisation in China. Begun in 1954, still in production -- the series is not yet completed, 7 volumes, 27 books. Simon Winchester (also author of The Perfectionists, mentioned in this thread, has an excellent biography, The Man Who Loved China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_Ch...