Why Could Modern Sciences Not Sprout in Old China,

There were great differences between Chinese ancient culture and Greek ancient culture, both originated almost in the same time—about 500 BC, like two long rivers, both flowed to different historical directions. As a result, Europe after Renaissance inherited and developed the cultural tradition of ancient Greece, thus, European modern science-technology developed faster and faster as time went on, and finally brought Europe into industrial revolution and capitalism. On the contrary, China had kept the feudal system and ancient Chinese cultural tradition to the ending of 19 century, but the sprout of modern science was not born out yet. In this article, it will be researched, that the different natural environment and different social-political-economical systems had the decisive influence to culture, thus, the different modes of thinking and behavior of ancient people finally exerted the different results to sprout of modern science in old China and in Europe. It is not the gist of this article to do comprehensive summing-up and analysis to two ancient cultures. [The Journal of American Science. 2005;1(2):65-76]. Note: This article is the continuation of author’s former article “New Concepts to the Change of Human Social-economical Formation and the Development of Human Society”, which was published on “The Journal of American Science ”. Its website is: http://www.americanscience.org/journal/2005/current. In that article, it was pointed out that old China had kept feudal system over 2,000 years and could not turn into capitalism, because no other motive power produced by modern science-technology except manpower and animal-power was used in production.