- Subtitle:
- 3000 Years of Science, Discovery & Invention
- Year:
- 2014
- Country:
- Predominant Genre:
- Non-fiction
- Author:
- Outstanding Performance:
- None
- Premiss:
- 3,000 years of Chinese science, discovery & invention.
- Theme:
- Christianity
- Compassion
- Destiny
- Emotional repression
- Empathy
- Friendship
- Humanity
- Identity
- Narcissism
- Personal change
- Political Correctness
- Science
- Self-expression
- Social class
- Solipsism
- Stereotyping
- White culture
- White supremacy
- Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:
- Unknown
- Review Format:
- Book
They’re damn clever these Chinese!
Fascinating book that proves history to be cyclic rather than cumulative in that so much of modern science and technology are little more than reinvented and rediscovered advances.
What dazzles most here is the fact that culture, religion and economics have profound influences on science, so much so that despite the Chinese being two millennia ahead of the West in terms of technology, China eventually lagged behind when those same forces came to bear. Such a self-sufficient and philosophically-introspective empire inevitably turned in on itself only to recently reawaken to beat the world economically in a way that it could so easily have done at least 500 years ago.
Where this book fails is in avoiding giving the appearance of being excited propaganda for the current Chinese government - despite its correctly noting the long-term backwardness of European culture. A healthy antidote to Eurocentric chauvinism and yet another reason not to trust White history books.
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