Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Time and Relative Developments in Science

The differential in technological development between China and Europe is not widely understood. Here's something that puts it in context:

When the Titanic was launched in 1912, it bragged about its watertight compartments, which had begun to catch on in European ship design around the 1800's. Watertight bulkheads were a standard feature on Chinese ships going back to as early as the 400's (and dated definitively to ~1000).

It took 1500 years for Europe to create a luxury liner using something merchants in China had when the Roman Empire existed. And it was still novel enough for the Titanic's builders to think of it as a "special feature." This would be the same as a city planner today bragging about the aqueducts he's having constructed to deliver water into his city and touting it as something awe-inspiring.

The abnormality of our modern era is not that China is catching up to the west in computers and engineering. The abnormality is that they are not centuries ahead of us.

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