Four Great Inventions of ancient China

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Four Great Inventions of ancient China (Traditional Chinese: 四大發明; Simplified Chinese: 四大发明; pinyin: Sì dà fā míng) are, according to the British scholar Joseph Needham: the compass, gunpowder, papermaking, and printing. These inventions are celebrated in Chinese culture for their historical significance and as signs of ancient China's advanced science and technology and contribution to the world that had tremendous effects on human civilization and development by people.

These four discoveries had an enormous impact on the development of Chinese civilization and a far-ranging global impact, although there is no evidence that Chinese movable type printing ever spread beyond East Asia, and today all movable type printing solely derives from Gutenberg's press, including in China. According to English philosopher Francis Bacon, writing in Novum Organum,

Printing, gunpowder and the compass: These three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world; the first in literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes, in so much that no empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries." (Novum Organum, Liber I, CXXIX - Adapted from the 1863 translation)

Karl Marx also commented that

Gunpowder, the compass, and the printing press were the three great inventions which ushered in bourgeois society. Gunpowder blew up the knightly class, the compass discovered the world market and founded the colonies, and the printing press was the instrument of Protestantism and the regeneration of science in general; the most powerful lever for creating the intellectual prerequisites. Economic Manuscripts of 1861-63, Division of Labour and Mechanical Workshop. Tool and Machinery

Although neither mentioned papermaking specifically, it can be seen as a prerequisite to the development and widespread use of print.

In case of the 'compass', Magnetism as a natural force had been long known in many cultures. The first incontestable reference to a magnetized needle appears in Chinese literature in 1086 in the Dream Pool Essay written by the scholar Shen Kua.^[1] The compass remained known to the Chinese only in the form of a magnetic needle floating in a bowl of water^[2]. The true practical mariner's compass uses a pivoting needle in a dry box, and was invented in Europe no later than 1300^[3] and introduced in China via the sea lanes in the late 16th or early 17th century, according to a contemporary Chinese source by "the Japanese".^[4] There are other minor differences between the use between the two cultures. The European needle was marked to point north, not south as in China, and the case around the needle showed sixteen basic divisions, not twenty-four.^[5] Depending on how important these differences are considered, it would be reasonable to state either that the Chinese magnetic needle was copied elsewhere around the world, or that an European independent invention may be more likely.

[edit] References