India and China: Old Technological Giants Catching Up…
An interesting article in The Economist traces the history of the erstwhile technological/scientific powers — China and India — “who have much to offer the world of technology, but more still to gain from it”.
“TOWARDS the end of the 11th century, while tardy Europeans kept time with sundials, Su Sung of China completed his masterpiece: a water clock of great intricacy and accuracy…
“Clockmaking was only one scientific endeavour in which China and India comfortably led the world before the 15th century. China outstripped Europe in its understanding of hydraulics, ironsmelting and shipbuilding. Its machines for ginning cotton, spinning ramie and throwing silk seemed to lack only a flying shuttle and a drawbar to match the 18th-century contraptions that launched Britain’s Industrial Revolution.
“Clean your teeth with a toothbrush, rebuff the rain with a collapsible umbrella, turn a playing card, light a match, write, pay—or even wipe your behind—with paper, and you register a debt to China’s powers of invention…
“India’s genius, then as now, was in software not hardware. Its ancient civilisations ushered in a ‘mathematical revolution’ from the fifth century, when Aryabhata devised something like the decimal system. In the seventh century Brahmagupta explained that a number multiplied by zero was zero. By the 15th century, Madhava had calculated pi to more than ten decimal places.
“After the 15th century, however, the technological clock stopped in both countries, even as it accelerated in Europe. This peculiar loss of momentum, noted Joseph Needham, a great historian of Chinese science, takes some explaining. Why, he asked, did the science of Galileo emerge ‘in Pisa but not in Patna or Peking’?”
While The New Scientist says: “Some of the innovations that will be needed to solve global problems are likely to come from China. Already, top Chinese researchers and entrepreneurs trained abroad are returning to their homeland in unprecedented numbers. They are emphatic about one thing: wanting China to be able to stand with the US and other leading nations as an equal partner.” More here…
With the world emerging as a global village, there are numerous fine brains from China and India working in the US and Europe along with the best the advanced countries have to offer. It is also said that there are still finest/sharpest brains in India and China who would not leave their country for any other place in the world …whatever be the temptations.
