What civlization had most scientific research in classical era??

China?

This is not about inventions, is it?

In classical age, Greeks definitely. Chinese had many inventions, but not in the classical age timeframe.

As for scientific research... I don't think that was established in the West before the Alexandrine school and much later in China. It's still the Greeks, but not in the classical age (they lacked a crucial part of the "scientific method", the experiment/verification process, even though they excelled at the theoretical approach) only in the days of the Alexandrine school (the generation of early scientists blooming in the famous Alexandrian Library).

If we talk about inventions only, there are far more contestants than just Greek and China. Romans were great inventors, Sumerians and Egyptians long before them also.

But they lacked the theoretical and scientific, approach of the Greeks. They were more empiricists than anything else. But that didn't hinder the mesopotamian cultures to discover great theoretical concepts like the Pi number or an early form of the Pythagorean theorem.

The Indians were great thinkers, as well.

P.S. forgot to add something to clear up a confusing fact: the ancient Greek term philosophy (love for wisdom?) as used in antiquity, is in all practical ways synonumous to our term "Science". So, if you say that Greeks invented philosophy it's like stating that they invented science. Which, in a way, is correct, concept-wise though. Practically, many more cultures long before the classical Greeks, have practiced science. They just didn't name it

Forgot to add a couple of links I've found

http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Inventions.htm

http://www.crystalinks.com/chinainventions.html

Coolstorm, is this going to evolve into another "the Chinese are better than anyone" type of thread? Because if it is, I honestly don't want to have anything to do with.

As to the subject of this thread, what excactly do you define "science"? Because battle formations (2/3 of your post) is definitely not "science". Since we are talking about scientific research, it's rather peculiar to refer to military manuals, formations, and such.

The Greeks formulated the whole theory of "science", which is a huge step forward in science nevertheless. I don't think China, besides practical implementation of things, had any theoriticists in the calibre of Aristotle, or any working scientists in the league of an Archimedes or a Hero.

I don't doubt the exceptional progress conducted in areas of China throughout the ages, but the blast furnace alone doesn't qualify the Chinese as superior scientists to the Greeks, don't you agree?

A rundown by invention:

Greeks

- Science

- Acoustics

- Anchor

- Astrolabe

- Automata (that is, primitive machines)

- Bricks

- Bucket chain

- Caltrops

- camera obscura

- catalog of books

- catapult

- chewing gum

- city planning

- coin automate

- compound pulley

- computing device

- cranes

- drydock

- dice

- dioptra

- fire extinction machine

- flame thrower

- floating bridge (pontoon bridge)

- hopper rubbers

- hydravlis

- terra cotta lamps

- lever

- lighthouse

- musical notation

- odometer

- parchment

- piston

- Alarm clock

...and many others, including the famous inventions by Archimedes.

Chinese

- Fireworks

- wheelbarrow

- Earthquake weathercock

- compass

- spaghetti

- fan

- kites

- bamboo working

- iron casting

- harnessing animals

- advanced navigation

- Abacus

- clock

- rudder

- planetarium

- anesthetic

- paper

- printing

- books

- umbrella

And many, many others

(both lists from the links I provided in the previous post)

What is my point? They were both great inventors, but the Chinese have more inventions relative to warfare and practical everyday use, while the Greeks have more sophisticated devices, but not practically useful all the times.

Note though that the Greek inventions date up to the 1st century AD, while the Chinese inventions mentioned in the list date up to the 10the century AD.

"Ru guo ni you rang da jia xiang xin zhong guo de chen jiou, ni bi shu rang da jia zhuen jing zhong guo de nien hang (if you know how to read Chinese, which i believe you can)."

Infact, I can't read a single word of this.

I can read Chinese but not ping ying. I am really bad with ping ying especially the mandarin romanization as it is not my mother touque.

If you could put that in written form or English, it would be great.

"You can be patrotic about being Chinese but dont be exaggerate their achivement as it seems they are simply GREAT in every era."

I actually think that Chinese civilization entered a dark age after mid Ming.

I don't think that the Chinese did well in every era but however during the warring state period and the classical age as you mentioned, China definitely had a firm scientific foundation. I agree that the Greeks were excellent in Math, philosophy... etc. I am not undervaluating their acheivements. However, I am not exaggerating Chinese achievements either.

Other than saying that I am exagerating Chinese achievements, would you also kindly list anything from my post that you find exaggerating and not based upon the truth.

Please also note that many technologies that western Europeans mastered from central Asia were originally developed in China. Gunpowder, scope, and compass are some examples.

I will wait for you reply here.

    I hope you guys are not gonna throw things at me for saying this: define science.

    I've once read this: the Chinese were great sociologists, the Greeks were great naturalists, and Indians were greak psychologists, if I remember what I read correctly.  Oversimplification of course, but I think we can somewhat identify the strenghts of each scientific culture.

    the beginning stage of the Chinese classical era was also one of the most chaotic one.  One way to help understand the 100 schools (in reality there were less than 30.  one hundred is another way of saying "a lot.") suddenly blosoming in classical China (circa 400 BC - 200 AD, as Kids suggested,) one must realize the issues they were facing.  All of these schools were essentially trying to solve a big dilemma: the Zhou regime had waned, and the many different states were competing for supremacy.  Zhou was essentially a kind of "overlord" state over, at one point 800 states.  With the collapse of the Zhou regime, these states competed for supremacy to replace Zhou.  By the time of the Spring and Autum era, there were a hundred something left; by the time of the Warring States era, only 13 are left, and of which only 7 were real powers.  What you can expect from this is a lot of war and chaos.

    It must've been a frightening time: wars went from chivalrous contest involving thousands that last about a day in the Spring and Autumn era to the large scale conquest of hundreds of thousands soliders on each side in the Warring State era.  Such scholars as Confucius and Lao Tzu were ardently trying to solve a problem facing them everyday.  Confucianism suggests a system of rituals and propriety, proper relations, compassionate rulers, and well educated leaders as the solution.  Taoism suggests escapism from mundanity and a lack of interference from the state.  Legalism suggests clear laws and absolute state power to enforce them.  Mohism suggests adamant pacificism and that everyone loves everyone else equally.  All other schools, including schools of diplomacy and military, all aimed at solving social unrest in one way or another.

    After first two hundred years of classical era, China was united, then disunited after a decade or so, and reunited again around 200 B.C.  Thus begun a peaceful stage of classicism, one where Confucianism reigned supreme, with Taoism still studied, and all the other schools became integrated with them one way or the other, while Buddhism was beginning to be known in China.  Perhaps the climates of other cultures, such as Greeks and Indians, also induced them to have different emphasis of science, but I'd leave that question to others. 

Today, we ask how the Chinese managed to hide their candle under a bushel. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

Modern pharmacology had to wait for biochemistry. Without it, all we could do was play around with herbs and hope for the best, right? Well, maybe not. Since the early days of Rome, Chinese doctors have done astonishing things with medicine and anatomy.

While Rome fought the last Punic War in the 2nd century BC, Chinese doctors were learning that blood recirculates and that it's refreshed in the lungs. Europe didn't begin to realize that until the 1500s. William Harvey finally got it straight in 1628. The Chinese also calculated that blood recirculates every 30 minutes. They got that figure by dissecting bodies, measuring the length of blood vessels, and making dubious assumptions. The correct value is more like 30 seconds. But -- Harvey also thought it took 30 minutes.

As the Punic wars ended, the Chinese had also begun extracting male and female hormones from urine. They did that by evaporating the liquid and using sublimation to separate estrogens or androgens from the other solids. They called those hormones the "autumn mineral," because they looked like autumn frost. They used them to treat sexual dysfunction and underdeveloped sexual characteristics.

By the height of the Roman empire, the Chinese were writing about using diet to fight beriberi. It was 1900 before Western doctors realized you got beriberi by trying to subsist on white rice. If the Chinese didn't know the part about vitamin B in brown rice -- well, it was 1936 before Western doctors isolated vitamin B.

By the time of Europe's Dark Ages, the Chinese had synthesized thyroid hormone from jujube dates. They used it to treat goiters. They also controlled diabetes with the right diet. They knew diabetics should avoid starchy foods. And, when the American, Michael Katsoyannis, synthesized insulin in 1966, the irony is that Chinese scientists Zahn and Wang had synthesized it two years earlier. But Zahn and Wang got swallowed up in the Cultural Revolution. The West got the credit.

Finally, as medieval cathedrals rose in France, the Chinese were regularly inoculating themselves against smallpox.

Why did all this stay unknown in the West? Well, the language barrier went beyond words. We were put off by metaphors like autumn mineral. And the Chinese didn't have our medium of print to spread knowledge. China did have printing before the West, but with so many characters it never became a real mass medium.

So the word didn't get out. And we have, for the last 400 years, proudly reinvented idea after idea already known to the Chinese -- things already known for two millennia.

I'm John Lienhard at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.

(Theme music)

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Temple, R, and Needham, J., The Genius of China: 3000 Years of Science Discovery and Invention. New York: A Touchstone Book, 1989, Part 5, Medicine and Health.

I am grateful to Robert Hazlewood, UH Biology Department, for pointing out the Chinese synthesis of insulin in 1964.