Chinese Industrial Revolution

Originally posted by pinguin Yes. But not the style. Greeks continued to be the intellectuals of the Roman Empire, particularly in science, for a long time after Roman control. Roman themselves where more inclined to build organizations, make war, promote engineering and bloody entertainment rather to sciences. They had some good phylosophers and doctors but in astronomy and mathematics they were mediocre.

penguin,

Tell me something I don't know.  Geeze.  You post a lot of stuff, some of which I'm only a vaguely aware, but most of it I already know.  Only tidbits here and there I don't know or have never heard of. 

There so much, that I already know, I'm just not going to bother pointing out that I am already familiar with what you assume is my ignorance.

Originally posted by pinguin Chineses, Romans and Incas were people inclined to state building and put the strenght in practical organization. It is just a matter of style. India and the Middle East has always being inclined to religion, for instance. Phoenicians, Polynesians, Norse, Iberians were born sailors. etc.

Yeah, different cultures produce different results.  Read your history.  And don't forget to take into account the comparative population sizes of ancient Greece vs that of China, India, Arabia, Persia and Europe throughout the ages as you count the respective achievements of each.

And stop counting irrelevant contributions!  In particular stop comparing Chinese or Arab nobody's to Shakespeare & Newton!

Hint:  Even Einstein is not in Newton's league.  Shakespeare's only peer is Joyce.

Originally posted by pinguin Of course I right... Otherwise, where do you put أبو علي الحسن بن الحسن بن الهيثم. Sorry, you don't know arab. I said, where do you put Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn Al-Haitham? Well, as westerner you are very bad for long names so better search for Alhazen, although same people calls him Al-Basri. He lived between 965 and 1040 AD.

 
Alhazen:  I'm vaguely familiar with this guy.  But no, he's not a Newton nor a Shakespeare.  More like a Leonardo or Ben Franklin.  In the West, he's dime a dozen.  Indeed, dime a for a dozen dozens.  Also he's not Chinese.  Historically, Indians have bested Chinese intellectually, which is why the Chinese borrowed heavily from them.  Arabs, during the Arab empire, were probably more intellectually creative than the Chinese too.  Remember, the Arab population is much smaller than Chinese population.

http://home.att.net/~mleary/alhazen.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham

Omar Khayy�m:  Another 3rd tier, or 2nd tier genius at best.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayy%C3%A1m

Mozi:  You've got to be kidding.  Considerable intellect, but hardly a godly Newton nor a godly Shakespeare.

http://www.allempires.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=17820
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_mathematics

pinguin,

So you've named two Arabs and one Chinese.  Big deal.  Just look at the pantheon of ancient Greek or ancient Hellenized/westernized Jewish intellectuals, and you'll still end up with more from the two respective tiny populations.

Originally posted by pinguin But Chinese mathematicians were as close to Calculus as Archemides.

Prove it!  Just try.  And no garbage wiki links!  HA! 

Don't forget, Archimedes was just one bloke, as opposed to being scores of Chinese or Indians of the famed Kerela school who western scholars are now claiming anticipated much of integral calculus before Newton and Leibniz back in the 1300's or so.  Further, even if true, how do you know that it, or much of it, didn't come from India or from the Greeks or Arabs via India?!? 

Originally posted by pinguin Originally posted by TranHungDao ... Do you actually believe the Chinese, or any Confucianist Asians, could have come up with string theory, supermanifolds, fractal geometry, etc., by studying the wit & witicisms of the old masters for centuries upon centuries, indeed millenium upon millenium?!?    I do they could have come out with string theory, etc.

Originally posted by TranHungDao ... Please stop smoking crack.

Originally posted by TranHungDao Originally posted by pinguin Of course I right... Otherwise, where do you put أبو علي الحسن بن الحسن بن الهيثم. Sorry, you don't know arab. I said, where do you put Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn Al-Haitham? Well, as westerner you are very bad for long names so better search for Alhazen, although same people calls him Al-Basri. He lived between 965 and 1040 AD.   Alhazen:  I'm vaguely familiar with this guy.  But no, he's not a Newton nor a Shakespeare.  More like a Leonardo or Ben Franklin.  In the West, he's dime a dozen.  Indeed, dime a for a dozen dozens.  Also he's not Chinese.

Originally posted by TranHungDao Originally posted by pinguin Originally posted by TranHungDao ... Please stop smoking crack.   Please stop bigotry Please stop smoking crack!

Edited by pinguin - 30-Dec-2007 at 12:12

Originally posted by pinguin You better study the guy fully and then come back. I am afraid it is not very smart to criticize a guy without knowing about him. If you are impartial you should recognize a genious when you see it. Imagine the world without glasses and perspective drawing. That what Alhazen initiated for us. Al-Kwarismi and Al-Hazen are some of the most brillianst intellectuals of the Middle Ages, but not the only ones. You should study Islamic scientists better before comming with your wild theories.

Try reading Archimedes (his workswhich survived the ravages of time anyway...) or Newton.  Alhazen is not in their league.  Alhazen is brilliant?  Yes.  But not a Newton or Shakespeare.  Nor an Archimedes.

At best, he's a Da Vinci or a Ben Franklin.  Considerable intellects all, but hardly godly.

Originally posted by TranHungDao ...But very few children, but for prodigies who are by definition pretty damn rare, can apply the Gauss-Bonnet theorem or the Aytiyah-Singer index forumula.

Originally posted by TranHungDao When it comes to mathematics and physics, the ancients discoveries are not that sophisticated.  Perhaps only the work of Archimedes anticipating calculus is an exception.

^ Pot, this is kettle calling... 

For your infromation, pinguin knows I'm joking with him. 

For your information, I like pinguin, and generally agree with him on other respects.

Stop trolling and ducking the debate via snide remarks, explicit and thinly veiled personal attacts--hypocritical ones too I might add.  You don't know what you're talking about which is why you now seem to be lobbying for me to get a warning.

BTW, I've yet to post on the confucianism civil service exam angle of the argument, which is the strongest case.

Originally posted by pinguin Originally posted by TranHungDao However, ancient philosophy and literature is very sophisticated.  They cannot be mastered by a high school student.  A high school student can read it, and understand it, but not deeply. I should have mentioned this earlier.   Yes, Ancient literature is very sophisticated, but not only Westerner or Greek. Besides, Shakespeare is not my favority writer at all

Actually, I also meant Indian (Ramayana), Arab, Persian, Chinese, European... literature and philosphy too. 

However, in their time, the works of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes, etc., still stand out.  Ramayana and a few others too.  Per capitawise, I'd still give it to the Greeks and Romans, especially the Greeks.

Later centuries saw Beowulf, Chaucer, etc. in the West.  I'm sure that the Chinese, Indians and Arabs have great classics within the last 1000 years.  Chinese lit has probably been very good for the last 2000 years.  But again, you must take into account per capita arguments.

Lastly, starting with Shakespeare and Cervantes, Western lit really took off after those two blokes.  That is, from Shakespeare onwards, Western lit was and still is supreme.  In the last few decades, there have been a number of great Latin and South American poets and novelists, but I consider them quintesentially western.  A few notable African and Arab writers too, who of course cannot be seen as Western.

Originally posted by pinguin Originally posted by TranHungDao C'mon, you know what I mean.  But if you insist...  God invented those things, and man discovered them. I see. You can't grasp the idea. Well, Axiomatic Geometry, Calculus or the Numberical Systems are inventions. Fractal theory and Chaos Theory came out by casuality. It was discovered when studying recursive complex functions.

No way, when it comes to mathematics, everything is discovered.  Nothing is invented.

Assertion #1:  There's a theory that says for every physical phenomena, currently known or unknown, there is a mathematical equation to explain it.

Assertion #2:  Now take the converse:  For every mathematical equation, there is a physical phenomena that is described by it.

If assertion #2 is correct, and it is, then everthing in mathematics is discovered, since it merely describes something that already exists out there in 3, 4, 10, 11, ... 26 dimensions.

I think the bard of Avon is relevant here:  There's nothing new under the sun!

And...

There are more things in heaven and earth, my dear pinguin, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.  (Hamlet I.v) 

Edited by TranHungDao - 30-Dec-2007 at 16:10