Very recommendable historical overview article! E.g. describes many Western influences on science & technology in China!
" ... But in the longer view, the periods of greatest advancement were those when China opened to outside influence. ... In 1868, the year before Nature was founded, the first textbook of Western science was published in Chinese, Introduction to Natural Philosophy ... The American who translated the book, William Martin, had no background in science, but understood its importance for improving the fortunes of a country beset by disasters. The book contained illustrations of microscopes and trains, and basic explanations of an idiosyncratic assortment of concepts in chemistry, electricity and physics.
Martin and other Protestant missionaries who headed to China in the nineteenth century saw the country as the next frontier in spiritual salvation. The introduction of science through Martin’s textbook and other translated works provided an opening and a way to improve the material well-being of the vast population of an impoverished country. ... By 1863, mathematicians Xu Shou and Hua Hengfang built China’s first steamship, using illustrations from a missionary magazine as a guide. ... By the end of the nineteenth century, many more Chinese people were convinced that what made the West rich and powerful was science and technology. Thousands of students ventured abroad to study, many to Japan. ... This year — 2019 — is a year of anniversaries. The May Fourth Movement of 1919, a response to the allies’ betrayal of China at Versailles, defined a generation of Chinese intellectuals. Student protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 built on this tradition, and became a turning point in China’s era of ‘Reform and Opening’. ... "
China: How science made a superpower: Shellen Wu traces the rise of the dominant force in science, in the second of a series of essays on the ways in which the past 150 years have shaped today’s research system, marking Nature’s anniversary.
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