The sun rises in the East

High school history courses and popular culture teach that science and technology are uniquely Western feats ... Reassuring, but wrong.\nConsider sunspots. Interactions between the sun's ultra-hot gases and its magnetic field sometimes combine to produce relatively cool, dark areas on the sun's surface.\nFor centuries, Europeans believed Greek philosopher Aristotle's idea that the sun was perfect. Since sunspots were by definition imperfections, and until 1611Westerners knew they didn't exist and never bothered to look for them.\nChinese astronomers detected sunspots as early as 28 B.C., and their observations are so accurate that modern astronomers consult them to trace phenomena thousands of years old.\nThe Chinese were equally ahead of Europeans in technology. They invented the wheelbarrow in about 232 A.D. It appeared in Europe only in the 1300s.\nWhile Europeans began large-scale use of iron in about 1380 A.D., the warring states of classical China had industrial-scale iron casting in the fourth century B.C. ... This list leaves out trivial items like paper, gunpowder, rockets, the compass and the printing press.\nIf the Chinese were that advanced, then why didn't modern science develop in the Middle Kingdom?\nThe answer is easy: The Chinese were too superstitious for rational thought. After all, the ancient Chinese had some odd beliefs, like that things are made of earth, air, water and fire, and that all objects want to remain at rest and will return to their natural place.\nOh -- excuse me. Those foolish ideas were Aristotle's.\nThere is no simple explanation for why science was born in backward Europe and not in advanced China. But there is a simple explanation for why you never hear Chinese scientific accomplishments discussed: ignorance and prejudice.\nPrejudice is less visible than a century ago, when eminent West European scientists and thinkers considered Asians part of a different, lower species than West Europeans. \nThat theory told Westerners that the Chinese were a backward people in need of civilizing, a mission the West accepted zealously. Missionaries flocked to Asia and returned to write about their experiences. The IU East Asian Culture Center warns teachers against using those books because they often call Asian cultures "heathen" and "immoral." \nBut biased writing was the least bad outcome of the white man's burden. Imperialists used the idea of native backwardness to justify their routinely brutal rule. After all, the natives had never invented anything useful.\nPrejudice evolves. Today, popular American stereotypes say Asians are hard-working, smart and dangerous competitors. The Chinese, in particular, are supposed to be gunning for America's position as the globe's superpower.\nOthers think Asians can only copy what Americans make first. Asians may be good craftsmen, bigots say, but they're still inferior.\nThese new prejudices are no more right than the old ones were. As historian of Chinese science Joseph Needham once said, nobody was better at copying advanced technologies than 15th-and 16th-century Westerners.\nOf course, it's possible to give the Chinese too much credit. The Taoists, who conducted investigations into nature, were nothing like modern scientists. \nFar from it. The typical Chinese investigator of the 11th or 12th century would have probably believed in theories every bit as strange as Aristotle's. And the astronomers who saw sunspots weren't studying solar magnetic phenomena; they were looking for signs of Heaven's displeasure. \nSomehow though, Western textbooks only remember Aristotle.\nStereotypes change, but ignorance remains. We don't know about the achievements of Chinese or Egyptian or Islamic or Indian civilizations, and so we conclude that the West is uniquely superior. \nJust like medieval Europeans knew there were no sunspots.