Science and Civilisation in China

It was a more ancient, a more unified, a more coherent, and in some ways, a more technologically advanced civilization than the fragmentary West.

When people, in particular, there's a remarkable British scholar called Joseph Needham, who went to go and live in China and began a series of books, which I think reaches about 30 volumes now, called Science and Civilization in China.

And he faced this very interesting question, why did the scientific revolution happen in Western Europe and not in China? given the fact that China was advanced technologically by quite some way at this particular time.

And it's still a contested question, but one of his arguments was this.

The Lingqu connects the Xiang River, a tributary of the Yangtze, with the Li River, a tributary of the Pearl River.

Joseph Needham had written in Science and Civilization, quote, So all of these natural and artificial waterways that were built between the Zhou and the Northern Zhou dynasties provided the lead up to the Grand Canal.

At the outset of the 7th century, the importance of the South and the criticality of this region's economy to the overall well-being of the empire meant that the idea for a kind of...

Grand North-South Canal made a lot of sense.