Reaction to articles about Ts'ai and da Vinci

I think all Chinese students are pretty familiar with Tsai Lun, while his name appears totally strange to people from other countries. This is common in nowadays. The domination of Western civilization has shadowed the achievements of other civilizations, such as China and India, even though their contributions are no less than that of western civilizations. People know even less about civilizations from South Africa and Latin America.

There are two things that I want to point out about the Ts’ai Lun article. First, it is believed by many Chinese that he is just the one that improved the paper making technique and popularized it. People had been making papers before Ts’ai did and it was his position in the empire that made him the most famous paper makers. Another point that I am not sure about is the reason why China started to fall behind during and after the Yuan and Ming Dynasty (1271-1644AD). I would argue that there are many reasons and the lack of improvements in printing may just be one of them. There are other important reasons, such as the historical suppression on business, conservative mindsets, the invasion of Mongolians, and the traditional emphasis on social science instead of natural science, etc.

Ts'ai Lun reminds me of another eunuch, the voyager Zheng He, whom I mentioned in one of my previous postings. Therefore, the additional reading I chose is Zheng He's Voyages of Discovery.

As for da Vinci, one of his statues is at the Piazza della Scala, one of the two landmarks in Milan. The statue at the other landmark-the Piazza del Duomo-is Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian national hero who unified the country. It is then obvious how important da Vinci is to Italians. However, as I said in one of my previous blogs, as science becomes more and more specialized, it will be very difficult, if no impossible, to have someone like da Vinci, who is so versatile and can make contributions to so many fields.