Why didn't China start the Scientific Revolution, or is that the wrong question?

Nobody agrees, and one of the field's own experts argued that the question may not have a useful answer. The puzzle is called the Needham Question, after Joseph Needham, a British biochemist who became a historian of Chinese science. In The Grand Titration, published in 1969, he asked why China had been overtaken by the West in science and technology despite its earlier successes. In his words, why did modern science, the mathematization of hypotheses about Nature, take its rise only in the West, when Chinese civilization had long been more efficient at applying natural knowledge to practical needs?

Needham did not think China had been stagnant. His research revealed a steady accumulation of scientific results throughout Chinese history, and he wrote that China was homeostatic but never stagnant. He concluded that the rise of the bourgeoisie in Western Europe from the 15th century onward was one of the most important factors, linking capitalism to the scientific method and the Industrial Revolution. He also thought that Chinese script, with its thousands of characters, limited what movable type could do to spread knowledge.

Others proposed different answers. Yingqiu Liu and Chunjiang Liu point to limited property rights, which could be had only through the emperor's favour and revoked at any time. A related proposal points to totalitarian control by a very large empire, with regulations on the press, clothing, construction, music, birth rates and trade. Justin Lin argues China did not make the shift from experience-based invention to experiment-based innovation.

But the question itself is disputed. Nathan Sivin, Needham's collaborator, suggested it did not have a useful answer: he compared it to asking why your name did not appear on page 3 of today's newspaper.