Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
contributed greatly to the European agricultural revolution. By the
third century B.C., the Chinese also understood the importance of
planting crops in long, straight lines. Plants placed in straight lines
usually do not interfere with each other's growth and allow winds to
pass through without causing extensive crop damage. Straight-line
cropping was not widely practiced in Europe until well into the eigh-
teenth century A.D.
Ancient Chinese medical knowledge was also advanced. By the sec-
ond century B.C., at the very latest, Chinese medical practitioners had
discovered that blood circulates throughout the body and understood
fully that the heart pumped the blood. Chinese medical instructors
actually constructed elaborate pumps and circulatory networks to
use as teaching aids for their students. Today, many Westerners still
believe that the circulation of the blood was discovered by William
Harvey in the early seventeenth century A.D. This knowledge, which
seems so very commonplace to us today, spread to Europe from the
Arabs, who obtained it from China.
By the fourth century B.C. the Chinese were drilling for natural
gas and using it as a heat source, thus preceding Western natural gas
drilling efforts by about 2,300 years. Natural gas seems to have been
discovered accidentally by workers who were drilling in the earth for
brine, or water saturated with salt from salt deposits in the earth's crust.
When they found both brine and natural gas together, the ingenious and
practical Chinese used the natural gas to boil vats of the brine, thus
removing the water and leaving the salt behind. Some drilled wells
yielded only natural gas, and the Chinese called these “fire wells.” Later
innovations facilitated the transport of natural gas through bamboo
pipelines and even the use of portable tanks to carry it.
The innovations and discoveries listed above had practical applica-
tions. It would be wrong to suggest that the Chinese were interested
in mere technology and did not generate purely scientific insights.
Something very close to Newton's First Law of Motion was known to
the Chinese by the fourth century B.C. Newton's First Law states that
“every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a
right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces
impressed upon it.” A Mo-ist topic dating to the fourth or third
century B.C. states, “The cessation of motion is due to the opposing
force
the motion will never stop.
This is as true as that an ox is not a horse” (Temple 1986, 161). The
Mo-ists, in fact, were quite scientific in their thought. Mo-ist writings
also accurately and conceptually defined a circle as a body of points
that are all equidistant from a centrally located point.
...
if there is no opposing force
...
