Environmental Factors That Influenced Ancient China's Sci-tech And The Enlightenments

The development of science and technology and even its character and social functions , all have a close relationship with the environments where it takes root , they form an organic system within which they interact bidirectionally and improve each other.The environments where science and technology takes root include : natural environment, social environments and other environmental factors such as the status of surrounding countries to a nation or a country, etc. Social environments includes economic environments, political environments , idealistic and cultural environments. These environmental factors, especially the natural environment, had a great effect on the development of science and technology in the ancient society, when, the productivity was comparatively very low, it even decided the direction, character, structure and level of the development of science and technology. Yet, this kind of effect was not all direct, usually it finally affected the development of science and technology through economy and politics.Before 17th century, owing to the special natural conditions—the economic condition, which was suitable for cultivation, the social structure of old China was very special, there was a patriarchal clan system then, meanwhile, the structure of ' home' and ' country' is similar. With such a special social structure, old China paid its main attention to the harmonious of human relations and stability of society, but almost cared nothing for the development of industry , commerce and science, it even restricted the development of them. Thus, the science and technology at that time mainly limited to these aspects, such as agriculture, water project, season, weather technology, etc. Although other aspects, such as machine making, cottoncracy, printing, etc., developed too, but finally none of them could push the science and technology of China to the transformation to modernization.Today, China has begun to move to modernization, yet, the final realization of it still depends on the development of its science and technology. At this moment, there is a long distance between China's science and technology and the other developed countries'. The most important factor that restricts the development of China's science and technology is still the environments which it takes root from. So, if we want to develop our science and technology rapidly, we must improve the concerned environments. This article emphasizes on the analyses on the environmental factors which restrict the development of China's science and technology, and make some simple analyses on 'harnessing environments' and ' perfecting environments', at the same time, also passes some constructive advices on improvement for reference.