The Geography of Thought

by Richard E. Nisbett

Chinese social harmony should not be confused with conformity. On the contrary, Confucius praised the desire of the gentleman to harmonize and distinguished it from the petty person’s need for conformity.

But, as philosopher Hajime Nakamura notes, the Chinese advances reflected a genius for practicality, not a penchant for scientific theory and investigation. And as philosopher and sinologist Donald Munro has written, “In Confucianism there was no thought of knowing that did not entail some consequence for action.”

Although the Chinese made substantial advances in algebra and arithmetic, they made little progress in geometry because proofs rely on formal logic, especially the notion of contradiction. (Algebra did not become deductive until Descartes. Our educational system retains the memory trace of their separation by teaching algebra and geometry as separate subjects.)