Biology Education in the People's Republic of China

Abstract

IN A.D. 1000 trip to China took you to the world's most advanced civilization. Here you saw amazing technological achievements such as paper, mechanical clocks, belt and chain drives, wheelbarrows, block printing, moveable-type printing, gunpowder, silk cloth, porcelain, seismograph, precise nautical and astronomical instruments, and other inventions. In the period from A.D. 1000 to 1400, China advanced to the threshold of systematic investigation of nature. In the field of biology start was made on science of anatomy with the dissection of cadavers. Disease symptoms were precisely described and new specific remedies developed. Attempts were made to relate theory more closely with empirical information, especially in the area of pharmacology. From careful observations classification system for plants and animals was devised. The outstanding scientist of the time (1031-1095) was Shen Kuo who devised solar calendar of 365 days to replace the lunar calendar. Shen Kuo also discovered the declination of the magnetized needle five centuries before the phenomenon was recorded in Europe. In his later years he wrote history of scientific achievements from ancient times up to his day. A famous biology book of its time was Essentials of Agriculture and Sericulture. In A.D. 1273 there were two printings of 1,500 copies each of the book. Yang Hui's Mathematics for Daily Use, printed in 1262, was designed to be of a slight help in the contingencies of everyday life, and to assist in the education of the young. The world's earliest mechanized industry was to be found in China. This was the China of A.D. 1000. Our visit to China took place nearly thousand years after Shen Kuo's death. We were delegation studying the teaching of science and observing Chinese achievements in science and technology. What we discovered was Third World country-a country that failed to recognize the significance of the birth of modern science in Western Europe during the 1600s. But we learned the