Abstract:

In his previous paper on the Needham Puzzle in 2015, the author offered a conclusion that science could not originate spontaneously in China due to the lack of logic and the subject-predicate structure in antient Chinese sentences. This paper further explores the following issue: Are there any other prerequisites for the birth of science? The answer is uniformitarianism and positivism. The generation of uniformitarianism is in high correlation with the necessity of subject in a sentence. Positivism did exist in the practice in Chinese history, but it was absent in epistemology. In this way, this paper argues for three prerequisites for the emergence of science: uniformitarianism, logic and positivism. Moreover, why science did not emerge in Indian, Arabic, native American and other cultures? The reason is that they lack one or more of the three prerequisites for science. The Needham Puzzle is asked in a negative form for a specific phenomenon, i.e., “Why did something not emerge in somewhere?” This tends to induce ad hoc hypotheses. The question should be asked in an affirmative form: “What are the general conditions for the emergence of something?” Only this question will lead to scientific research.

Key words: birth of science, linguistic-thinking cultural category, three prerequisites, logic, monism, positivism