The purpose of Zhao Yu's visit was to investigate the state and thoughts of the current corporal, and what he saw had already disappointed him, but after listening to the words of Chen Pu and others, he realized that his refusal to take up the post of president of the 'Academy of Sciences' was not because he was 'not a shallow learner', but because he looked down on this work of cultivating scientific and technological engineering talents from the bottom of his heart, and even regarded craftsmen as lowly servitude.

In his previous life, Zhao Yu studied engineering, and he can be said to be very passionate about this profession and proud of it. After coming to this world, he also used his former needs to change the world, relying on the strong ships and cannons he built to save the Great Song Dynasty on the verge of extinction, creating amazing wealth with the power of science and technology, and gradually penetrating into the bits and pieces of society, changing the inherent production and lifestyle.

Even so, Zhao Yu's behavior will still be greatly resisted, and the ministers feel that he is 'not doing his job', and that he likes to be a plaything and discouraged, and he is doing cheap things. However, with his persistence and the appearance of the effect, he still won the understanding and recognition of some ministers, and after listening to these people's discussions today, Zhao Hao, who originally planned to only listen to it, still did not calm down and fought back. But I also know how pale and powerless his counterattack is in front of many conservative scholars, and it is not easy to change their deep-rooted thinking by anger.

We all know that the material culture or manufacturing industry in ancient China was ahead of the world before the Tang Dynasty, and the vertical ratio was the peak in the Song Dynasty. For example, construction and metallurgy, two industries that represent the level of traditional manufacturing, until the Tang Dynasty, China was proud of all other nations in Asia, at least in Asia, and its convincing craftsmanship confirmed the splendor of ancient "Made in China".

Why did it start to fall behind in the Song Dynasty? Zhao Yu believes that this is not a simple technical problem, but must be found from the changes in the economic system and political system, and the changes in the system will cause changes in the distribution of interests and the differentiation of classes, so it will cause the prosperity of some industries and the decline of some industries. Or it can be simply said that the imperial examination system is an important "baton" for the Chinese to emphasize literature and light industry.

In the Spring and Autumn Period of ancient China and the later Warring States Period, a hundred schools of thought contended, and Confucianism was only one of them. Confucius also did not despise all kinds of people who eat by handicraft, he also said: Rich can be sought, although the whip is a person, I will also do it. If you can't ask for it, do what I like. And the social status of craftsmen is not low, such as the well-known Chinese construction industry and the originator of carpenters Lu Ban, that is, the public loss plate of Lu State, with his own skills to become the doctor of Chu State. "Mozi" contains: Gong Lose Pan is the machine of Chu to build a cloud ladder, and it will be used to attack the Song Dynasty. Zi Mozi heard it, started from Qi, traveled for ten days and ten nights, and as for Ying, he saw the public lose.

At that time, Mozi seemed to be a leader in the craftsman industry, he worked as a shepherd boy in his youth, learned carpentry, and a large number of craftsmen and lower-class scholars followed Mozi, and gradually formed his own Mohist school, which became the main opposition of Confucianism. After he saw the public loss plate, the two of them carried out the deduction of engineering equipment, "Zi Mozi unravels the belt for the city, and uses the Gong Losing Pan as the weapon, and the public loss plate is set up to attack the city, and Zi Mozi is nine distances." The attack of the public losing plate is exhausted, and the defense of Zi Mozi is more than enough." Gong lost the game and admitted defeat, so he gave up the plan to build a cloud ladder for the Chu State.

At the same time, Guan Zhong, the prime minister of the Qi State, put forward the famous "Four People's Separation Theory", that is, the people with the four identities of "Shinong, Industry and Commerce" lived separately and cultivated separately, so that their respective skills could be perfected. His advice to the craftsmen was to gather the craftsmen together to live together, to observe the needs of the seasons, to discern the fine and ugly of the quality of the utensils, to gauge their use, and to compare the good and bad materials and make them just right.

It means "to engage in twilight, to give to the Quartet, to reward their children, to talk to each other, to show each other to skill, and to show each other with merit". When they learn technology at a young age, their minds settle down and they don't think differently. Therefore, the teachings of the father and brother to the children can be completed without serious supervision, and the children can learn well without effort. In this way, the disciples of the craftsman always remain the status of the craftsman.

In this way, the occupation of agriculture and industry is passed down from generation to generation, which of course leads to social rigidity and is not conducive to class mobility. However, from the perspective of vocational training, in ancient times when transportation and education were not developed, father-son inheritance and brotherly mutual assistance were convenient ways to cultivate and improve skills.

However, starting from the Han Dynasty's "deposing the hundred schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone", the Mohist family, which could compete with Confucianism, declined, and the decline of the Mohist family was also accompanied by a great regression in the social status of craftsmen. In the imperial era, the country was founded by agriculture and ruled by soldiers. The scholars and peasants were the basic plate of the rulers. The artisans, as Guan Zhong put it, were "in the middle of the group", where everyone gathered together and lived in the towns, while the merchants were on the move, which was not conducive to rule.

For 2,000 years, industry and commerce were discriminated against by the rulers, and the various institutions of the empire were designed to suppress and prevent them. The reason why these two professions still exist is that society needs to build houses, make utensils, and need the circulation of goods, so it has to allow the existence of such people. It can be said that Chinese craftsmen and merchants survived in the cracks during the imperial era for more than 2,000 years.

The imperial examination system broke the gate valve system, so that ordinary people could also enter the ruling class, and promoted social equality and class mobility. But there is also a negative side. Zhao Yu thought that the rise of the imperial examination system had made the artisan group increasingly marginalized, and the gap between the social status of scholars and craftsmen was getting wider and wider. What is even more serious is the change in people's minds.

"The dynasty is Tian Shelang, and the twilight is in the Tianzi Hall" has become the life dream of many children from poor families, and "Zhu Zigui of the Manchu Dynasty is all scholars" has become the standard for social value judgment. On the other hand, it has come at a cost to China, including slow progress in manufacturing technology and even regression in some areas.

It is obvious that smart people in society want to study, take exams, and become officials. And those who become craftsmen are often poor children who are forced by life - if the family has a few acres of thin land and can be a good farmer, they rarely go to become an apprentice, and endure the abuse of almost being a slave of the master. And if a skilled craftsman has made a good living with his craft and has plenty of money, he must have thought of letting his son read the sages and sages, participate in scientific examinations, and become an official from the craftsman class.

As a result, the entire artisan class is a manual laborer with little education or even no literacy, and the quality of the craft depends entirely on the experience and professional attitude of the craftsman. The occasional appearance of great craftsmen is only rare, and it cannot be cultivated in batches with some kind of education and training system. It is undeniable that ancient China did have a higher level in the field of engineering technology than other countries in the same period, but these achievements were all based on the experience of craftsmen, and were not summarized and summarized from the scientific level.

Zhao Yu came to this world and soon found that the developed shipbuilding industry is the result of the craftsmanship passed down from generation to generation by craftsmen, but craftsmen do not understand the law of buoyancy. The same is true of architecture, craftsmen do not understand structural mechanics and material mechanics. And this kind of pure experience 'innovation' is not only weak, but also goes up further, and soon reaches the ceiling, and there is no possibility of a major breakthrough.

Therefore, how is it possible for a group of uneducated craftsmen, even if there are particularly smart people among them, to learn the master's craft faster, to systematically summarize the knowledge of modern mechanics, physics and chemistry, and then to have various types of modern engineering? This can explain why ancient China did not have the threshold of engineering technology and science from technology, and you can't expect those craftsmen who are mostly illiterate or semi-literate to theorize technology.

What is this well-educated group of people in society doing? They were reading the "Four Books and Five Classics", studying Confucian classics, and the lucky ones passed the examinations again and again to become officials, and they relied on Confucian ethics to govern the country, and some professional work such as finance and law was entrusted to the master. A few were willing to work with the craftsmen to study the improvement of the forging process - that was the "cheap industry" that they looked down upon.

Zhao Yu knew that Huang Daopo was written about in middle school history textbooks, saying that she was a famous cotton weaver and technological reformer in the early Yuan Dynasty. Because of the teaching of advanced textile technology and the promotion of advanced textile tools, it is admired by the people. Huang Daopo was exiled in Yazhou when she was a teenager, and learned to use cotton-making tools and the method of weaving Yazhou quilt under the Li people, and taught people how to make cotton after returning to Songjiang, teaching and promoting the weaving techniques such as defending, elastic, spinning and weaving, and wrong yarn color matching, and heald thread flowering, so that Songjiang cotton cloth sold well all over the world.

When he was in Qiongzhou, Zhao Yu also thought of such a historical figure, but he did not deliberately visit, because he had completed such a major technological reform and promotion in Qiongzhou to increase foreign trade income. But think that if it weren't for his arrival, this weaving process would have to be completed by a woman with a rough background, why? The reason is simple, who would do this?

Some people may think that this statement is too extreme, and the Song Dynasty also appeared in the "Construction of the French Style" and "Mengxi Bi Tan", which recorded ancient science and technology and summarized the theoretical literature of process technology. But Zhao Hao will tell you that it is just a drop in the ocean.

The book "Construction Method", which details the modular system of building components, classifies, grades and standardizes the dimensions of materials and components, so that craftsmen can make a complete and accurate list of materials before they start construction. However, later generations know that this book is only a summary of the experience of Chinese architectural technology in the past thousand years, and there are not many breakthroughs in the sense of disciplines.

Even if the author of this book is in charge of the life history of Li Jie, the general of the imperial craftsman, later generations know very little, and even the compiler of this book is called "Li Jie" or "Li Cheng", which is still controversial. And those dignitaries, brave generals, literati and writers, and even heroes who robbed homes and houses in history, how detailed the historical records are.

In addition, the ancient Chinese classics are vast, but the proportion of works that record craftsmanship such as "Qi Min Yaoshu" and "Tiangong Kaiwu" is very small, and there are too few scholars like Li Jie, who are willing to investigate and summarize the work experience of craftsmen and write a book. And the reason why Song Yingxing, who wrote the book "Beginning the Heavenly Things", was able to do this was also because of his repeated failures in the imperial examination, and since then he has abandoned the idea of the imperial examination. Only then did he have the time and energy to write such "idle books" that the big officials disdained. Even so, he is only a spectator and summarizer, not a master craftsman who does actual operations.

Then there is the political system that determines the low level of education of the artisan class, and it also determines the degree of development of commercial culture. It can lock the manufacturing industry and the trade industry is the two wheels of the car and the two wings of the bird. The profits of manufacturing can only be realized through commerce, and in ancient China, commerce was suppressed, and the tributary system made the imperial court monopolize foreign trade. The commercial environment that led to unfree competition increased the weak position of artisans in trade, and ordinary craftsmen toiled and fed.

Zhao Yuji's book in his previous life says that the craftsmen of the Great Song Dynasty would enjoy high salaries, and their incomes even exceeded those of government officials. But when he came to this world, his real feeling was that the living conditions of most craftsmen were very poor. Even in the 'state-owned enterprises' such as the Craftsman Supervisor and the Metropolitan Workshop, the craftsmen were confined to work in cramped workshops and received a barely subsistence salary, no different from contract laborers. How can you hope that some craftsmen who live without dignity will carry out technological innovation and promote the development of China's manufacturing industry?

In contrast, the development of manufacturing techniques in Europe and Japan was also due to the fact that the social environment in which the craftsmen lived was very different from that of China, and Europe and Japan experienced a truly "feudal" society. The feudal lords of Western Europe had a high degree of autonomy within their jurisdictions, as did the daimyo of the Japanese islands. Most of the fiefdoms were hereditary, and the "seguan" system in Western Europe continued until the bourgeois revolution, while the "seguan" system in Japan continued until the Meiji Restoration.

Craftsmen are on an equal footing with farmers and merchants, and some handsome children of civilian families are willing to learn crafts, while some artisan families are hundreds of years old, and the craft is beyond the next generation. And because there was no unified centralized power, the feudal lords and princes competed with each other, the artisan class and the merchant class had more room to survive, and excellent craftsmen could stand out, live a good life with their craft, and be respected by the whole society.

Organization and professionalism are important characteristics of craftsmen, and the establishment of organization and professionalism has prompted generations of craftsmen to innovate in inheritance, and this inheritance and innovation can cultivate the "craftsman spirit". The ancient European craft guilds became the driving force of economic, social and urbanization precisely because they were extremely effective in ensuring the orderly transmission, continuous improvement and widespread dissemination of various artisan skills.

Workshops and workshops can unite to form trade associations to safeguard the interests of their own classes. Compared with Chinese craftsmen who work alone, and even whose ancestral skills are not passed on to outsiders, European craftsmen are organized and professional earlier, and craftsmen are encouraged to carry out technological innovation and constantly improve their craft. In China, on the other hand, skilled craftsmen are subservient grass people in front of officials......