Lunchtime Meeting - 12.45pm - Speaker Dr Stan Moore

Today we welcomed to club Richard Hughes' guest speaker, Dr Stan Moore, recently retired Senior Lecturer from Glyndŵr University and member of the Rotary Club of Wrexham Yale.  Richard met him when they were both at the University of Aberystwyth at the same time.

The title of Stan's talk was 'Bomb, Book and Compass' after the book of the same name by Joseph Needham, an eminent biologist who had studied at Oundle and Cambridge and who, it was felt, would surely have won the Nobel Peace prize had he continued in that career.  Instead, he fell in love with China (and a Chinese woman!) and dedicated the rest of his life to studying it and living there, having mastered the language.

Francis Bacon, the famous Elizabethan, identified 3 key discoveries which he believed had changed the course of history - the bomb, the book and the compass.  Joseph Needham (and indeed Stan!) spent a great deal of time showing the world that the Chinese got there hundreds of years before the Europeans.

Some examples: the Chinese had iron ploughs from the 6th century, wrought iron in the 2nd century BC, the blast furnace in the 4th century BC, writing paper and type-setting in the 8th century; they invented plastic, the wheel-barrow, kites (including manned flights using them), the stirrup.  They drilled for and piped (in bamboo pipes) natural gas, mastered astronomy, cartography, biological pest control, gimbals (look it up!), mechanical clocks, porcelain, water and steam power.

Their physicians understood immunology, endocrinology, diabetes and the circulation of blood around the body - all centuries before the same discoveries in Europe.  They created canals, crossbows with multiple arrows, rockets, gunpowder, the compass and understood mathematics including the use of 0.  They invented a seismograph to predict earthquake location, understood the 1st law of motion - gravity and magnetism.  They understood geo-botany and forensic entomology (great story about a blood-stained sickle!)

Bells in tune, the rudder, flame-throwers, poisoned gas, saltpetre - is there no end to the skills of the Chinese?

Then, suddenly, it seems they just stopped trying - it seems ethnic diversity breeds competition and this was lacking in post-15th century China so the Europeans suddenly romped ahead and 'discovered' all these things all over again leaving China behind!

However, look out because they are coming back strongly now...

A very interesting talk.

Jayne Middleton