Very interesting piece (and serendipitous for me since I was reading <i>The Man Who Loved China</i> [very well-written bio, btw]).<p>&quot;Thus Joseph Needham acquired what administrators at lonely outposts in the British Empire used to call a &#x27;sleeping dictionary.&#x27; ”<p>It has often been commented that one of the fastest ways to learn a new language is to have a partner bilingual (or even better,  monolingual) in that language; however, I had never heard of this interesting term before!<p>As for Needham&#x27;s Question: Many, <i>many</i> pages have been written on this topic. As is briefly touched upon in the article the problem of moving from empirical to &quot;modern&quot; science is not unique to China. Similar comments have been made made on how the Babylonian math (that survives) is a list of algorithms to (sometimes surprisingly complicated) mathematical problem instances and not an attempt at general theory, cf. to be compared to the Greek advancements in geometry.<p>As it&#x27;s stressed in the article cultural factors are often cited as the cause. Sayings similar to the Japanese proverb &quot;A nail that sticks out will be hammered&quot; (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;What-do-you-think-about-the-Japanese-proverb-The-nail-that-sticks-out-shall-be-hammered-down" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;What-do-you-think-about-the-Japanese-pr...</a>) are commonly used in Middle East and Asia. There&#x27;s a pervasive culture of not standing out both because it&#x27;s found to be tasteless but also because it may bring danger to oneself (and to the family).<p>And it&#x27;s not a question about geographical location, i.e  being in the East, either, as is demonstrated by the examples of prominent outlier ports given in the article:<p>&quot;Wesson put forward the late Roman and Byzantine empires as instances. He calls the latter “exceptionally uncreative,” and points out that the Byzantine trading port of Galata, controlled by the Genoese, was by the end of the fourteenth century producing seven times as much revenue as Constantinople, the imperial capital. The parallel with Chinese treaty ports like Hong Kong is hard to miss.&quot;<p>However, if this is the most satisfactory answer then we have the updated Needham Question: Why did such a culture develop in these societies?