Another Short History of Linguistics (36)

We have said that being a pictogram culture, the Chinese doing anything according nature. But in the world there are many things that nature could not offer to us. It have to be created by human being, or it have to appeared artificially. The typical example is the geometry. It is a branch of study totally artificially, totally abstracted. In this way, the Chinese culture began to lose ground.  And just because this reason that many western philosopher believed that China had never have a true philosopher.

A significant application of geometry is architecture. Without this knowledge the architecture would be a quite mess. Ancient Chinese painter drew a boat roof like this:

http://www.gongbi.net/bbs/laolu/gudai/luoshenfu/2008_3.jpg

I don’t know how that painter drew it like that, perhaps only Picasso can answer the question.

A typical ancient Chinese boat looked like:

Pic from: http://www.bydzc.cn/uploads/allimg/110314/1-110314000R8.jpg

Until today, also the Chinese students have won plenty of Olympic Math competition, yet in their inner world, they still could not recognise the geometry is a language. Now I have to explain why they Chinese roof are curved. Before Qin Dynasty, all roof was straight like:

Pic from: http://cathay.ce.cn/file/200708/03/W020070803387645310075.jpg

Later people found it cost too much material. If change the shape of roof like:

Not only save material, reduce the weight but the rain water can fall out of roof faster than before. That is to say running water travel from AB then to C would faster than AC directly.

The real roof would be looked like:

Later generation try it further:

Another step would be curve:

Put a small ball on the peak of a curved roof, you may find it will run faster than the straight roof. That is to say this kind of roof driving rain water faster than the following two roofs:

Or we may say the European roof cost more material than the Chinese roof. In this way the curved roof spread widely in East Asia.