Coupling Geometry Case Study XXVIII: Song–Ming China, 960–1644
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: This case study applies Coupling Geometry — the framework developed in the programme’s foundations paper — to the Needham question: why did the scientific revolution occur in Europe rather than in China, the civilisation that led the world in technology for most of a millennium? The answer offered is a geometry rather than a deficit. Song China, scored at 5.7 on the programme’s ten-point coupling index, was the most innovative society on earth; what a single-centre civilisation cannot generate is the validation mode a scientific revolution requires — claims surviving passage between centres that judge them on incompatible standards. Europe’s fragmentation supplied those judges. The Ming reconstitution — sealed by the 1371 maritime prohibition in the same century Iberian navigation opened Europe’s ocean channel — closed China’s, and the elites the closure created kept it closed. The study also reports, at full prominence, a result the framework did not want: the celebrated Tang–Song transformation moves the coupling composite by just +0.10, all three pre-registered range predictions held, and the decentralisation-reversal pattern the test was designed to find did not replicate. Three proposed codings, one honest non-replication, and a five-century answer to a famous question. Case Study XXVII: China, 1979–Present – Case Study XXIX: South Africa, 1948–Present
Author: Pepper, Philip
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7170191510
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