Is Japan an intellectual country ?
I've often thought that Japan was very good at inventing new products and applications. However, after almsot 2 years of living in Japan, I come to realise that most Japanese aren't very scientific or just intellectual (especially when it comes to philosophy, history or the understanding of the world in general, be it in politics, economics or merely geographic).
IMHO, Japanese people are much more polite and respectful in average than most Westerners, which make them very nice people. But as they have little interest in direct confrontation of ideas and prefer keeking the harmony to arguing, it also affects their philosophical or scientific thinking (spontaneous questioning, confronting ideas, distrust what they've learnt, etc.). Let's say that they are great engineers, work hard and know how to do business, but lack theoritical and abstract thinking compared to Westerners.
Japan has "borrowed" most of its scientific knowledge to the West from the Meiji era. They haven't invented the car, the train, the telephone or even the television. Nobody would contest that Japanese cars, TV's and mobile phones are among the world best, if not the best. However, they had to import all these inventions and then only work on how to improve them. They e better in practice than in theory.
I have counted the number of Nobel prizes obtained by each country and made a little summary (in maths, I have taken the Field Medal, as there are no Nobel prize).
In science (in order : physics/chemistry/medecine/maths)
Japan : 3/3/1/1 = 8
France : 11/5/7/10 = 33
UK : 18/22/25/8 = 73
Germany : 18/27/18/0 = 63
Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland) : 7/6/7/1 = 21
TOTAL EUROPE (all countries, except ex-USSR, Romania, Bulgaria, ex-Yougoslavia) : 70/71/78/20 = 239
USA : 69/50/86/20 = 225
Literature et Economics
Japan : 2/0
France : 13/1
UK : 7/6
Germany : 7/1
Scandinavia : 13/2
TOTAL EUROPE : 61/13
USA : 11/36
All Nobel prizes ( except "peace") + Field Medal
Japan = 10
France = 47
UK = 86
Germany = 71
Scandinavia = 36
TOTAL EUROPE = 313
USA = 272
The European countries taken here into account have an approximate population of 400 millions, the US 285m and Japan 125m. That means that the US have the more Nobel prize per inhabitant. Consequently, the US have proportionally 16x more Nobel prize than Japan, while Europe has 10x more than Japan, Scandinavia 25x, and the UK has 19x.
Very interesting statistically.
Engineering vs. Inventive Science
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Originally Posted by
Maciamo
Then if we look at really important post-WWII inventions like the audio tape, the walkman, the video tape, the CD, the CD-ROM, contact lenses, etc., they are all European inventions.
CDs (not CD-ROMs) were invented in a collaborative effort between Philips and Sony. I recommend reading The Compact Disc Story by Kees Immink. It would be nice if you would fact-check before you post complete misapprehensions like this.
Sony launched their videocassette format "U-matic" in 1971. Philips didn't introduce their version called "VCR" until 1972.
Walkman is wholly a Japanese invention. Even the word Walkman is the brand name used by Sony.
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I don't think that Japan 80 or 100 years ago was most scientifically backward than Western countries 200, 300 or 400 years ago. Yet, Western countries did invent such things as the mechanical clock, the thermometer and barometer, the microscope or the steam engine over 300 years ago.
The nature of things is that inventions can only be made if people don't know about them. It's pretty silly to blame Japan for not inventing things they were already using at the time.
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Engineering is putting in practice the laws of sciences. It's mostly a matter of financial means...
I asked a question about the difference between inventive science and engineering. Now you have defined "engineering" (and added a piece of personal opinion which I will ignore because it's so obviously uninformed) but you forgot to provide a definition of inventive science. Perhaps you'll allow me to do it for you? Inventive Science is the act of creating new machines, devices or systems by applying scientific principles. In other words, it's a branch of engineering under your very own definition...