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(詳細はancient China that are celebrated in Chinese culture for their historical significance and as symbols of ancient China's advanced science and technology.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Four Great Inventions )〕 The Four Great Inventions are: * Compass〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Four Great Inventions of Ancient China -- Compass )〕 * Gunpowder〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Four Great Inventions of Ancient China -- Gunpowder )〕 * Papermaking〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Four Great Inventions of Ancient China -- Paper )〕 * Printing〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Four Great Inventions of Ancient China -- Printing )〕 These four discoveries had a large impact on the development of civilization throughout the world. However, some modern Chinese scholars have opined that other Chinese inventions were perhaps more sophisticated and had a greater impact on Chinese civilization – the Four Great Inventions serve merely to highlight the technological interaction between East and West. == Origins of the concept == Although Chinese culture is replete with lists of significant works or achievements (e.g. Four Great Beauties, Four Great Books of Song, Four Great Classical Novels, Four Books and Five Classics, Five Elders, Three Hundred Tang Poems, etc.), the concept of the Four Great Inventions originated from the West, and is adapted from the European intellectual and rhetorical commonplace of the Three Great (or, more properly, Greatest) Inventions. This commonplace spread rapidly throughout Europe in the 16th century and was appropriated only in recent times by Chinese scholars. The origin of the Three Great Inventions—these being the printing press, firearms, and the nautical compass—was originally ascribed to Europe, and specifically to Germany in the case of the printing press and firearms. These inventions were a badge of honor to modern Europeans, who proclaimed that there was nothing to equal them among the ancient Greeks and Romans. After reports by Portuguese sailors and Spanish missionaries began to filter back to Europe beginning in the 1530s, the notion that these inventions had existed for centuries in China took hold. By 1620, when Francis Bacon wrote in his ''Instauratio magna'' that "printing, gunpowder, and the nautical compass . . . have altered the face and state of the world: first, in literary matters; second, in warfare; third, in navigation," this was hardly an original idea to most learned Europeans.〔Boruchoff, 2012.〕 In the 19th century, Karl Marx commented on the importance of gunpowder, the compass and printing, "Gunpowder, the compass, and the printing press were the three great inventions which ushered in bourgeois society. Gunpowder blew up the knightly class, the compass discovered the world market and founded the colonies, and the printing press was the instrument of Protestantism and the regeneration of science in general; the most powerful lever for creating the intellectual prerequisites." Western writers and scholars from the 19th century onwards commonly attributed these inventions to China. The missionary and sinologist Joseph Edkins (1823–1905), comparing China with Japan, noted that for all of Japan's virtues, it did not make inventions as significant as paper-making, printing, the compass and gunpowder.〔 ()〕 Edkins' notes on these inventions were mentioned in an 1859 review in the journal ''Athenaeum'', comparing the contemporary science and technology in China and Japan. in 1880 ''Johnson's New Universal Cyclopædia: A Scientific and Popular Treasury of Useful Knowledge''.''The Chautauquan'' in 1887, and the distinguished sinologist, Berthold Laufer in 1915.〔"Some Fundamental Ideas of Chinese Culture, 〕 None of these, however, referred to four inventions or called them "great." In the 20th century, this list was popularized and augmented by the noted British biochemist, historian, and sinologist Joseph Needham, who devoted the later part of his life to studying the science and civilization of ancient China.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Four Great Inventions」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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