CAN ASIANS CREATE?

"... The Muslim world gave us something we continue to use to this day – soap – because of the religion’s emphasis on cleanliness.

Soap was manufactured in the Middle East for centuries before the West knew about it.

Muslims invented algebra and worked out the angle of the tilt of the earth. They built the first windmill, pioneered the concept of the crank rod and designed the first ever torpedo.

Muslim creativity also led to numerous other inventions that are still in use today, hundreds and thousands of years later.

Their pursuit of knowledge led them to build the world’s largest libraries which they simply called “houses of wisdom”.

From Egypt came the mysterious Pyramids that until today baffle scientists and engineers – a feat that cannot even be copied today. The Egyptians also built the first dam.

The Chinese invented paper around the year 105.

Gutenberg is officially credited with inventing the printing press in the 1440’s. But the Chinese created a type of printing press long before that – around 200 B.C. By 1000 A.D., the Chinese had introduced books to replace scrolls – a good 450 years ahead of Gutenberg.

When the tsunami hit in 2004, we all learned of its power based on the Richter scale, which was invented in 1935. But in the 132 A.D., the Chinese developed the first earthquake sensor, 600 years ahead of the first western sensor from France.

As you know, the Chinese also invented the suspension bridge, gun powder and the first steam propelled cart hundreds of years before the first steam-propelled engine car was built in the West.

And well before Texas Instruments, China had developed the first calculator, the abacus.

The Indians were weaving cotton and wearing comfortable cotton attires 3,500 years before the West got to know about it. The Indians invented the spinning wheel of course – something the Europeans did not catch up with until the Middle Ages.

The world’s first planned cities were found in India. Every house had its own bathroom and toilet 5,000 years ago!

This list goes on.

The East and the Middle East were centres of ancient inventions; they were leaders of innovative thinking and inventive creativity for a thousand years.

So all these excuses that being Asian or Malaysian make us incapable of creative thinking can only come from people who do not do much thinking..."

~ from a beautiful speech by Professor Emeritus Dato' Tan Sri Lim Kok Wing, Founder & President of the Limkokwing University of Creative Technology, Malaysia;

[Here's the link to the original speech, entitled 'Creativity: Heartbeat of an Innovative Economy', from which the above has been extracted;]