cjh@petsd.UUCP (Chris Henrich) (04/21/88)
In article <111@avsd.UUCP> govett@avsd.UUCP writes: > >> Does anyone have a reference showing that Japanese, either as a race >> or as a culture "have a very bad problem with creativity"? Come to that, >> does anyone have a reference to Japanese acknowledging that? Unless >> they do, I am inclined to write this off as unthinking racism. Everything me too. >> I have seen recently in science and engineering leads me to think that Japanese >> have absolutely no problem with creativity, and I think that the onus is >> on someone who thinks that they do to produce some evidence for it. >> > >Many Japanese have commented on the rigidity of the Japanese educational >system and the consequent lack of creativity. It's difficult to discuss >creativity objectively because it's difficult to define and quantify. > >However, one can generalize in the area of science and technology. >It's difficult to think of many scientific "breakthroughs" or >technologies that originated in Japan. There have been many excellent Japanese mathematicians. The name that I would put first is Hironaka, who proved an important theorem in algebraic geometry. Then there's Miyaoka (?), who seems to have come damn close to proving the Fermat conjecture just recently. Other names I recall are Kodaira, Kuranishi, Kobayashi, Nomizu, Tomita, Shimura, Nagata, Nakayama,... >Until that changes, Japan will remain subject to charges of freeloading >on the basic research of the U.S. and Europe. Regards, Chris -- Full-Name: Christopher J. Henrich UUCP: ...!rutgers!petsd!cjh US Mail: MS 322; Concurrent Computer Corporation; 106 Apple St; Tinton Falls, NJ 07724 Phone: (201) 758-7288 Concurrent Computer Corporation is a Perkin-Elmer company.
guy@slu70.UUCP (Guy M. Smith) (04/25/88)
> >Many Japanese have commented on the rigidity of the Japanese educational > >system and the consequent lack of creativity. It's difficult to discuss > >creativity objectively because it's difficult to define and quantify. I got into a discussion of this issue with a friend of mine who's a professor at Tokyo University (geophysics). He felt that a lot of the problem was related to the monolithic structure of Japanese industry. Much of the inn- ovation in American technology comes from small firms which apparently are virtually unknown in Japan where giants such as Mitsubishi dominate.