Talks With Mao Yüan-hsin (2)

[Comrade Mao Yüan-hsin is Chairman Mao’s nephew who studied at the Harbin Military Engineering Institute.]

Second Talk[1]

(February 18, 1966)

Chairman Mao and his nephew discussed the question of whether the Military Engineering Institute should go in for two or three years of study first and then do another year of part-time work and part-time study: and also the question of coordination and assignment of work.

[Chairman Mao:] The science and engineering faculties should still have their own language. With their six-year syllabus we could start by trying to do it in three years first and see how it works out, and not necessarily be in a hurry to shorten it to two years. With advanced science, if there is a clear-cut objective, then three years of study would perhaps be all right, and if three years are not enough they could later add on a bit.

Only when there is a clear-cut objective can you do less but do it well, and only then can you combine the general and the particular. The six-year system can then be altered into a three-year system, and after we have done that our steps can be sure and steady and our direction will be right.

When you try new things, the only way to do it is to carry on for a few years, constantly summarizing your experience.

The science and engineering faculties have their specific nature and have their own special terminology, so you have to read a few books. But they also have something in common with other subjects, it’s no good just to read books. One had only to study at Whampoa Academy for half a year and after graduation one served as a soldier for one year. In that way many talented officers were produced, but after it was changed to the Army University (I have not made a note of how long they studied) the result was that when people graduated, they kept on being defeated in battle and becoming our captives.

I don’t know anything about the science and engineering faculties, but I do claim a little knowledge about the medical faculty. When you listen to an eye doctor talk it all sounds very mysterious, but the human body should be viewed as a whole.

The development of science proceeds from a low level to a high level, from the simple to the complex, but when one teaches one cannot follow the sequence of development. When we study history, we should concentrate on modern history. Now we only have three thousand-odd years of recorded history; what will happen when we have ten thousand years of history, how will we teach it then?

Advanced science, including those fundamental theories which practice has proved useful, must get rid of those parts which practice has proved useless and irrational.

When one lectures on nuclear physics it will suffice to talk about the Sakata model; one needn’t start from the theories of Bohr of the Danish school; otherwise you won’t graduate even after ten years of study. Even Sakata uses dialectics  —  why don’t you use it?

Man’s understanding of things always starts from the concrete and proceeds to the abstract. In medicine they start by teaching abstract things such as psychology, the nervous system, etc. I think this is wrong: they should start by teaching anatomy. Mathematics was originally derived from physical models. Nowadays one cannot associate mathematics with physical models: instead one has gone a step further and made it abstract.