In my memories, “Qigong” sounds a very superstitious term ever since I was a child, and Qian Xuesen was such a famous and great scientist. It is really hard for me to believe that even one of the greatest modern scientist has connections to some superstitious ideas like “Qigong”. And such a ridiculous thing even turned out to be a popularity. Also, it is strange to me that even Tan Sitong has relations to the idea of Ether. But that is also reasonable. During that time, the Chinese philosophy system lacked a sense of practical and realistic. The theories are often generated without enough experiments. For example, from the reading of “Tan Sitong &the Ether reconsidered”, the idea of “yitai”, “tong”, “ren” and “xinli” are all ramifications of Tan’s own mind. It is true that the development of science could have mistakes and problems, but what the Western society did right is their demonstration spirit – their theories must match the experiment.
Assume that Tan Sitong knew Hertz experiments, he would believe that it is not because of electromagnetic waves, but because of something like ether or “Qi” (By Qian Xuesen’s idea). Since in Tan and many Chiese philosopher’s minds, experiments are not as reliable as their thoughts. What they thought is, their minds suppress everything else, the world is constructed under their minds, so experiments do not mean anything – the hardest thing to change is someone’s mind.
To sum up, Chinese scientists in the last century have depended too much on thoughts and paid less attention to the experiments and the objective facts. And this might be the reason why China’s science was not comparable to the Western countries in the last century.