Xie Heng, a scholar from a poor family, faced a desperate situation in life. He relied on his family's lost secret knowledge of "investigating things to achieve knowledge" (a set of classical scientific methodology based on simple observation, experimentation, and logical reasoning). He shone in the practice of farming, water conservancy, and criminal investigation, and was recommended to Beijing by the local government. He was not from a Machiavellian family, nor was he a general, but with his paranoia of "not understanding human nature, only understanding physics", he set off an ideological storm between "reform" and "conservative" in the court, and eventually became the emperor's master and changed the world.
