Rather than base ...

[yamyam]

Hello, teachers.

I'm confused with a sentence. Would you read the following passage?

The fact thtat the traditional cultural mind-set of the Japanese is based in significant part on the ambiguities as well as the seeming contraditions of life has turned out to be one of the greatest strengths of the Jjapanese in dealing with the growing complexities of the modern world.

It would appear that one of the most conspicuous and vital advantages the ambiguity-minded Japanese have is their attitude and approach toward computer science. Rather than base their approach only on the black and white logic favored by Aristotelian conditioned American and European computer scientists, the Japanese were also quick to use the so-called "fuzzy logic" approach. Japanese were not the first to conceive and develop the concept of fuzzy logic in programming comptuers. That was primarily the work of American scientists, but the mainstream of American and European computer scientists were philosophically opposed to "fuzzy thinking" and tended to igonore its value and potentioal.

I'm puzzled with the expression "Rather than base ...".
Does it mean ""Rather than the Japanese were quick to base ..."?
If not, would you explain that part to me?

Thank you very much in advance for your help.

yam.

[probus]

To "base something on" means that the following reasoning depends on that which it is based on. The "thing" is an axiom in the sense of Euclid.

In your quotation, the speaker says that the Japanese were much more flexible than that. They tended to think that computers might be able to "think" in ways that classical logic and rhetoric could not have conceived of.