If the simplified version of 態 is 态 is why isn't there one for 熊?

Question

I ask because I'm curious as to what's the reasoning behind simplification. It would look something like:

太

灬

Answer 1

態 to 态

态 is a "new" Phono-semantic compound character. 態 sounds tài, so a simple character 太 with the same pronunciation is chosen for the phonetic part. Then it becomes 态.

This character was simplified by the people who lived in places governed by the CCP during 1940s.

Why not simplify 灬 to 一 for 熊, but for 魚

Answer: 灬 came from 火 (fire) in the seal script. For 灬 under 熊, it has the meaning of fire. But for the character 魚:

though the bottom is written like 火, it is not really 火. Duan Yucai's Annotation to Shuowen said:

"非从火也 the semantic part is not 火 (fire)"

"象形。魚尾與燕尾相佀。 (this character) is a pictogram character. The fishtail is just like the swallow tail."

Thus, when simplifying 魚, they made 灬 (fishtail) as 一; while for 熊, they kept 灬.

Answer 2

From

Second Stage Simplification Tables

Table 2 Subtable 9 : Generic Simplifications of Component Elements (16 entries)

Where the second stage simplified form of an example character is already encoded it is put in parentheses after the corresponding example character, but these parenthesized forms are not given in the actual second stage simplification tables.

We can see that a simplification for 熊 was actually proposed before.

Wikipedia cites the following as:

Reason For Failure

The Second Scheme broke with a millennia-long cycle of variant forms coming into unofficial use and eventually being accepted (90 percent of the changes made in the First Scheme existed in mass use, many for centuries[13]) in that it introduced new, unfamiliar character forms.[14][15] The sheer number of characters it changed — the distinction between simplifications intended for immediate use and those for review was not maintained in practice — and its release in the shadow of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1978) have been cited among the chief reasons for its failure.[9][16][17][18] As a result of the Cultural Revolution, trained experts were expelled and the Second Scheme was compiled by the Committee and its staffers without outside consultation, which may also have been a factor.[13]

The exact circumstances surrounding the creation and release of the Second Scheme remain shrouded in mystery due to the still-classified nature of many documents and the politically sensitive nature of the issue. However, the Second Scheme is known to have encompassed only about 100 characters before its expansion to over 850.[19] A two-year delay from 1975 to 1977 was officially blamed on Zhang Chunqiao, a member of the Gang of Four; however, there is little historical evidence to support this.[20] Against the political backdrop of the Cultural Revolution, a special section known as the "748 Project" was formed with an emphasis on non-experts, under whose supervision the lists grew significantly. The bulk of the work is believed to have been performed by staffers without proper oversight.[18][21]

The Second Scheme's subsequent rejection by the public has been cited as a case study in a failed attempt to artificially control the direction of a language's evolution.[22] Indeed, it was not embraced by the linguistic community in China upon its release;[23] despite heavy promotion by official publications, Rohsenow observes that "in the case of some of the character forms constructed by the staff members themselves" the public at large found proposed changes "laughable."[24]

Political issues aside, Chen objects to the notion that all characters should be reduced to ten or fewer strokes. He argues that a technical shortcoming of the Second Scheme was that the characters it reformed occur less often in writing than those of the First Scheme. As such it provided less benefit to writers while putting an unnecessary burden on readers in making the characters more difficult to distinguish.[25] Citing several studies, Hannas similarly argues against the lack of differentiation and utility: "it was meaningless to lower the stroke count for its own sake." Thus, he believes simplification and character limitation (reduction of the number of characters)[26] both amount to a "zero-sum game" — simplification in one area of use causing complication in another — and concludes that "the 'complex' characters in Japanese and Chinese, with their greater redundancy and internal consistency, may have been the better bargain."[27]