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83+ Works 1,041 Members 8 Reviews 3 Favorited

About the Author

Image credit: Joseph Needham, Sinologue et historien des sciences (1900-1995)

Series

Works by Joseph Needham

Science, religion & reality (1925) — Editor — 46 copies
Order and Life (1600) 23 copies
A history of embryology (1975) 15 copies
Man A Machine 4 copies

Associated Works

The Legacy of China (1964) — Contributor — 52 copies

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Common Knowledge

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Reviews

This is an amazing book. The first thing you notice is how beautiful it is, well-made, a gorgeous cover, flawless typesetting, meticulous note-keeping. It is also well-organised in its conception and the nerd in me welcomes the fact that for all Chinese names the Chinese characters are given in the footnotes, so sinologists can derive the full benefit. Arab names are given in scientific transliteration. Modern scholarship has probably superseded some of his statements, but not to an extent that would make the book obsolete. I enjoyed the observations he made when travelling in China when so many of the things he writes about could still be seen. Wonderful.… (more)
 
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MissWatson | 2 other reviews | Aug 25, 2016 |
Science and Civilization in China (1954–2008) is a series of 27 books by Joseph Needham dealing with the history of science and technology in China. Since 1954, Needham and an international team of collaborators meticulously researched the science, technology, and civilization of ancient China. The project continues today. THE NEEDHAM HAS ITS ORIGINS in the collections assembled from 1937 onwards by Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-Djen, from sources both in China and the Western world. No other collection of the kind exists in the Western world.… (more)
 
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patworks | Jul 9, 2013 |
Joseph Needham was a biochemist at Cambridge in the 1920s and 30s before, by his own account, he fell in love with the Chinese language and country and set out in the 1950s to devote the rest of his life to writing a book in English about the history of science in China. Turned out to be more than a few books, as there are 24 volumes published and at least three more on the way. Needham himself died in 1995.

This is the first volume. It doesn't go into great detail about specific ideas or technologies, but instead it sets the scene, in a manner unsurprising for a scientist. The language and geography of China is meticulously described and then there are a few summary chapters: 5 and 6, on the history of China per dynasty, up until the latter parts of the Ming. Because Needham seems to be writing specifically to address the question of what an isolated China did, everything after the 18th century is not of much interest, as China is then more or less incorporated into the global scene.

The most interesting chapter in this volume is the next one, 7, travel of ideas and techniques. It quite exhaustively discusses possible contacts across Eurasia right throughout history. Places that are frequently discussed include what is today Iran, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, northern Afghanistan (formerly Bactria, the furthest Greek colony founded by Alexander the Great), Xinjiang, Tibet, Mongolia proper, and the Gobi and Ordos deserts. And then in the south there is some discussion of the Persian Gulf, southern Iran, and the sea-routes connecting the Arabian Sea right around to the South China Sea. He dismisses, carefully, the tantalising idea of much direct contact between Rome and China, and says that despite definite visits to Syria, Chinese envoys probably never made it to Rome itself. Merchants definitely made the journey though. He also points out that it was generally not in the interest of the Parthians (Iranians) who were the middlemen in the silk trade to allow such contact, as it may have reduced their share of the profits.

Maritime contact is more certain. The most interesting part here to me is how the direction flipped numerous times. First 'Roman' ships (really Greek Egyptians) established a solid trade with India during the first few centuries AD, and fingers of this trade, or perhaps via Indian ships, reached southern China. Then in subsequent centuries Chinese ships themselves reached back to India and into the Persian Gulf: apparently Chinese prisoners taken by Muslim armies in Central Asia in the eighth century AD were returned to China via Chinese shipping from the Persian Gulf. Arab shipping then took over the trade around 1000 AD all the way direct to Canton (Hong Kong). Apparently Arabs also knew of routes as far as Japan, something I hadn't ever heard before. The maritime story ends with the brief renaissance of Chinese maritime power under the Ming (I am familiar with this from the furore that Gavin Menzies raised in the Australian press in 2002 with his fanciful book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World) and the European juggernaut that began in the sixteenth century.

I most enjoyed the last part where he discusses the time periods when Muslim armies conquered much of the Middle East and parts of Central Asia, and the following period of Mongol domination. Not so much for the history itself, although he covers it quickly in the old-fashioned narrative way, but for the way he discusses the nature of possible scientific contact and exchange of ideas during this time. There are too many examples to list, but it was fascinating to read. Greek science was preserved by Muslim scholars in the Middle East in the first millenia AD. Chinese scholars were in irregular contact with this civilization, yet the Greek ideas were not taken up by them. Some technologies, yes, but the ideas, by and large not. The Islamic scholars on the other hand were insatiably curious, and described many Chinese ideas and technologies. Yet when the European Renaissance took place, it was the older Greek and Islamic ideas that were taken up from the Arab literature, not the Chinese ones. The possibility of exchange was often present but usually it was the technology and not the science that was passed across. Needham makes a somewhat convincing argument for why this was the case, having to do with the system of thought that had already developed for each of the respective civilisations. It's an interesting idea and obviously a lead in to the second volume.

He also has an interesting summary at the end (7f) discussing the possible kinds of technological and scientific exchange from a semi-theoretical point of view. I have no idea how up-to-date these ideas are, but they are certainly thought provoking. Clearly "exchange" is far too blunt a term for what is really is a set of different kinds of influence. The idea of 'stimulus diffusion' in particular made a lot of sense to me: general ideas, like "there is a place where men put marks on things to represent their thoughts and words", might travel many thousands of kilometres via the mouths of many people, and stimulate the development of writing in cultures far removed from the source, but in a way that's unique to each culture. It fits right into a view of humans as creatures fundamentally concerned with telling stories to one another.

Some other observations: the original Cambridge University Press editions are beautifully made. The transliteration is close to Wade-Giles, so a little confusing for a newbie like me, used to the pinyin that's almost universal nowadays. There are heaps of tables and maps, which is handy. He includes Chinese characters for everything, which is probably very handy if you can read them. And best of all, unusual for a history book of this era, Needham assiduously dates almost every reference he makes to anything for which a date is available, and he uses +/- for AD/BC, which is a surprisingly easy scheme to get used to. Oh, the good sense of scientists!
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seabear | 2 other reviews | Apr 30, 2013 |
This is a collection of lectures on the history of chinese science by one of the foremost experts in this field. Foremost among those writing in english, at least. Since the book is so short it's a bit sketchy sometimes and it reads mostly like a selection of tidbits for arousing interest in this topic. Some of the concluding remarks on why modern science developed in the west rather than in china were interesting, but I think persons with a serious interest in chinese science can just as well move directly to the other, more detailed studies written by this author.… (more)
 
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thcson | Aug 5, 2011 |

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