The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West (review)

438 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 Toby E. Huff. The Rise ofEarly Modern Science: Islam, China and the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Hardcover $54.95, isbn 0521 -43496-3. Paperback (1995) $18.95, 1SBN 0-521-49833-3. Modern science, as we are frequently reminded, is a uniquely Western product, but to what extent is it a product ofWestern culture? To acknowledge that modern science did, as a matter of fact, come into being in Europe does not yet commit one to any kind of cultural relativism, for if it were simply a matter of contingent historical fact, modern science might equally have emerged in one of the Islamic states, in China, or in Japan. Moreover, even staunch opponents of cultural relativism will allow that there are social, political, economic, and intellectual conditions under which modern science cannot flourish. In other words, there are cultural conditions for the possibility of modern science. When intellectual innovation is forbidden and punishable by death or imprisonment, when there is no educational infrastructure, no financial or institutional support for the conduct of inquiries concerning the natural world, and where critical rationality and free inquiry are discouraged there will not be anything resembling modern science. Much of the burden ofToby Huffs book is to argue that in neither the Islamic states nor in China were these minimal social conditions for the emergence of a continued flourishing of modern science present, despite the early emergence of individual thinkers of great brilliance and sophistication. Huff regards such social conditions as external conditions necessary for the emergence and practice of science , while nonetheless believing in the universal appeal of the content of science. He shares this non-relativist position with Joseph Needham, and thus he, like Needham, thinks that there should be an answer to the question "Why didn't modern science develop in China (or in any of the Islamic states)?" The presupposition underlying this question is that science has such a universal appeal that any rational people, from whatever culture, would want to pursue scientific inquiries (p. 362). In this he disagrees sharply with Nathan Sivin, who has dismissed Needham's question by likening it to asking why the house next door did not catch fire yesterday (p. 246). This last is a question we would only ask, or think it worthwhile to pursue, ifwe had a reason for thinking that the house should have caught fire, although, contrary to expectation, it did not. Sivin is much less willing than Huff to draw the distinction between external and internal conditions for the development of science, and thus is less willing to treat sociological condi-© 1996 by University tions as purely external conditions, ones which have no impact on the nature of ofHawai'i Pressme content ofthe science produced. As Sivin points out, one of the difficulties with the whole area of inquiry is that we still do not fully understand the hows and whys of the development of modern science in Western Europe; we do not Reviews 439 know which ofthe multitude ofactual historical conditions were crucial and which were not. Indeed, he suggests that one ofthe benefits ofengaging in cross-cultural comparison in intellectual history in general and in science in particular is the light this can throw on corresponding aspects ofWestern history even in virtue of the questions it prompts us to ask and the newperspectives it compels us to adopt. Huffs book bears this out. His introductory chapter raises methodological issues concerning the comparative study of science. It concludes by linking the emergence ofmodern science to that ofan "open society." He argues that the path to modern science is the path to free and open discourse. This means that much ofhis subsequent discussion is devoted to tracing that path. So there follow some two hundred pages devoted to a comparative discussion of Islam and the West whose primary focus is on religious, educational, and legal institutions, together with the conceptions ofrationality implicitly contained in them. The actual development ofscience receives relatively little attention. The section on Chinese science and culture occupies only about seventy pages and thus is somewhat lacking in depth and detail. These comparisons lead...