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Reviewed by:
  • Zhongguoshi xinlun: Keji yu Zhongguo shehui fence 中國史新論:科技與中國社會分冊 ed. by Ping-yi Chu, and: Mr. Science and Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution: Science and Technology in Modern China ed. by Chunjuan Nancy Wei, Darryl E. Brock, and: Science and Technology in Modern China, 1880s–1940s ed. by Jing Tsu, Benjamin A. Elman
  • Hsiao-pei Yen (bio)
Ping-yi Chu, ed., Zhongguoshi xinlun: Keji yu Zhongguo shehui fence 中國史新論:科技與中國社會分冊 [ New Perspectives on Chinese History: Science, Technology, and Chinese Society]
Taipei: Academia Sinica and Lianjing chubanshe, 2010. 528pp. NT$680.
Chunjuan Nancy Wei and Darryl E. Brock, eds., Mr. Science and Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution: Science and Technology in Modern China
Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013. 426pp. US$110 hardcover, $49.99 paperback.
Jing Tsu and Benjamin A. Elman, eds., Science and Technology in Modern China, 1880s–1940s
Leiden: Brill, 2014. 347pp. US$148.

Three recent collections of scholarship on science and technology in China strongly suggest that the Needham paradigm can be put to rest in more than one way. The often-stated question, first investigated by Joseph Needham, wonders why China, with a long tradition of scientific practices, did not develop “modern” science. According to Needham, it was Chinese traditional bureaucracy and feudalism that hindered a “true” development of modern science as seen in Europe. Although this statement is easily critiqued as teleological and Eurocentric, it has shaped much of the writing on Chinese science and technology in the past decades. Modern science, if it came to China, had to be imposed or adopted. The Chinese role in modern science could only be passive. The Needham model, informed by the trajectory of modern Western science, also imposes an anachronistic interpretation of science and technology in premodern China. Recent scholarship, as demonstrated by the three edited volumes discussed here, has attempted to go beyond the Needham paradigm by posing a new set of methodological approaches and research questions. It shows a more nuanced understanding of China’s [End Page 285] scientific and technological achievements in the premodern era. It also finds that Chinese scientists have been active participants in global science since the nineteenth century, and that science has been a central part of modern China’s self-identification.

New Perspectives on Chinese History: Science, Technology, and Chinese Society, edited by Ping-yi Chu, is a collection of essays on premodern Chinese science and technology written mainly by Chinese and Taiwanese scholars. In his introduction, Chu outlines the current state of this academic field in these two Chinese-speaking societies. In China, historians of science and technology, while generally embracing the Needham paradigm, emphasize the “discovery” and the “restoration” of premodern Chinese scientific methods and practices. Their scholarship tends to be more empirical than theoretical or critical. In Taiwan, although the Needham model helps to strengthen a cultural identification with China, scholars pursue more eclectic approaches, which lack a single paradigmatic focus. What Chu observes might not be unique to the study of the history of science and technology but is, rather, a phenomenon of the study of history in general. Easy access to archival materials leads to Chinese historians’ preoccupation with primary sources, which results in a more empirical scholarship; Taiwanese scholarship, meanwhile, reflects diverse academic traditions and training.

How, then, to go beyond Needham in studies of premodern Chinese science and technology? Chu proposes an “anthropological” approach, in which historians understand the past as a “different culture.” Instead of trying to find fault in premodern Chinese society for its failure to develop modern science, or of viewing premodern scientific and technological activities from the vantage point of modern science and technology, we should force ourselves to learn the language and logic of the past. Only through historicizing the past as a “different culture” will we be able to appreciate the role science and technology played in premodern society. The ten essays included in this volume provide different case studies in the fields of astronomy, medicine, mathematics, sericulture, astrology, and botany.

Shi Feng and Chia-Feng Chang both look at astronomy in ancient China. Feng shows how archaeoastronomical discoveries enhance our understanding of the cosmological imagination of the ancient Chinese. This is also the only essay in this volume...

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