After Joseph Needham

ISSN 2096-6083 CN 10-1524/G

Cultures of Science ISSN 2096-6083 Cultures of Science CN 10-1524/G Volume 3 . Issue 1 March 2020 Volume 3 . Issue 1 . March Volume 3 . Issue 1 March Editorial 34 Brass tacks on iron: Ferrous metallurgy 2020 in Science and Civilisation in China 3 Note from the co-editors in chief Volume 3 . Issue 1 March 2020 Fujun Ren and Bernard Schiele Donald B Wagner 43 The East Asian History of Science Introduction Library/Needham Research Institute as an intellectual hub in the late 1970s and 4 Introduction: Needham’s intellectual 1980s

heritage Volume 3 . Issue 1 March 2020 Jianjun Mei Gregory Blue

58 How can we redefine Joseph Needham’s Articles sense of a world community for the 21st 11 After Joseph Needham: The legacy century? reviewed, the agenda revised – some Vivienne Lo personal reflections Geoffrey Lloyd 62 Chinese organic materialism and modern science studies: Rethinking 21 My farewell to Science and Civilisation in China Joseph Needham’s legacy Christopher Cullen Arun Bala

CUL_3-1_Cover.indd 1 22/07/2020 7:40:23 PM Honorary Director of Editorial Board Members Journal Description Editorial Board Cultures of Science is a peer-reviewed international Open Access journal. The journal aims at building a community of scholars who Martin W Bauer, London School of Economics and Political Science, are expecting to carry out international, inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural communication. The topics include: cultural studies, science Qide Han, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Association UK communication, the history and philosophy of science and all intersections between culture and science. The journal values the diversity for Science and Technology, China John Besley, Michigan State University, USA of cultures and welcomes manuscripts from around the world and especially those involving interdisciplinary topics. Massimiano Bucchi, University of Trento, Italy Director of Editorial Board Rui Chen, China Association for Science and Technology, China Michel Claessens, European Commission, Belgium Aims and Scope Yanhao Xu, China Association for Science and Technology, John Durant, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Cultures of Science is an international journal that provides a platform for interdisciplinary research on all aspects of the intersections China Zhe Guo, China Association for Science and Technology, China between culture and science. It is published under the auspices of the China Association for Science and Technology. Liuxiang Hao, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Editors-in-Chief Robert Iliffe, University of Oxford, UK It welcomes research articles, commentaries or essays, and book reviews with innovative ideas and shedding a fresh light on significant Lui Lam, San Jose State University, USA issues. Research articles report cutting-edge research developments and innovative ideas in related fields; commentaries provide sci- Fujun Ren, National Academy of Innovation Strategy, China Les Levidow, The Open University, UK entific perspectives on emerging topics or social issues; book reviews evaluate and analyze the contexts, styles and merits of published Bernard Schiele, Université du Québec, Canada Hui Luo, China Centre for International Science and Technology works related to cultures of science. Exchange, China Associate Editors Jianjun Mei, University of Cambridge, UK The topics explored include but are not limited to: science communication, history of science, philosophy of science, sociology, social psychology, public science education, public understanding of science, science fiction, political science, indicators of science literacy, Zhiqiang Hu, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Gauhar Raza, National Institute of Science Communication and China Information Resources, India values and beliefs of the scientific community, comparative study of cultures of science, public attitudes towards a new scientific and technological phenomena. Zhengfeng Li, Tsinghua University, China Shukun Tang, University of Science and Technology of China, China Daya Zhou, National Academy of Innovation Strategy, China Hongwei Wang, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China Xiaoming Wang, Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, China Cultures of Science is published 4 times a year in March, June, September and December. Invited Editor of Current Issue Masataka Watanabe, Tohoku University, Japan Jiangyang Yuan, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Contact Information Jianjun Mei, University of Cambridge, UK Li Zhang, Peking University, China Address: 3 Fuxing Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100038, China. Yandong Zhao, Renmin University of China, China Email: [email protected] Director of Editorial Office Xuan Liu, National Academy of Innovation Strategy, China Disclaimer Any opinions and views expressed in the articles in Cultures of Science are those of the respective authors and contributors and not of Managing Editor Cultures of Science. Cultures of Science makes no representations or warranties whatsoever in respect of the accuracy of the material in this journal and cannot accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The accuracy of content should Ji Zhao, National Academy of Innovation Strategy, China be examined independently. © National Academy of Innovation Strategy 2020 Coordinating Editor All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, transmitted or disseminated in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher. Yanling Xu, National Academy of Innovation Strategy, China

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Contents

Editorial Note from the co-editors in chief 3

Introduction Introduction: Needham’s intellectual heritage 4 Jianjun Mei

Articles After Joseph Needham: The legacy reviewed, the agenda revised – some 11 personal reflections Geoffrey Lloyd My farewell to Science and Civilisation in China 21 Christopher Cullen Brass tacks on iron: Ferrous metallurgy in Science and Civilisation in China 34 Donald B Wagner The East Asian History of Science Library/Needham Research Institute as 43 an intellectual hub in the late 1970s and 1980s Gregory Blue How can we redefine Joseph Needham’s sense of a world community 58 for the 21st century? Vivienne Lo

Chinese organic materialism and modern science studies: Rethinking Joseph 62 Needham’s legacy Arun Bala

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Editorial

Cultures of Science 2020, Vol. 3(1) 3 Note from the co-editors in chief © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/2096608320911761 10.1177/2096608320911761 journals.sagepub.com/home/cul

Cultures of Science was launched in September (MIT Museum), Tang Shukun (University of Science 2018. The six published issues have included theo- and Technology of China), Wang Xiaoming retical and empirical studies, and papers on research (Shanghai Science and Technology Museum) and policy and practice in the field of science culture. All Zhao Yandong (Renmin University of China). We published articles are in open access on the journal’s welcome these researchers, whose expertise includes website. informal education, science communication and The journal will enter its third year of publication sociology. Along with collaboration with the other with its first quarterly issue of 2020. That issue will members of the board, the expertise brought by the mark an important change behind the scenes. As of new members will enrich the content of Cultures of January 2020, SAGE Publishing will be the joint Science. Science culture is an interdisciplinary field, publisher of Cultures of Science, and will globally and the contribution of board members from various distribute the journal. Articles will continue to be in disciplines will guarantee a rich diversity in the open access on the SAGE platform. The six previous study of that culture. issues of the journal will also be available on SAGE The journal is published four times a year. Each shortly. issue includes a thematic dossier with contributions Our cooperation with SAGE will not change the from specialists in the field and is introduced by a journal’s mission, which is to provide a platform for guest editor (in the near future, it will also publish international exchange in the field of science culture individual papers). All contributions are double-blind and to abide by the standards that define an academic peer-reviewed before being accepted and published. journal. We are only making some adjustments to the You are invited to suggest a theme and join a list of publishing process to foster the journal’s develop- potential contributors or to submit individual articles. ment. This will enhance the international character of the journal, allowing it to reach a greater audience. Fujun Ren The 2019 editorial board meeting held in National Academy of Innovation Strategy, China. November also marked both renewal of the editorial board and the admission of new members: Michel Bernard Schiele Claessens (European Commission), John Durant Université du Québec, Canada.

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Introduction

Cultures of Science 2020, Vol. 3(1) 4–10 Introduction: Needham’s © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions intellectual heritage DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/2096608320924199 10.1177/2096608320924199 journals.sagepub.com/home/cul

Jianjun Mei Needham Research Institute, UK

Joseph Needham,1 born on 9 December 1900, was a journal – Cultures of Science – which was estab- Cambridge-trained biochemist in his early academic lished by the National Academy of Innovation career but later became the greatest Western sinolo- Strategy (NAIS) in China in 2018. During the meet- gist and one of the most original and creative histori- ing, it was agreed that the journal would publish a ans of science of the 20th century. He is best known special issue in 2020 on Joseph Needham’s intellec- for his monumental series Science and Civilisation tual heritage to mark the 25th anniversary of his in China (SCC), the successive parts of which have passing, and that I would act as a guest editor and be been published by Cambridge University Press since responsible for inviting scholars to contribute. I con- 1954. By the time of his death on 24 March 1995, tacted a number of scholars and received many posi- Needham had been responsible for 13 separate books tive and encouraging responses. After a long process published in the series, while three had been pro- of discussion, reviewing and editing, the final results duced independently by collaborators. Needham are now presented to readers: the two special issues was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in of Cultures of Science under the title ‘Needham’s 1941 for his pioneering contributions to chemical Intellectual Heritage’. embryology and Fellow of the British Academy These two special issues include five essays, four (FBA) in 1971 for his pioneering achievements in research papers and one report written by Dr researching the history of science, technology and Needham himself. With the exception of the two medicine in China. contributions from Professor Sir Geoffrey Lloyd and In this introduction, I first provide some back- Professor Fu Banghong, seven of the contributions ground information regarding the organization of are actually the essays and papers originally pre- these two special issues on Joseph Needham’s intel- sented at the workshop (‘Dr Joseph Needham’s lectual heritage, then give a brief introduction of the Intellectual Heritage: A workshop to commemorate nine contributions published here, and finally make the twentieth anniversary of the death of Dr Joseph a few remarks on the relevance of Needham’s intel- Needham’), which was held at the Needham lectual heritage to current scholarship. Research Institute (NRI) in July 2015. I wish, therefore, to give a brief introduction to this workshop so 1. Background: the Needham that readers can better understand the initiative that led to these special issues. Workshop in 2015 On 28 February 2019, at the invitation of Professors Corresponding author: Martin Bauer and Ren Fujun, I attended a meeting Jianjun Mei, Needham Research Institute, 8 Sylvester Road, held at the London School of Economics to discuss Cambridge CB3 9AF, UK. the development strategy for a new English-language Email: [email protected]

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The initial idea to organize a workshop to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the death of Dr Joseph Needham came from Dr Peter Lee,2 the then Honorary Secretary of the East Asian History of Science Foundation, Hong Kong (EAHSF- HK), now Chairman of the Joseph Needham Foundation for Science and Civilisation (JNFSC, formerly EAHSF), whom I met in Hong Kong for the first time in May 2013 when I was invited by the EAHSF to deliver the 8th Joseph Needham Memorial Lecture at the University of Hong Kong. After taking over the directorship of the NRI in January 2014, I consulted many colleagues and friends about the work- Figure 1. The group photo of the delegates who attended the Needham Workshop. shop initiative and it gradually developed into a solid plan. It was eventually decided that the workshop would be jointly organized by Professor Roel Lim, Kam-Wing Fung, Wang Siming and Bridie Sterckx, Joseph Needham Professor of Chinese Andrews. Session 4 involved a round table discus- History, Science and Civilization at the University of sion about the NRI and the development of studies of Cambridge, Professor Angela Ki Che Leung, Joseph the history of science, technology and medicine in Needham – Philip Mao Professor in Chinese History, East Asia, exploring ways in which the NRI could Science and Civilization at the University of Hong continue to play a central role in promoting cutting- Kong, and me, representing the NRI. The aims of the edge research and cross-cultural interaction with the workshop were as follows: (1) to reflect on Dr wider academic community (Wu, 2015). Needham’s intellectual heritage, its impact on under- Subsequently, the idea of publishing a workshop standing the world history of knowledge circulation, proceedings was discussed briefly, but then put aside and its broad influence on generations of scholars for a variety of reasons. I always believed, however, and (2) to assess the role of Dr Needham’s legacy that the papers were worthy of formal publication, and the institute he founded with a view to future and so was especially delighted when my suggestion research directions in the field of study he did so to publish a special issue on ‘Needham’s Intellectual much to open up. Heritage’ was accepted by the Editorial Board of the Thanks to generous financial support from the newly established journal Cultures of Science in EAHSF-HK, about 30 invited scholars attended the February 2019. I promptly wrote to a number of workshop held on 4 July 2015 at the NRI (Figure 1). scholars who had attended the 2015 workshop to ask It was organized into four sessions, chaired respec- them whether they would consider publishing their tively by Geoffrey Lloyd, Roel Sterckx, Angela presentations in Cultures of Science. I was very much Leung and Mei Jianjun. The theme of Session 1 was encouraged by the mostly positive responses I ‘Working with Dr Needham and the SCC project: received, though I also learned that a few scholars reflections and reminiscences’, with seven presenta- were already committed to publishing their papers in tions being given by Francesca Bray, Donald Wagner, other journals. Those included Chu Pingyi’s paper on Rose Kerr, Robin Yates, Georges Métailié, Gregory ‘Needham in Taiwan: An unexpected turn to STS’, Blue and Christopher Cullen. Sessions 2 and 3 were and Jongtae Lim’s on ‘Joseph Needham in Korea, focused on ‘Needham’s intellectual heritage and and Korea’s position in the history of East Asian sci- future directions in the field of the history of science, ence’, both which will be published in East Asian technology and medicine in East Asia’, with 13 Science, Technology and Society: An International papers being presented by Liu Dun, Vivienne Lo, Journal in late 2020, together with a commentary Togo Tsukahara, Chu Pingyi, Dagmar Schäfer, Sun piece titled ‘Putting Joseph Needham in East Asian Xiaochun, Tony Butler, Arun Bala, Shi Yunli, Jongtae context: Commentaries on papers on the reception of

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Needham’s works in Korea and Taiwan’ written by Donald Wagner shares with us a personal account of Professor Togo Tsukahara and me.3 his experience in preparing the SCC volume on ferrous metallurgy. He first reflects on the theoretical 2. The nine contributions framework of the volume, including Whig history, the social construction of technology, the evolution The nine contributions published in these two spe- of technology, and technology in economic history, cial issues on Needham’s intellectual heritage can be then briefly discusses the style and structure of the roughly divided into two groups. The first group volume, and finally presents a few case studies to includes five essays offered by Geoffrey Lloyd, demonstrate the importance of checking the basic Christopher Cullen, Donald Wagner, Gregory Blue data in technical studies. The NRI is, in his eyes, ‘the and Vivienne Lo, while the second group includes bricks-and-mortar aspect of Joseph Needham’s intel- four research papers contributed by Arun Bala, Shi lectual heritage’. Yunli, Wang Siming and Fu Banghong. Here, I The late 1970s and 1980s were a crucial period for would like to give a brief introduction to these con- the development of the NRI, or the East Asian History tributions and their authors. of Science Library (EAHSL), as it was then known. Geoffrey Lloyd’s essay titled ‘After Joseph As a research associate of the NRI during the period Needham: The legacy reviewed, the agenda revised – from 1977 to 1990, Professor Gregory Blue was a key some personal reflections’ is based on the text of his witness to many events and crucial changes of the First Needham Memorial Lecture delivered in the period. His essay titled ‘The East Asian History of University of Cambridge on 28 October 2016.4 Science Library/Needham Research Institute as an Professor Lloyd was a Trustee of the NRI from 1991 to intellectual hub in the late 1970s and the 1980s’ is thus 2019 and Chair of the Trust from 1992 to 2002. As a both fascinating and of great historical value, beca key figure steering the NRI through choppy waters in use it presents his personal recollections of Joseph the 1990s and the most eminent scholar in residence at Needham, Lu Gwei-Djen5 and many other scholars the institute, his personal reflections on Joseph and their activities at the NRI/EAHSL. Through his Needham and his legacy are unique, far-sighted and account, readers can gradually gain a clear picture of full of wisdom. While pointing out that the famous how and why the NRI/EAHSL could act as an intel- Needham question is simplistic, his essay emphasizes lectual hub, attracting so many researchers of diverse that ‘differing experience of ancient societies can pro- academic backgrounds during that time. vide lessons that may still be relevant today’. In her short essay on Joseph Needham’s sense of As general editor of Joseph Needham’s SCC a world community, Dr Vivienne Lo, senior lecturer series for nearly two decades (1992–2013), in his and convenor of the UCL China Centre for Health essay entitled ‘My farewell to Science and and Humanity, points out that the attraction of Joseph Civilisation in China’ Professor Cullen provides us Needham’s vision is not just its de-centring of the with vivid observations on the growth of the SCC Eurocentric narrative of the history of science, but project since the 1950s, as well as a firsthand descrip- also his quest for a better world. One important tion of his involvement in coordinating and support- aspect of Needham’s legacy is his compelling vision ing the production of some of the SCC volumes, of ‘All under Heaven as One Community’,6 which, such as those on ceramics, ferrous metallurgy and in her opinion, was ‘grounded in socialist, Christian (ethno)botany. It is worth noting that Professor and 20th-century scientific utopian belief’. Cullen has seen 10 volumes through the press to An important aspect of Needham’s intellectual date. His reflections on the experience of this inti- heritage is his use of ‘organic materialism’ to charac- mate involvement with the SCC series are truly pre- terize the philosophy of Chinese science. In his paper cious for a deep understanding of Needham’s titled ‘Chinese organic materialism and modern sci- intellectual heritage. ence studies: Rethinking Joseph Needham’s legacy’, In his article titled ‘Brass tacks on iron: Ferrous Professor Arun Bala, the author of The Dialogue of metallurgy in Science and Civilisation in China’, Dr Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science (Bala,

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2006), offers a detailed discussion of the conception The last paper I would like to introduce here is the of Chinese organic materialism and its wider impact. one contributed by Professor Fu Banghong of the He argues that ‘Chinese organic materialism not Department of the History of Science and Scientific only nurtured Chinese science in the past, and hin- Archaeology, University of Science and Technology dered the emergence of modern science in China, but of China. This paper is a specially invited contribu- can also be part of a synthesis of late modern science tion, because it focuses on a secret report written by transcending early Western science’. Joseph Needham in 1945 to Chiang Kai-shek, the How do we appreciate, review and even criticize then national leader of the Republic of China. Needham’s work in the light of recent scholarship? Needham’s report was titled Report to His Excellency Professor Shi Yunli, Head of the Department of the President and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek on History of Science and Scientific Archaeology, the Position and Prospects of Science and Technology University of Science and Technology of China, in China. It has been known about among a small offers an excellent example in his paper titled group of scholars for some time and was translated ‘Chinese astronomy in the time of the Jesuits: Studies into Chinese by Professor Fu a few years ago (see Li, following Science and Civilisation in China’. In con- 2008), but its original English text has never been trast to Needham’s overall claim about the role and previously published. When I began to think about a results of Jesuit activities in the development of special publication to commemorate the 25th anni- astronomy in China, Professor Shi argues that versary of Needham’s passing, I came up with the idea of publishing his original report, because some What happened to Chinese astronomy in the time of the observations made by him 80 years ago are still rel- Jesuits cannot be understood as a gradual integration of evant to the development of science and education in Chinese astronomy into modern science, but rather as present-day China. I also felt that a research paper on an integration of early modern science into the Needham’s report would be useful for readers to traditional framework of native Chinese astronomy. gain a better understanding of its background, motivation and impact during the late 1940s and beyond. This new perspective is significant for a better To that end, I contacted Professor Fu, a specialist understanding of early modern scientific exchanges in the history of science and technology and scien- between Europe and China. tific policy in modern China who had devoted con- What inspiration did Joseph Needham and SCC siderable time to the study of Needham’s report, and bring about in China to stimulate research into the invited her to make a contribution. She was delighted agricultural history of China? Professor Wang to accept my invitation and subsequently contributed Siming, Director of the Institution of Chinese the paper titled ‘Science, society and planning: Agricultural Civilization, Nanjing Agricultural Joseph Needham’s report to Chiang Kai-shek in University, examines this issue in great detail in his 1946’. In it, Professor Fu first highlights the histori- paper titled ‘Joseph Needham’s inspiration for cal context in which the report was produced, then research on agricultural history in China’. It not only examines its main content, features and essentials, highlights extensive interactions between Needham and finally discusses its impact and significance. She and a group of Chinese historians of agriculture, suggests that ‘Needham’s report has universal sig- such as Shi Shenghan, Wan Guoding, Hu Daojing, nificance for the development of science – not only Wang Yuhu and Liang Jiamian, but also demon- in China at the time, but even globally today’. strates that Needham’s work has had far-reaching influence on research into the Chinese history of agriculture, especially with regard to institutionali- 3. Needham’s intellectual zation and the transition from a technical narrative to heritage a concept of ‘comprehensive agriculture’, taking ancient Chinese agriculture as an organic combina- In 2019, as a joint initiative, two top journals in the tion of cropping, forestry, husbandry, fishing and field of the history of science and technology, Isis sideline production. and Technology and Culture, published eight articles

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in the form of a forum titled ‘A Second Look at science and break out of the framework imposed by Joseph Needham’.7 Why should a second look be studies of modernization (Low, 1998: 4). Mark Elvin necessary now? H Floris Cohen (2019), the editor of (2004: xxiv)) also reminded readers in his introduc- Isis, states in his editor’s introduction that tion to Volume VII, Part 2 of SCC, published in 2004, that One of the most impressive enterprises ever undertaken since the scholarly investigation of the history of As scholarship has advanced, not everything that science came of age is surely Joseph Needham’s Needham wrote, forty or more years ago, on the social multivolume Science and Civilisation in China (SCC) and economic history of China now seems as solidly . . . It is the goal of the reflections that follow to honor based as the greater part of his reconstructions of the lasting achievement of one of the great historians of Chinese technical practice and scientific theory. The science of the twentieth century by exploring what his reader needs to exercise a certain caution here, work still means for us today. (pp. 91–92) searching at times less for information than for inspiration. (p. xxiv) This sense of a clear need to revisit Needham’s work is shared by Florence Hsia and Dagmar Schäfer What inspiration, then, can contemporary schol- (2019), the forum organizers, who believed that the ars search for in Needham’s work? Or what intellec- Second Look forum could probe ‘the contributions tual heritage can current scholarship inherit from that Needham’s work can still make to ongoing Joseph Needham and his collaborators? Worth not- debates’ (p. 94). ing in connection with these questions is that raised The joint forum publications on Joseph Needham by Francesca Bray (2019): by Isis and Technology and Culture are not an isolated phenomenon. Over the past two-and-a-half How did Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China decades since his death, scholarly interest in Joseph . . . project relate to the radical critiques that were then Needham and his work has never died away. As and have remained the raison d’être of STS, Florence Hsia and Dagmar Schäfer (2019) observe: encouraging it to speak truth to power, sustaining its reflexivity, and keeping it ‘open-ended and never-at- rest-with-itself’? (p. 317) While some researchers continue to wrestle with the perennial ‘Needham question’—Why did modern science develop in Renaissance Europe, and not In his long paper titled ‘How deep is love? The elsewhere?—others refute its counterfactual, engagement with India in Joseph Needham’s histori- comparativist, or civilizational premises in order to ography of China’, Leon A Rocha (2016) has elo- launch alternative approaches to writing global quently encapsulated the deep relevance of histories of science. (pp. 94–95) Needham’s work to ongoing scholarship:

In their introduction to the Second Look forum, There is a political vision, a spirit of openness, an they list a dozen major research publications relat- ethical imperative embedded in Needham’s idea of ing to Needham’s work or the ‘Needham question’, ‘oecumenism’ that may be worth inheriting: that mostly emerging after 1995 (Hsia and Schäfer, modern science and medicine (as we currently know 2019: 95). them) are not a complete and settled project; that they It is understandable that, in the eyes of some schol- may not have a monopoly on ‘truth’; that there is still ars, Joseph Needham has become or is becoming an the possibility that non-Western cultures can revise our ways of knowing and seeing; that doing the history of out-of-date figure, because of the amount of new science and medicine in those non-Western cultures research work that has been carried out since 1995. In (China, India . . .) may help towards building a 1998, in a special issue of Osiris titled ‘Beyond Joseph pluralistic science in the future that fully acknowledges Needham: Science, technology and medicine in East the complexity of nature and reality and that and Southeast Asia’, the editor, Morris Low, sug- encompasses the partial perspectives from different gested that we think beyond Needham and a unitary classes, genders, ethnicities and cultures. (p. 39)

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While acknowledging the value of Needham’s Cultures of Science for their encouragement and profes- work, Florence Hsia and Dagmar Schäfer (2019), sional support during the whole process of carrying out however, also observe the need for departing from it this initiative. and seeing and doing things differently: 27 March 2020, Cambridge.

Yet there are clear parallels between current debates in Declaration of conflicting interests the history of science, technology, and medicine (HSTM) The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest and the themes, methods, and approaches that Needham with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication took seriously and, in many cases, pioneered, although of this article. clearly his terms are not ours: against Needham’s vision of traditional and culturally specific sciences converging Funding into modern world science stand our diverse perspectives on a globalizing HSTM; his historical materialism has The author(s) received no financial support for the turned into our ‘materiality’; inherent within our research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. practice/theory debates are the lines he tried to draw between technology and science. (p. 95) Notes 1. 李约瑟. Even today, 25 years since he passed away, the 2. 李励生. presence of Joseph Needham and his legacy, like a 3. I would like to thank Dr Kuo Wen-Hua, editor of mountain standing in the field of the history of sci- East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An ence and technology, cannot be lightly brushed International Journal, for sharing the information aside. Rather than simply ignore or skirt around it, concerning the publication of Professors Chu Pingyi the best way to deal with the mountain is to climb up and Jongtae Lim’s papers. I would also like to thank Professor Togo Tsukahara for his support. and appreciate its grand vistas and fascinating 4. Professor Lloyd’s Needham Lecture text has already details. As Du Fu, the Tang poet wrote, ‘When shall been translated by Dr Fu Yang into Chinese and pub- I reach the top and hold, all mountains in a single lished in Taiwan. Please see Luo (2019). 8 glance’. It is my belief that ‘Needham’s intellectual 5. 鲁桂珍. heritage is unique, substantial, and multidimen- 6. 天下大同. sional, and it will surely continue to encourage and 7. Please see Isis, volume 110, number 1, 2019, pp. 91– inspire new generations of inquisitive minds’ (Mei, 136 and Technology and Culture, volume 60, number 2019: 603). 2, 2019, pp. 553–624. 8. 会当凌绝顶，一览众山小. Acknowledgements Without the strong support of many people, the publica- References tion of these two special issues on Joseph Needham would Bala A (2006) The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth never have been possible. My grateful thanks go to of Modern Science. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Geoffrey Lloyd, Christopher Cullen, Donald Wagner, Bray F (2019) From Needham to EASTS, or why history Gregory Blue, Vivienne Lo, Arun Bala, Shi Yunli, Wang matters. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: Siming, and Fu Banghong for their excellent contribu- An International Journal 13: 317–321. tions; to Sally Church and Yu Jia for their hard work in Cohen F (2019) Editor’s introduction. Isis 110(1): 91–93. preparing the text of Needham’s report based on a typed Elvin M (2004) Vale atque ave. In: Robinson KG (ed.) version; and to Peter Lee, Angela Leung, Roel Sterckx, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 7, part 2. John Moffett, Sue Bennett and Wu Huiyi for their crucial Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. xxiv– contributions to organizing the 2015 Needham Workshop. xliii. I am especially grateful to the following scholars for their Hsia F and Schäfer D (2019) History of science, tech- great generosity in providing review comments and even nology, and medicine: A second look at Joseph help with editing the manuscript texts: Geoffrey Lloyd, Needham. Isis 110(1): 94–99. Christopher Cullen, John Moffett, Catherine Jami, Roel Li Y (2008) (Joseph Needham) The position and prospects Sterckx, Lim Jongtae, Wu Huiyi, David Killick and Du of science and technology in China, translated by Fu Xinhao. Finally, I wish to thank the Editorial Board of Banghong. Science & Culture Review 5(5): 5–29.

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Low M (1998) Beyond Joseph Needham: Science, tech- Wu H (2015) Brief report on the workshop on Needham’s nology, and medicine in East and Southeast Asia. intellectual heritage. Chinese Journal for the History Osiris 13: 1–8. of Science and Technology 36(4): 509–513 (in Luo J (2019) (Geoffrey Lloyd) After Joseph Needham: The Chinese). legacy reviewed, the agenda revised—Some personal reflections, translated by Fu Yang. Newsletter for Research in Chinese Studies 38(3): 1–9 (in Chinese). Author biography Mei J (2019) Some reflections on Joseph Needham’s Jianjun Mei is a professor at the University of Science and intellectual heritage. Technology and Culture 60(2): Technology Beijing and Director of the Needham Research 594–603. Institute, Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of Churchill Rocha L (2016) How deep is love? The engagement with College, University of Cambridge. His current research India in Joseph Needham’s historiography of China. focuses on non-ferrous metallurgy in ancient China as well British Journal for the History of Science, Themes 1: as the history of technological exchange and interactions 13–41. between the East and the West.

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Cultures of Science 2020, Vol. 3(1) 11–20 After Joseph Needham: The © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions legacy reviewed, the agenda DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/2096608320917579 10.1177/2096608320917579 revised – some personal reflections journals.sagepub.com/home/cul

Geoffrey Lloyd The Needham Research Institute, UK

Abstract We all owe Joseph Needham an immense debt for discovering Chinese science and technology for Western scholars. But his famous question (Why did the Chinese, who had been so far in advance of Europe until the 17th century, fail to produce modern science independently?) is simplistic.

•• Needham’s discussion relied on categories (‘physics’, ‘engineering’, even ‘mathematics’) that are largely anachronistic. •• He was preoccupied by questions of priorities (who did what first). •• We should recognise that the historical record brings to light many breakthroughs in the development of science, in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, ancient Greece and ancient China, as well as in Europe in the 17th century and beyond; they all call for detailed analysis of the different social, political, economic, institutional and intellectual factors at work. •• One topic of particular importance and current interest concerns the factors that enable innovation to flourish, where the differing experience of ancient societies can provide lessons that may still be relevant today. The new agenda for the history of science should have a global remit.

Keywords Joseph Needham, science, China, the West

For Western scholars, Joseph Needham founded a sub- was really what he was looking for), and although at ject – the comparative history of science and technol- the time most thought the NRI was moribund (some ogy. No one before him had even begun fully to were already writing its obituary), I was very happy to appreciate China’s contribution. I had the privilege and do what I could to resuscitate it. Restoring it from honour to have many conversations with him, espe- intensive care in the late 1980s to its present state of cially when – after unsuccessfully approaching some moderately rude health took determination and team- five or six other individuals – he finally turned to me to work – the collaboration of individuals with very succeed Lord Roll as Chair of the East Asian History of Science Trust, the body responsible for overseeing Corresponding author: the work of the Needham Research Institute (NRI). Geoffrey Lloyd, Needham Research Institute, 8 Sylvester Road, Even though I was sixth or seventh choice for the job Cambridge CB3 9AF, UK. (I was and am no captain of industry, after all, which Email: [email protected]

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different backgrounds and interests, some based here touch reminiscent of the cloak-and-dagger intrigues in Cambridge, others across the world. It would be of the Warring States, but without the daggers. invidious to try to name them all, though we all shared The multiple volumes of SCC are truly monu- a devotion to the Great Man. For my part, I made it my mental. Yet the plan and execution are, as we all business to discuss at length with Joseph the future of know, very much of their time, and this has certainly the NRI and the prospects for the history and philoso- contributed to its relative lack of influence in history phy of science in general; we did so many times in his and philosophy of science circles in the West – in declining years. contrast to the continuing mass of attention it still My acquaintance with Joseph goes back to the attracts in China itself. Joseph decided to organise 1960s. My first contact with him was when I received the work according to Western categories: astron- one of his famous index cards, which posed the omy, mathematics, physics, engineering, medicine question: ‘When was the first Greek or Roman div- and so on. He was convinced not just that science is ing bell?’ This came with the instruction to reply on now universal but that those disciplinary boundaries the card itself, which was to be returned to Joseph. I can be used in relation to the science of much earlier believe he approached me because his usual adviser times, where he had, of course, quite a preoccupation on Graeco-Roman matters, Arthur Peck, was on sab- with who made which discovery first (by the time batical at Princeton, and Peck knew that I was one of SCC 7.2 was published in 2004, the list of Chinese the very few people in Cambridge at the time with ‘firsts’ had grown to more than 250; it did not, inci- any interest in Greek science, medicine and technol- dentally, contain any mention of a diving bell). He ogy. But I was in luck with that question, for the famously and repeatedly depicted the contributions answer concerning the first extant evidence of a of different ancient traditions as a plurality of differ- Greek diving bell is clear: it comes in the text called ent streams and rivers all eventually converging in the Problemata, Book 32, Chapter 5, which describes the great ocean of today’s unified science. how divers use cauldrons which retain the air inside But over and above the distractions of that ques- them, provided they are maintained in a vertical tion of priorities, there are two main problems with position. The Problemata is a text in the Aristotelian that way of organising the material. First, as Joseph Corpus, but not by Aristotle but by one of Aristotle’s well knew, the ancient Chinese themselves did not pupils, and it mostly dates to the late 4th or 3rd cen- have exactly (in some cases not even approximately) tury BCE. Voilà. Problem solved. the same concepts as ours of the disciplines in which Then, when I was Senior Tutor at King’s College they engaged or of the boundaries between them. We in the turbulent days of the late 1960s and early may have little difficulty identifying what we call 1970s, I saw Joseph as an important and prestigious Chinese ‘medicine’, but even there we must be care- ally in the furore that raged about student representa- ful not to assume that what counted as ‘health’ or tion on college councils and faculty boards, the sit-in ‘well-being’ for them in any given period is what we in the Senate House, and the protests at the Garden may count as such (and that is problematic too if we House Hotel in 1970 when it was used to promote stop to think about it, not just in terms of the tricky Greek products and so to support the dictatorial rule issues involved in ‘mental health’). of the Greek colonels.1 He was kind enough to give Second, the Chinese in premodern times did not me and my colleagues great moral support in our have our modern Western concepts of the causes of attempts to calm things down, but he explained that disease (pathogens) and how to combat them – and I he could not actively engage in the work of the com- have no need to remind you that our thinking on mittees set up to consider various aspects of univer- those subjects had a long struggle to emancipate sity reform. Why? Because Science and Civilisation itself from the legacy of Graeco-Roman, Islamic and in China (SCC) took precedence. Absolutely right. medieval notions. Nor do you need reminding of the Nevertheless, he came to my rooms at King’s several ongoing controversies, in China and elsewhere, of times to discuss the problems – always clandestinely: the status and viability of so-called ‘alternative’ I was sworn to keep those visits confidential. All a medicine, where it is important, in my view, not to

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lump together all the practices associated with tradi- – indeed, it emerged in the West only in the 19th tional Chinese medicine (TCM) to attempt some century. overall verdict on its validity, however much some Thus, we face an apparent gap in our grasp of practitioners of biomedicine, and indeed some of what may have motivated those investigators who TCM, may urge us to do so. Not all of TCM is as made such important contributions to an understand- straightforwardly efficacious as the traditional use of ing of the world around them. Nor should we imag- a species of artemisia (qinghao) as a treatment for ine that the answer to those questions is uniform in malaria. every period and across all the fields that interested Again, although some scholars have proposed that them, such as the heavens (the movements of the sun Chinese studies of the heavens, tian wen (the patterns and moon, and solar and lunar eclipses), the calen- in the heavens) and li fa (calendar studies) are roughly dar, music, the body, health and disease, plants and equivalent to the contrast we draw between astrology animals, change and transformation, to mention just and astronomy, that is highly problematic. The ‘pat- a few examples. This point about heterogeneity is terns’ are not investigated just to yield predictions for crucial (and I shall return to it) as it concerns not just events on earth, and while calendar studies certainly China but also ancient Greece and other ancient apply mathematics and in that resemble our astron- societies, as well as modern science. omy, they do not extend to geometrical models of So, my first issue with the organisation and struc- heavenly movements or other aspects of astronomi- ture of SCC relates to indigenous category bounda- cal theory as it has been practised in the West. So tian ries. But my second problem follows on from the first. wen and li fa do not map at all happily onto ‘astrol- Needham’s perspective was resolutely teleological: ogy’ and ‘astronomy’, any more than do Greek astro- he looked at China and other ancient societies from logia and astronomia. Yet the Greeks could and did the point of view of the eventual development of sci- distinguish between (a) predictions of heavenly ence as we know it today, and it was that breakthrough movements and (b) predictions about events on earth in the 17th century, the so-called Scientific Revolution, on that basis, even if those two Greek terms can also that inspired his big question – why it happened in the be used interchangeably. West and not in China. But if we adopt the perspective Analogously, any attempt to find a single Chinese of the ancient investigators themselves, we get a very category that corresponds to our ‘physics’ is bound different and more fundamental agenda. We can iden- to force all sorts of issues (where again exactly the tify many different contributions to an understanding same point applies to the ancient Greeks). In prac- of the world from China and other ancient civilisa- tice, of course, what came to be included in the sev- tions: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, India, Islam and eral volumes of SCC that were labelled ‘Physics’ Mesoamerica. But why are there such divergences in covered a multitude of different fields of research what our records offer? What does the complex and and practice, both theoretical and practical; and the varied history of the development of inquiry in ancient same was true of the various sections devoted to civilisations tell us about human cognitive develop- ‘Chemistry’. ment in general? We should not limit ourselves to This question of the original indigenous Chinese China and the West, nor indeed to ancient literate civi- conceptual categories is no mere quibble. The issue lisations, though I know I shall be considered fool- that SCC tended to finesse but which has to be hardy for proposing that further extension of the pressed is this: if we cannot, on pain of anachronism, agenda. use our modern categories, then we have to ask what Yet, after all, we all came out of Africa, even the Chinese researchers themselves thought they though that has often been caricatured. True, the ques- were doing, and why. What did they imagine to be tion of when and where those movements occurred the pay-off? How did their work reflect on or interact continues to be fiercely debated. There is general with the values of the society in which they lived? agreement that the break with our nearest relatives They could not have entertained the ambition to among the hominids happened at some specifiable become ‘scientists’, for no such category existed time and place. But if all humans share a common

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origin (if you go back far enough) and if there are Again, there are also important differences powerful commonalities in what humans strive to between the various primary modes of subsistence make sense of, such as the environment, plants and that humans have relied on, as between hunter-gath- animals, life and death, then why historical human erers, herders and farmers. We now have a much struggles for understanding have been so diverse is a firmer grasp of the major changes that occurred at question that may seem crushingly naive but cannot different times and places, and of the shifts and tran- be ignored. After all, if we accept Joseph’s image of sitions in theoretical and practical knowledge as the common global ocean of modern scientific under- various areas of technology came to be developed, in standing, why that needed to be fed by such a multi- agriculture, textiles, metallurgy, water management, tude of different streams and rivers (let alone a few urbanisation and so on. Much of the latest knowl- stagnant pools) is a question that does not go away. edge comes from research undertaken at the NRI or Starting with ancient China and ancient Greece, we by scholars associated with it, inspired by Professor can open up questions about human endeavours to Mei Jianjun. This helps us a little to understand the understand the world more generally, although we nature of progress in human knowledge and its une- should not assume that those endeavours all reflect ven tenor in different societies, but much remains the same ambitions, or even the same conception of unexplained. what ‘the world’ comprises, let alone the same social, Joseph himself pinned his hopes on a combina- institutional and intellectual circumstances. tion of economic and political factors, adapting the Of course, widely differing types of explanatory Marxian notion of differences in the modes of pro- factors have been invoked in grand global theories to duction and the role of ‘bureaucratic feudalism’. account for what happened. Some fancy physical But, as many commentators have observed, most differences, others social or economic ones, and yet pointedly perhaps Mark Elvin in his contribution to others factors to do with language and literacy. I will SCC 7.2 (Elvin, 2004), that combination is a fairly say something about each of these, just to give a crude tool to discriminate between China and sense of how the diversity of human efforts to under- Europe, and it has the signal disadvantage of imply- stand the world has been tackled and with such ing a static economic and social regime in China shockingly limited results. down the ages. True, throughout pre-revolutionary To a small degree, differences in understandings China the political ideal remained the benevolent can be explained by differences in what there was to rule of a sage king, but ideas and practices about be understood: the physical environment, for exam- how to achieve this varied greatly. In his final sum- ple, the flora and the fauna, of different parts of the mary of his views in SCC 7.2 – where he reprints earth. You cannot expect humans to be concerned some of his earlier essays, mostly with very little with the structure of a snowflake if they have no modification – Joseph wrote extensively on the rise acquaintance with snow. Over and over again, some of the bourgeoisie in the West, leading to the growth classification of plants that was presumed compre- of capitalism, the scientific method and the indus- hensive has had to be upended following the discov- trial revolution ‘one after another’.3 But again, as he ery of previously unknown kinds. That was more a half admitted, that was subject to severe qualifica- problem in the West than in China, given the West’s tions as a global explanatory factor. greater pretensions to produce a universal system of Indeed, none of the available considerations I plant taxonomy – a far less prominent preoccupation have mentioned so far is really fit for the heavy-duty for Li Shizhen in the 16th century. In point of fact, it work of explanation that Joseph was looking for in only gradually dawned on European botanical tax- relation to his question, let alone for the further onomists north of the Alps that much of what they issues raised by the immense variety of actual ways found in the texts of their main authorities, the Greek of being in the world and of attempting to under- botanists Theophrastus and Dioscorides,2 related to stand it, to which the historical and ethnographic species limited to the Mediterranean area and, con- records give us access. versely, that some northern European species did not But what about what have sometimes been figure in those compendia. thought to be the more promising differences, in the

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technology of communication, in language itself and when they were faced with the problem of translat- in degrees of literacy associated with different modes ing the Latin versions of Aristotle’s texts in the 16th of writing (a favourite with Jack Goody (1977) and and 17th centuries, the Chinese certainly did not find indeed a factor that Joseph targeted, though not in that impossible (Wardy, 2000). In fact, their perfor- relation to him (Needham, 2004a: 230f.)? This too is mance was comparable to that of Latin translators a topic where the waters have been much muddied when they faced the equivalent task of rendering his by some highly superficial speculations, and I do not Greek into their Latin. just mean the common accusation often voiced by As for the second factor that linguistic determin- those with no firsthand knowledge of Chinese: ists are prone to cite, namely, the effects of literacy namely, that it is a hopelessly ambiguous language. on the rise of a critical and sceptical spirit, I can be Sometimes that view is a grotesquely extravagant brief, for two reasons. The first is that written texts, inference from the comparative lack of morphology especially when treated as canonical, let alone in Chinese, but more often it just stems from down- sacred, can stifle criticism, not foster it. Second, lit- right prejudice. Ancient and modern Chinese writers eracy as such does not, of course, discriminate and thinkers were and are usually perfectly capable between quite a few different ancient civilisations of expressing whatever they want to express, and across the Eurasian landmass (see Lloyd, 2014: with the degree of precision they think appropriate. 116–139). For sure, there are numerous ambiguities in the clas- My all-too-rapid critique of just some of the fac- sical texts, but ambiguity can be useful: it leaves tors invoked to account for the different trajectories open a range of interpretations that wait to be of modes of thought and inquiry in premodern socie- explored. Indeed, in classical Chinese rhetoric this is ties should not be taken to imply that I dismiss them often a deliberate, quite cunning ploy that is exploited all out of hand. As I said, we can see the limited rel- to excellent effect. evance of different items – physical, economic, At one stage it was proposed that the Chinese lan- social, institutional, intellectual – at different junc- guage does not countenance counterfactual condi- tures. But what none of them singly, nor the whole tionals, and that was imagined to be crucially gamut collectively, provides is the makings of a relevant to the development of ‘science’, given its grand global history of those trajectories. In particu- heavy dependence on exploring counterfactual lar, they do not enable us to answer Needham’s ques- hypotheses.4 Yet it did not take long for that to be tion of why modern science did not occur exposed as a gross mistake. From the earliest times, independently in China. Indeed, with no single over- Chinese writers contemplated counter-to-fact situa- all explanation coming near to commanding any- tions – there are some fine examples in the 2nd cen- thing like a consensus – despite the very considerable tury BCE compendium Huainanzi and even earlier efforts expended over the past 50 years or so – we in the 4th–3rd century BCE texts of the Gongsun might conclude that the question as posed is incapa- Longzi.5 There is even a linguistic form that marks ble of resolution. these out, jiashi, which is roughly translatable as The conclusion looms that what Joseph continued ‘falsely supposing’ (see Harbsmeier, 1998: 117). The to be preoccupied with was really an unanswerable shi corresponds to ‘if’ but the qualifying jia indicates question to which he failed to find a fully satisfac- that this is counterfactual. Nothing could be a clearer tory solution. At points in his contributions to SCC counterfactual than Gongsun Long’s ‘if there were 7.2, he effectively admits that definitive answers are no things within the world’. not, as yet, forthcoming.6 Yet what we can take away We can and should concede that the range of dif- from his monumental research is not a simple – over- ferent modes of conditionality that are expressible in simple and ill-formed – particular problem, but a a highly inflected language such as ancient Greek wealth of detailed data offering marvellous possible can be conveyed only by paraphrase or elaboration areas for investigating the complex factors at work at in a language such as classical Chinese. Yet, as my different points in the diverse endeavours that differ- colleague Robert Wardy showed rather conclusively, ent individuals and groups made to understand the

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world around them – whatever they took that to be, consists in, we shall not be able to identify what was and indeed, different views were entertained on that ‘missing’ in China or in any other ancient or modern subject. society which we tend to regard as ‘pre-scientific’. This is where a new agenda begins to emerge from So on the view I would favour, the way to tackle the the ashes of the old. We should not think that their Needham question is to unravel it. We would not notions of how to go about understanding, and even then face what is supposed to be a single massive – what understanding entails, were all the same. Indeed, but quite unmanageable – problem that lumps the evidence shows that they had many different together everything that went into ‘the’ ‘Scientific goals – a point that applies not just within ancient Revolution’ and demands that we satisfy ourselves China but also within and between ancient Greece, on the character of ‘the’ ‘scientific method’ that Egypt, Mesopotamia and India. Heterogeneity again. brought ‘it’ about in the West but failed to do so in So what I propose as an alternative to the China or anywhere else. Rather, we would have a Needham question starts by problematizing what whole series of very difficult but more focused ‘science’ itself can be taken to include. We are used issues, concerning details of the inquiries undertaken to thinking of it as a well-defined endeavour, unified at any one period or in any civilisation. Although by a single determinate ‘scientific method’. Joseph China and the West have dominated scholarly atten- himself focused on ‘mathematised hypotheses’ com- tion, other ancient societies (and indeed modern bined with ‘relentless experimentation’.7 But this is ones, as revealed by ethnography) are not only inter- yet another oversimplification. A case can be made, esting in their own right but can also be used to test as I have detailed elsewhere (Lloyd, 2009: 153–171), hypotheses we might propose on the relative impor- that science just calls on a particular systematisation tance of different factors at different junctures in the of cognitive capacities that we all possess, at least development of systematic investigations. potentially. One can, in fact, find both experiment So the Needham question as traditionally con- and the application of mathematics to understanding ceived looks all too seductively simple yet is any- physical phenomena in both ancient China, for thing but. In fact, I believe it turns out to be an example, in the Zhoubi Suanjing at the turn of the obstacle insofar as it tends to distract attention from millennium, and ancient Greece. Systematic obser- where the real work lies – investigating the activities vation differs from merely looking and seeing but and achievements of different individuals and groups can be said to be continuous with the latter. in the particular complex situations in which they Controlled experiment owes much to ordinary trial- worked, on which, of course, Needham has masses and-error methods, and deductive argument is just a of important comments to make in the many thou- tidier and more self-conscious version of common- sands of pages of SCC. But there were many crucial or-garden arguing and inferring. I have accordingly turning-points in the history of the development of defended the view that to seek the origin or origins science, and they all deserve our attention.8 To call of ‘science’ itself may be misleading. The simple but them ‘Revolutions’ dramatises them, but none was a crucial point is that different areas of scientific well-defined historical event like the Storming of the endeavour draw on different techniques – and that is Bastille or of the Winter Palace. still true today. In some areas, such as the explora- Besides, those major scientific changes occurred tion of distant galaxies, direct experiment is neither at different times and places depending on the sci- necessary nor even possible. But all that variety ence we are discussing. In the study of the heavens, tends to be brushed aside when we attempt to encap- the regularities in planetary motion were first discov- sulate exactly what ‘the’ scientific method com- ered in Babylonia in the 8th century BCE (see prises, armed with which some set out to judge both Rochberg, 2016). With that major breakthrough, the the West and China as if each was a determinate reappearance of a planet after a period of invisibility monolithic entity. became predictable. Then my colleague Nathan Sivin Until such time as we can produce a satisfactory in a famous article (Sivin, 1995 [1982]) pointed first account of what ‘the’ ‘modern’ scientific method to the work of the astronomer and polymath Shen

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Gua in the 11th century and then identified a revolu- The advantages and disadvantages of the two tion carried out by the mathematician Mei Wending kinds of set-up – strong state support and its com- and his associates in the 17th century.9 Meanwhile, in plete absence – are (I suggest) mirror images of one my own work (e.g. Lloyd, 2002) I have discussed at another. With state support, the astronomers in length what different ancient Greeks managed or did Mesopotamia and China had to work to the state’s not manage in different fields at different periods, agenda, but they had regular employment and, in and not just Aristotle proving the earth’s sphericity China especially, teams of assistants. With no such and cutting up octopuses to investigate their repro- help or recognition, the Greeks had far more free- ductive system, Archimedes in his bath, and dom to propose their own agenda, but had to earn a Aristarchus failing to persuade his contemporaries living as best they could – mostly by casting horo- that heliocentricity was the answer (to which I will scopes. The main alternative was teaching or lectur- shortly return). In every case we need to identify the ing; their exhibition lectures, called epideixeis, specificities of the social, political, institutional and served as publicity to attract customers to undertake intellectual circumstances in which individuals or and pay for the more extensive and expensive groups worked and allow the diversity in the answers courses they offered. to those questions, not just as between Archimedes Naturally, in such circumstances, the ambition and Shen Gua and Copernicus but also between was to produce startlingly original ideas, which I Copernicus and Galileo and Kepler and Harvey and hold to be one reason why they are so common in Newton. They were all great investigators, for sure, ancient Greek thought in general. Among the crazy but the ways they were great differed. ideas the astronomers came up with was the highly I repeat that these are difficult questions, but one counterintuitive hypothesis that the earth moves topic where I think we can make some progress con- round the sun. Aristarchus was the first to propose cerning the conditions of possibility for innovation, that, but even before him, in the 5th century BCE, where the different trajectories of science in the the Pythagorean Philolaus had suggested that the ancient Graeco-Roman and Chinese worlds may even earth is just another planet, moving not round the sun have some relevance for the situation we all face but what he called the Central Fire. But look what today. Let me end with some observations on that, happened. Heliocentricity was rejected in ancient focusing particularly on the study of the heavens. Greece, not because it offended the authorities (as in The issue turns on the question of state support the days of Galileo) but because the ancient astrono- in ancient and modern scientific research. In astron- mers themselves could not accept it. If the earth omy, especially, the contrast between Mesopotamia rotated on its axis once every 24 hours (a necessary and China on the one hand and Greece on the other assumption for the hypothesis to work), that could be is striking. In the first two civilisations, astronomy expected to have dramatic effects on the earth’s was an affair of state, but Greek astronomers were atmosphere. Clouds or missiles – that is, javelins or very much on their own. Two ingenious characters bolts hurled by catapults – could never move east- called Eudoxus and Callippus were responsible for wards (Ptolemy said in the 2nd century CE)10 excellent work on determining the length of the because they would always be overtaken by the tropical year in the 4th century BCE. But they held movement of the earth itself. no official position, and their results were only Of course, the understanding of physical phe- half-heartedly implemented even in the city-state nomena was in its very early days in both ancient where they lived (Athens). This contrasts starkly China and ancient Greece, but the tension between with China, where already in the Han dynasty there orthodoxy and innovation has remained a problem were officials supported by the State who were ever since. With today’s massive support for science responsible for astronomical observations, fore- across the world, there is every chance that any shadowing the later Astronomical Bureau which in decent new idea will be taken up and developed. Ming times offered employment to literally hun- After all, the ambition to succeed, to make a name dreds of researchers. for oneself, to win that coveted Nobel Prize, is as

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strong now as it ever was. (Competition still drives the individual’s freedom of manoeuvre, particularly innovation, as does necessity if one thinks of the in relation to scientific research that raises acute threat to the world’s ecology.) But three points give moral problems. You should not think that this is an cause for concern. exclusively modern phenomenon – the pros and cons First, today’s scientists must prove themselves of stem-cell research certainly are, but already in masters of what passes as received wisdom, jumping Greek antiquity the practice of human vivisection for successfully through the hoops of BA, MA and PhD medical research raised an outcry, in some quarters degrees and post-doc positions. It is dangerous to at least. display too much originality too soon in your career, Let me return to the main point and recapitulate. I as that may not be recognised and you may find started with the problems I have with Joseph’s yourself marked down. Without a straight-A record, anachronisms, his teleology and his preoccupation how will you be accepted by your preferred graduate with the supposedly key event of the 17th-century school? Recall that both Darwin and Einstein had scientific revolution in the West that did not happen very undistinguished undergraduate careers. Indeed, in China. We should, I suggest, widen our remit to Darwin had not long graduated from Cambridge include the history of human attempts to understand with an ordinary degree (he did not even take hon- the world and their experience of it more generally ours) when he embarked on his extraordinary voy- (which would allow me to discuss the full range of age of discovery on the Beagle. How many nowadays ancient Greek achievements). When we thus broaden could live that poor academic record down to go on the agenda, we encounter many limited break- to do brilliant research? throughs across different cultures and periods. I cast Second, the major innovations of 20th-century doubt on grand theories of the trajectory of human science were not accepted with open arms. I lived endeavours in general, but ended with some very through both the plate tectonic and DNA discoveries summary remarks on one topic where some progress in Cambridge; in both cases, the principal propo- in our understanding of the impact of different insti- nents were initially treated with suspicion, even hos- tutional regimes seems possible, namely in the study tility, and their scientific credentials were called into of the conditions of possibility for innovation, where question. When Crick was proposed for a fellowship we are still faced, today, with finding a balance in my own College (I was at King’s at the time), the between individual freedom of manoeuvre and cor- Provost consulted the current leading biochemists porate or state support. and was told that Crick’s ideas were a flash in the Those who yearn for a single definitive answer to pan and that in a month or two nothing more would what they imagined to be the simple Needham ques- be heard of them. tion will, no doubt, be taken aback at my twin insist- Third, what gets taken up and sponsored reflects ences on complexity and specificity, and I certainly commercial and military interests as often as it does concede that it is harder work.11 But it should release the disinterested pursuit of the truth. In all of this, I us from any idea that we should focus more or less think we still have much to learn from both the exclusively on that one supposedly simple explanan- ancient Chinese and Greek models; from their con- dum when we have so much other work to do to trasting strengths and corresponding weaknesses. investigate the shifting fortunes of scientific investi- There are clear advantages to massive state support gation down the ages. That hard work chimes, how- for science (as in ancient China) but also disadvan- ever, with the ambitious plans being entertained by tages in outside influences (whether governmental the new Director of a revived NRI, where enthusias- or commercial) on the agenda. Conversely, in ancient tic young scholars drawn from many different coun- Greece, individuals were free to go it alone, but then tries and with many different skills and interests are they had to, since there were no state institutions to engaged in inspiring studies of a considerable vari- back them up. In particular, we moderns, in both ety of topics, involving increasingly significant col- China and the West, have to continue to worry about laborations with different faculties and institutions in striking the right balance between state support and the university, including the faculties of Asian and

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Middle Eastern Studies, History and Philosophy of to call not the pointed-out? If within the world there Science, Archaeology, Classics, Social Anthropology were no things, what would we have the opportunity and CRASSH (the Centre for Research in the Arts, to call the pointed-out?’ (Gongsun Long, Zhiwu lun, Social Sciences and Humanities), to name but six. discussed by Graham, 1989: 91–94). For me, revising the agenda means being prepared 6. ‘In sum, I believe that the analysable differences in social and economic pattern between China and to look closely at all the complexity and specificity I Western Europe will in the end illuminate as far as mentioned – the work of famous individuals and of anything can ever throw light on it, both the earlier anonymous craftsmen. But reviewing the legacy means predominance of Chinese science and technology continuing the investigations that Needham launched, and also the later rise of science in Europe alone’ not in precisely the way he organised them but recog- (Needham, 2004b: 23, italics added). He later added nisably in line with the spirit that animated his work, that such questions as ‘why did the Roman Empire insofar as he set a shining example of the most pro- fall?’ are stimulating . . . but ‘they have no definitive found cross-cultural and interdisciplinary investigation answers’ (Needham, 2004a: 231). of human endeavours to comprehend the world. 7. ‘If I were asked to define modern science, I would say that it is the combination of mathematised hypotheses Acknowledgements about natural phenomena with relentless experimentation’ (Needham, 2004b: 1 note 2). This is a slightly modified version of the first Needham 8. Important pre-modern ‘breakthroughs’: Memorial Lecture that I delivered on 28 October 2016. I am most grateful to the sponsors, Jing Brand Co. Ltd, and Babylonia 8th century BCE: Recognition of the regu- also to Professor Roel Sterckx and Clare College for host- larities in planetary movements and predictions of ing the event. My thanks also go to John Moffett and Jenny visibility/invisibility. Zhao for their help in preparing the lecture. Greece: Philolaus (proposed non-geocentric system) 5th cen- Declaration of conflicting interests tury BCE The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest Eudoxus (concentric spheres hypothesis) c. 365 BCE with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication Callippus (modified Eudoxus) c. 330 BCE of this article. Aristotle 384–322 BCE (proves sphericity of earth) Aristarchus of Samos (heliocentricity) c. 275 BCE Archimedes 287–212 BCE Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, China: authorship, and/or publication of this article. Huainanzi (compendium of knowledge) 139 BCE Zhoubi suanjing (cosmology and cosmography) c. 50 CE Notes Shen Gua (astronomer and polymath) 978–1052 CE 1. This led to the arrest of 15 students, who were tried Li Shizhen (plants/pharmacopoeia) 1518–1598 CE at the Hertfordshire assizes. Eight of them were sen- Mei Wending (mathematician and astronomer) 1632– tenced to between 9 and 18 months in prison. 1721 CE 2. Theophrastus’ great botanical treatises date from the 9. ‘In two decades of study, teaching and public lectur- 4th century BCE. Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica ing on Chinese science and medicine, I have encoun- was written in the 1st century CE. tered no question more often than why modern 3. ‘It is the rise of the bourgeoisie in Western Europe science did not develop independently in China, and from the 15th century onwards which decided that none on which more firmly based opinions have been Europe . . . would strike out in a new direction, devel- formed on the basis of less critical attention to avail- oping capitalism, scientific method and the industrial able evidence’ (Sivin, 1995 [1982]: 46). revolution one after another’ (Needham, 2004a: 229). 10. Ptolemy, Syntaxis (otherwise known as the Almagest). 4. See Bloom (1981), extensively criticised by See Heiberg (1898), Book 1, ch. 7, p. 24. Harbsmeier (1998: 116ff.). 11. Arguments very similar to mine have subsequently 5. ‘Supposing that within the world there were no point- been advanced by contributors to the issue of ISIS ing out of things, what would we have the opportunity (an international review devoted to the history of

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science and its cultural influence) (101.1, Spring in China, vol. 7, part 2. Cambridge: Cambridge 2019) devoted to a ‘second look’ at Needham’s leg- University Press, pp. 224–231. acy. On the one hand, it is agreed that the framework Needham J (2004b) Science and society in East and West. within which to carry out our investigations needs to In: Robinson KG (ed.) Science and Civilisation be modified to avoid the pitfalls of anachronism and in China, vol. 7, part 2. Cambridge: Cambridge of treating either ‘China’ or ‘the West’ as homogene- University Press, pp. 1–23. ous entities. On the other hand, this does not mean Rochberg F (2016) Before Nature: Cuneiform Knowledge we should abandon Needham’s ambition to engage and the History of Science. Chicago, IL: University in deep comparative studies to elucidate specificities of Chicago Press. of the developments in different places and times in Sivin N (1995 [1982]) Why the scientific revolution did not human endeavours to understand the world. take place in China – or didn’t it? (originally Chinese Science, 1982, 5: 45–66). In: Sivin N (ed.) Science in References Ancient China: Researches and Reflections. Aldershot: Variorum. Bloom A (1981) The Linguistic Shaping of Thought: A Wardy RBB (2000) Aristotle in China: Language, Study in the Impact of Language on Thinking in China Categories and Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge and the West. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. University Press. Elvin M (2004) Vale atque Ave. In: Robinson KG (ed.) Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 7, part 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. xxiv– Author biography xliii. Geoffrey Lloyd is Emeritus Professor of Ancient Philosophy Goody J (1977) The Domestication of the Savage Mind. and Science at the University of Cambridge, where from Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989 to 2000 he was Master of Darwin College. He has Graham AC (1989) Disputers of the Tao. La Salle, IL: been a Trustee of the NRI from 1991 and he was Chair of Open Court. the trust from 1992 to 2002. He has held Visiting Harbsmeier C (1998) Science and Civilisation in China, Professorships in North and South America, in Europe, in vol. 7, part 1, Language and Logic. Cambridge: the Far East and Australia and holds Honorary Doctorates Cambridge University Press. from Athens, Oxford and St Andrews. He is the author of Heiberg IL (1898) Claudii Ptolemaei opera quae exstant 23 books, most recently The Ambivalences of Rationality: omnia, vol. 1. Leipzig: Teubneri. Ancient and Modern Cross-Cultural Explorations Lloyd GER (2002) The Ambitions of Curiosity. Cambridge: (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), and he Cambridge University Press. has edited a further seven. He has been a Fellow of the Lloyd GER (2009) Disciplines in the Making. Oxford: Royal Anthropological Society since 1970, of the British Oxford University Press. Academy since 1983, and of the American Academy of Lloyd GER (2014) The Ideals of Inquiry. Oxford: Oxford Arts and Sciences since 1995. He was awarded the Sarton University Press. Medal in 1987, the Kenyon Medal in 2007, the Dan David Needham J (2004a) Modern science: Why from Europe? Prize in 2013 and the Fyssen Prize in 2014. He was In: Robinson KG (ed.) Science and Civilisation knighted for ‘services to the history of thought’ in 1997.

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Article

Cultures of Science 2020, Vol. 3(1) 21–33 My farewell to Science and © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions Civilisation in China DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/2096608320921615 10.1177/2096608320921615 journals.sagepub.com/home/cul

Christopher Cullen Needham Research Institute, UK; Darwin College, UK

Abstract The author served as General Editor of the Science and Civilisation in China series from 1992 to 2014. He reviews the history of this scholarly project since its inception by Joseph Needham in 1943, and discusses some of the problems that had to be solved in the production of such a complex and far-ranging publication. He illustrates the discussion with reference to three of the books in the series that appeared under his editorship – those dealing with the topics of ceramics, ferrous metallurgy and ethnobotany.

Keywords Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Needham Research Institute

1. The conception of Science and not deter readers from wanting to serve themselves Civilisation in China another slice. First, it will be helpful for me to outline the early stages The aim of this essay is to share some of the experi- of the Science and Civilisation in China (SCC) project ences I had as General Editor of Joseph Needham’s – and how the series developed from its original sim- Science and Civilisation in China series in the 22 plicity to the complex series of books that it eventually years that I fulfilled that role between 1992, when became. In May 1943 – the year that he arrived in Joseph Needham and Ho Peng Yoke (then Director China – Joseph Needham sketched an ‘ideas map’ of the Needham Research Institute) asked me to (Figure 1). Such was his normal practice whenever he take on this responsibility, and my retirement in wanted to plan an article or a talk. This one, however, 2014.1 A remark often wrongly attributed to Otto was the most important ideas map of his entire career, von Bismarck says, in effect, that if people knew for although he did not know it at the time, the project how sausage was made, nobody would want to eat that grew from it was to occupy the great majority of any.2 In this essay, rather than discussing the schol- his time and energy for the next half-century. arly significance of Science and Civilisation in China, which many have done before me, I shall try to make use of my experience as editor of the series Corresponding author: to describe something of ‘how [at least some parts Christopher Cullen, Needham Research Institute, 8 Sylvester of] the sausage was made’ – hoping that, despite Road, Cambridge CB3 9AF, UK. the fears wrongly ascribed to Bismarck, this will Email: [email protected]

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Figure 1. Needham’s ‘ideas map’ for the SCC project.

The sheet of paper in question does not tell us that thought about nature from the early Daoists to Zhu it is the plan of a book. It may simply have been the Xi, the core of a detailed history of the technical fer- outline for one of the many lectures that he gave in tility of Chinese civilisation, covering everything the course of his visits to academic institutions as from ceramics and gunpowder to the pharmaco- part of his travels all over Free China from 1943 to poeia, all set in the context of an abiding interest in 1946. But anyone who looks at this document with the relations between the ways people think and the hindsight can see that the essentials of SCC are all social and political structures that shape and con- present: the initial survey of Chinese traditions of strain their actions.

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Figure 2. Letter from Cambridge University Press in 1948.

After a relatively brief post-war period at UNESCO included in one volume’, which, as we shall see, it cer- in Paris, Needham returned to Cambridge. He does not tainly was not. seem to have waited long before setting out his plans to write a history of science, technology and medicine 2. The seven-volume scheme in China, in the fullest social, intellectual, economic and political context, from original sources. We have The Syndics’ original agreement was to publish a the letter of 22 May 1948 in which the Syndics of single volume by Needham. Whether or not that was Cambridge University Press expressed their willing- also Needham’s intention is unclear. But a little over ness to consider such a book for publication (Figure 2). 2 years later, in January 1951 (Figure 3), another They acknowledged that the printing department Secretary to the Syndics wrote saying that it was would have to be warned that the book would contain pretty clear that ‘the right course [was] to issue the ‘a certain number of Chinese characters’, which it cer- work in a number of smaller volumes purchasable tainly did. We can perhaps detect a slight nervousness separately’. It may be that the Syndics were already in the Secretary’s note that in the view of the Syndics, beginning to become apprehensive at the sheer bulk it was ‘most desirable that the material should be of material that Needham was preparing in draft

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Figure 3. Letter from Cambridge University Press in 1951.

– from the letter, it is clear that they had already seen decision, the first three volumes of the series material he was preparing on mathematics, a topic appeared in 1954, 1956 and 1959. The 1954 volume that was not planned to appear in print until volume set out the first published plan of Needham’s work. 3. In any case, in accordance with the Syndics’ This core plan, which remained constant during the

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whole of the time Needham worked on SCC, was Ling (published in 1965 and contains sec- based on a division into 50 topical sections – from tion 27) ‘1: Preface’ to ‘50: General conclusions’. These || Part 3: Civil Engineering and Nautics. were to be distributed over seven physical volumes, Joseph Needham, with the collaboration arranged under broad topical titles, as follows3: of Wang Ling and Lu Gwei-djen (published in 1971 and contains sections 28 •• Volume 1: Introductory Orientations and 29) •• Volume 2: History of Scientific Thought •• Volume 3: Mathematics and the Sciences of From this time on, someone speaking of a ‘vol- the Heavens and Earth ume’ of SCC might mean either the large-scale divi- •• Volume 4: Physics and Physical Technology sion into volumes 1 to 7 or the actual physical books •• Volume 5: Chemistry and Chemical published by Cambridge University Press. Needham Technology himself recognised the distinction by labelling the •• Volume 6: Biology and Biological Technology first kind ‘heavenly volumes’ and the second ‘earthly •• Volume 7: The Social Background volumes’. But the process of subdivision had much further Volumes 1, 2 and 3 appeared in fairly rapid suc- to go. In the plan published in volume 1 (published cession in 1954, 1956 and 1959, an excellent rate of in 1954), volume 5 was to contain the following five publication for a scholarly series mostly written by sections: one person. But then things changed quite markedly, as we shall now see. •• Volume 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology 3. The plan proliferates || Section 33: Alchemy and Chemistry || Section 34: Chemical Technology Up to the end of the 1950s, there were no signs that || Section 35: Ceramic Technology Needham planned to depart from the seven-volume || Section 36: Mining and Metallurgy plan agreed with the press early in that decade. By || Section 37: The Salt Industry 1962, however, it became clear that Needham had other ideas – and indeed must have had them for If volume 5 had contained 680 pages, as had vol- some time, given the time required to research and ume 3, each section would have had about 136 write books of the kind Needham was producing. pages. But just as the 1960s had seen volumes appear Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology, was in a number of physical parts, the 1970s were to see originally planned as a single book containing four an even more radical ‘multifurcation’, and one which sections. But in that year, there appeared a book con- would no doubt have horrified the Syndics had it taining only one of the planned sections, with the been proposed a few decades earlier: the appearance rest of the volume scheduled to appear as two further of a single section in four separate physical parts. physical books. As a result, volume 4 appeared in Section 33 became three parts as follows: •• Volume 5: Chemistry and Chemical •• Volume 4: Physics and Physical Technology Technology || Part 1: Physics. Joseph Needham, with the || Section 33: Alchemy and Chemistry research assistance of Wang Ling, and the || Part 2: Spagyrical discovery and inven- special co-operation of Kenneth Robinson tion: Magisteries of gold and immortality. (published in 1962 and contains section Joseph Needham, with the collaboration 26) of Lu Gwei-djen (1974): 510 pages || Part 2: Mechanical Engineering. Joseph || Part 3: Spagyrical discovery and inven- Needham, with the collaboration of Wang tion: Historical survey, from cinnabar elix-

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irs to synthetic insulin. Joseph Needham, academic post he held was that of the Sir William with the collaboration of Ho Ping-Yu and Dunn Reader in Biochemistry,4 which he held from Lu Gwei-djen (1976): 481 pages 1924 to his retirement in 1966, with a period of || Part 4: Spagyrical discovery and inven- absence during his wartime work in China, and tion: Apparatus, theories and gifts. Joseph immediately after in Paris at UNESCO. The Needham, with the collaboration of Lu University statutes at that time meant that his only Gwei-djen, and a contribution by Nathan strict obligation was to give a certain number of lec- Sivin (1980): 772 pages tures on biochemistry each year, which he did until || Part 5: Spagyrical discovery and inven- his retirement. As a result, his abandonment of bio- tion: Physiological alchemy. Joseph chemical research for the SCC project did not Needham, with the collaboration of Lu threaten his security of tenure or his salary; in addi- Gwei-djen (1983): 574 pages tion, he had inherited some capital from his parents that also produced a helpful income. He had been a The reader who is wondering what happened to fellow of Gonville and Caius College since 1924, part 1 of volume 5 will perhaps be reassured to know and was thus guaranteed a room in college and free that it appeared as volume 5, part 1: Paper and print- meals for life; he was elected Master in 1966. And ing, authored by Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin (published in for most of his life, he had the loyal support of two 1985). In total, the four parts of volume 5 embody- energetic and learned women, his wife Dorothy ing section 33 contained 2287 pages, about 17 times Needham (like her husband a Fellow of the Royal the number of pages that might have been predicted Society) and Lu Gwei-djen. when volumes 1, 2 and 3 appeared in the 1950s. But I mention these advantages, which most modern far from being in any way disturbed, it appears that researchers can only wonder at, to stress how well the Syndics happily agreed to publish. And they cer- and fruitfully he exploited them. He wasted none of tainly had some motivation for this, quite apart from his chances, and we should be grateful for that. the scholarly value of these books. The fact is that by 1970, SCC had established itself as a series that 4. The later collaborators many scholarly libraries round the world had decided they should have on their shelves. As a result, each During the time I was General Editor, I saw a num- book in that series was automatically ordered in ber of volumes of SCC through the press. Two of large numbers as it appeared. The resultant income these were largely by Needham himself, though they for the press was more than satisfactory. Thus, appeared posthumously: whereas it is unlikely that the Syndics would have accepted a proposal from Needham for four substan- •• Volume 6, part 6: Biology and biological tial books on Chinese alchemy in 1960, by 1970, technology: Medicine. Joseph Needham and things looked very different. Lu Gwei-djen, edited by Nathan Sivin (pub- Let us pause to ask how Needham was able to lished in 2000) sustain and develop this immense productivity. In •• Volume 7, part 2: The social background: the first place, it is indisputable that he had a capac- General conclusions and reflections. Joseph ity for work that most scholars would envy, and that Needham, edited by Kenneth Girdwood he had an unusual ability to produce coherent text at Robinson, with contributions by Ray Huang, the first draft as his fingers moved rapidly over the and an introduction by Mark Elvin (published keys of his electric typewriter, after he had soaked in 2004) himself in the source materials that he surveyed. He could also display a ruthless determination to keep Most of my work was, however, concerned with distractions at a distance. volumes by collaborators in which Needham had But added to all that were the fortunate circum- never played any role, apart from noting their topics in stances of his life in Cambridge. The only senior his outline of the series. I shall now turn to some

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examples of these, which appeared, respectively, in they could certainly have been in print by around 2004, 2008 and 2015 (a date which rendered it, in a 1975 or 1980. Since Needham was born in 1900, that sense, posthumous for me as General Editor, given my might have been thought an appropriate time for him retirement the previous year). But how did it happen to retire from active research and writing, and enjoy that Needham felt he had to allow others to publish the gratitude of the scholarly world for a magnificent whole books in the series that he had, in many ways, life’s work that would have done much to change the made a unique expression of his world view as a scien- way the world saw China, as well as the way that tist, a historian and a student of Chinese culture? historians of science saw the premodern and early When speaking or writing about his project, modern world. But it was not to be. The 1960s were Needham typically used the pronoun ‘we’ rather mainly devoted to bringing out the three parts of the than ‘I’. This was a just recognition of the fact that expanded volume 4, and the 1970s were spent in the SCC series in anything like the form it began to producing no less than four books on the topic of a take in the 1950s would have been impossible with- single section, that on alchemy.5 Needham could see out the work of a number of scholars in addition to clearly that it was unlikely that he would be able to Joseph Needham. complete his work even if he had suddenly reverted For the first three volumes of the series, that col- to the original plan of the 1950s, and that it was flatly laborator was Wang Ling, who is credited on the title impossible that the series would ever be completed pages as having provided ‘research assistance’. To a in the expanded, we may even say the inflated, form large extent, this consisted of locating material in pre- that he had allowed it to assume. modern Chinese sources that Needham could use in It was at this point, already late in life by any nor- his writing of what was, let us remember, conceived mal scholarly standard, that he began to hand over as a pioneering survey rather than a definitive treat- responsibility to others for the writing of major parts ment. Needham was certainly well able to read and of SCC. translate both modern and classical Chinese, but This first such book to appear was volume 6, part Wang had a speed of comprehension that enabled him 2: Biology and biological technology: Agriculture, to glance through many pages of complex premodern by Francesca Bray (published in 1984). This was fol- texts and locate promising materials much more eas- lowed by the book on paper and printing (volume 5, ily than Needham ever could. In the three parts of vol- part 1) by Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin (published in 1985). ume 4, other names appear: Part 1 had the ‘special Bray was the first author to whom Needham handed co-operation of Kenneth Robinson’, who wrote on over responsibility in this way, and it appears that acoustics, and part 3 also bore the name of Lu Gwei- once he had chosen someone in whom he had confi- djen. But in every case, all or the great majority of the dence, Needham’s habit was to let that person get on words published in the series came from Needham’s with the job in his or her own way – at times even rapid dactylography on his electric typewriter. when the ‘collaborator’ would have been glad to From the 1980s onwards, we begin to see signs of have been able to work more closely with him. There a different kind of collaboration, in which entire was of course one obvious reason for this: Needham books in the series appear as the work of a single was impelled to turn to collaborators in the hope that collaborator, although Needham’s name continues to he would at least be able to finish work on the appear as the overall series author. If we consider remaining parts of the series. Such time and energy Needham’s situation in the 1970s, it is clear why he as remained to him had to be used for that purpose would have felt this necessary. and that purpose alone. The plan agreed with the press in 1951 provided for seven volumes, each being a single book. In 5. A collaborator’s volume from accordance with this plan, Needham had produced the first three volumes by the end of the decade. That (re)start to finish: ceramics left four more volumes to write, and even if we allow I turn now to the first example of a volume entirely for a rather slower rate of production for these books, written by a collaborator that was published during

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my editorship. In the original 1954 plan, the follow- the technical aspects of the topic. Of course, a pro- ing section appears: ject like this needs funding, and my next task was to draft the appropriate grant applications. Happily, the •• Volume 5: Chemistry and Chemical Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation agreed to support a Technology ‘buy-out’ of Rose Kerr from the Victoria and Albert || Section 35: Ceramic Technology Museum for a year, plus all other research costs. A || ‘History of pottery, porcelain, feldspathic Leverhulme Trust Senior Fellowship was also glazes, etc.’ obtained for Nigel Wood. In 2004, 10 years after recommissioning, and half By 1979, when the Needham Research Institute a century after the publication of the original seven- (NRI) prepared a pamphlet on ‘The State of the word plan for this section, the book appeared as Project’ for private circulation, the words ‘Digression volume 5, part 12: Ceramic Technology, by Rose on cloissoné’ had been added. But that was all. When I Kerr and Nigel Wood, with additional contributions took over responsibility for the series, I found that this by Ts’ai Mei-fen and Zhang Fukang. As its topic section had been allocated to a collaborator, of whom demanded, it was illustrated in colour throughout, the we need say no more than that there were no apparent first volume of the series to be given this privilege by signs of activity on that person’s part, nor did there Cambridge University Press. It contains 918 pages in seem any great likelihood of the situation changing. all, making it seven times longer than the estimate for Although, on the basis outlined earlier, this sec- a single section under the seven-volume plan. This tion might have occupied something like 136 pages was a very modest expansion compared with the fac- as part of a single physical volume 5, I also found tor of 17 that Needham had allowed himself for sec- that in the context of the almost uncontrolled expan- tion 33 on alchemy, and was certainly well justified sion of the series in previous decades, the expecta- by the importance of the subject and the rich histori- tion had arisen that this section would appear as a cal scholarship and technical understanding that this separate book. In scholarly terms, the idea of a com- book offered its readers. It is unlikely to have any prehensive survey of the development of ceramic serious competitors for several decades. technology in China, set in its fullest historical, social and intellectual context with all the accompa- 6. A closer look at one long nying apparatus of a volume of SCC, was a very but successful story: ferrous attractive one. Given the privileged publishing win- metallurgy dow offered by SCC at this stage of its development, this was clearly an opportunity not to be missed. In the case of ceramics, the challenge I faced as edi- After I had outlined the situation to him, Needham tor was that of effectively restarting part of the SCC accepted my suggestion that we needed to seek a project from scratch, given the complete failure of new collaborator who might actually be able to do the original collaborator to make any perceptible the necessary work to make this very desirable pos- progress with the task allocated to (or perhaps sibility into a reality. imposed on) them by the creator of the series. In If one has a demanding task that one wants to see other cases, my responsibility was essentially to completed within a reasonable timescale and to a ensure that a collaborator who was already fully high standard, it is commonplace wisdom that one engaged with the task was enabled to bring it to suc- should ask a busy person to take it on. The busy cessful completion and publication. I shall briefly person in question was Rose Kerr, Keeper of the discuss two such cases in the order in which the East Asian section, Victoria and Albert Museum, planned volumes eventually appeared. London. To my great delight, she agreed to take the The story of the first of these begins with the orig- job on, and she in turn was able to persuade Nigel inal plan for section 36, Mining and Metallurgy, Wood to join her, with particular responsibility for which appeared in 1954 as follows:

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•• Volume 5: Chemistry and Chemical Donald Wagner @ Ostasiatika Institutet Copenhagen / Technology v. keen on hist. [history] of i. [iron] & s. [steel] in || Section 36: Mining and Metallurgy [China] might collaborate || Ancient Chinese bronze and bronze- casting. Metallurgical formularies in Han Needham’s first idea was essentially to ask books Wagner to revise the short draft on ferrous metallurgy || Ancient iron technology: the mastery of that he had already completed and published, since cast iron in the Han; iron ploughs and he was fully aware that the archaeology and scholar- sword forging ship of the preceding two decades had rendered his || Metallurgy of the precious metals previous work outdated. But the conception of the || Knowledge of coal in China and tentatives task appears to have expanded rapidly in harmony at coke for smelting. Types of smelting with other aspects of Needham’s original plan, and furnaces. The great Ming metallurgical by 1992, it had been agreed that Wagner was to pro- compendium duce a complete book on this topic. Once more thanks || Mining of tin and zinc. Brass and other to a grant obtained by the NRI from the Chiang alloys, some unknown to the West till the Ching-kuo Foundation, Wagner was able to spend +18th century several years in Cambridge working on his book without distraction, and it was published as volume 5, All this was to be one section within volume 5, part 11, in 2008 – 54 years after the publication of the planned as a single book. On the usual estimate of original plan. Once more SCC offered the window 136 pages for a section, the topic of ferrous metal- for publication of a lengthy and comprehensive work lurgy might have been expected to take up no more of scholarship that will provide an entry point into its than 50 pages. It is interesting therefore to note that subject for decades to come. the draft of the ferrous metallurgy section, published as The Development of Iron and Steel Technology in 7. (Ethno)botany: SCC reflects on China (Needham, 1958), contains 48 pages. Had Needham continued to work at the same pace on the itself rest of the section, the result would have been a very If we look at the outline given for volume 6 in the valuable short monograph survey of an important 1954 plan of SCC, we see: topic not so far treated by historians of technology. But this was not to be. Needham himself moved on •• Volume 6: Biology, Agriculture and Medicine to other matters, particularly those that eventually || Section 38: Botany appeared in volume 4 of SCC. The parts of the sec- || Botany and plant sciences in the great tion relating to mining were taken on by Peter Golas, series of pharmaceutical compendia and it was a pleasure to see his valuable contribution || Development of the classification system appear as volume 5, part 13, in 1999. The parts of the || Special monographs in the Sung [the section dealing with nonferrous metallurgy were Song dynasty] allocated to collaborators who proved unproductive, || Discovery of sex in plants; plant abnor- and I was happy to be able to transfer responsibility malities and so on. for this topic to Mei Jianjun, now my successor as Director of the NRI. But what had happened to fer- The whole of volume 6 as then planned was to be rous metallurgy? contained in a single book, covering sections 38 to After the publication of Needham’s short mono- 45 – Botany, Zoology, Biochemical Technology, graph in 1958, there are no further signs of work Agriculture, Agricultural Arts, the ‘Institutes of on this topic over 20 years, until 1981, when Medicine’ (specified as Anatomy, Physiology and Needham left the following note in his ferrous Embryology), Medicine and Pharmaceutics. In terms metallurgy file: of space in the plan, Botany represented about

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one-twelfth of the whole. On the basis of the 680 project involved Métailié working with and manag- pages of main text in volume 3, that would have ing a number of collaborators of his own. given Botany a little under 60 pages – slightly longer Nevertheless, in March 1981, only 3 years after than what we saw earlier might have been occupied asking his new collaborator to begin work, Needham by ferrous metallurgy. began to apply pressure. When writing in reference If we look at the plans for botany published in the to an impending visit to Cambridge by Métailié, 1979 pamphlet, it is clear that there had been great Needham added a significant sentence: developments during the preceding quarter of a century. Volume 6, of which section 38 ‘Botany’ had origi- We are longing for [the volume on Botany] to be able nally been described in four lines, was now planned to to go to press, and I must say that the CUP [Cambridge appear in four parts, with sections 38 to 42 composing University Press] themselves are trying to hasten more parts 1 and 2, while sections 43 to 45, dealing with the publication of the volumes, so that they are very medical matters, were to be dealt with in parts 3 and 4. eager to receive typescript. The plan for section 38 occupied more than 60 lines in the pamphlet plan, and much of it had in fact already Reference is also made in this letter to the contri- been drafted. It is at this point that the name of Georges bution to be made to the book by Huang Hsing-Tsung Métailié first appeared in print in association with (Huang Xingzong, once Needham’s secretary in war- SCC: under the heading for parts 1 and 2 in the pam- time China, but by 1981 working with the National phlet, we read ‘With the collaboration of Lu Gwei- Science Foundation in Washington, DC), who had djen, Georges Métailié, and Francesca Bray’. been given responsibility for the parts of section 38 To trace the background of this story, we may turn dealing with biological plant protection. Further cor- to the correspondence files of the SCC project, care- respondence renewed the topic, until in February fully filed away at the NRI. Inside a green folder, 1983, Needham announced that those portions of the labelled ‘SCC VI Bot’, we find another folder bear- Botany volume then available in finished form, ing the name ‘Georges Métailié’. The earliest slip of including most of the contribution by Huang Hsing- paper in that folder is dated ‘16 Dec. 78’, with a box Tsung, had gone to press, and galley proofs were round the words ‘BOTANY Section, finishing of’. imminently expected. In April of that year, Needham Clipped to that slip is the curriculum vitae of a young wrote that ‘I think it is now agreed that we should French researcher in his 30s, who describes himself print the breakdown of all the sub-sections of the as being in the process of completing a ‘doctorat chapter in Vol. VI, part 1, leaving your remaining d’état’ on the history of botanical vocabulary in China portion to come in a later volume’.6 and Japan in the 19th century, after having completed SCC volumes passed rather more slowly through a PhD in 1974. Plans for an initial visit to Cambridge the press in those days, and in the event volume 6, in the first 6 or 7 months of 1979 are outlined, con- part 1, containing 553 pages of main text, did not cluding with the note by Needham that once the work actually appear until 1986, 32 years after the original was underway, the new colleague ‘could work in plan of 1954. When readers turned to the contents Paris, + xeroxed files of notes, coming once or twice pages, they found that section 38 had been divided for coupla [sic, = ‘a couple of’, i.e. two] weeks’. into alphabetically divided subsections labelled (a) But as time went by, it became clear that, like all to (k). Subsections (a) to (d) were by Needham and tasks to do with SCC, this one was less simple to Lu Gwei-djen, and comprised7 complete than it might have appeared at first sight. Métailié’s job involved his participation in an offi- (a) Introduction cial French mission to China in the immediate short term and gave him few opportunities to work on (b) The setting: China’s plant geography SCC-related topics. There was also a major project (c) Botanical linguistics for a dictionary of agriculture that was eventually to be published in 1995 (Métailié and Cai, 1995). This (d) The literature and its context.

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Huang Hsing-Tsung was responsible for volume on botany, written by Métailié. By April 1988, it was clear that the issue had been settled in favour of a separate ‘earthly volume’, and Métailié (e) Plants and animals in man’s service. gave as his estimate that the typescript for this new volume would consist of around 400 pages. After the usual details of bibliographies, the index Time (once more) passed. When in 1992 I became and auxiliary tables, there is a white space, followed General Editor of the SCC series, the state of affairs by these words enclosed by rules: with Métailié’s book was one of the matters I The following subsections, by Georges Métailié, are reviewed. I was a little concerned to learn that there not yet ready for publication was an understanding between Needham and the author that the text of this volume would be drafted After which the subsections still to come are in French, but I dealt with this problem as far as I listed as could by earmarking funds for the eventual employment of an expert translator, whose skills would obviously be required in order for the book to be (f) Treatises on traditional botany, and the devel- published in English with the rest of the series. opment of classification Work on the series continued over the next two (g) The development of plant description and decades. Nine further (earthly) volumes were pub- illustration lished under my General Editorship. Finally, in February 2011, I was able to report to the NRI Board (h) Chinese knowledge of the life of plants of Trustees: (i) Horticulture and its techniques We [have] received the final instalment of MS (j) The influence of Chinese flora and botany on [manuscript] from [Georges Métailié], and have now modern plant science been sent very favourable reports from the two specialist readers. We therefore begin the complex (k) Conclusions process of preparing this long-awaited volume for publication, a task which we view with all the more In his preface, Needham wrote, satisfaction considering how long the author has been working on this major project. The present volume contains most of section 28 [sic – an uncorrected typographical error for 38], on the plant sciences. We cannot say all, because there will still be But as already mentioned, Métailié’s complex more to come in a following volume, the work of our and scholarly text was all in French. However, I was collaborator Dr Georges Métailié . . . It would no in the extremely fortunate position of having by then doubt have been preferable to bring it all out together in agreed with Lady Lloyd (Janet ‘Ji’ Lloyd) that she one volume, but the necessities of collaboration and the would take on the very demanding task of transla- interlocking of commitments have made it impossible. tion. As anyone familiar with the range of scholarly work that had already been handled by this expert In July 1986, Colin Ronan (at the time Secretary and sensitive translator will understand, I felt com- of the East Asian History of Science Trust) replied to plete assurance that the resulting version would be an enquirer by referring to Métailié’s work as being the best that could possibly be produced. Anybody planned to appear in ‘the second botany volume’ of who reads the book as it now stands will agree that SCC. It is clear that those working with Needham my assurance was justified in the event. In late 2013, had tacitly moved from the original notion of the we had before us a fully translated text, agreed with remaining botanical material finding a place in some the author, and could begin to carry out the final later volume of the series, to the assumption that tasks required before sending the book to press.8 So, there would be a completely independent further 36 years after Georges Métailié agreed to Needham’s

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request to help finish his book on Botany, his book Métailié’s sensitive and deeply informed response is appeared. set out in his book and cannot be discussed in detail Some words of Métailié in his preface show us here. The important thing is, however, that with that the time taken for this project had given this Métailié’s book, we can say that SCC has become author the opportunity for deep reflection on the reflexive and has begun to discuss the assumptions nature of the task he had undertaken. As a result, he that underpinned its creation. That is not a bad set down on paper what I think is the first significant moment for me to bid farewell to the series now that example of an SCC collaborator’s critical reflection it has passed into other hands. on the nature of the task he had been set: Declaration of conflicting interests In accepting the proposal made by Joseph Needham and The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest Lu Gwei-djen, I had in effect accepted the idea that a with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication form of clearly defined botany did exist in ancient of this article. China, given the voluminous corpus of texts to be analysed. However, as my reading proceeded, I was Funding forced to admit, in the first place, that I had come across The author(s) received no financial support for the no Chinese term that might have even one of the modern meanings of ‘botany’. Furthermore, nor had I found any research, authorship and/or publication of this article. term that referred to any traditional knowledge specifically about plants before the creation, in 1858, of Notes the term zhiwuxue植物學, meaning botany in the 1. In 1992, I became Deputy Director of the Needham modern sense of the term. Finally, among the abundant Research Institute (NRI) in parallel with my full- literature that I was working through, there was no text time job in the department of history at the School that could be regarded as a kind of botanical manual, of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. I nor was there any reference to what we call a flora. So worked under the new Director of the NRI, Ho Peng was there no botany in China at that time? Yoke, who had taken over in 1990 when Needham decided to retire. I also became chairman of the NRI To ask such a question is, in effect, to turn the spot- Publications Board and General Editor of the SCC light on what has, over the past 60 years, come to be series. In theory, all this took up no more than the seen as a controversial assumption behind the whole one working day a week away from London allowed structure of the SCC project, first stated by Needham by the terms of my contract with SOAS. I was able in 1977 in the following words, which Métailié quotes: to work full-time for the NRI after being appointed Director in 2002 in succession to Ho Peng Yoke. 2. The original sentence is ‘Laws, like sausages, cease I suppose we all generally agree that there is only one to inspire respect in proportion as we know how unitary science of nature, approached more or less closely they are made’. It is commonly attributed to Prince and built up more or less successfully and continuously, Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898), but is said by Fred even if very slowly, by the several groups of mankind R. Shapiro to have first appeared in the Cleveland from age to age. This means that we could expect to trace Herald in 1869, attributed to the poet John Godfrey an absolute continuity between the first beginnings of Saxe (1816–1887), more than half a century before astronomy and medicine in ancient Babylonia or ancient it began to be attributed to Bismarck. See: Shapiro Egypt, through the advancing natural knowledge of (2008; online edition: said to have appeared in print mediaeval China, India, Islam and the classical Western on page MM16 of the Sunday Magazine). world, to the break-through of late Renaissance Europe 3. At the time Needham planned his work, it was fairly when, as has been said, the most effective method of normal practice among historians of science to use discovery was itself discovered. (Needham, 1977) the contemporary view of the structure of science to give shape to their study of the past. In addition, Reading these words written over 40 years ago, since Needham was planning to survey a largely unex- most historians of science would be able to do no plored field, it would have been unwise for him to more than say ‘Well, up to a point . . .’ The nature of begin by attempting to decide at the outset how human

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understanding of nature was actually constructed in persistence and skill in helping to ensure that all that premodern China. (For such an attempt, made to some was needed was eventually put in place. extent in the light of Needham’s work, see Sivin, 1977: Introduction.) Most of the time, Needham’s chosen References structure did not pose significant problems in his writ- Lu G and Needham J (1980) Celestial Lancets: A History ing and that of his collaborators. In two cases, it proved and Rationale of Acupuncture and Moxa. Cambridge; difficult to make the evidence of premodern Chinese New York: Cambridge University Press. thought and practice fit into modern structures. Thus, Métailié G and Cai SL (1995) Dictionnaire d’agriculture there is no SCC treatment of zoology, not because chinois–français–anglais. London; New York; Paris: Chinese people did not have systematic knowledge Lavoisier. of animals from many aspects (agriculture, veterinary Needham J (1958) The Development of Iron and Steel medicine, cosmological correlation), but because there Technology in China. London: Newcomen Society was no overall concept of ‘the study of animals’ in its for the Study of the History of Engineering and own right. The problems that arose with botany will be Technology. discussed near the end of this essay. Needham J (1969) The Grand Titration: Science and 4. A Reader in British usage at that time was above a Society in East and West. London: Allen and Unwin. Lecturer in status and salary, but below a Professor. Needham J (1977) Address to the opening session of the 5. We may also mention substantial works outside 15th International Congress of the History of Science, Science and Civilisation in China (SCC), one of Edinburgh, 11 August 1977. The British Journal for which (see Needham et al., 1960) contained origi- the History of Science 2(38): 103–113. nal research, while the others (see Needham, 1969; Needham J, Wang L and De Solla Price DJ (1960) Needham et al., 1970) were essentially edited talks Heavenly Clockwork: The Great Astronomical and articles appearing in book form. Needham is also Clocks of Medieval China. New York: Cambridge named as the second author of a research monograph University Press. (see Lu and Needham, 1980). Needham J, Wang L, Lu G, et al. (1970) Clerks and 6. Needham seemed quite happy with the idea that col- Craftsmen in China and the West: Lectures and laborators’ contributions that were not ready to be Addresses on the History of Science and Technology. published with his own work, such as Métailié’s, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. could be fitted in somewhere at a later stage, perhaps Shapiro FR (2008) Quote . . . Misquote. New York by ‘mak[ing] up a volume consisting of various con- Times, 21 July. Available at: https://www.nytimes. tributions’ (letter from Needham to Métailié dated 14 com/2008/07/21/magazine/27wwwl-guestsafire-t.html June 1982). Consistency of topic was not necessarily Sivin N (ed.) (1977) Science and Technology in East Asia. a primary consideration in such plans. Needham had New York: Science History Publications. for instance hoped that material drafted by Lo Jung- pang on deep drilling and the salt industry might find a place in Francesca Bray’s book on Agriculture, Author biography to which it would not have been very relevant (see Christopher Cullen studied engineering science at the volume 6, part 1, Preface, xxiv–xxv, and the letter University of Oxford, and later did a PhD in classical referred to above). Of course, the topic of the salt Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, industry (section 37) properly belonged in some part University of London. He became Deputy Director of the of volume 5 (Chemistry and Chemical Technology) NRI in 1992, then held the post of director from 2002 to rather than anywhere in volume 6 (Biology and 2014. His recent publications include Heavenly Numbers: Biological Technology). Astronomy and Authority in Early Imperial China (Oxford 7. I omit here and below the more detailed analyses of University Press, 2017) – a narrative history of the founda- the content of each subsection given in the original. tional period of Chinese astronomy, 3rd century BCE to 8. These included, among other things, securing the the 3rd century CE – and The Foundations of Celestial complex copyright permissions required for the Reckoning: Three Ancient Chinese Astronomical Systems book’s many illustrations. Much gratitude is due (Routledge, 2017) – translations of source materials, with to the institute’s librarian, John Moffett, for his detailed explanations.

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Article

Cultures of Science 2020, Vol. 3(1) 34–42 Brass tacks on iron: Ferrous © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions metallurgy in Science and Civilisation DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/2096608320915074 10.1177/2096608320915074 in China journals.sagepub.com/home/cul

Donald B Wagner University of Copenhagen, Denmark; Sichuan University, China

Abstract This article is a memoire of the author’s work in producing the volume of Science and Civilisation in China focusing on ferrous metallurgy.

Keywords Joseph Needham, ferrous metallurgy, Science and Civilisation in China

This article is a very personal account of my adven- numerous questions large and small. In this article I tures in preparing the volume on ferrous metallurgy review some of them, starting with the big picture of Science and Civilisation in China (SCC) (Wagner, and then going on to a few brass tacks. 2008). My first encounter with Joseph Needham’s monumental work was in 1968. I was 25 and a first- 1. Theoretical framework year student of Chinese. A visiting professor, hearing that I had a background in science, led me to its place A writer of history needs a theoretical framework – on the library shelf and insisted that I read it. (I send or rather, a historian has a theoretical framework Schuyler Cammann many belated thanks.) At that whether she or he knows it or not. In studies of the time, the first two of the three parts of volume 4 had history of technology, four approaches stand out. been published. I was captured immediately by Joseph Needham’s 1.1. Whig history erudition, his clear and precise language, and perhaps most of all his use of his scientific background History is about progress, towards a goal that some- in a constant concern for what he called ‘brass tacks’. how is a given from the beginning. The term can be Americans call it ‘the nitty gritty’, and a Swedish applied to Joseph Needham’s (1962) work, as the writer, Arne Dahl, recently coined the term ‘non- following passage testifies: virtual reality’. Joseph asked me to write his volume on ferrous Corresponding author: metallurgy in about 1980. I submitted the finished Donald B Wagner, Jernbanegade 9B, Frederikssund DK-3600, manuscript 25 years later, and it was finally pub- Denmark. lished in 2008. In those years of work, I confronted Email: [email protected]

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Some time ago a not wholly unfriendly critic of our species. George Basalla (1988) in his book The previous volumes wrote, in effect: this book is Evolution of Technology made an old idea explicit, fundamentally unsound for the following reasons. The adduced a large number of historical examples and authors believe (1) that human social evolution has made a convincing argument for it as a valid brought about a gradual increase in man’s knowledge of approach in the history of technology. Consulting a Nature and control of the external world, (2) that this citation index, it seems that his work has had a cer- science is an ultimate value and with its applications forms today a unity . . ., (3) that along with this tain impact. H. T. Huang used it in SCC, volume 6, progressive process human society is moving towards part 5, Fermentations and Food Science (Needham forms of ever greater unity, complexity and organisation. and Huang, 2000: 597–605). We recognised these invalidating theses as indeed our I have been very much attracted to this approach. own, and if we had a door like that of Wittenberg long In particular, the great geographical variation in ago we would not hesitate to nail them to it. (p. xxxi)1 iron-production technologies throughout China, apparent in recent centuries, is reminiscent of the My own subjective experience leads me to agree ways in which new species develop in ecological that ‘science is an ultimate value’, but for all my isolation. Local ironmasters working in a traditional respect for Joseph Needham, I can find no subjective master–apprentice line can be expected to make or objective basis for the idea that the evolution of small innovations in each generation, not necessarily society has any definite direction at all, positive or aware of any change. The result has been that each negative, or that progress is a useful concept in the isolated region had its own iron-production technol- study of history. ogy, precisely adapted to its geographical situation. Sadly, I have had to abandon the effort to follow 1.2. The social construction of technology up on Basalla’s insight. I lack the kind of sources – documentary or archaeological – that would be Technology is influenced in important ways by needed to develop a fine-grained understanding of social forces, which are to be studied using the meth- the evolution of any of the regional iron-production ods of the social sciences. This approach no doubt technologies. owes much of its popularity to a reaction against the Marxist emphasis on the ways in which technology influences society. For example, in a famous dictum 1.4. Technology in economic history in Marx’s (1936) The Poverty of Philosophy, ‘the One specific concern of mine has been to bring the handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the insights of economic theory into the history of the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist’ (p. iron industry in China. Especially important here is 92). In my own work, I find it useful to see technolo- the Law of Comparative Advantage of David Ricardo gies in both ways. I have earlier used the term ‘tech- (1772–1823). Boiled down to its essential minimum, nological choices’ and believed I had coined it it states that the economically rational course is not myself. It turned out that this was a term already in to do what one does best, but to do what gives the wide use, with quite a different meaning from that I highest profit in the given market. This insight helps had intended. Basically, I see technologies – the to explain why the iron industry in the region around ways people choose to satisfy their material needs Nanjing, until the Yuan period a major iron-produc- and wants – as factors among myriad historical fac- ing region, died out by the early Ming: commercial tors that interact with each other simultaneously as development there gave the comparative advantage causes and effects. The historian’s challenge is to to other activities. understand and articulate them in a meaningful way. Another example of the effects of comparative advantage is given by the structure of the iron industry 1.3. The evolution of technology in the province of Guangdong from the Ming period onward. Here numerous large-scale ironworks had Technologies change and develop in ways that are until about 1700 produced massive quantities of iron closely analogous to the evolution of biological for a market that extended northward along the

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Chinese coast and southward throughout South-east attempted to write for ‘readers who know some Asia. This may well have been the largest and most chemistry and are accustomed to technical thinking’. technically sophisticated iron industry in the world at Not all readers have been satisfied with this limita- that time. The large-scale ironworks operated in paral- tion, but further popularization of technical matters lel with myriad small-scale village ironworks through- would, I believe, dull the sharp contours of the tech- out Guangdong that produced for local consumption. nical discussion and leave no one satisfied. I have at These were much less efficient than the large-scale least attempted to make the broader implications works, but their comparative advantage lay in iron clear to all readers, including those who skip over production because of low labour costs and the high the technical explanations. cost of land transportation. It was economically The natural organization for the book clearly had rational to produce iron inefficiently rather than to to be chronological, delineating for each period the produce something else for sale and buy iron pro- historical events and developments that have influ- duced by the efficient large-scale ironworks (Wagner, enced and been influenced by technological devel- 2008: 47 ff, 2011). opments. However, technical matters are easiest to Comparative advantage helps also to explain the explain when dealing with a period that is well- effect of foreign trade on the iron industry of known through rich historical sources. I therefore Guangdong. The large-scale sector went into a steep moved the last period, the 18th–20th centuries, to the decline beginning in the early 18th century, and by the beginning of the book. This allowed me to describe mid-19th century it was dead. The small-scale village the basic iron-production technologies in a concrete ironworks continued production uninterrupted. An context, with clear contemporary written descrip- important part of the explanation for the decline of the tions and illustrations. I could at the same time dis- large-scale iron industry was competition with cuss the ways in which specific aspects of the imported foreign iron. Improvements in iron-produc- technology could interact with the economics of the tion technology in the Industrial Revolution, as well time and place. An example is the two-tiered iron as falling shipping costs, meant that British and industry in Guangdong and elsewhere, mentioned American iron was competitive in China from the above – a phenomenon conditioned by, first, the early 19th century. This is only part of the explana- extreme economies of scale that are possible in blast- tion, however, because the decline began long before furnace iron production, and second, the law of com- foreign competition became a major factor. The parative advantage. This two-tiered industrial explanation of the 18th-century decline is more likely structure appears in the sources in the 3rd century to be that foreign trade brought new opportunities for BCE (Wagner, 2008: 187–188), but it would have Chinese investors, especially in tea and ceramics pro- been awkward and unconvincing to explain it in that duction but also in many other fields. Investors’ com- context, with only a few uncertain sources. parative advantage changed: the large-scale iron Some readers were not happy with this arrange- industry gave a smaller return on investment and ment, and I must admit that Chapter 2 of the book could not compete for the capital necessary for contin- can be off-putting for some, a tough chunk to digest ued operation. right at the start. Perhaps I should have found a com- promise, with fewer details in this opening chapter, 2. Style and structure but by the time that the Publications Board of the Needham Research Institute began criticizing it, the In a book that emphasizes the historical implications book was nearly complete and there was no reason- of technological brass tacks, one must deal at length able possibility of changing the arrangement. with technical details and make them comprehensi- ble to non-specialist readers. This is a difficult task, and I doubt that it is even possible to explain these 3. Brass tacks matters in a manner accessible to all of the intended Of all the matters that it was necessary to take up in readers of SCC. I have, in SCC and elsewhere, the preparation of my SCC volume, I shall restrict

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myself here to some widely held wrong ideas about of cast iron. This can be replaced quickly and cheaply iron in China that I have had to correct. when damaged and thereafter recycled. From the Yuan period we have a text describing the use of a wrought-iron cap in the same way on a cast-iron 3.1. Cast-iron versus steel ploughshares ploughshare (Wang, 1956: 11; Wagner, 2008: 286). Joseph Needham wrote in 1956, The history of the cast-iron ploughshare in the West seems not to have been dealt with by serious It has often been said that the Chinese farmer was historians of technology. The sources I have found in ploughing with a cast-iron ploughshare long before the a cursory search are mostly laudatory stories of farmers of the West knew anything else but wood; but heroic inventors, often with details that look suspi- that they continued to plough with a cast-iron ciously like tall tales. Here are some bare brass tacks, ploughshare long after the farmers of the Far West had gleaned from those suspect sources: A cast-iron ploughshares of steel. ploughshare was on the market in New York in 1794, and was declared to be much superior to wrought This was in a short epitome of his famous lecture iron (Smith, 1974). A cast-iron plough was patented to the Newcomen Society for the History of in Britain by Robert Ransome in 1795 (Ransome, Engineering and Technology, ‘Iron and steel produc- 1843: 17–19; Mirzoeff, 1980), and in the USA by tion in ancient and medieval China’, on 9 May 1956. Jethro Wood in 1814 (Allen, 1848; Gilbert, 1882). He did not include that sentence when the full lecture John Deere produced some of the first steel plough- was published in 1964 (Needham, 1964), perhaps shares in about 1837, and within a few decades his because he had learned the brass tacks of cast-iron company (which still exists today) became a major ploughshares. White cast iron (the principal kind in supplier of agricultural equipment of all kinds premodern China) is highly abrasion-resistant and (Clark, 1937: 32–38). His fawning biographer therefore an excellent material for ploughshares (see, explains that the heavy clay soils of the American for example, Massari, 1938). Cast-iron ploughshares Midwest stuck to the cast iron and hindered the were in use in the West from the 18th century well plough’s progress through the earth, but did not stick into the 20th, and are presumably still used today: in to the smooth steel. The question of damage to cast 1976, ‘[m]ost shares used in Britain are made of iron by stones is not even mentioned. chilled cast iron, but cast alloy steel and forged steel are also used’ (Culpin, 1976: 51). It is true that this supposed example of Chinese 3.2. Robert Hartwell’s iron-production technological stagnation has often been expressed; I figures for the Song period have not found its source, but here is a version of the Working chronologically through Chinese history, story, as stated by a Danish author in 1975: writing the history of Chinese iron and steel one period at a time, I several times, starting on a new One of the oldest and most important uses of iron is for chapter, felt like a beginning graduate student again, ploughshares. In China it was possible to use brittle cast iron for this purpose. This was because China’s having to familiarize myself with the sources for the agricultural land has been cultivated for centuries, and period, the outstanding events and trends, and the therefore does not contain stones. In Europe a important issues confronting its historians. ploughshare of cast iron would be shattered by the When I began working on the Song period, my stones. (Thomsen, 1975: 12)2 most important guide was the works of the late Professor Robert Hartwell: his 1963 Chicago disser- Of course, China’s agricultural land contains tation and several articles on the iron industry in the stones, and various means have been used to deal ‘commercial revolution’ of the Northern Song period with them. Figure 1 shows a Han-period cast-iron (Hartwell, 1962, 1963, 1966, 1967). He not only con- ploughshare.3 The edge, the part most subject to fronted the broad issues in Song economic history, damage, is protected by a small V-shaped cap, also with lasting influence on the field,4 but also did some

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Figure 1. Mouldboard, ploughshare and V-shaped cap found at Wangxiangcun in Liquan County,a Shaanxi: (a) The three artefacts. The cap is rusted fast to the ploughshare. Ploughshare 23.3 × 28 × 8.6 cm, mouldboard 22 × 23 cm. On the underside of the mouldboard are two lugs for tying with cord and a peg that fits precisely into the hole in the ploughshare. (b–d). Three views of the artefacts when fitted together. a礼泉县王相村.

hard work on the detailed brass tacks of the primary as it was by a respected scholar. However, when, in sources. In the course of his dissertation work he research for SCC, I looked more closely at the back- went through the most important primary sources for ground for this figure, I became angry; I felt that I Song history page by page – thousands of pages – had been duped by a conman. There is, put bluntly, seeking out references to iron, steel, coal, and other no basis at all for Hartwell’s estimate. key subjects. I needed only to go through the foot- I gave a detailed argument for this conclusion in a notes in his dissertation to find a wealth of sources for separate article, which I referred to only briefly in the my own work. SCC volume (Wagner, 2001, 2008: 279–280). In that Having now acknowledged my immense debt to article I was concerned to avoid explicitly calling a Hartwell in matters both broad and detailed, I must recently deceased and highly respected scholar a liar. now go on to criticize him severely. A famous part of I concealed my anger so well, unfortunately, that his work is the estimate that iron production in 11th- some readers have taken the article to be praising century China was 125,000 English tons (115,000 rather than criticizing Robert Hartwell. Part of my metric tonnes) per year. In a couple of my early pub- effort to soften the criticism was writing that the esti- lications I quoted this estimate as a fact, established mate of 115,000 tonnes was ‘plausible’, and this has

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led several historians to accept the figure as the best There is thus no evidence at all for Hartwell’s estimate possible. In fact, I believe that a figure three production estimate. None. times higher or three times lower would be equally ‘plausible’. We simply have no basis for any quanti- 3.3. Economies of scale in iron blast tative estimate of iron production for the period. furnaces In Hartwell’s publications he refers to his unpub- lished dissertation for details of the calculation, but In many places in SCC, I invoke as an explanatory this has not been easily accessible, and very few factor the economies of scale that the blast furnace have read it. makes possible. A general rule in modern iron pro- Two official surveys of metal mining and smelt- duction is that, for maximum efficiency, a blast fur- ing, dated 1064–7 and 1078, give the ‘receipts’ or nace should be as large as the supply of its raw ‘quotas’ of iron from localities throughout the materials and labour, and the market for its product, Empire. The total receipts are about 3,400 tonnes in will reliably allow (Jones, 1933; Pratten and Dean, 1064–7 and 3,300 tonnes in 1078. Hartwell makes 1965; Sidney, 1920). No larger than that, for effi- two assumptions about these surveys. First, that they ciency also requires that the furnace should operate refer to different sectors of the iron industry, so that continuously for years at a time. they should be summed to obtain the annual total Figure 2 shows technical details of the operation receipts of iron by the government in the 11th cen- of a modern blast furnace. It can be seen that there is tury. Second, that these ‘receipts’ represent a ten-per- a ‘zone of relatively constant temperature’ near the cent in-kind tax on iron production. This gives 67,000 top of the shaft; this zone acts as a buffer, shielding tonnes of taxed iron production, to which he adds regions further down in the shaft from outside per- estimates for untaxed government ironworks, receipts turbation. This means that the furnace is extremely accidentally omitted from the surveys, and illegal stable in normal operation, and remains so even production. The result is a total annual production of when it is scaled up to an enormous size. The princi- 115,000 tonnes (Hartwell, 1962: 154–155, 1963: pal reasons why efficiency increases with size are, 178–195, 1966, 1967: 104–105). first, that a larger volume means less heat lost to the Hartwell’s only argument for the first assumption surroundings, and second, that a reduction zone with is that the two surveys show very different figures higher temperature and larger volume means faster for most localities and greater changes than would reduction. Both factors lead to more efficient use of normally be expected in the course of only 14 years. fuel. This ignores the fact that the period between the two With the technical explanation clear enough, and surveys was the period of the reforms of Wang the empirical observation that modern industry pre- Anshi (Wang Anshi bianfa),5 which influenced most fers large blast furnaces to small ones, it is surprising aspects of the economic life of the time. He cites no to find two well-known archaeometallurgists, sources indicating a recognized distinction between William Rostoker and Bennet Bronson (1990), two well-defined sectors of the iron industry in the claiming that the economies of scale in blast-furnace Song period. iron production are illusory (pp. 186–189). They cite The second assumption is based ultimately on some data for Indian and South-east Asian bloomery one 10th-century source, which states that in one iron smelting, which are irrelevant. They make much place (modern Shangrao,6 Jiangxi) there is an ‘iron of the fact that in Shanxi, in the 1920s, cast iron from mountain’ where, at some unspecified time in the the crucible smelting process sold for about the same past, common people were allowed to mine, with the price as imported blast-furnace cast iron. This is government receiving one-tenth. This is the only again not a comparison of blast furnaces, but more Song source that mentions a 10% tax on iron produc- striking still is the economic naiveté of the argument. tion. It concerns a single place, in the past, and says In Shanxi, ironmasters and workers lived in utter nothing about the general situation in the Empire in poverty and produced iron because they had no other the 11th century. means of living, and obviously they could not sell

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Figure 2. Diagram of a modern large-scale coal-fuelled iron blast furnace. The height is typically 20–30 m. Temperatures in °C are indicated for isotherms inside the furnace. The reactions that take place are indicated at the right; underlined elements are in solution in iron.

that iron at a higher price than that of imported iron Myles G Boylan. But what Boylan (1975) actually produced by well-fed investors and workers in said is this: ‘In summary, the data indicate that while Britain and the United States. The same argument large blast furnaces were more efficient than smaller applies to blast-furnace iron production in many furnaces, their edge in efficiency was reduced when other parts of China. agglomerates of high quality were used (for exam- Rostoker and Bronson state that ‘[m]anagers of ple, pellets) in place of standard domestic ore’ (p. American steel corporations in the twentieth century 176). Ore agglomeration is an innovation of the 20th have consistently preferred larger furnaces, but there century and has no relevance for Rostoker and is little good evidence that these produce significant Bronson’s argument. savings in costs’, citing as their only authority a sur- Thus, Rostoker and Bronson, in an otherwise very vey of 20th-century American blast furnaces by useful textbook of archaeometallurgy, have on this

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issue merely introduced confusion into an issue that Notes has been clear for centuries: larger blast furnaces are 1. Here Needham was reacting to a review of volume 2 overall much more cost-efficient than smaller ones. by Arthur F Wright (1957). He is not entirely fair in his summary of Wright’s critique. 2. A similar statement is made by Mathieu Arnoux 4. Joseph Needham’s intellectual (2014). heritage 3. Figure 1 is reproduced from Cultural Relics (1966: The work I have described here was possible because 19–26 + plates 3–4, plate 3); also reproduced in Science and Civilisation, vol. 5, part 11, p. 160. Joseph Needham showed the way. In his publica- Further examples can be seen in Wagner (1993: tions, he made clear the importance of Chinese sci- 232–235); Chinese translation by Li Yuniu (李玉牛) ence and technology to me and many of my (2018: 113–117). generation, and also to universities hiring staff and 4. For more on Hartwell’s work and its influences see foundations supporting research. especially Tim Wright (2007). A large part of his impact lay in his insistence on 5. 王安石变法 taking on the whole of a subject: SCC was and is 6. 上饶 intended to consider all fields of natural science through all of Chinese history, and each of the vol- References umes attempts to treat the whole of one of those Allen AR (1848) The cast iron plow. Scientific American fields. This was his implicit challenge to me and his 3(22): 171. other collaborators and an important part of his Arnoux M (2014) European steel vs. Chinese cast-iron: intellectual heritage: do the whole job; do not accept from technological change to social and political limitations. choices (fourth century BC to eighteenth century An important fixed point for me in the work was AD). History of Technology 32: 297–312. the Needham Research Institute. Its unconventional Basalla G (1988) The Evolution of Technology. Cambridge: library, together with the truly great Cambridge Cambridge University Press. Boylan MG (1975) Economic Effects of Scale Increases in University Library nearby, was of course essential, the Steel Industry: The Case of US Blast Furnaces. but of equal importance was the scholarly milieu of New York; London: Praeger. the place, with Joseph himself as long as he was in Clark NM (1937) John Deere: He Gave to the World good health, his enthusiastic staff and a constant the Steel Plow. Moline, Illinois: Desaulniers & stream of visitors from all parts of the world. I vis- Company. ited once or twice a year from 1979 on and worked Culpin C (1976) Farm Machinery. 9th edition. London: there for 4 years (1990–1991 and 1993–1996). The Lockwood. institute has always provided the physical frame- Gilbert F (1882) Jethro Wood, Inventor of the Modern work for discussions and debates that have shaped Plow. Chicago, IL: Rhodes & McClure. many scholars’ work, including my own. This is the Hartwell RM (1962) A revolution in the Chinese iron and bricks-and-mortar aspect of Joseph Needham’s intel- coal industries during the Northern Sung, 960–1126 A.D. Journal of Asian Studies 21(2): 153–162. lectual heritage. Hartwell RM (1963) Iron and early industrialism in eleventh-century China. PhD Thesis, University of Declaration of conflicting interests Chicago, Chicago, IL. The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest Hartwell RM (1966) Markets, technology, and the struc- with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication ture of enterprise in the development of the eleventh- of this article. century Chinese iron and steel industry. Journal of Economic History 26(1): 29–58. Hartwell RM (1967) A cycle of economic change in Funding imperial China: Coal and iron in northeast China, The author(s) received no financial support for the 750–1350. Journal of the Economic and Social research, authorship and/or publication of this article. History of the Orient 10(1): 102–159.

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Jones GT (1933) Increasing Return: A Study of the Relation Sidney LP (1920) Blast furnace practice. The Times between the Size and Efficiency of Industries with Engineering Supplement 546: 129, 548: 189. Special Reference to the History of Selected British Smith J (1974) On cast-iron plough-shares. Transactions and American Industries, 1850–1910. Cambridge: of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts, Cambridge University Press. and Manufactures 1(2): 168. Li CQ and He HN (1966) Tiehua and bitu of the Han Thomsen R (1975) Et meget mærkeligt metal: En beret- Dynasty discovered in Shaanxi Province [陕西省 ning fra jernets barndom. Varde: Varde Staalværk. 发现的汉代铁铧和鐴土]. Cultural Relics [文物] 1: Wagner DB (1993) Iron and Steel in Ancient China. 19–26. Leiden: Brill. Li Y (李玉牛) (2018) Iron and Steel in Ancient China Wagner DB (2001) The administration of the iron [中国古代钢铁技术史]. Chengdu: Sichuan People’s industry in eleventh-century China. Journal of the Publishing House. Economic and Social History of the Orient 44(2): Marx K (1936) The Poverty of Philosophy (Orig. Misère de 175–197. la philosophie: Réponse à la philosophie de la misère Wagner DB (2008) Science and Civilisation in China de M. Proudhon, 1847). London: Martin Lawrence. (Ferrous Metallurgy). vol. 5, part 11. Cambridge: Massari SC (1938) The properties and uses of chilled iron. Cambridge University Press. Proceedings of the American Society for Testing Wagner DB (2011) The traditional iron industry in Metals 38: 217–234. Guangdong. Available at: http://donwagner.dk/ Mirzoeff J (1980) Heritage: Self-sharpening shares. New MS-English/GuangdongEng.html (accessed 22 Scientist 85: 947. January 2020). Needham J (1956) Iron and steel production in ancient Wang Z (1956) Wang Zhen Nongshu. Beijing: Zhonghua and medieval China. Transactions of the Newcomen Book Company (in Chinese). Society 30: 141–144 (reprinted in Needham J, et al. Wright AF (1957) Science and Civilisation in China. (1970) Clerks and Craftsmen in China in the West: Volume II, History of scientific thought. By Joseph Lectures and Addresses on the History of Science Needham, with the research assistance of Wang Ling. and Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1956. pp. Press, p. 112). xxii, 696. $14.50.). The American Historical Review Needham J (1962) Science and Civilisation in China 62: 918–920. (Physics), vol. 4, part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge Wright T (2007) An economic cycle in imperial China? University Press. Revisiting Robert Hartwell on iron and coal. Journal Needham J (1964) The Development of Iron and Steel of the Economic and Social History of the Orient Technology in China. Cambridge: The Newcomen 50(4): 398–423. Society. Needham J and Huang HT (2000) Science and Civilisation in China (Fermentations and Food Science), vol. 6, Author biography part 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Donald B Wagner, formerly a lecturer in Chinese at the Pratten CF and Dean RM (1965) The Economies of Large- University of Copenhagen, Denmark, has written widely Scale Production in British Industry: An Introductory on the history of science and technology in China, espe- Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. cially mathematics and metallurgy. After his retirement, Ransome JA (1843) The Implements of Agriculture. he is associated with the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, London: Ridgway. University of Copenhagen, and the Department of Rostoker W and Bronson B (1990) Pre-Industrial Iron: Its Archaeology, Sichuan University. He is currently engaged Technology and Ethnology. Philadelphia, PA: Univ in developing a multimedia textbook on the archaeometal- Museum Pubns. lurgy of iron in China and the West.

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Article

Cultures of Science 2020, Vol. 3(1) 43–57 The East Asian History of Science © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions Library/Needham Research Institute DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/2096608320922324 10.1177/2096608320922324 as an intellectual hub in the late journals.sagepub.com/home/cul 1970s and 1980s

Gregory Blue University of Victoria, Canada

Abstract During its first decade and a half, the East Asian History of Science Library/Needham Research Institute served both as the centre of the Science and Civilisation in China project and as a meeting point for discussions involving a wide range of researchers. Some of these were working on the history of science, technology and medicine; some were members of Joseph Needham’s and Lu Gwei-Djen’s broader networks; and some came seeking the views, guidance or assistance of the institute’s founders on diverse topics. In the institute’s first 6 years in particular, a series of delegations from China visited as that country embarked on re-expanding academic relations abroad in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. This article recalls the institute’s ambiance during those years, key individuals who were involved and some of the kinds of interactions that took place there.

Keywords History, China, United Kingdom, East Asia, international relations, history of science, technology and medicine, social history of science, Joseph Needham, Cambridge University, Needham Research Institute

In its early years, the atmosphere at the East Asian never would have appeared and would certainly not History of Science Library (EAHSL) resonated with have been produced so consistently and at such a the wide-ranging interests and the extensive social high standard of scholarship. Nonetheless, Needham networks of Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-Djen, was always a man of multiple dimensions – a public respectively, the institution’s founding director and proponent of scientific rationalism, an Anglican lay deputy director. Those who knew them well might reader and process theologian, a lifelong Labour recall Needham sometimes plaintively declaring that Party socialist with a strong anti-imperialist bent, he was ‘just’ a historian of science, technology and and yet a devotee of traditional college protocols and medicine: There is little question that his steadfast- ness in pursuing those particular subjects gave a necessary grounding to his remarkable discipline and Corresponding author: 1 Gregory Blue, Department of History, University of Victoria, prolific output as an author. Without that focus 3800 Finnerty Rd., Clearihue Building, Room B245, Victoria, BC and discipline, the successive tomes of his Science V8W 3P4, Canada. and Civilisation in China (SCC)2 project probably Email: [email protected]

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prerogatives.3 Moreover, SCC itself embraced an vantage point that I here consider the functioning of ample array of subjects and was based on volumi- the institute then. That there were other things in the nous ranges of evidence. Accordingly, researchers air as well during the last decade and some of the from many different disciplines were steadily drawn Cold War and that various tensions and discontents to him and to the institution that he and Lu had emerged within the institute itself can go without say- founded. Some came to partake in the breadth of ing: Those matters are not my concern here. As for vision the SCC project embodied; others came to the three decades at the NRI following the period I access the rich documentary materials that the library worked there, others are far better placed to discuss possessed. In either case, Needham’s generosity in them. sharing his insights and materials, including texts he By the time Needham and Lu, who had long been was still working on, went hand in hand with his his chief collaborator, officially combined the Asia- devotion to promoting understanding of the com- related portions of their personal libraries to form the parative history of science and, most particularly, of EAHSL in 1976, Needham’s generosity was already the relevant but hitherto long-neglected East Asian well established from the welcomes he had accorded traditions. over three decades to researchers who had visited his Early in 1977, as a graduate student working in fellow’s rooms at Gonville & Caius College, where Belgium on political philosophy, I found myself try- the SCC project had grown from its emergence as a ing to puzzle through how academic Marxist inter- prospective publishing venture in the late 1940s. pretations of ancient and imperial Chinese history The project’s roots famously ran deeper still. In might relate to the weaponized versions promulgated 1938–1939, Needham and Lu first envisioned a during the late Cultural Revolution. Hoping to get modest volume on the history of Chinese science some enlightenment on the matter, I wrote to an ‘old that would complement the studies Needham and China-hand’ in Britain whom I understood to be in Walter Pagel had been promoting within Cambridge touch with what was going in the People’s Republic. University on the history of science in the West Unbeknownst to me, he was also a trustee of the East (Needham and Pagel, 1938). The scope of the China Asian History of Science Trust (EAHST) that project grew dramatically thereafter, as Needham Needham and Lu had established in the 1960s to systematically set about working out a theoretical support the SCC project. framework he considered suitable and gathering rel- My letter was passed along and, in due course, I evant materials. Those were tasks he pursued ‘on the was surprised one day to find a letter from Needham side’, throughout his wartime mission to China suggesting I visit him in Cambridge to consult on (1943–1946) as director of the Sino-British Scientific issues related to Marx’s notion of an ‘Asiatic mode of Cooperation Office (SBSCO), when he had the production’ and Needham’s concept of ‘bureaucratic opportunity to get to know many of the country’s feudalism’. To my good fortune, we hit it off, finding prominent researchers. These were Lu’s colleagues that we shared many common concerns. That fall, on in the Chinese scientific community before her 1937 his invitation, I joined the EAHSL team. Joseph departure for doctoral studies in Cambridge. Her Needham, his wife Dorothy and Lu Gwei-Djen guidance and advice to Needham in approaching kindly accepted my wife and myself immediately them proved invaluable for the success of the into their inner circle, which in turn welcomed us SBSCO mission. The pair’s newly conceived his- with warmth and generosity. Cambridge would torical project provided rich soil for personal and become our home, and the Needham Research intellectual connections forged in many an informal Institute (NRI) my danwei, for the next 13 years, until conversation with Chinese interlocutors. In 1946– the end of Needham’s directorship. I remember those 1948, when Lu was back in China, she too collected years, when China and the rest of the world were important materials and sent them to Cambridge for undergoing rapid transformations, as times of intel- the project. lectual discovery, excitement and, especially in the Needham continued deepening his thinking about NRI’s first decade, optimism: It is from that personal SCC during his stint as founding director of the

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Science Division of UNESCO in Paris (1946–1948). surprising that the institute quickly became some- As a lifelong Francophile, he happily made use of thing of a magnet for researchers. opportunities to cultivate relations not only with the Needham called the EAHSL a ‘working’ library, French scientific elite, but also with leading scholars and it functioned operationally as a research insti- interested in comparative and world history, and tute, one largely geared in its first two decades to with sinologists opening new vistas on the history of producing the SCC series. Its trustees’ initiative in Daoism and on Sino–Western contacts. naming it the Needham Research Institute a few Subsequently, soon after his return to Cambridge years later was thus an appropriate clarification, in late 1948, Needham and his then-most engaged celebrating the director’s accomplishments collaborator Wang Ling, a young historian of science (although Needham found the renaming rather who had been one of his wartime assistants in China, ‘blush-making’) while playing on his fame as a sketched the contours of what they then planned as a fund-raising move. seven-volume SCC series (Needham, 1954–present). Of the factors that worked to make the institute The originally envisioned volumes 4 through 7 an international hub of scholarship and reflection, would famously become subdivided over time into a several stand out in addition to the breadth of the series of physical volumes, in many cases weighty founders’ vision and personal connections. One was tomes in their own right, so that the series now, the striking expansion in research in the late 1970s although not quite finished, already comes to 25 dis- and the 1980s on the history of science, technology crete books. Nonetheless, the outline of the subjects and medicine in East Asia. That growth in the field Needham and Wang devised still largely applies, is evidenced by the fact that the first international comprised of 50 thematic sections covering what conference on the history of science, technology they saw as the entire gamut of sciences and tech- and medicine in China, held in Leuven, Belgium in nologies ranging from mathematics to medicine, 1982, involved fewer than two dozen participants, with contextualizing forays into relevant philosophi- whereas the sixth, organized by Christopher Cullen cal traditions and socio-economic conditions that at and for the NRI in 1990, brought together over varyingly affected scientific-technical development 200. Over the course of that upsurge of interest, the in different parts of the world in premodern times. NRI functioned as something of a disciplinary pil- With the first volume of the series having grimage site, drawing researchers wishing to pay appeared in 1954, by the time the EAHSL was for- their respects as well as use the library. mally constituted in 1976, eight physical volumes A related factor in the institute’s attractiveness in had already been published. By that time, the ency- those years was the nature and organization of the clopaedic scope of the project had made it renowned, book collection as a ‘working library’: not that it had and the series was celebrated internationally as a so many holdings that could not have been found monument of scholarship. Its academic value and elsewhere, even in the West, but rather that the rich pioneering significance underwrote Needham’s holdings it did have were (and are) rather uniquely induction into the British Academy in 1971 and his accessible. To a considerable degree, that accessibil- election as president of the Division of History of ity was due to the first librarian, Philippa Hawking, Science and Technology of the International Union who managed to turn Needham’s and Lu’s personal of the History and Philosophy of Science from 1972 collections into a usable collective tool, not least by to 1974. The fact that he had conceived the project as painstakingly cataloguing all published holdings. In a study of the history of Chinese science, technology the course of her labours, Hawking incorporated two and medicine undertaken in the comparative cross- key features of the ‘working library’ approach civilizational framework he and Lucien Febvre had Needham took pride in: namely, that the library conceived in the late 1940s in their first iteration of stacks were open (to bona fide researchers), and that UNESCO’s Scientific and Cultural History of items on a given subject were shelved together irre- Mankind further enhanced his new institute’s intel- spective of language, that is, without East Asian lan- lectual appeal. With such a profile, it was hardly guage materials being segregated on their own, as is

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most often the case elsewhere in the West. Given the first months, even before its formal inauguration, institute’s active specialist acquisition policy, and which would bring EAHST trustees and the univer- the fact that authors and publishers from around the sity’s top brass together at the beginning of 1977. world frequently provided copies of new publica- Characteristically for Needham, the first signa- tions relevant to the institute’s mandate, the EAHSL’s ture in the official guestbook is that of his wife stacks were a treasure trove for SCC collaborators Dorothy, the celebrated biochemist and historian of and other researchers alike. muscle biochemistry, whom he sometimes referred At the same time, one must recognize the impor- to as the only other person he was certain had read tance of the vigorous correspondence, with a diverse all the SCC volumes to date, since she proofread array of people, that Needham carried on from the them. Along with her name in the guestbook, one late 1940s and into his final decade as director, as can find those of Carol and Nathan Sivin, the latter another factor in building the institute’s aura as an then in mid-career at Massachusetts Institute of engaged centre of scholarship in the field to which Technology (MIT) and completing his contribution he devoted what he referred to as his ‘second to SCC on alchemical theory. As close friends and half-life’. associates of the Needhams and Lu, the Sivins vis- A further obvious attraction of the NRI was its ited more or less annually over the following dec- location – for Cambridge itself, with its density of ades. On this occasion, they were joined by Douglas specialist scholars with so many kinds of expertise King of Singapore. Frederick F Kao, editor of the and with its wealth of academic resources, was a American Journal of Chinese Medicine, also made huge draw. To cite a single instance among many, an appearance early on. Not long after, Lu Gwei- Needham’s friend, Abdur Rahman, whom Needham Djen’s close old friend Muriel Platt dropped by, the had known since Rahman was a young anti-colonial widow of Benjamin Platt, Lu’s director of nutritional scientist in mid-1940s India, and who eventually research at the Lester Institute of Medical Research served as Indira Gandhi’s science advisor under her in mid-1930s Shanghai. premiership, would regularly visit Cambridge both By the end of the year, a string of senior figures for historical and science-policy consultations with had visited: Derk Bodde, the eminent University of Needham and for cosmological discussions with Sir Pennsylvania intellectual historian of China, the Hermann Bondi, master of Churchill College Japanese historian of science and technology through most of the 1980s. Yoshida Tadashi of Tohoku University, the political At a more mundane level, many researchers visit- historian Charles Curwen from the School of ing the institute for more than a short stay found it Oriental and African Studies in London, Witold invaluable that Needham was regularly open to pro- Rodzinski, historian of China and former Polish viding a letter of introduction that would open the ambassador to Beijing, the Stanford historian of door to accessing the vast holdings of the main uni- Chinese art Michael Sullivan, and the theologian versity library. Aesthetically, of course, Cambridge James Burtchaell, then provost at the University of also features both beauty and the strong romantic Notre Dame. allure, for which it is renowned throughout East Asia At the same time, notably interspersed in with the as well as elsewhere. On top of that, politically, espe- names of such established figures are those of then- cially in the institute’s first years, a visit to the NRI young scholars with prominent careers ahead of was a way for delegations from China to express them. Among the first to visit were the archaeo- respect for Needham as a very ‘old friend’ of their astronomers Richard Stevenson, a long-time friend country, one who was incidentally the founding of the SCC project, and David Clark, then of the president of the Society for Anglo-Chinese Mullard Laboratory, the United Kingdom’s largest Understanding (established in 1965). space science research facility, as well as Nicholas One can glean a sense of the character of the early Isbister, the Freud biographer, who shared Needham’s EAHSL – inter-disciplinary, international and multi- interest in psychoanalysis and the history of psychol- generational – from the stream of visitors during its ogy. Also present were the now-distinguished

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historian of Chinese art, Craig Clunas, then a doctoral contributors based elsewhere who would periodi- candidate at Edinburgh, the young Peter Lee (Li cally visit. Both types contributed significantly to Lisheng), an industrial chemist with Coca Cola, who the institute’s ambience as it developed over the fol- would go on to play important roles in both the lowing years. United States and Hong Kong trusts, and the budding So too did the institute’s quarters, which shifted East Asia-inspired garden architect Ulrich Hausmann, to accommodate a larger number of researchers (in who a dozen years later would bring us chunks of the increasingly comfortable surroundings) while evolv- Berlin Wall as mementoes of its fall. ing towards a distinctively cross-cultural personality In the EAHSL’s first days, Francesca Bray like- in architectural terms. For its first 2 years, the wise signed in, one of the first two young members EAHSL was housed in a nondescript one-story pre- of the core team then forming up at the institute. Her fab structure, with an open-plan layout, located at volume on agriculture (Bray, 1984) became SCC’s the main site of the Cambridge University Press on first to be fully authored by someone other than Shaftesbury Road. There, the sole signs of any East Needham. Not long after, Dieter Kuhn, a young Asian presence were the exterior signage with the German sinologist specializing in textile history vis- library’s name and Chinese seal, plus a plaster stupa. ited. A year later, he too joined the core team; in When the press began preparing for its massive new time he would go on to contribute the SCC volume administrative edifice, the Edinburgh Building, on on spinning and reeling (Kuhn, 1988). Before the that same site 2 years later, the institute moved year’s end, Nick Menzies, later the author of SCC’s around the corner to a roomier three-story Victorian treatment of the history of Chinese forestry prac- building at 16 Brooklands Avenue that before the tices (Daniels and Menzies, 1996), had put in an 1960s had housed the Faculty of Oriental Studies. appearance. Finally, in 1986, the permanent Needham Research The strategy of recruiting a new contingent of Institute moved to Sylvester Road, at the southwest- collaborators followed from Needham’s realization ern corner of the Robinson College grounds in west that the SCC project, as it was unfolding in practice, Cambridge, where its richly appointed premises, was more than he and his original team from the red brick with Chinese features, have been descri 1950s – most prominently, Wang Ling, Lu Gwei- bed as an ‘East Anglian/East Asian’ composite Djen, Kenneth Robinson and Ho Peng Yoke (Ho stylistically. Ping-yū in Needham’s transcription) – could com- The decade of fundraising required for that evolu- plete on their own. From the outset, he had in princi- tion was itself an international affair involving the ple constructed the team as cross-cultural on the efforts of three distinct supporting trusts. The origi- ground that the kind of wide-ranging and in-depth nal EAHST in the United Kingdom was aided finan- comparative study he envisioned would be impossi- cially from 1979 by a counterpart in Hong Kong4 ble to execute without the knowledge and expertise that devoted itself with great success to raising the of people from different backgrounds. By the mid- bulk of the construction funds. From 1978 on, the 1970s, the experience of the series’ first volumes had British trust was supported as well by a correspond- shown the fecundity of this approach while also ing American body5 that channelled generous opera- amply demonstrating the extent and richness of the tional funds from the National Science Foundation, material to be analysed. monies that were intended to move the SCC project Moreover, since the 1960s, Chinese studies as a towards completion. Those funds were supple- field of research had been booming, and a new gen- mented in the 1980s by further substantial opera- eration armed with new levels of specialized training tional support provided to the British trust directly was emerging. Needham was effectively riding this by the Japanese National Institute for Research wave when he set about enlisting his contingent of Advancement. young collaborators who would contribute to the The consistently international character of the new institute’s character, whether as members of SCC project was brought home to me during my EASHL’s core group of research associates or as second visit to the EAHSL in the late summer of

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1977, when Needham literally walked me through In terms of research, however, Needham enjoyed the list of collaborators he had signed up to work on and was stimulated by the younger members he the series’ remaining volumes (‘literally’ in the brought into the institute. From the EAHSL’s 1976 sense that he explained the tasks to be done over the opening, Philippa Hawking and Francesca Bray course of a long, fascinating stroll through ‘the were both, each in their own ways, dynamic and backs’ of the colleges along the Cam). He expressed positive presences. Hawking was prominent not only his hope that I could help keep him in touch, through as librarian and gatekeeper, but also for her correspondence and otherwise, with the growing Japanological expertise and translations on the his- cohort of collaborators. Having encountered SCC’s tory of silk textiles. As the institute’s first full-time weighty tomes as a graduate student and recognized younger researcher, Bray played a pioneering role in it as a monument of scholarship, I had for some time opening avenues for the new cohort as she embarked implicitly assumed it to be a nearly finished prod- on her decade of contributions to the institute while uct, but Needham had disabused me of that notion establishing herself as a leading specialist in the his- and alerted me to its status as a work in progress tory of agriculture, agricultural technologies and when, during my first visit, he had presented me related policy matters and as a gender historian. For with hefty binders containing drafts by Ray Huang the EAHSL’s first year, the young linguist Robin and Derk Bodde for volume 7, sections 48 and 49, Brilliant was also present, constructing SCC’s stand- respectively.6 He was interested in theoretical feed- ard conversion table between pinyin and Needham’s back and in deepening the conversations the three of idiosyncratic version of Wade–Giles romanization. I them had held the previous summer. As we ambled joined the team in the fall of 1977, coming from my around the Trinity and Johns lawns on my second philosophy studies at Leuven to focus on Western visit, he detailed the institute’s function as the hub theories concerned with patterns of socio-economic in the complex international research network that change in diverse societies. Dieter Kuhn joined in was ‘SCC in process’. December that year, shortly after earning his doctor- At the centre of that network was the EAHSL ate at Cologne, to contribute to the SCC section on itself, with the core team as it shaped up in 1976– textiles. 1977. Administratively, the institute was headed by a Over the following years, the core team under- three-person management committee consisting of went various changes while remaining central to the Needham and Lu, plus Peter Burbidge, Cambridge SCC project. Dieter Kuhn remained absorbed in University Press’s production manager and the first working on his volume on spinning after taking an chairman of the EAHST. He was the person who had academic position in Heidelberg late in 1980. steered the SCC series through the press’s editorial Philippa Hawking left at about the same time and, and printing processes ever since volume 1. That over the following decade, was succeeded in turn as three-person committee oversaw the institute’s day- librarian by Michael Salt, Carmen Lee and Liang to-day affairs, handled employment matters and Lien-chu, the last of whom also pursued her research liaised with the respective trusts. In addition, through on the history of Chinese hospitals in collaboration the late 1970s, after the Cultural Revolution in with Lu Gwei-Djen. China, and once Needham was no longer persona In 1980, after a career in the colonial civil service non grata in the United States after the Vietnam War, and at the Education Division of UNESCO, Kenneth he and Lu travelled extensively through East Asia Robinson was re-enlisted onto the team to serve as and North America to share and promote the work of editor coordinating the burgeoning contributions to the institute, and raise funds for its permanent build- volume 7. Shortly afterward, Toshio Kusamitsu ing. Frankly, much as Needham loved to travel, such came to the team as a fresh post-doc with the pri- trips wore on them, especially as Dorothy Needham mary task of engaging with Japanese materials on was increasingly affected by Alzheimer’s disease textile history; he remained for several years work- from around 1983 onward. ing on issues related to volumes 5 and 7.

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Around 1983, Peter Burbidge brought Trevor Christian Daniels’ and Nicholas Menzies’ shared vol- Gardner, Cambridge University’s recently retired ume, in which they, respectively, treat agricultural treasurer, onto the EAHSL management committee industries and forestry, would be published in 1996. to help put the institute’s finances on a sounder Peter Golas’ volume on mining appeared in 2000, financial footing and better regularize employment Donald Wagner’s on ferrous metallurgy in 2008 and conditions for library and research staff. This was a Georges Métailié’s, SCC’s second volume devoted to prudent move, but, unfortunately, after Burbidge’s botany, in 2015. sudden death, it led to administrative rifts over the All these authors were recruited by Needham dur- NRI’s future, with negative effects on morale.7 ing his 1976–1991 term as NRI director. All but Bray In the mid-1980s, the historian of medicine Ma completed their contributions while working Boying from Shanghai’s First Medical University remotely, with editorial processes carried out in joined the team to collaborate with Lu and, to a Cambridge at the NRI, which functioned as the SCC lesser extent, Needham. The end of the 1980s saw a project’s hub, and then at the press. new vibrancy in the spirit of research emerging, as The progress on those volumes allowed Needham Geoffrey Lloyd of the Cambridge Classics Faculty and Lu to focus their own energies on subjects dear began his long comparative engagement with to their hearts. This they occasionally did on their Chinese science, encouraging such studies among own, as was the case both with their major study of his associates internationally, and as monies from acupuncture and moxibustion (Lu and Needham, American and European foundations began bringing 1980)10 – one they intended to eventually revise into in fresh young researchers on fellowships, a wave a volume of SCC – and with their critical review of that fortunately continued through the 1990s and scholarship on the history of material and cultural early 2000s, and indeed beyond.8 transmissions across the Pacific Ocean (Needham Needham knew from long experience that aca- and Lu, 1985). More often, they worked in collabo- demic collaborations are often unpredictable, and ration with established associates, as was the case that each is likely to have its own unique trajectory9: with two further SCC volumes, namely, that devoted Some prove incredibly enriching and productive for to botany (Needham et al., 1986a), on which they the partners; others can be delicate, tenuous, difficult worked with their old friend and associate Huang affairs. Hsing-tsung, one of Needham’s wartime assistants Certain senior individuals associated with the in China, and the volume devoted to gunpowder project, including some (certainly not all) on the technologies (Needham et al., 1987), on which they British trust, were sceptical of the abilities of young collaborated again with Ho Peng Yoke and Wang scholars in particular to contribute as collaborators. Ling. Needham co-authored a further volume That objection never seemed to phase Needham devoted to military technologies (Needham et al., much. After all, he knew well that Wang Ling had 1994) with Robin DS Yates of Dartmouth College written the bulk of the mathematics section for and, later, McGill University. SCC’s volume 3 as his doctoral dissertation, that Many of the collaborators Needham told me Kenneth Robinson had composed his section on about during our summer walk along the backs went physical acoustics as a mature student at Oxford, and on to produce outstanding studies in the SCC series. that Ho Peng Yoke had been recruited as a fresh Others whom he was enthusiastic about fell by the post-doctoral scholar. wayside: some because other obligations or health In any case, the strategy of enlisting new collabo- problems did not allow them to complete the work rators quickly showed itself to be a success. Bray’s the series required (e.g. Ursula Franklin (Toronto) on volume on agriculture (volume 6, part 2) appeared in non-ferrous metallurgy, James CY Watt (Boston) on 1984, Tsien Tsuen-hsuin’s on paper and printing (vol- ceramics, Hans Ågren (Gothenburg) on mental dis- ume 5, part 1) in 1985 and Kuhn’s on spinning and ease, Janusz Chmieliewski (Warsaw) on language reeling technologies in 1988 (volume 5, part 9). That and logic), others because their analysis did not success also proved to be strategically enduring. square sufficiently with the understanding Needham,

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often influenced by other members of the network, The same cannot be said of researchers’ interac- had of a subject (e.g. WB Fisher (Durham) on tions with other members of the institute and with China’s physical environment and its social signifi- visitors. Needham regularly encouraged and pro- cance, Derk Bodde (Philadelphia) on the signifi- moted consultation among his collaborators, and cance of the outlook of the literati elite), others still within the institute, he and Lu adopted from the because of differences over conditions of publication beginning the practice, which they had previously and/or NRI policies and practices. Nonetheless, peo- known at the Dunn Institute of Biochemistry,12 of ple Needham had roped into the project, even tempo- having everyone participate together in morning cof- rarily, in various cases made contributions that fee and afternoon tea breaks. That included the reverberated in the institute and, through it, had an directors, all staff and any visitors, whether long or impact on thinking within the SCC network, and short term, who were present at the appointed time. sometimes beyond it.11 These informal occasions, characteristically relaxed The reader might wonder what kinds of opera- and lively, featured open conversation on all manner tive relationships and types of communication of subjects and for a good decade constituted excel- were in effect among members of the NRI/SCC lent occasions for members of the institute’s broad network. Honestly, the relationships varied widely. networks to get to know one another. A point worth noting, though, is that some impor- While the EAHSL/NRI in its first years was an tant members of the network never did visit the institution geared primarily to producing volumes of institute or visited only perfunctorily. One notable the SCC series, it was also always this and more. As case was that of Hu Daojing in Shanghai, with such, it attracted a wide variety of users and visitors. whom Lu and Needham remained in touch via A full, descriptive account of the individuals correspondence and, after the Cultural Revolution, involved is impossible here, but a sketch of some via visits in Shanghai. Another was that of Tsien major categories of people gravitating to the NRI Tsuin-hsuen who, as chief librarian at the can give an impression of their diversity. University of Chicago, had ready access there to One may start by noting that, while they hailed all the sources he needed. geographically from many different countries, most Few NRI research associates and SCC collabora- of the visitors came from Europe (including the tors were ever in a position to observe much of the United Kingdom), Asia, North America and the relationships among the shifting memberships of the Middle East. Beyond this, they were of course dif- three trusts, although such relationships clearly did ferentiated in the first instance by whether or not substantially affect life at the institute and work on they were collaborating on the SCC project. They the SCC project. That is, a rather large gap did gen- also differed according to whether they were visiting erally exist, for whatever reason, between members for library research or for meeting with members of of the three trusts and the research staff, although it the team, or with other visiting scholars. Of course, was by no means wholly unbridgeable. Each of the such categories were hardly exclusive. In addition, three trusts featured striking personalities – to men- as often happens with academics, an SCC collaboration just a few, F Peter Lisowski, professor of medi- tor visiting the NRI on their own funding (as was cine at the University of Hong Kong, who had strong most often the case) might have devoted part of their anthropological interests, the financier Stephen time to work on SCC and part to other projects. Keynes, great grandson of Charles Darwin and Similarly, many SCC collaborators made short nephew to the famous economist, the Quaker geolo- trips simply to consult with Needham and Lu, or gist Brian Harland, who had spent World War II in other project colleagues, but on other occasions they Chengdu, and the pacifist Chicago banker Erwin would visit to carry out library research. Some visi- ‘Bud’ Salk, who once had served as a bodyguard for tors thus returned numerous times. Some were long- Paul Robeson. Fascinating as such personalities time associates of the project or the directors, and were, opportunities for researchers and staff to others were new collaborators. Naturally, those who engage with them remained distinctly limited. made research trips stayed for varying lengths of

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time. Some researchers settled in for relatively long the history of military technology, made periodic stays of 6 months or a year or more – for example, on visits through the 1980s. In addition, Nathan Sivin, a sabbatical leave and/or research fellowship. Others by then at the University of Pennsylvania, and came instead for medium-length stays of several Nakayama Shigeru, Thomas Kuhn’s one-time stu- weeks to a couple of months. The majority came for dent who instituted the history of science pro- short stays of between a day and a week. The length gramme at Tokyo University in the 1960s, regularly of stay(s), number of visits and duration of associa- came to the NRI from the mid-1970s and through tion could all play roles in determining visitors’ the 1980s, most often for several weeks during impact on the institute and their closeness to the core summers, conducting research on projects of their team. own. As established historians of Chinese science, Even brief visits could have a fascination. As a both brought fresh research questions, deeply con- seasoned international intellectual, Needham was in sidered views about issues dealt with in the SCC touch with many public figures who esteemed his series, and engagement with the most recent trends work and insights and who would seek him out and/ in the scholarly literature. Both were also commit- or gladly agree to participate in events he organized. ted to helping raise funds for the institute in their I vividly recall glancing up from the computer in the respective countries. As long-term intimates of the NRI catalogue room in 1985 to find him giving a SCC project – Sivin was an SCC collaborator13; tour to Romila Thapar, the eminent historian of Nakayama, an associate of Needham’s since the ancient and medieval India, and leading her over to mid-1950s14 – they could voice critical comments introduce us. The institute in the late 1970s and frankly in ways that benefitted the institute (e.g. on through the 1980s was a place where one could find library acquisitions strategies) and were stimulat- oneself having tea with Owen Lattimore, Franklin ing for younger collaborators to consider (e.g. on Roosevelt’s wartime representative to Chiang Kai- issues ranging from the relation between Daoism shek; Raysun Huang, vice-chancellor of the and traditional science to the pressure from funders University of Hong Kong; the American IT and for stepping up the timetable for publication of the cybernetics pioneer John Diebold; Fang Lizhi while remaining volumes of SCC). Also appreciated was he was at the University of Science and Technology the Sivins’ generosity in annually hosting a summer of China in Hefei; Joan Robinson, the left-Keynes- tea on Grantchester Meadows for NRI members ian professor of economics at Cambridge; the and their families. Egyptian philosopher Hassan Hanafi; the historian The NRI’s long-term visitors, that is, those who of pre-1919 Chinese anarchism and later of came on sabbaticals or fellowships, for example, the ancient east Mediterranean, Martin Bernal; the included a substantial number whose presence historian of traditional medicine Ma Kanwen; the affected the atmosphere positively. My impression comparative literature specialist Elinor Shaffer; was that this was the case for both Derk Bodde and the astrophysicists/cosmologists Carl Sagan and Ray Huang (Huang Renyu, or Huang Jen-Yü in Douglas NC Lin; or the Labour MEP and head of the Needham’s transcription). Before my time in the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, Ken Coates. institute, as mentioned above, they held a series of The presence, however occasional, of distinguished lively three-way conversations with Needham dur- figures of diverse interests and expertise was a nota- ing their stays in 1976. Those exchanges were ble facet of life at the NRI. important for solidifying their own thinking on Recurrent visitors who stayed for a week or aspects of the ‘Needham Problem’, and for spurring more naturally tended to have a greater impact. As Needham himself to feel the need to engage other young SCC collaborators, Donald Wagner and collaborators to help him refine his analysis of Georges Métailié were in the habit of coming at Chinese socio-economic history for volume 7.15 One least once a year, and were closely integrated with of the consequences of that impulse was the recruit- the core team. Eventually, both also arranged to ing of Timothy Brook, whose stay of 6 months in come for extended stays. Robin Yates, working on 1978 and another month in 1979 made him a

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familiar presence, and set the stage for Needham to New visitors from Western countries made an appoint him in 1987 as coordinating editor of vol- impact as well, as the institute approached and ume 7, section 48, on imperial China’s socio-eco- entered its second decade. In the mid-1980s, Peter nomic structure. (Unfortunately, the plan for that Golas, for one, brought perceptive observations and section, which was then expected to constitute a vol- lively conversation to the NRI during his sabbatical ume in its own right, broke down in the early 1990s.) year, spent working up portions of his SCC volume Another consequential visit was Wang Ling’s on the history of mining. In 1986, Catherine Jami nearly year-long stay starting in December 1977. visited the institute briefly after its move to the per- Returning to Cambridge unannounced for the first manent building and, over the following years, made time in 20 years, and armed with a sheaf of critical several extended visits there to work on the Jesuits comments on the draft Ho Peng Yoke had written of the Kangxi era. In this way, she inclined the NRI as SCC’s treatment of the history of gunpowder, towards research on the Chinese reception of mod- Wang persuaded Needham that the subject needed ern science, a subject that had previously not been considerably more work. Needham’s choice to covered much in the SCC series. invest time over the following years in that direc- Recurrent visitors who came for only short con- tion meant, however, that, to Lu Gwei-Djen’s sultations were so many that I must confine myself abiding disappointment, he was not able to work to several especially concerned with the history of with her to the extent she had hoped on the history science in their own parts of the world. Deserving of of medicine. particular mention are two key members of what Other long-term stays in 1976–1979 helped Dhruv Raina has called ‘Needham’s Indian strengthen the institute’s connections with East Asia. Network’, namely, Abdur Rahman and Debiprasad Hashimoto Keizo’s completion of his doctoral work Chattopadhyaya. Both were from the National on Chinese astronomy was important in this regard Institute for Science, Technology and Development due to his closeness with Needham, even though he in New Delhi, and both were of central importance did not usually work at the institute. Another endur- for the introduction of the history of science as a dis- ing connection for the Needham institute was forged cipline into South Asia.16 The first, already men- with Japanese academia through the year-long sab- tioned above, visited every couple of years or so, batical stay of Nakaoka Tetsuro of Osaka City often more for discussions with Needham on science University, who had earlier worked on the Japanese policy and the role of science in society than strictly translation of SCC’s astronomy section and was now on the history of science, despite his active research focusing on late Tokugawa and Meiji Japanese tech- and publication record in the latter area. It was he nological development and social–political changes. who, while discussing the South Asian experience, He and his family quickly endeared themselves to impressed on Needham the new dangers posed by the entire institute. religious fundamentalism for both science and the Similarly, in 1980, Li Wenlin of the Mathematics maintenance of social peace. Chattopadhyaya, on Department of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the other hand, visited perhaps only twice during the Beijing was fondly received as a pioneering visitor 1980s, but when he did come, he was intent on get- from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as he ting into the ‘brass tacks’ of approaches to the com- proceeded good-naturedly on his fruitful 2-year stay parative history of science. at the institute. This enabled him to become a par- If South Asian scholars faced particular chal- ticipant in the first international conference on the lenges in striving to explore the history of science history of Chinese science. Not long after, the histo- and technology in the Indian context, they were not rian of mathematics Lam Lay Yong of Singapore, an alone in connecting with the NRI as they sought to old friend of Needham’s, and her associate Ang explore the historical records of their own societies. Tien-se of Malaysia spent productive sabbatical Two other short-term visitors, Ahmad Yusuf al-Has- years connected with the institute, where they were san and Donald Hill, visited in the early 1980s to much appreciated. discuss and get advice on their innovative projects

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on the history of Islamic technology (Al-Hassan and the November 1977 visit by a study group on metal Hill, 1986). More significantly, in the 1970s and corrosion and protection to have been of great impor- 1980s, the institute also cultivated contacts with tance. But Needham and Lu – recognizing it as the scholars working on the history of science and tech- first official scientific delegation to the United nology in Korea, long a subject of interest to Kingdom since 1966 – regarded it as highly signifi- Needham, particularly with regard to astronomical cant. Dr Lu, who for reasons of health had long dis- traditions (see Needham et al., 1986b) and the his- ciplined herself to control her emotions, could not tory of printing. Visits of varying lengths by Song help being tense and excited. Happily, the visit came Sang-yong (Hallym University), Park Soong-rae off as a relaxed and successful event. (Han-kuk University), SongYoung-gon (Seoul In the 4 years after Hu Dingyi’s visit, the NRI National University) and Kim Ki-hyup all contrib- welcomed all manner of official delegations: a pho- uted to firming up that connection in a fast-growing tochemical delegation, a crystallography delegation, field. a laser physics delegation, a joint Academia Sinica/ In sketching the profile of the NRI as a hub, the Royal Society delegation, a delegation of book preceding paragraphs have focused on the diversity importers, another of publishers, another still of for- of individual scholars who visited. To get a fuller eign language specialists, a national medical sci- picture, however, one must also recognize that the ences delegation and so on. institute regularly received visits by delegations and For me, two of those delegations are most memo- working groups interested in subjects related to its rable. The first was a Chinese Academy of Social areas of research. Sciences delegation visit in May 1980, on which the Most prominent in this regard were delegations renowned archaeologist Xia Nai served as deputy from the PRC: In weighing the NRI’s place in the head. He complained sharply to Needham of having international republic of letters, an important point to cope with budget austerities under the Four to note is that 1976, the year in which the institute Modernizations. The second visit I have in mind was founded, also happened to be the final year of remains even more vividly in my memory, namely, the Cultural Revolution. China’s (re-)opening to the that of the Chinese Academy of Sciences delegation world beyond its borders, which had begun haltingly headed by Zhou Peiyuan, then president of Peking in 1973, now began to widen, again with initial hesi- University, a highly personable character who had tation but eventually quite dramatically. The fact that worked with Einstein between the world wars. Needham and Lu had long and varied experience of Poignancy was given to that September 1982 visit by China and Chinese ways, and that he, very publicly, the inclusion in the delegation of Cao Tianqin, and she, more quietly, were both well-known sup- another of Needham’s wartime assistants. After his porters of engagement and dialogue with China, distinguished doctoral work in biochemistry in seems to have made the NRI an appealing destina- Cambridge after the war, he and his wife, the tion for delegations venturing culturally and politi- renowned physicist Xie Xide, who had trained at cally into uncharted political waters. MIT, returned to China to take part in the socialist In August 1978 – that is, in the run-up to Deng construction. By early 1962, Cao was vice-president Xiaoping’s second official return to power17 – Hu of the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry, and Xie Dingyi, the cultural counsellor at the Chinese was professor of physics at Fudan University, but embassy in London, who was well known to Lu and both were ousted from their positions during the Needham, paid the institute an official visit. Between Cultural Revolution. It was the refusal of the Chinese then and November 1982, when Lu Jiaxi, as presi- authorities to let the Needhams visit them in 1972 dent of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, visited for that focused Joseph’s mind on the harm the Cultural the first time (he would return 5 years later near the Revolution was doing to Chinese science and to the end of his term), at least 20 delegations of experts country.18 Cao’s 1982 return to the town where he from the PRC visited the NRI. Ignoring the context had earned his doctorate was moving. That same of the previous 12 years, one might not have expected year, he co-published a festschrift in Shanghai (Li

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et al., 1982) celebrating Needham’s 80th birthday – major centre for the history of Chinese science and that is, honouring the man he had been persecuted technology in Germany’s industrial heartland. for having associated with. Still more memorable from my perspective is the Over the following years, as travel between China March 1987 visit to the NRI by the former Algerian and the West became normalized, the number of del- president Ahmed Ben Bella and his entourage. Ben egation visits to the NRI dropped off rather steeply, Bella, with his desire to get a better understanding of but between 1977 and 1983, the role of the NRI as an the relations between science and religion in the iconic site for intellectual contacts between China Arab–Islamic context, and with a conviction about the and the West was palpable. value of inter-civilizational dialogue, had been alerted In addition to such official delegations, the sig- to Needham’s work by his friends, Anouar Abdel- nificance of which may be said to have been gener- Malek and Ken Coates, the MEP. Within two years, ally ceremonial, the NRI also had working meetings Ben Bella raised funds for an inaugural workshop in with groups of experts of various sorts from time to celebration of opening of the NRI’s permanent build- time. Several of these are memorable to me. The ing on Sylvester Road. That event, which was held in first was a team led by the French historian Charles September 1989 at the NRI and Robinson College and Morazé, which came to consult over 3 days in 1981 was devoted to ‘The Dynamics of Oriental Societies’, on the preparation of a new UNESCO History of was designed to promote fresh comparative discus- Mankind. Curiously, Morazé’s team included Colin sion on issues to be treated in SCC, volume 7. Ronan and Christopher Cullen, both of whom would Finally, one last visit I cannot resist recalling is go on to have important roles at the NRI. Another that of a film team from the Japanese national broad- meeting that sticks in my mind was the international caster NHK in July 1989. Led by the film-director workshop hosted in April 1982 by the NRI and Igarashi Kyotei and centred on the historian Tsuneishi organized by the United Nations University’s Kei-ichi (Kanagawa University), the team was work- ‘Socio-Cultural Alternatives’ programme headed by ing on a documentary on the Japanese Imperial Anouar Abdel-Malek (Centre national de la Army’s Unit 731, which, during World War II, devel- recherche scientifique (CNRS), Paris), who was oped biological warfare techniques that Needham passionate about the need for inter-civilizational had documented at the time. Unscripted at tea-time, dialogue and had accordingly a decade earlier raised Needham spontaneously entertained the assembled awareness of Needham’s approach to cross-cultural company with a rousing a capella rendition of the understanding in the francophone world with a sub- opening verse and the chorus of L’Internationale. stantial profile in Le Monde diplomatique (Abdel- Let me cap this article with a simple conclusion: Malek, 1974). The 1982 workshop was an occasion By the time Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-Djen that drew on Needham’s allure to bring together stepped down in 1991 as the NRI’s directors, the such reputed figures of diverse ideological orienta- institute had functioned for a decade and a half as a tions as conservative University of Chicago histo- significant international centre promoting innova- rian Donald Lach, Indian social scientist Barun De tive scholarship, and as a site where researchers and (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta), analysts of varying orientations from many parts of ‘new cartographer’ Arno Peters (University of the world came together for comparative historical Bremen), Kenyan-American political scientist Ali reflection and dialogue. However much historical Mazrui (University of Michigan) and Cambridge researchers were beginning to feel a creative need to political theorist John Dunn. enrich the field by moving ‘beyond Joseph A third notable meeting, held on a much smaller Needham’,19 it seemed nonetheless entirely fitting scale over 2 days in September 1983, was with a that the NRI was chosen as the site for the September working-group from the Ruhr University in Bochum. 1990 announcement of the formation of the The group was headed by the China scholar Bodo International Society for the History of East Asian Wiethoff, who was in the process of developing a Science, Technology and Medicine.

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Declaration of conflicting interests (1996) China: A Macro History, Timothy Brook’s (1999) ‘Capitalism and the writing of modern history The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest in China’, and Immanuel Wallerstein’s (1999) ‘The with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication West, capitalism and the modern world-system’. of this article. Some of these works may have had a greater impact outside of the SCC series than they would have had Funding within it. The author(s) received no financial support for the research, 12. On the Dunn Institute, see Weatherall and Kamminga authorship and/or publication of this article. (1992: 34–62). 13. As noted above, he contributed to SCC, volume 5, Notes part 4, on alchemy (Needham et al., 1980), and later as editor, to volume 6, part 6, on medicine (Needham 1. Blue (1997) lists Needham’s historical, philosophi- and Lu, 2000). cal, religious and political publications. A list of his 14. Together, they organized and edited the festschrift scientific books and papers is found in Li et al. (1982: honouring Needham on his 70th birthday, see 703–711). Nakayama and Sivin (1973). 2. Following Needham Research Institute (NRI) prac- 15. See Sivin (2013) for an insightful discussion of the tice, I italicize the title of the series, but not the name significance of this question. of the project. 16. See e.g. Rahman (1987, 1999); Chattopadhyaya 3. See Blue (2002) for an overview of his life and career. (1986–1991); also Raina (2015). Given that other 4. Formally incorporated in 1981 as the East Asian writers share their names, readers may want to History of Science Foundation (Hong Kong) and know that this Rahman was born in 1923 and recently renamed as the Joseph Needham Foundation Chattopadhyaya in 1933. for Science & Civilisation Hong Kong. 17. At the historic Third Plenary Session of the 11th 5. The East Asian History of Science Foundation USA, Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, established under the joint leadership of the seasoned which aimed to draw a line beneath the Cultural US diplomat Phillips Talbot and Clifford Shillinglaw, Revolution. senior vice-president of the Coca-Cola Company, 18. For strategic reasons, he kept his powder dry. The who served as the foundation’s first chairman. After public expression of his assessment came in an three decades of vigorous fundraising, this body was extended article in Nature 6 years later; see Needham dissolved in 2008. (1978). 6. Respectively on socio-economic and intellectual fac- 19. A sense captured later in the decade by a special issue tors Needham considered as possibly inhibiting the of the History of Science Society’s journal Osiris; see emergence of specifically modern science. In his view, Low (1998). socio-economic structures were decisive in this regard. 7. Gardner’s (1998) account of the rift in his memoirs is insightful but not complete, overlooking, for exam- References ple, how differences in political backgrounds and ori- Abdel-Malek A (1974) Joseph Needham, encyclopédiste entations exacerbated the situation. des civilisations. Ouverture sur l’Orient et condam- 8. On Mellon Foundation grants in the early 2000s nation de l’occidento-centrisme. Le Monde diploma- in particular, see Needham Research Institute tique 245: 19. Fellowships (n.d.). Al-Hassan AY and Hill DR (1986) Islamic Technology: 9. One finds a striking case, possibly known person- An Illustrated History. Cambridge: Cambridge ally to Needham, in the partnership of the Cambridge University Press. mathematicians GH Hardy and JE Littlewood as pro- Blue G (1997) Joseph Needham – A publication history. filed in Wilson (2002). Chinese Science 14: 90–132. Available at: http:// 10. This work was unique among their joint publications www.nri.cam.ac.uk/JN_wartime_photos/Blue_bibli- in having Lu Gwei-Djen as lead author. ography.pdf 11. To take just a few examples: Ursula Franklin’s Blue G (2002) Joseph Needham. In: Harman P and Mitton (1999) The Real World of Technology, Derk Bodde’s S (eds) Cambridge Scientific Minds. Cambridge: (1991) Chinese Thought, Society, and Science: The Cambridge University Press, pp. 299–312. Intellectual and Social Background of Science and Bodde D (1991) Chinese Thought, Society, and Science: Technology in Pre-Modern China, Ray Huang’s The Intellectual and Social Background of Science

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and Technology in Pre-Modern China. Honolulu, HI: Nakayama S and Sivin N (eds) (1973) Chinese Science: University of Hawaii Press. Explorations of an Ancient Tradition (MIT East Bray F (1984) Science and Civilisation in China: Volume Asian Science Series). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 6, Biology and Biological Technology; Part 2, Needham J (1954–present) Science and Civilisation Agriculture. Cambridge: Cambridge University in China (7 Volumes in 25 Parts). Cambridge: Press. Cambridge University Press. Brook T (1999) Capitalism and the writing of modern his- Needham J (1978) Science reborn in China. Nature tory in China. In: Brook T and Blue G (eds) China and 274(5674): 832–839. Historical Capitalism: Genealogies of Sinological Needham J and Lu GD (1985) Trans-Pacific Echoes Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University and Resonances; Listening Once Again. Singapore: Press; Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, World Scientific. pp. 110–157. Needham J and Lu GD (2000) Science and Civilisation in Chattopadhyaya D (1986–1991) History of Science China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, and Technology in Ancient India. Volume 1, the Part 6, Medicine (ed Sivin N). Cambridge: Cambridge Beginnings; Volume 2, Formation of the Theoretical University Press. Fundamentals of Natural Science (Foreword by Needham J and Pagel W (eds) (1938) Background Joseph Needham). Kolkata: Firma KLM. to Modern Science; Ten Lectures at Cambridge Daniels C and Menzies N (1996) Science and Civilisation Arranged by the History of Science Committee, 1936. in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; New York: Technology, Part 3, Agroindustries and Forestry. Macmillan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Needham J, Ho PY, Lu GD, et al. (1987) Science and Franklin U (1999) The Real World of Technology (CBC Civilisation in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Massey Lectures). Toronto, ON: House of Anansi Chemical Technology, Part 7, Military Technology: Press. The Gunpowder Epic. Cambridge: Cambridge Gardner T (1998) My First Eighty Years. Lancaster: University Press. Carnegie Publishing. Needham J, Lu GD and Huang HT (1986a) Science Golas PJ (2000) Science and Civilisation in China: and Civilisation in China: Volume 6, Biology and Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part Biological Technology; Part 1, Botany. Cambridge: 13, Mining. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cambridge University Press. Huang R (1996) China: A Macro History. White Plains, Needham J, Lu GD and Sivin N (1980) Science and NY: M. E. Sharpe. Civilisation in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Kuhn D (1988) Science and Civilisation in China: Chemical Technology; Part 4, Spagyrical Discovery Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, and Invention: Apparatus and Theory. Cambridge: Part 9, Textile Technology: Spinning and Reeling. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Needham J, Lu GD, Combridge JH, et al. (1986b) The Hall Li GH, Zhang MW and Cao TQ (eds) (1982) Explorations of Heavenly Records: Korean Astronomical Instruments in the History of Science and Technology in China. and Clocks, 1380-1780 (Antiquarian Horological Society Shanghai: Shanghai Chinese Classics Publishing Monograph). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. House. Needham Research Institute Fellowships (n.d.). Available Low MF (ed.) (1998) Beyond Joseph Needham: Science, at: https://mellon.org/grants/grants-database/grants/ Technology, and Medicine in East and Southeast needham-research-institute/40600681/ Asia (Special Issue, Osiris Second Series, 13). Ithaca, Needham J, Yates RDS, Gawlikowski K, et al. (1994) NY: Cornell University. Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5, Lu GD and Needham J (1980) Celestial Lancets: A History Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 6, Military and Rationale of Acupuncture and Moxa. Cambridge: Technology: Missiles and Sieges. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cambridge University Press. Métailié G (2015) Science and Civilisation in China: Rahman A (1987) Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II and Indian Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Renaissance. New Delhi: Navrang. Part 4, Traditional Botany: An Ethnobotanical Rahman A (1999) History of Indian Science, Technology, Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University and Culture AD 1000-1800. New Delhi: Oxford Press. University Press.

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Raina D (2015) Needham’s Indian Network: The Search Cambridge: Wellcome Unit for the History of for a Home for the History of Science in India. New Medicine. Delhi: Yoda Press. Wilson RI (2002) Hardy and Littlewood. In: Harman Sivin N (2013) The Needham Question. Available at: P and Mitton S (eds) Cambridge Scientific https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/docu- Minds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ment/obo-9780199920082/obo-9780199920082- pp. 202–219. 0006.xml Tsien TH (1985) Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Author biography Part 1, Paper and Printing. Cambridge: Cambridge Gregory Blue is an emeritus professor in the History University Press. Department at the University of Victoria in British Wagner DB (2008) Science and Civilisation in China: Columbia, Canada, where he taught modern and contem- Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, porary world history, comparative history and historiogra- Part 11, Ferrous Metallurgy. Cambridge: Cambridge phy from 1990 to 2014. His post-secondary studies in phi- University Press. losophy and the history of social/political thought were Wallerstein I (1999) The West, capitalism and the mod- done in the United States, Belgium, and the United ern world-system. In: Brook T and Blue G (eds) Kingdom. From 1977 until 1990, he was a research associ- China and Historical Capitalism: Genealogies of ate on the Science and Civilisation in China project in Sinological Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge Cambridge, England. His primary field of research is the University Press; Paris: Maison des Sciences de history of Sino-Western relations and Western interpreta- l’Homme, pp. 10–56. tions of Chinese society and politics, but he has broad Weatherall M and Kamminga H (1992) Dynamic research interests in global and comparative history, intel- Science: Biochemistry in Cambridge, 1898-1949. lectual history, and international politics.

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Article

Cultures of Science 2020, Vol. 3(1) 58–61 How can we redefine Joseph © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions Needham’s sense of a world DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/2096608320919525 10.1177/2096608320919525 community for the 21st century? journals.sagepub.com/home/cul

Vivienne Lo University College London, UK

Abstract In the middle of World War II, my father, Kenneth Lo, accompanied Joseph Needham on a lecture tour to Colchester Co-operative Society dedicated to the support of China’s war effort and to boycotting Japanese goods. They were comrades-in-arms, soft-left socialists, inspired by the Spanish Civil War, George Orwell and WH Auden alike to take up the pen and the campaign circuit. This article is a reflection on the politics and aesthetics of research, on decentring the Eurocentric narrative of the history of science, but also on the role of poetry in the quest for a better world. Grounded in socialist, Christian and 20th-century scientific utopian belief, All under Heaven was to be One Community. Post Needham, but in the Needham spirit, I ask what shared vision drives our research?

Keywords Joseph Needham, Kenneth Lo, research ethics, poetry, history of science, cosmic libido

And for me, in the face of things difficult to No separation can break. understand As it is written in the Book of Rites You, the Explainer, the Antithesis THIEN HSIA TA THUNG (whether or not in the flesh) All under Heaven shall be One Community. Were always there, You, the outward and the tangible sign – From ‘A Poem for a Chinese Friend’ 1 Of the strength of all workers’ muscles under the by Joseph Needham, September 1946 hot sun It is really sad for me that I did not meet Joseph Intelligence of scholars attending to brush-strokes Needham in his younger years; he was very frail and Beauty of all Chinese women under the moon. wheelchair-bound by the time I came across him at You, the manifestation of what Lucretius invokes: QUAE QUONIAM RERUM NATURAM SOLA Corresponding author: GUBERNAS Vivienne Lo, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK. The assurance of a link Email: [email protected]

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the Needham Research Institute (NRI). I have a bor- Auden, another traveller in war-torn China, and his rowed memory of him though, through one of the reflections on love, politics and citizenship; Auden’s interminable stories my father used to tell me about epistolary poem, ‘New Year Letter’ (1940), written his own younger years – stories that I have grown to after his return from the Sino-Japanese War, had spo- appreciate only in later years. ken of the ‘free rejoicing energy’ – a phrase that cap- On 29 March 1942, my father addressed the tures the faith that revolution would transform Education Department of the Colchester Co-operative society through love (Auden, 1965: 79; Auden and Society in Chinese. He spoke in Chinese despite Isherwood, 1939). Also trained by Christians, in his being fluent in English, having just graduated from case in the missionary school at Fuzhou, but not Fitzwilliam College. The other speaker happened to Christian himself, my father shared that optimistic be Joseph Needham, whom he had known through spirit that the faith engendered and wrote for the Cambridge Chinese Student Association during Kingsley Martin’s Eastern Eye. the 1930s. They were comrades-in-arms, soft-left For Needham, carrying with him an experience of socialists, inspired by the Spanish Civil War, George the devastation of the civil war in China, All under Orwell and WH Auden alike to take up the pen and Heaven was to be one Community (tianxia datong)2 the campaign circuit. in the service of a better world.3 The Colchester event was a fund-raiser organised Needham’s better world drew on the meaning of a by the Save China Campaign Committee (1937– passage in Liji and its imagining of a community that 1949), which was dedicated to the support of China’s would be drawn together by social structures that war effort and to boycotting Japanese goods. The were perceived as different from and more humane documents of that meeting are kept in the public and benevolent than any others in the geographical archives in Shanghai, where a colleague of mine, region where the classical Chinese texts were pro- Zhou Xun, discovered them just before the Needham duced and disseminated. Workshop in July 2015. In 1942, Needham was just But Lu Gwei-djen and Needham’s vision for world a few months away from departing for China, carry- community in the mid-20th century was radically dif- ing his belief in the possibility of universal moral ferent – as remains so vividly illustrated in ‘A Poem and intellectual solidarity, and the germ of what for a Chinese Friend’, quoted above. The poem itself would grow into his magnum opus, Science and speaks of their conjoined project as a powerful aes- Civilisation in China, had already been planted. thetic and cross-cultural practice, of a philosophy of My father had been born between revolutions. As world science and art (my father also left behind a lot a young teenager, he had seen the first Northern of bad poetry), and is a very moving piece for what it Expedition march past his front door in Fuzhou in reveals about his motivation and his success: a glori- 1926, before it arrived the following spring in ous concoction of republicanism, socialism and Shanghai on that bitter day in April when all the left- Christianity, and a passion for classical learning and wing elements of the Kuomintang were first violently music mobilised in the pursuit of the science that so purged. He was trained by Edgar and Helen Snow at characterised his and Lu Gwei-djen’s lives. Yanjing University, now Peking University, and as The full poem coasts from the pipa and the cello the North China tennis champion (1936) had been to Hu Sihui’s apparent differential diagnosis of beri- invited to join his friends in the Chinese Olympic beri, to Peking opera and a Cantonese bishop. It team to go to Berlin. This was just before the Marco embraces images of Lu Gwei-djen’s research: Polo Bridge Incident when the National Revolutionary Army and the Japanese Army clashed outside Beijing Year after weary year by the student of plague (7–9 July 1937) initiating the second Sino-Japanese War and, in the view of some scholars, World War II. Dissecting endemic rats and fleas in a bamboo shed— His experiences had prepared him to share Needham’s anxieties and his hope for China. Iron and steel to the help of the million families . . . Together, they also shared an appreciation of WH (Needham, 1969: 161)

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It also had a particularly potent reading of a love, we, encourage research that is grounded in political which Needham found common to the Judaic, tantric philosophy, in campaigning, in an aesthetics that is and Chinese traditions, without possessiveness and appropriate to our time? jealousy. Long ago, Donna Harraway (1988) argued that Along with the reference to ideas grounded in the ‘politics and ethics ground [our struggles] over Liji, we are treated to an invocation to Venus, the knowledge projects in the exact, natural, social, and goddess of love, that is the opening lines of human sciences’ alike. How we frame the object of Lucretius’ De rerum natura (On the Nature of our study inevitably reflects who we are as a com- Things): ‘QUAE QUONIAM RERUM NATURAM munity. It is only rational then, like Lu and Needham, SOLA GUBERNAS’ (‘and since you alone govern to make those politics and ethics explicit and to the nature of things’). deliver them with passion and dedication. The NRI Prescient of the 1960s celebration of liberated shapes the community responsibility for all who love, for Needham as for Lucretius, the goddess of have the privilege to follow in their footsteps. The love brought cohesion, solidarity, aggregation and ethical dimensions of science research and its history reproduction and gave birth to the universe, joining, are not limited to the ethics of what scientists pro- in Needham’s lyricism, the love and potency of a duce and how they review that process – the respon- divine creator. The poem was written for Needham’s sibilities, for example, of developing superior own love in 1946 and recycled as an address (for military technology or genetic modification – Whitsunday) in Caius Chapel in 1976, which also although that is one key aspect. There are others. appears as a postscript to Jolan Chang’s (1977) The In the history of science, and medical history in Tao of Love and Sex, and it ultimately framed his my case, and increasingly as medical history becomes farewell to Lu Gwei-djen (1993) in 1991. His repeat- subsumed into Wellcome’s medical humanities funding references to Lucretius’ poem and to the Liji con- ing streams, historians have been forced to evaluate firm the importance to him of a fusion of humanist the impact of our work. On every application form philosophy and what he calls, on the final page of we are confronted with the ‘Outreach’ and ‘Public The Tao of Love and Sex, a ‘cosmic libido’, capable engagement’ boxes, asking how we will interact with of powering and structuring creation. and learn from the public and disseminate our find- And so this was his universal love that manifested ings – a challenge that I have come to love, respect simultaneously in a hope for mankind, in the poten- and value. It is no longer enough that we should plan tial for the aggregation of wisdom and in a belief in to share our research findings in closed academic the virtue of ‘the achievements of Chinese science communities, but they should translate into some and technology before the time when, like all other kind of meaningful practice. We have to consider the ethnic cultural rivers, they flowed into the sea of wider and ‘so what’ question in designing our histori- modern science’ (Needham, 1964). cal practice and to construct meaning beyond the Lu and Needham shared this compelling vision for confines of university departments. their work. It was so perfectly fitted to their time that Another aspect of Needham’s legacy is his suc- it drew to them a large network of people enthused not cess in projecting the values and work of the com- only by decentring the Eurocentric narrative of the munity and creating institutional identity. Today history of science but also by a quest for a better this could become a corporate branding exercise, world. Their historical project remains a model for but from another perspective it would be a critical other Asian histories of science. Grounded in social- exercise in self-determination and effective com- ist, Christian and 20th-century scientific utopian munication – a rallying cry. For University College belief, All under Heaven was to be One Community. London (UCL), my employers, that has meant the Though we now live in very different times, aca- Grand Challenges, which all staff are encouraged demically and politically, is there a moral legacy to respond to: improvements in global health, sus- here to preserve, or a new combination of ethics and tainable cities, intercultural interaction and human aesthetics waiting in the wings? Can we, or should well-being.

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For the history of science, there has been a greater Notes concentration on conceiving All under Heaven as 1. The full poem is reprinted in Within the Four Seas, One Community: the connections, the transcultural, London: Allen & Unwin, 1969, pp. 160–162. transnational networks which have linked and are 2. 天下大同. linking the world, but with more investment in the 3. This is a conflation of two terms found in the Liyun value of local translations and multivocal conversa- chapter of the Confucian Classic Liji (Book of Rites). tions than ever there was before. Needham had already embraced the concept by 1938, And what of the artistry, the poetry and the pas- as evidenced by an inscription by him on a plank sion? It remains as it was here at the NRI – in the of wood to be found at the home of his friend John atmosphere, in the library, in the garden, in the prac- Cornford in Ringstead, Norfolk. 4. The story of the frog in the well is from Zhuangzi tice of learning, in the cultivation of the modern waipian ‘qiushui’. scholar. More than ever, we should value and build on this aspect of the inheritance of Needham and his close associates: their marriage of ethics and aesthet- References ics in research. Now that the harsh lines of discipli- Auden WH (1965) Collected Longer Poems of WH Auden. narity no longer regulate and restrain the terms of New York: Random House. our academic engagement, the creative potential is Auden WH and Isherwood C (1939) Journey to a War. even greater. New York: Random House. I am ever impressed by this marriage of ethics Chang J (1977) The Tao of Love and Sex. New York: EP Dutton. and aesthetics and the power it has exerted to reori- Harraway D (1988) Situated knowledges: The science ent the history of science. Perhaps in the following question in feminism and the privilege of partial per- generation, we each can see only a small part of spective. Feminist Studies 14(3): 575–599. Needham’s sky, but we are moved and drawn Lu G (1993) A Commemoration. Cambridge: The Pentland together by what we have seen and remember. Press. Mapping the future also requires a vision, but it is Needham J (1964) Science and society in east and west. perhaps inevitable that that vision will be less grand Science and Society 28(4): 386. and less universal in its ambition. I am reminded of Needham J (1969) Within the Four Seas. London: Allen Zhuangzi’s ‘frog in the well’ and the joy that can be & Unwin. found in knowing your well and the limited vision that it affords.4 Best not venture too far, lest we get Author biography hit by the ‘cosmic libido’! If the destinations of 21st- Vivienne Lo is a senior lecturer and the convenor of the century science, politics and religion are less clear UCL China Centre for Health and Humanity. She has been than they were in Needham’s time, what is needed is teaching the History of Asian Medicine and Classical to determine a new and shared programme through Chinese Medicine at BSc and MA level in UCL since just the kind of collective reflection and cultivation 2002. Her core research concerns the social and cultural that we are engaged in today. origins of Chinese acupuncture, therapeutic exercise, and food and medicine. She translates and analyses manuscript Declaration of conflicting interests material from early and medieval China and publishes on the transmission of scientific knowledge along the so- The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest called Silk Roads. She has a long-term interest in visual with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication cultures of medicine and healthcare and has recently pub- of this article. lished with Chris Berry and Guo Liping Film and the Chinese Medical Humanities (London: Routledge, 2019). Funding Her current projects include a Handbook of Chinese The author(s) received no financial support for the Medicine (Routledge, 2020) and a History of Nutrition in research, authorship and/or publication of this article. China (Reaktion).

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Article

Cultures of Science 2020, Vol. 3(1) 62–74 Chinese organic materialism and © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions modern science studies: Rethinking DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/2096608320911316 10.1177/2096608320911316 Joseph Needham’s legacy journals.sagepub.com/home/cul

Arun Bala Independent Scholar, Singapore

Abstract Historian of science Joseph Needham argued in various papers and books that the philosophy of organic materialism that informed classical Chinese science not only nurtured Chinese discoveries in areas such as magnetic studies, but also obstructed the emergence of early modern mechanical science in China. Nevertheless, the emergence of field conceptions in late modern science led him to see that Chinese organic materialism could combine with mechanical conceptions to enrich late modern science. Although much attention has been paid to Needham’s historical and sociological views of Chinese science, there has been hardly any systematic focus on understanding his conception of the philosophy of Chinese science. This article explains why Chinese organic materialism not only nurtured Chinese science in the past, and hindered the emergence of modern science in China, but can also be part of a synthesis of late modern science transcending early Western science.

Keywords Joseph Needham, organic materialism, contextual knowledge, complementarity, experimental method

1. Joseph Needham and Chinese general; that is, outside the half-occluded universe of East Asian specialists and a handful of experts sensitive organic materialism to the decisive contributions of comparisons. For these In his preface to the second part of the last and sev- to be useful, there has to be enough in common between enth volume of the series Science and Civilisation in two domains to make comparisons and contrasts China, in which Joseph Needham was involved in relevant, and enough different to make such laying out his general conclusions and reflections juxtapositions reveal critically distinctive aspects of one or the other. (p. xxv) after five decades of monumental work, the eminent historian of Chinese science, Mark Elvin (2004), Over the more than two decades since Elvin wrote, bemoans the neglect of Needham in the mainstream the situation has changed considerably. The global history of science:

What is hard to come to terms with, almost half a Corresponding author: century after the appearance of the first volume in Arun Bala, Independent Scholar, 440 Tanjong Katong Road, 1954, is the limited assimilation of Needham’s work Singapore 437149. into the bloodstream of the history of science in Email: [email protected]

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turn in history, and particularly the history of science had made seminal contributions to modern sci- and technology, has increased the relevance of ence and technology? Did it hinder, be indiffer- Needham’s achievements for mainstream history. The ent to or facilitate those discoveries in ancient study of the role of the Eurasian circulation of ideas, China? religions, goods and people in shaping the rise of •• Second, why did organic materialist philoso- modern science and modernity in Europe is now a phy turn out to be an obstacle to the emer- vibrant cultural enterprise, and no one can deny that gence of modern science in China? Was the Needham played a crucial role in this turn, beginning obstacle merely linked with sociocultural fac- more than six decades ago. Much of this new work is tors and beliefs that came to be integrally the outcome of attempts to construct a global histori- associated with organic materialism, or did cal sociology of modern science and society by reori- this philosophy positively inhibit the turn to enting from Eurocentric to Eurasian perspectives modern mechanical science? (Bala, 2006; Cohen, 2011; Hobson, 2004; Huff, 2010; •• Third, do developments in late modern sci- Joseph, 2011; Mei and Rehren, 2009; O’Brien, 2013). ence make the organic materialist world view Nevertheless, even Elvin forgets to mention that relevant once again in a new synthesis of Needham did not only have a great deal to say about Chinese organic philosophy with the mechan- historical and sociocultural factors that could illumi- ical world view? How can such a synthesis nate his grand question about why modern science even be possible if the organic world view emerged in Europe rather than in China, but also had hindered the emergence of modern sci- wrote much about the intellectual and philosophical ence in the first place? belief systems relevant to answering that question. In particular, Needham saw Chinese science as This article attempts to address these questions inspired by a vision of nature – what he termed and consider their implications for the relevance of ‘organic materialism’ – that was sharply different classical Chinese natural philosophy to contempo- from the mechanical vision of early modern science. rary philosophy of science. Although he saw many of the achievements of Chinese science as playing themselves out within the 2. Organic materialism as framework of organic materialism, Needham also facilitating classical Chinese claimed that Chinese natural philosophy constituted an insuperable obstacle to the rise of modern science science in China. Needham considered that the natural philosophy of Paradoxically, Needham also saw early modern organic materialism promoted the growth of Chinese science as subsequently broadening its perspective discoveries during the period of its dominance, espe- to include field ideas, and with late modern science cially in the development of the seismograph, knowl- to integrate such ideas with mechanical atomic edge of magnetism and the understanding of tidal notions. It led him to argue that the Chinese organic phenomena. He wrote, world conception was becoming a part of late modern science, so that organic materialism and the [I]t can be shown in great detail that the philosophia mechanical philosophy could be seen as comple- perennis of China was an organic materialism. This can menting and completing each other. be illustrated from the pronouncements of philosophers Needham’s views raise three profound concerns and scientific thinkers of every epoch. The mechanical for contemporary history and philosophy of science view of the world simply did not develop in Chinese thought, and the organicist view in which every that have yet to be adequately addressed: phenomenon was connected with every other according to hierarchical order was universal among Chinese •• First, how did the philosophical orientation of thinkers. Nevertheless, this did not prevent the appearance organic materialism influence the many discov- of great scientific inventions such as the seismograph, to eries of Chinese science and technology that which we have already referred. In some respects this

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philosophy of Nature may even have helped. It was not see an intimate connection between science and so strange or surprising that the lodestone should point to technology, so that the two are perceived as evolving the pole if one was already convinced that there was an and developing together, as the correlative mode of organic pattern in the cosmos. If, as is truly the case, the thinking of early magical modes of thinking and Chinese were worrying about the magnetic declination practice, as well as that of medieval protoscientific before Europeans even knew of the polarity, that was thought, became displaced by causal thinking. This perhaps because they were untroubled by the idea that for action to occur it was necessary for one discrete object to leads us to suppose that the great advances made in have an impact upon another; in other words, they were technological discoveries in China imply that it was inclined a priori to field theories, and this predilection on the verge of modern science. It also prompts us to may well also account for the fact that they arrived so ask why China failed to achieve modern science, or early at a correct conception of the cause of sea tides. otherwise raises suspicions about Chinese priority in (Needham, 1969: 20–21) technological achievements (Graham, 1989: 315). Graham rejects both alternatives. He thinks we What is clear, however, is that even if Needham cannot repudiate Chinese priority in technological appealed to field conceptions of Chinese organic discoveries merely on the grounds that they did not materialism to explain discoveries in seismograph- produce modern science, but he also maintains that ics, magnetism and tidal phenomena, he did not the Chinese cannot be taken to have been on the show us that there is any connection between this verge of modern science simply because of their organic philosophy and the many remarkable technological achievements. He explains that it was mechanical discoveries made in China that he so possible for the Chinese to be scientifically regres- amply documented. Indeed, this dissociation is rein- sive even though they were technologically progres- forced by historian of science Shigeru Nakayama, sive because they deployed causal thinking as who considers that organic materialism could not rigorously as in the West when it came to practical, have served to promote modern science. He argues useful concerns that improved material welfare. But that, while Western thinkers see discrete phenomena this does not imply that there would be a natural pro- as linked by cause and effect relations grasped in gressive development of rationality that would lead terms of impacts in a well-defined framework of to the notion of controlled experiments to make dis- abstract space and time, the Chinese comprehended coveries about mathematical laws of nature to them in terms of resonances involving action at a explain phenomena. Causal thinking and the ration- distance. He considers it doubtful that such a concept ality it promoted could not lead the Chinese to the of ‘organism’ in Chinese thought could ever have led conceptions of experiment and mathematical laws so to modern science. Moreover, the organic concep- closely associated with Western science. This leads tions of nature that Needham saw as uniquely Graham to conclude that the Chinese engaged in two Chinese can, according to Nakayama, also be found different kinds of thinking when it came to practical in other premodern cultures (Nakayama and Sivin, matters and theoretical or philosophical discourse. In 1973: 39). the former case, where the pursuit of utility was the To explain the anomaly of Chinese mechanical dominant interest, they adopted causal thinking, but accomplishments and the apparently impoverished in the latter case, where intellectual concerns were Chinese philosophy of nature, sinologist AC Graham primary, they adopted a correlative cosmology and maintains that theoretical and practical concerns thinking (Graham, 1989: 317). were not brought to bear on each other in China as But such an account fails to provide an acceptable they were in Europe. That separation between the answer to the question he addresses. On the one two precluded the integration of Chinese technologi- hand, he asserts but does not explain why the Chinese cal discoveries within a broader theoretical vision. adopted a causal approach in their practical pursuits. Graham considers that our tendency to associate sci- On the other hand, Graham does not explain why the ence and technology together hinders us in recogniz- Chinese causal approach to practical matters, which ing this today. He attributes this to our propensity to allowed them to design, construct and implement a

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surprisingly huge number of sophisticated technolo- achievements – Graham thinks it was an obstacle gies over long historical periods, was not hampered circumvented by Chinese causal thinking in practi- by their correlative intellectual orientation. cal matters, and Cohen considers it to have facili- However, in contrast to Graham, historian Floris tated Chinese achievements for some time until it Cohen gives a positive role to the philosophy of reached its ‘magnificent dead end’ – neither explains organic materialism in classical China in promoting how it nurtured Chinese technological and scientific Chinese discoveries. But, unlike ancient Greek phi- achievements. losophy, it could not pave the way to modern sci- I suggest that correlative cosmology played a posi- ence. He explains this by noting that there were two tive role in Chinese technological discoveries. This different pathways of going beyond primitive becomes evident when we compare the notions of thought – one taken by the ancient Greeks and the cause in Aristotelian philosophy, which inspired other by the Chinese. At the time those choices were European science in the premodern era, and the Chinese made, neither path would have appeared clearly correlative conception of causes. I propose that the superior, and both were options well worth pursuing. Aristotelian tradition inhibits and organic materialism The natural philosophy adopted by the Chinese was nurtures a technological experimental approach that initially superior in making possible technological promotes innovation in mechanical engineering. discoveries. The water clock developed by Su Sung This can be appreciated when we consider in medieval China was superior to its mechanical Aristotle’s causal analysis of phenomena. Aristotle counterpart in Europe at the time. Indeed, in many sees all natural phenomena as shaped by four differ- respects, one would have judged the natural philoso- ent types of causes, which he terms efficient, final, phy of the Chinese superior to that of the Europeans material and formal. He also takes those four causes before the scientific revolution. Nevertheless, there to be ultimately grounded upon his fundamental con- was a crucial difference: the Greek tradition had cepts of matter and form used to analyse all pro- greater long-term possibilities than Chinese organic cesses of change. In his study, The Classical Mind: A materialism. The latter ran into what Cohen terms ‘a History of Western Philosophy, WT Jones deploys magnificent dead end’, whereas the Greek legacy the example of an acorn growing into an oak tree to opened the way to modern science after it was elucidate how Aristotle would provide his causal restored and forged into a new synthesis. He con- analysis of the process. For an oak tree that grew cludes that ‘China had no Scientific Revolution from a planted acorn, Aristotle would see the effi- because such an outcome was not contained in the cient cause as the person who planted the acorn; the developmental possibilities of an organic approach final cause would be the purpose for which the tree to nature in the “correlative” mode of the Chinese’ is being grown; the material cause would be the soil, (Cohen, 1994: 475). water and sunlight needed to nurture its growth; and Cohen wrongly assumes that only the Greek and the formal cause is the form of the tree that exists not the Chinese legacy possessed developmental potentially in the acorn. possibilities that could lead to modern science. That Jones emphasizes that the Aristotelian view would appear to be the case only if modern science requires us to see the acorn as carrying the potential were solely rooted in the Greek precedent. Following to be an oak tree and the tree as the actualization of Needham, we now recognize that modern science that potential. The oak is the realization of the poten- also had crucial contributions from Chinese science. tial in the acorn, and the environment in which it This suggests that elements of modern science came grows merely provides the medium that nurtures that from both the Chinese and the Greek traditions even process. For Aristotle, the grown oak tree is the out- though neither had the resources to develop into come of something essential contained in the acorn, modern science by itself. That required contributions although in a way not yet actualized (Jones, 1969: from both traditions. 223–225). Despite their different conceptions of organic This Aristotelian conception of causality contrasts materialism in promoting Chinese technological sharply with the Chinese correlative conception. For

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the latter, the oak became what it is not only by virtue are seen as arising from the relationships between what is innate in the acorn, but also by virtue of the things in nature (Needham, 1956: 518–583). environment in which the tree grew. It is the relations Such an understanding of a thing, not in terms of with other things in its environment that makes the an essence within it but in terms of its relations to oak what it is. The acorn is only one factor among other things, would encourage a tinkering orienta- many others that have to be included. The Chinese tion to a system as a whole, to see how changes view explains the oak tree correlatively in terms of occur in the behaviour of one part when we alter the environmental context in which it matured, but other parts within the system. This is the trial-and- Aristotelians account for it by appeal to essential error process that we find in the scientific experi- properties within the acorn. Although they are both mental method, which involves altering the context giving causal explanations of the oak tree, their of an object in order to discover how its behaviour is accounts of its causes are quite different. Aristotle thereby affected. It would be far more difficult to refers to necessary causes within the acorn but treats adopt such a tinkering experimental approach if we the environment as only a facilitating factor, whereas assumed that the behaviour of a thing is influenced the Chinese emphasize correlated causes in the con- by virtue of an essence within it. text outside and treat the acorn as a facilitating factor Chinese organic materialism did not only inspire (Benesch, 1993; Lloyd, 2004; Lloyd and Sivin, 2003; technological discoveries. It came to shape Chinese Shankman and Durrant, 2002). astronomical ideas that Needham considered to have The correlative causal approach associated with influenced modern astronomy in 17th-century organic materialism is much more likely to nurture Europe. Many ideas associated with the heliocentric mechanical innovation and creativity than the revolution in astronomical theory had been antici- Aristotelian causal essentialist approach. It encour- pated by the Chinese centuries earlier. In order to aged the Chinese to take the path of understanding appreciate this, we have to recognize that an impor- something by examining how it harmonizes and tant astronomical model accepted by the Chinese at integrates with other parts of the system in which it the time of the scientific revolution was the Xuan Ye, is embedded. This is because its behaviour is or infinite empty space, theory (Bala, 2006: 131– explained in terms of how it fits into the larger sys- 144). Although there was also concern about the tem to produce harmony in the whole. This does not movements of the Sun and the Moon and predictions invoke some essence of a thing, or essential causes of their eclipses, the theory centred on the study of within it, but how it correlates with other things. the stars. According to the theory, all heavenly bod- Even if we acknowledge that there were many ies were generated by the condensation of an ethe- microcosm–macrocosm analogies in Greek thought, real substance, qi, which floated in an infinite empty they were framed within the Aristotelian concept of space. The heavenly bodies themselves rotated causal essentialism rather than a relational view of around their orbits in an anticlockwise direction causes, which dominated Chinese thought. around the Pole Star, driven by the floating, rushing Needham saw this holistic orientation in the neo- qi. Needham maintained that this theory had cur- Confucian philosophy of Zhu Xi (1130–1200), who rency among Chinese astronomers at the time Jesuits viewed nature as regulated by li, which is translata- arrived in China. ble as ‘principles of organization’. Needham (1956) Jesuit astronomer and missionary Matteo Ricci argued that li is close, but not identical, to natural referred to this theory in 1595 in a letter to his col- law in the modern sense (p. 484) because it includes leagues in Europe, in which he contrasted the a notion in which parts of a system are treated as fit- European and Chinese astronomical traditions. He ting into the whole, showing neo-Confucianism to particularly drew attention to some of the ‘absurdi- be ‘a scheme of thought striving to be a philosophy ties’, as he saw them, that Chinese astronomers of organism’ (pp. 558, 567). This conception of law believed. He noted that the Chinese believed in only as li accords with Chinese organic materialist phi- one sky, unlike European astronomers, who knew losophy of nature, in which the regularities of nature that there were 10 skies because the planets were

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bound to separate crystalline spheres. Moreover, the 3. Organic materialism as Chinese thought that the stars moved in an empty obstructing the emergence of void, unlike Europeans, who considered a void to be modern science impossible, and stars to be attached to a crystalline firmament.1 Needham was also concerned with explaining how What is remarkable is that the Chinese ideas seen modern science differed from medieval science, as absurd by Ricci became part of the radical revisions including Chinese science, when he wrote, of thought following the scientific revolution. Working with Chinese astronomers in their [I]t is essential to define the differences between Astronomical Bureau, Ricci must have also learned ancient and medieval science on the one hand, and how his Chinese counterparts made meticulous modern science on the other. I make an important records of the passages of comets, the sudden mani- distinction between the two. When we say that modern science developed only in Western Europe at the time festations of supernovae or exploding stars, and the of Galileo in the late Renaissance, we mean surely that advent of sunspots. Even when European astronomers there and then alone there developed the fundamental of the time noticed those anomalous events, the events bases of the structure of the natural sciences as we have were dismissed as illusions or earthly exhalations out them today, namely the application of mathematical of regard for the Aristotelian view of an unchanging hypothesis to Nature, the full understanding and use of and immutable heaven beyond the lunar sphere. It is the experimental method, the distinction between surely striking that Ricci – who was well trained and primary and secondary qualities, the geometrisation of educated in the European astronomical tradition at the space, and the acceptance of the mechanical model of time and inducted into the highest Chinese astronomi- reality . . . Until it had been universalised by its fusion cal circles for that reason – should list as absurdities with mathematics, natural science could not be the Chinese beliefs that soon became part of modern common property of all mankind. The sciences of the medieval world were tied closely to the ethnic astronomy (Ronan, 1981 (1978): 213). Indeed, this environments in which they had arisen. (Needham, gives grounds for suspecting that Chinese ideas of a 1969: 14–15) changing heaven of exploding stars, comets and sunspots, and the infinity of space, influenced European That passage is interesting from a philosophical 2 astronomy at the time of the scientific revolution. point of view. It suggests that Needham believed that Moreover, one can further suspect that Chinese there is a crucial difference between the classical organic materialism influenced the discoveries in organic materialist natural philosophy of premodern Chinese astronomy that later became a part of mod- China and the mechanical philosophy of modern sci- ern astronomy. If heavenly phenomena correlate ence. It also invokes the question of why organic with events on Earth in the Chinese organic view, materialism, which nurtured science in its early then there is every reason to suspect that changes on stages within China, did not have the potential to Earth would correspond with those in the heavens, make the passage to modern science directly. In par- an example being the tides, and this would make ticular, it raises the issue of why the modern experi- Chinese astronomers receptive to recognizing com- mental method Needham refers to, which was ets, sunspots and meteors as well as supernovae in systematically formulated by Francis Bacon, and the the heavens as portending changes on Earth. application of mathematical hypotheses did not arise Thus, we cannot explain the scientific revolution in China. To address this, we have to look more in Europe by ignoring the impact of Chinese tech- closely at Bacon’s influence on modern science. nologies and astronomy, both of which were shaped Many great scientists acknowledged Bacon as the by Chinese organic materialist philosophy. We have founder of the scientific method, even though he was to conclude that Chinese organic materialism con- neither a great scientist nor a great mathematician. tributed to the scientific revolution through the dis- The Royal Society of London saw in him its founding coveries it facilitated even if it could not have led to inspiration, and Isaac Newton claimed inspiration modern science on its own. from the Baconian method. Even in Enlightenment

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France, the philosophes treated him as the pioneer of when, and only when, natural history (which is its basis the inductive–experimental method. The celebrated and foundation) shall have been better organized; but scientist John Herschel, in his study A Preliminary until that is done, hardly any. (Bacon, 1994: 107–108) Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy in 1851, gave him the highest accolade. Herschel wrote Thus, Bacon’s experimental method recom- that, although the fallacies of Aristotelian philosophy mends that we study how things behave not in their came to be overthrown by appeal to the facts of natural contexts, but in the context of controlled nature by Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, it was situations that we artificially engineer. He argued Bacon who showed the flaws in Aristotelian philo- that the study of plants and animals – what he called sophical methodology by appealing to broad and natural history – must adopt the same experimental general principles and rectifying its drawbacks by method that had shown itself to be remarkably suc- proposing a better approach to understanding nature. cessful in the mechanical arts. In effect, his method For that reason, Herschel (1851) considered that promotes an approach to studying nature in which Bacon would be acknowledged in future ages as a contexts devised by the experimenter displace nat- great reformer of philosophy, despite making little ural contexts. contribution to the discovery of what he called ‘phys- What was new and significant about Bacon’s ical truths’ (pp. 113–114). experimental method was that it leads us to identify To get a better appreciation of Bacon’s (1994) the universal laws that constrain nature in all the influence, let us begin with his famous dictum: ‘We sundry and diverse conditions that scientists can can only command Nature by obeying her’ (p. 43). It imaginatively devise. It permits us to discover seems paradoxical when we take it at face value. It nature’s laws by adamantly violating the natural con- appears to suggest the impossible: that we should texts wherein those laws normally operate. Bacon command and obey nature at one and the same time. maintained that we can discover those laws only by But what Bacon was doing was referring to two dif- the vexations of art – that is, by creating new experi- ferent contexts in the way we relate to nature. His mental contexts that do not exist in nature to wrest method of controlled experiment helps us to under- those secrets from nature. stand what they are. To practise his method requires Bacon’s apparently paradoxical dictum that us to adopt techniques to compel nature to reveal nature must be obeyed to be commanded now those laws that regulate natural phenomena. That becomes much clearer. He was proposing that we cannot be achieved by merely observing phenomena can only have greater control of nature by conform- as they occur in their natural contexts – it requires us ing to the laws of nature, which we cannot violate. to create new contexts, forged by our own artifice, Moreover, although we cannot alter those laws, we that are not found in nature: can use our knowledge of them to have greater command over natural contexts. Those contexts can be A natural history compiled for its own sake is quite freely altered by us, as we do in the experimental unlike one collected in an organized way with the aim method, so as to bring nature into our service. In of informing the intellect and building a philosophy. short, what can be made subject to our command are And these two [kinds of] histories, different as they are the contexts in which natural laws operate; what we in other matters, differ especially in this, that the former must submit to are the natural laws in themselves. contains only the variety of natural species and no But it is precisely the violation of natural contexts experiments of the mechanical arts. And just as in that Chinese organic materialism precludes. It pro- ordinary life the true personality of a person and his hidden thoughts and motives show themselves more motes a science that seeks to operate within natural clearly when he is under stress than at other times, so contexts even if they are tinkered with in order to things in Nature that are hidden reveal themselves make improvements in the functioning of nature. more readily under the vexations of art than when they The debate between Taoist and Confucian thinkers follow their own course. There will therefore be in early China was not about whether one can violate grounds for optimism regarding natural philosophy natural contexts but the extent to which one should

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allow natural processes to develop spontaneously or accurate description and practical orientation that cultivate them. Indeed, this original debate concern- emerged sui generis in late Renaissance Europe ing our relations with nature became transformed, (Cohen, 2015: 102–144).3 with the consolidation of the cultivation of nature Cohen traces this third mode of nature-knowl- under the agricultural order, into one centred not on edge to an origin in the practical crafts evident in whether nature should be cultivated, but on whether artist–artisans such as Leonardo da Vinci. He main- human nature should be cultivated or allowed to tains that it was this mode of nature-knowledge that develop spontaneously. Both the Taoist and Francis Bacon transformed into fact-finding experi- Confucian perspectives were inspired by an organic mentalism. This is questionable. The mechanical materialist vision of the universe that would have discoveries that impressed Bacon did not draw their precluded the Baconian method of violating natural inspiration simply from Leonardo. They were contexts to discover natural laws (Bala, 2017: 183– Chinese discoveries, the origins of which were 200). For this reason, Chinese organic materialism unknown to Bacon. In a famous and oft-quoted pas- would have proved an obstacle to the emergence of sage, Bacon wrote, modern science in China. There has recently emerged a new approach to It is well to observe the force and virtue and consequences understanding the scientific revolution as more than of discoveries. These are to be seen nowhere more a transformation in astronomical theory and technol- conspicuously than in those three which were unknown ogy. It is emphasized that the expansion of knowl- to the ancients, and of which the origin, though recent, is edge included many disciplines, from medicine and obscure and inglorious; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the magnet. For these three have changed the whole biology to geography and chemistry. Those changes face and state of things throughout the world, the first in involved not just technological or theoretical trans- literature, the second in warfare, the third in navigation; formations but also a radical shift in the way we whence have followed innumerable changes; insomuch approach the production of natural knowledge. A that no empire, no sect, no star, seems to have exerted strong case along such lines has been made recently greater power and influence in human affairs than these by historian Floris Cohen (2011) in his study How mechanical discoveries. (As cited in Needham, 1954: 19) Modern Science Came into the World: Four Civilizations, One 17th century Breakthrough. Hence, in trying to explain the rise of fact-finding Cohen accounts for the rise of modern science experimentalism in Europe with Bacon, we cannot through the emergence and fusion of three distinct simply take into account Leonardo da Vinci and approaches to natural phenomena that he labels ignore the crucial impact of Chinese technologies on ‘modes of nature-knowledge’: mathematical real- medieval Europe. ism, kinetic corpuscularianism, and fact-finding But it is precisely the violation of natural contexts experimentalism. Cohen claims that the first two of recommended by Bacon to discover the laws of the three modes – mathematical realism and kinetic nature that is precluded by Chinese organic material- corpuscularianism – are transformations of two dif- ism. That philosophy recommends the method of ferent traditions that originated in ancient Greek sci- observing nature in its natural contexts, even if it ence. Kinetic corpuscularianism emerged through a allows tinkering with those contexts to discover the radical transformation of the ancient atomism of changes and improvements that such tinkering makes Epicurus that was popularized in Athens. Cohen sees possible. It was this approach that led to the gradual mathematical realism as a transformation of the improvements in technology that Chinese science abstract mathematical orientation to disciplines such made possible, the impacts of which so impressed as optics, astronomy, statics and hydrostatics mainly Bacon. It was also organic materialism that led the associated with Greek science in Alexandria. He Chinese to envision a changing universe in an infinite takes the third tradition of fact-finding experimental- empty space – an idea that influenced the rise of ism to have grown out of another transformation of a modern astronomy in Europe, although it also pre- distinctive orientation to nature emphasizing both cluded the mechanical conception of a clockwork

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universe so crucial to the Newtonian system. This modern science as a synthesis of the Chinese tradition explains why Needham rightly saw organic material- of organism and early modern Western mechanism. ism as both nurturing ideas and technologies that This makes modern science, he thought, neither contributed to modern science and at the same time Eastern nor Western. Indeed, Needham held that early also precluding the mechanical worldview and exper- mechanistic science, which originated in Europe, imental method. could not be deemed modern science, but only Given the impact of Chinese technologies on matured into the latter after drawing on contributions Bacon, despite his ignorance of their origins, it is from Chinese science (Nakayama and Sivin, 1973: highly likely that his radical experimental method 39–40). involves a systematization of the tinkering experi- Needham’s views on the relationship of Chinese mental method that nurtured those Chinese mechani- philosophy to science exhibit a paradoxical stand cal discoveries subsequently transmitted to Europe. that has not gone unnoticed. He seems to have The major innovation Bacon instituted was to take assumed that Chinese philosophy was congenial to the tinkering orientation further by producing novel the growth of premodern Chinese science, hostile to contexts not found in nature to enable the discern- the emergence of early modern science, but hospita- ment of the laws of nature that controlled all experi- ble once again to late modern statistical science. mental contexts. Thus, it was the stimulus of Chinese Strangely, even Needham himself recognized the technology, and its tinkering experimentalism to irony of his position when he wrote, make mechanical innovations, which guided Bacon to his ‘discovery of how to discover’. The problem is whether recognition of such statistical By contrast, the tinkering experimental method of regularities and their mathematical expression could Chinese science went beyond the passive method of have been reached by any other road than that which observation of the ancient Greeks, although it fell science actually travelled in the West. Was the state of short of Bacon’s method of active experimentation. mind in which an egg-laying cock could be prosecuted at law necessary in a culture which should later have the Greek science worked within the context of nature as property of producing a Kepler? (Needham, 1956: 582) it is; Chinese science was prepared to cultivate nature by tinkering with it while respecting its over- He went on to add, ‘Who shall say that the all context, but Baconian science demanded that we Newtonian phase was not an essential one?’(Needham, violate natural contexts to determine the laws that 1956: 582). He repeated this claim by stating, regulate nature in all contexts. And the main factor that inhibited Chinese science from moving beyond An unexpected vista thus opens before our eyes – the its tinkering experimental method to Baconian active possibility that while the philosophy of the fortuitous experimentalism was the organic materialist philos- concourses of atoms, stemming from the society of ophy that inspired it. European mercantile city-states, was essential for the construction of modern science in the 19th century form; the philosophy of organism, essential for the 4. Organic materialism as construction of modern science in its present and completing modern science coming form, stemmed from the bureaucratic society of ancient and medieval China . . . All that our In an early paper on mathematics and science that conclusion need be is that Chinese bureaucratism and compared Chinese and Western approaches to knowl- the organicism which sprang from it may turn out to edge, Needham noted that ‘Chinese mathematical and have been as necessary an element in the formation of theoretical backwardness was clothed in an organic the perfected worldview of science, as Greek philosophy of nature closely resembling that which mercantilism and the atomism to which it gave birth. modern science has been forced to adopt after three (Needham, 1956: 339) centuries of mechanical materialism’ (as cited in Courtney and Lee, 1997: 108). This leads Nakayama He reiterated this point in a number of places in the to conclude that Needham was inclined to see late same text by not only stressing Chinese philosophical

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ideas as valuable for the future of science, but also triumphs’ chapter in The Grand Titration, Needham that science could not ‘perfect itself’ without such (1969) wrote, ideas (Needham, 1956: 288, 340). We have already seen Needham’s claims disputed I would be prepared to say that if parallel social and by historian of science Shigeru Nakayama. His view economic changes had been possible in Chinese is endorsed by Qian Wenyuan in a chapter titled society then some form of modern science would have ‘Scientific philosophies: China’s past – the world’s arisen there. If so, it would have been, I think organic future?’ in his book The Great Inertia. Qian notes, rather than mechanical from the first, and it might well have gone a long way before receiving the great tongue in cheek, that Needham treated ancient stimulus which a knowledge of Greek science and Chinese philosophy as increasing in value over time, mathematics would no doubt have provided, and like antiques. In the past, the Chinese did not know turning into something like the science which we how to develop it, so it hindered the growth of sci- know today. (pp. 40–41) ence. But now, so Needham argued, it will be resur- rected to complete the science that emerged in Europe Needham’s views on such philosophical matters in the early modern era. To Qian, such a development may be dismissed as aggrandizing claims for Chinese would be a great irony of history (Qian, 1985: 133). natural philosophy if not for the fact that Niels Bohr Indian sociologist of science Jatinder Bajaj would (1958), a leading pioneer of quantum theory who agree with him. He notes quizzically that Needham developed the complementarity of the field and atomic requires us to suppose that, although the Chinese had viewpoints (wave–particle duality), also emphasized a a natural philosophy and social views that were similar connection to Chinese philosophy: remarkably modern, they arrived at them too early to be able to make significant discoveries, as happened For a parallel to the lesson of atomic theory . . . [we in the West. This was because those discoveries could must turn] to that kind of epistemological problems only be made by following the historical sequence in with which already thinkers like Buddha and Lao Tse which they emerged in the West. He finds such a have been confronted, when trying to harmonize our view highly questionable (Bajaj, 1988: 59–60). position as spectators and actors in the great drama of Paradoxically, Needham also thought that science existence. (pp. 19–20) today has reached a position in which we need to integrate the Chinese organic materialist vision (and Indeed, so impressed was Bohr by this Chinese its field orientation) with the mechanical and atomic connection that when he was awarded the Order of views of early modern science. He argued that, since the Elephant, one of Denmark’s highest honours, he the time of Dalton, Huxley and the mechanical mate- chose for his coat of arms the Chinese yin–yang rialists, science has increasingly been obliged to symbol (Figure 1). The connections between field integrate field conceptions of nature that were more and atomic ideas noted by Needham and Bohr raise consonant with the Chinese organic materialist a new philosophical question. What makes the phi- worldview. He envisaged a situation in which the losophy of Chinese organic materialism so congenial two come to complement each other. He noted that to the worldview of the quantum theory? Needham answered that question, as we have [Science] has been obliged to become still more seen, by arguing that the modern science of statisti- ‘modern’, to assimilate field physics . . . Deepening cal regularities, presumably linked to quantum the- knowledge of biological phenomena, too, has necessitated ory, although he is not explicit about that, takes us a reformulation of scientific concepts in which the beyond the mechanical vision of 17th century sci- philosophy of organism has had a vital part to play. ence and moves us closer to the correlative cosmol- (Needham, 1956: 339) ogy that characterized Chinese thought for millennia. Moreover, Needham also argued that, among But Needham thought that Chinese science on its Chinese philosophical traditions, it is the Taoists own could have developed into modern science with who most consistently emphasize the notion of inputs from the Greek tradition. In his ‘Poverties and nature as a correlatively conditioned self-regulating

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his seminal text Dao De Jing.4 It led him to recom- mend that we can only learn about nature by entering and communing with it, but without intervening in its processes. It is important to note that his desire for communion is not merely an expression of a sec- ular wish to leave civilization – it is also connected with an urge to identify with nature so closely and intimately that it is often seen as a sort of nature mysticism. Taoist mysticism, however, contrasts sharply with Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and Islamic mysti- cal traditions because it stresses communion with nature rather than withdrawal from nature. Its natu- ralistic orientation led historian of Chinese philosophy Feng Youlan to describe it as ‘the only system of mysticism the world has ever seen which was not profoundly anti-scientific’ (as cited in Needham, 1956: 33). Such an approach would make observation highly sensitive to the natural contexts in which phenomena arise and develop. It is quite contrary to the Baconian experimental method of studying nature by violating its contexts. The importance of making scientific method sensitive to contextual knowledge was also stressed by philosopher of science Stephen Toulmin. He argued Figure 1. Niels Bohr’s coat of arms. that Enlightenment science in general repressed contextual knowledge and described the change he system of growing processes. He described the wished to promote to transcend the limits of the Taoist conception of nature as follows: modernist vision initiated by Bacon and Descartes. He thought that those 17th century philosophers set For the Taoists the Tao or Way was not the right way of out to frame their queries to arrive at answers that life within human society, but the way in which the were universal and independent of context. By con- universe worked; in other words, the Order of Nature trast, he saw his task as the opposite one of reversing . . . which brought all things into existence and governs those decontextualizing approaches by recontextual- their every action, not so much by force as by a kind of izing the questions that were their primary concerns natural curvature in space and time, that reminds us of (Toulmin, 1992: 21). the logos of Heracleitus of Ephesus, controlling the Toulmin contended that contextual knowledge orderly process of change. (Needham, 1956: 36–37) was held in high regard in the premodern age by European and many other cultures inspired by their Thus, Needham saw the Taoists as concerned different organic worldviews, but enlightenment sci- with the way of nature that lies outside the way of ence marginalized such knowledge in favour of the life in human society and views things in nature as acontextual knowledge of universal laws that early growing and developing in correlative dependence modern thinkers valued. He added that the new sci- upon other things without human intervention. This ence of chaos and complexity has once again organic correlative vision of nature is central to the revealed the significance of contextual knowledge Taoist conception of how we should study and relate for the advancement of science. He concluded that to nature. This is most clearly expounded by Laozi in quantum theory, gestalt psychology and ecology

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have begun to shift science away from the acontex- and modern science. The explanations offered in this tual emphasis of early modern mechanical science. paper for the ambivalent relationship between Chinese This makes the Chinese organic materialist emphasis organic materialism and modern science make his on the importance of contextual knowledge obtained views quite relevant to contemporary science studies. by working within the context of nature, rather than aggressively experimenting outside it, transcend the Declaration of conflicting interests limitations of Bacon’s experimental method. The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication 5. Rethinking Needham’s legacy of this article. In the past, comparative studies of Chinese science Funding have largely focused on why the organic materialist The author(s) received no financial support for the research, framework obstructed the emergence of modern sci- authorship, and/or publication of this article. ence in China. Little attention has been paid to two positive contributions of organic materialism to Notes modern science. First, it promoted the growth of scientific and technological developments in China that 1. It can be said that ancient Greeks, such as the atom- paved the way for early modern science to emerge in ists and Epicurus, postulated the void, but they were Europe. Second, its perspective can be incorporated not part of the dominant Greek tradition. Similarly, Mohists had ideas reminiscent of modern views to enrich the philosophical understanding of late but were not part of the dominant Chinese organic modern science following the integration of field orientation. conceptions with atomic ideas in quantum theory. 2. Although it may be rightly argued that those views Needham himself emphasized these two positive identified by Ricci are neutral to the core 17th cen- contributions of organic materialism, although those tury astronomical debate in Europe concerning who followed him have largely paid attention only to whether the Sun or the Earth is at the centre of the his concerns about how it obstructed the emergence universe, they are relevant because they are also asso- of modern science. ciated with the Chinese belief that the heavenly bod- There is a tendency to see Greek science as closer ies rotate around the Pole Star. This is explained by to modern science than its Chinese counterpart. This heliocentric astronomy as an illusion produced by a is a historical mistake, since both the Greek and the rotating Earth. 3. Cohen links these new modes of nature-knowledge Chinese traditions made important contributions to to pioneering figures of the scientific revolution: modern science. Modern science broke away from mathematical realism to Galileo Galilei and Johannes Greek and Chinese science, although we can trace Kepler, kinetic corpuscularianism to René Descartes ontological and methodological continuities from and Isaac Beekman, and fact-finding experimental- both the earlier traditions into modern science. Such ism to Francis Bacon, William Gilbert and William a view is more faithful to Needham’s legacy and, as Harvey. Elvin notes, would rectify its neglect by mainstream 4. Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching) has been translated over historians and philosophers of science. 250 times into various European languages, espe- What comes out clearly is the coherence of cially English, German and French. See LaFargue M Needham’s views on the role that Chinese organic and Pas J (1998) “On Translating the Tao-te-ching,” materialism played in nurturing Chinese contextual in Kohn L and LaFargue M (eds) Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching, 277–301. Albany: State University of science, in obstructing the Chinese from moving New York Press. Even in Chinese, there are a num- towards the acontextual tradition of early modern sci- ber of transmitted editions in historical times, but the ence, and once again meshing in well with late modern three primary ones are named after early commentar- science. But Needham did not give a coherent philo- ies of the text – the ‘Yan Zun version’ attributed to sophical explanation for his claims concerning the Han Dynasty scholar Yan Zun (80 BCE – 10 CE); the relations between Chinese organic materialist science ‘Heshang Gong version’ named after Heshang Gong

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(202–157 BCE); and the ‘Wang Bi version’ named Lloyd G (2004) Ancient Worlds, Modern Reflections: after Wang Bi (226–249 CE). Philosophical Perspectives on Greek and Chinese Science and Culture. New York: Oxford University References Press. Bacon F (1994) Novum Organum (eds. P Urbach and J Lloyd G and Sivin N (2003) The Way and the Word: Gibson). Chicago, IL: Open Court. Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece. Bajaj JK (1988) Francis Bacon, the first philosopher of New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. modern science: A non-Western view. In: Nandy A Mei JJ and Rehren T (eds) (2009) Metallurgy and (ed.) Science, Hegemony and Violence: A Requiem Civilisation: Eurasia and beyond. London: Archetype for Modernity. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, Publications. pp. 24–67. Nakayama S and Sivin N (eds) (1973) Chinese Science: Bala A (2006) The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth Explorations of an Ancient Tradition. Cambridge, of Modern Science. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. MA: MIT Press. Bala A (2017) Complementarity beyond Physics: Niels Needham J (1954) Science and Civilisation in China: Bohr’s Parallels. Stuttgart: Springer. Introductory Orientations, vol. I. New York: Benesch W (1993) The Euclidean egg, the three legged Cambridge University Press. Chinese chicken: Contextual vs. formal approaches to Needham J (1956) Science and Civilisation in China: reason and logics, an approach to comparative philoso- History of Scientific Thought, vol. II. New York: phy & logics. Journal of Chinese Philosophy 20(2): Cambridge University Press. 109–131. Needham J (1969) Poverties and triumphs of the Chinese Bohr N (1958) Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge. scientific tradition. In: Needham J (ed.) The New York: John Wiley & Sons. Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and Cohen HF (1994) The Scientific Revolution: A West. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, Historiographical Inquiry. Chicago, IL: The pp. 14–54. University of Chicago Press. O’Brien P (2013) Historical foundations for a global per- Cohen HF (2011) How Modern Science Came into the World: spective on the emergence of a western European Four Civilizations, One 17th-Century Breakthrough. regime for the discovery, development, and diffusion Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. of useful and reliable knowledge. Journal of Global Cohen HF (2015) The Rise of Modern Science Explained: History 8(1): 1–24. A Comparative History. Cambridge: Cambridge Qian WY (1985) The Great Inertia: Scientific Stagnation University Press. in Traditional China. Dover, NH: Croom Helm. Courtney C and Lee JY (eds) (1997) East Wind: Taoist and Ronan C (1981 [1978]) The Shorter Science and Cosmological Implications of Christian Theology. Civilization in China: An Abridgement of Joseph Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Needham’s Original Text, vols. 1 & 2. Cambridge: Elvin M (2004) Vale atque ave. In: Needham J (ed.) Cambridge University Press. Science & Civilisation in China, vol. VII: 2. New Shankman S and Durrant SW (eds) (2002) Early China/ York: Cambridge University Press, pp. xxiv–xliii. Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons Graham AC (1989) Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical (SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture). Argument in Ancient China. La Salle, IL: Open Court. New York: State University of New York Press. Herschel J (1851) A Preliminary Discourse on the Study Toulmin S (1992) Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of of Natural Philosophy. London: Longman, Brown, Modernity. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Green & Longmans. Press. Hobson JM (2004) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huff TE (2010) Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Author biography Revolution: A Global Perspective. Cambridge: Arun Bala is the author of The Dialogue of Civilizations in Cambridge University Press. the Birth of Modern Science (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) Jones WT (1969) The Classical Mind (A History of Western and Complementarity Beyond Physics: Neils Bohr’s Philosophy). New York: Harcourt Brace & World. Parallels (Springer, 2016). He is currently exploring how Joseph GG (2011) The Crest of the Peacock: Non- the philosophical studies of historian Joseph Needham and European Roots of Mathematics. Princeton, NJ: atomic scientist Niels Bohr can be combined to enrich our Princeton University Press. conceptions of the philosophy of science.

08_CUL911316.indd 74 13/08/2020 3:20:55 PM Honorary Director of Editorial Board Members Journal Description Editorial Board Cultures of Science is a peer-reviewed international Open Access journal. The journal aims at building a community of scholars who Martin W Bauer, London School of Economics and Political Science, are expecting to carry out international, inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural communication. The topics include: cultural studies, science Qide Han, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Association UK communication, the history and philosophy of science and all intersections between culture and science. The journal values the diversity for Science and Technology, China John Besley, Michigan State University, USA of cultures and welcomes manuscripts from around the world and especially those involving interdisciplinary topics. Massimiano Bucchi, University of Trento, Italy Director of Editorial Board Rui Chen, China Association for Science and Technology, China Michel Claessens, European Commission, Belgium Aims and Scope Yanhao Xu, China Association for Science and Technology, John Durant, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Cultures of Science is an international journal that provides a platform for interdisciplinary research on all aspects of the intersections China Zhe Guo, China Association for Science and Technology, China between culture and science. It is published under the auspices of the China Association for Science and Technology. Liuxiang Hao, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Editors-in-Chief Robert Iliffe, University of Oxford, UK It welcomes research articles, commentaries or essays, and book reviews with innovative ideas and shedding a fresh light on significant Lui Lam, San Jose State University, USA issues. Research articles report cutting-edge research developments and innovative ideas in related fields; commentaries provide sci- Fujun Ren, National Academy of Innovation Strategy, China Les Levidow, The Open University, UK entific perspectives on emerging topics or social issues; book reviews evaluate and analyze the contexts, styles and merits of published Bernard Schiele, Université du Québec, Canada Hui Luo, China Centre for International Science and Technology works related to cultures of science. Exchange, China Associate Editors Jianjun Mei, University of Cambridge, UK The topics explored include but are not limited to: science communication, history of science, philosophy of science, sociology, social psychology, public science education, public understanding of science, science fiction, political science, indicators of science literacy, Zhiqiang Hu, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Gauhar Raza, National Institute of Science Communication and China Information Resources, India values and beliefs of the scientific community, comparative study of cultures of science, public attitudes towards a new scientific and technological phenomena. Zhengfeng Li, Tsinghua University, China Shukun Tang, University of Science and Technology of China, China Daya Zhou, National Academy of Innovation Strategy, China Hongwei Wang, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China Xiaoming Wang, Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, China Cultures of Science is published 4 times a year in March, June, September and December. Invited Editor of Current Issue Masataka Watanabe, Tohoku University, Japan Jiangyang Yuan, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Contact Information Jianjun Mei, University of Cambridge, UK Li Zhang, Peking University, China Address: 3 Fuxing Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100038, China. Yandong Zhao, Renmin University of China, China Email: [email protected] Director of Editorial Office Xuan Liu, National Academy of Innovation Strategy, China Disclaimer Any opinions and views expressed in the articles in Cultures of Science are those of the respective authors and contributors and not of Managing Editor Cultures of Science. Cultures of Science makes no representations or warranties whatsoever in respect of the accuracy of the material in this journal and cannot accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The accuracy of content should Ji Zhao, National Academy of Innovation Strategy, China be examined independently. © National Academy of Innovation Strategy 2020 Coordinating Editor All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, transmitted or disseminated in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher. Yanling Xu, National Academy of Innovation Strategy, China

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