Natural Knowledge in a Traditional Culture: Problems in the Study of the History of Chinese Science YUNG SIK KIM ONE of the questions most frequently asked about Chinese culture in general and about Chinese science in particular is, "Why did the 'scientific revolution' not take place in China?" or "Why did modern science not develop independently in China? ''1 This question has exerted a great influence on the scholarly study of traditional Chinese science. For many of the scholars who have asked it, the question has pro- vided a motive for the deep study of traditional Chinese science and scientific thought. For example, it is doubtless what underlies Dr. Joseph Needham's monumental work on Science and Civilisation in China.2 Although occa- sionally too speculative and far-fetched, it is full of information and insight on all the Chinese scientific and technical traditions and on the schools of natural philosophy; it is the broadest, most interesting, most persistent and enthusiastic attempt to ask and answer the question: "why not"? But the "why not" question has had a different kind of influence on the field through the detailed works of those scholars who have deliberately put the question to one side or ignored it. Having concluded that asking questions which are variations on "why not" should be postponed until traditional Chinese science itself is much more thoroughly understood, these scholars have engaged in detailed, concrete studies of specific technical topics within Chinese scientific traditions. Professor Nathan Sivin has been the most influential figure among them; he has steadily emphasized this position in his editorship of two series of monographs and a journal devoted to Chinese science, as well as in many of his own works? These studies, I Explicit formulation of some forms of the "why not" question and attempts to answer them are found in Dr. Joseph Needham's "Mathematics and Science in China and the West", in Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954-), vol. III, pp. 150-168; and his "Science and Society in East and West", in The Grand Titration (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), pp. 190-217. For examples of very early works of the same nature, see Fung, Yu-lan, "Why China Has No Science--An Interpretation of the History and Consequences of Chinese Philosophy", The International Journal of Ethics, XXXII (April 1922), pp. 237-263; Dubs, Homer H., "The Failure of the Chinese to Produce Philosophical Systems", T'oung Pao, XXVI, Series 2, Nos. 2 and 3 (1928), pp. 96-109; Bodde, Derk, "The Attitude toward Science and Scientific Method in Ancient China", T'ien Hsia Monthly, II (February 1936), pp. 139-160. More recent works that can still be considered worthy of attention are, Chan, Wing-tsit, "Neo-Confucianism and Chinese Scientific Thought", Philosophy East and West, VI (January 1957), pp. 309-332; Hu, Shih, "The Scientific Spirit and Method in Chinese Philosophy", in Moore, Charles A. (ed.), The Chinese Mind (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1967), pp. 104-131. Professor Sivin has been editor of the "MIT East Asian Science Series" of which six volumes have been published, of "Science, Medicine, and Technology in East Asia" (Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan) and the journal, Chinese Science since 1973. He also edited or co-edited two volumes of collections of papers; with Shigeru Nakayama, Chinese Science: Explorations of an Ancient Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1973), and Science and Technology in East Asia (New York: Science History Publications, 1977), 84 Yung Sik Kim together with similar works by Chinese and Japanese scholars 4 standing in the tradition of the "evidential research" (kao-cheng) of the Ch'ing (1644-1911), have greatly added to and deepened our understanding of various Chinese scientific traditions such as those of astronomy, calendrical arts, mathematics, alchemy, medicine and harmonics. During the last decade, a number of studies have raised the issue of the admissibility of the "why not" question itself; these studies deal with the historical, philosophical and sociological problems which are raised by it. The sharpest and most cogent rejection of the question has come from Professor A. C. Graham.5 He argues that we cannot ask why an event did not happen unless there is some reason to have expected it, and that even in the conditions of Europe in the sixteenth century nothing justified thinking of the "scientific revolution" as an event which was bound to occur in the near future. Still less can we expect, Professor Graham continues, that the conditions which existed in Western Europe, and which did favour the emergence of modern science there, would also have led to the emergence of modern science in China if they had existed there. Professor Graham notes that explanations of China's failure to develop modern science have usually been no more than proofs that China did not follow the same route as Europe. He thus criticises and rejects the various answers given by many scholars regarding the conditions such as experimentation, mathematics, language with number and case, "more stringent, logical and intellectual arguments", "linear conception of time", "the concept of a divine legis- lator", "the rise of a merchant class to power", 6 the absence of which in China account for the non-development of modern science. Professor Graham concludes that "the 'why not' question could be fruitfully asked only if it should prove possible to detach the factors from their historical situation and show that they are necessary", 7 and he finishes with a rhetorical question: "Is it necessary to say more than that one set of conditions for the genesis of modern science came together in sixteenth century Europe, and that since it spread too fast to allow independent occurrence elsewhere this is the only set of conditions of which we can ever know? ''8 See also Professor Sivin's Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary Studies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968); "Cosmos and Computation in Early Chinese Mathematical Astronomy", T'oung Pao, LV, Series 2, livr. 1-3 (1969), pp. 1-73. 4 Most notable examples are the work on the history of Chinese science done by the group at the University of Kyoto led by Professor Yabuuti Kiyoshi and by the Institute of the History of Natural Science at the Academia Sinica of Peking. For bibliographical information on the works of the former group, see Nakayama, Shigeru, "Kyoto Group of the History of Science", Japanese Studies in the History of Science, IX (1970), pp. 1--4, Yabuuti, Kiyosh, "The Study of the History of Chinese Science in Kyoto", Acta Asiatica, XXXVI (March 1997), pp. 1-6. A bibliography of the works on Chinese astronomy by the Peking group can be found in Xi, Zezong, "Chinese Studies in the History of Astronomy, 1949-1979",Isis, Lxxn (September 1981), pp. 456-470. Graham, A. C., "China, Europe, and the Origins of Modern Science", in Nakayama, S. and Sivin, N. (eds.), Chinese Science, pp. 45-69. Ibid., passim. ~Ibid., p. 54. 81bid., p. 68. Problems in the Study of the History of Chinese Science 85 Professor Sivin also has frequently treated the same problems. 9 In the most recent expression of his reflections on them, he characterises the "why not" question as a "heuristic" one useful only at the beginning of an enquiry, and he then proceeds to identify the two fallacies that usually accompany it: TM namely, the arbitrary assumption that a given feature of Western thought at the time of the "scientific revolution", for example, the "Baconian" method, amounts to a necessary condition applicable to all cultures, and the confusion that the absence of further scientific develop- ment of a set of ideas in China such as the hexagram system of the Book of Changes, is a result of its role as an "inhibiting factor". Professor Sivin also points out how frequently it is assumed that the question can be answered by an examination of intellectual factors alone, or by social and economic factors alone. Professor Robert S. Cohen has considered the problem of the "why not" question more abstractly and from a philosophical perspective. 11 He observes that the question predetermines the answers themselves, in other words that a presupposed answer is contained in what is asked and that this restricts the range of what is regarded as an answer to the question. Professor Cohen sees in the "why not" question a cluster of issues for the philosophy of science. For example, he stresses the necessarily "comparative" nature of the answers to the "why not" question and the fundamental difficulty of establishing the comparability of cultural variables in different historical settings. TM According to Professor Cohen, variables such as slavery, feudal- ism and "nature-mysticism" elude clear understanding even in one cultural context; some of these variables may themselves be candidates for a "why not" question, others may be merely "intervening variables" or convenient "conceptual stand-ins" that have to be replaced later. Professor Cohen also points out the difficulty in the "causal conditional arguments" employed in these discussions. TM Some sociologists whose primary interest has been the understanding of the nature of social and cultural influences on scientific knowledge have analysed certain of the social and cultural factors which have been proposed as possible answers to the "why not" question. The late Benjamin Nelson, for example, discussed Dr. Needham's various answers to the question. 14 He 9 Sivin, N., Chinese Alchemy, pp. 1 ft.; Sivin, N., "Shen Kua", in Gillispie, Charles C. (ed.), Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vo]. XlI (1975), pp. 369-393; "Introduction", in Sivin, N., Science and Technology, pp. xi-xxiv; "Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not Take Place in China--or Didn't It?", Chinese Science, V (June 1982), pp.