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17 May 10
James ChoateFEW people, other than scholars, will be familiar with the story of the Cambridge don whose study of China’s scientific history helped to change the West’s appraisal of a civilisation once thought hopelessly backward. By the time Joseph Needham died in 19
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FEW people, other than scholars, will be familiar with the story of the Cambridge don whose study of China’s scientific history helped to change the West’s appraisal of a civilisation once thought hopelessly backward. By the time Joseph Needham died in 1995, he had published 17 volumes of his “Science and Civilisation in China” series, including several that he wrote entirely on his own.
The Chinese began printing 600 years before Johannes Gutenberg introduced the technique in Germany. They built the first chain drive 700 years before the Europeans. And they made use of a magnetic compass at least a century before the first reference to it appeared elsewhere. So why, in the middle of the 15th century, did this advanced civilisation suddenly cease its spectacular progress?
<script src="/JavaScript/adcode1.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> <!-- // document.write('<script type\=\"text\/javascript\" src="http:\/\/ad.doubleclick.net\/adj\/main.economist.com\/booksart;abr=!webtv' + subSect() + ';count=' + ReadCookie('sessionCount') + ';sect=books;pos=v5_art350x300;sz=350x300;tile=1;ord=' + random + '?"><\/script>'); // // --> </script><script src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/main.economist.com/booksart;abr=%21webtv;sect=nonsubscriber;count=;sect=books;pos=v5_art350x300;sz=350x300;tile=1;ord=7303038861098989?" style="display: none;" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> <!-- if ((!document.images && navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Mozilla\/2.') >= 0) || navigator.userAgent.indexOf("WebTV") >= 0) { document.write('<a href="http:\/\/ad.doubleclick.net\/jump\/main.economist.com\/booksart' + subSect() + ';sect=books;sz=350x300;ord=' + random + '?" target="_top"><img src="http:\/\/ad.doubleclick.net\/ad\/main.economist.com\/booksart' + subSect() + ';count=' + ReadCookie('sessionCount') + ';sect=books;sz=350x300;ord=' + random + '?" width="350" height="300" alt=""><\/a>'); // } // --> </script>So powerful has Needham’s contribution been to the historiography of Chinese science that this conundrum is still known as “The Needham Question”. Even the Chinese themselves use it: the phrase in Mandarin is Li Yuese nanti.
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FruFru FourOneWhy did China’s scientific innovation, once so advanced, suddenly collapse? A British academic made this question his life’s work
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