The Needham Question (Chinese Studies)

Introduction

The “Needham Question” or “Needham Problem,” also misleadingly called “the Needham Paradox,” refers to the guiding question behind Joseph Needham’s (b. 1900–d. 1995) massive Science and Civilisation in China, as well as his many other publications. As he phrased it, “the essential problem [is] why modern science had not developed in Chinese civilization (or Indian) but only in Europe.” He went on to consider another quite different question, equally important, and centered his historical research on it: “why, between the first century BC and the fifteenth century AD, Chinese civilization was much more efficient than occidental in applying human natural knowledge to practical human needs” (p. 190 of The Grand Titration [Needham 1969], cited under Basic Works by Needham). To seek answers, he compiled what Europeans had learned over three hundred years about science, medicine, and technology in China. Substantial original investigations by Needham and his several collaborators, of whom the best known were Lu Gwei-djen (Guizhen), Wang Ling, and Ho Peng Yoke (Bingyu), expanded and added depth to the picture, and Needham’s interpretations of the results gave it coherence.

Basic Works by Needham

The basis of Needham’s work is the massive Science and Civilisation in China (Needham 1954–; twenty-five volumes published since 1954). Increasingly, from the mid-1980s, the volumes, organized by topic, were written by specialist colleagues. Needham also developed his ideas on the Needham Question for a broader readership in a series of other publications, especially Needham 1969a; Needham 1969b; Needham 1970; Needham 1981; and Huang and Needham 1974 (for a complete list, see Blue 1997, cited under Biographies of Needham). Huang and Needham 1974 is an attempt to specify material and social factors that impeded the development of capitalism and thus, in the authors’ opinion, of modern science in China (see Needham 1969a). This idea was to some extent derived from the writings of Edgar Zilsel, gathered in Zilsel 2000.

Huang, Ray, and Joseph Needham. “The Nature of Chinese Society: A Technical Interpretation.” East and West n.s. 24.3–4 (1974): 381–401.
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Emphasizes failure to fully develop a money economy (although paper money was first used in China).
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Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilisation in China. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1954–.
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A project of great scope that still continues after sixty-plus years.
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Needham, Joseph. “Science and Society in East and West.” In The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West. By Joseph Needham, 190–217. London: Allen & Unwin, 1969a.
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Paper first published in 1964. The most mature of several essays on the determinants of Chinese technical history, comparative as always. Republished as recently as 2005 (London: Routledge).
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Needham, Joseph. The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West. London: Allen & Unwin, 1969b.
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Needham’s collected arguments for the primacy of social and economic factors in the conditioning of Chinese scientific achievement. One can follow in this collection of papers, published from 1944 onward, the development and modification of the author’s views. See the book review by Nathan Sivin in Journal of Asian Studies 30.4 (1971): 870–873.
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Needham, Joseph. Clerks and Craftsmen in China and the West: Lectures and Addresses on the History of Science and Technology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
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Another gathering of contributions, published from 1946 onward, dealing with a spectrum of themes from the most general to articles on snow crystal observations. Includes a group of essays on medicine.
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Needham, Joseph. Science in Traditional China: A Comparative Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.
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Four informal lectures, of which only one is based on previously unpublished research.
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Zilsel, Edgar. The Social Origins of Modern Science. Edited by Diederick Raven, Wolfgang Krohn, and Robert S. Cohen. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 200. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 2000.
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Zilsel was one of the very few social historians of science in the United States c. 1940. He argued that under capitalism artisans and scholars interacted, giving rise to new technical ideas, an idea that has been fruitful since. His studies were generally ignored by mainstream historians of scientific thought, who exclusively depended on intellectual history. The essays in this collection were published mostly between 1940 and 1945, but a couple first appear here.
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The Science and Civilisation in China Project

Needham was a distinguished biochemist, the founder (and historian) of chemical embryology. He spent most of his career at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. During World War II, from 1942 to 1946, he volunteered to direct the Sino-British Science Co-operation Office in China, helping Chinese scientists continue their research under extreme wartime hardship. They in turn informed him about the history of science in their country and helped him build up an exceptional library. History became his main activity from 1948 onward. Needham planned and began the Science and Civilisation project in that year (see Needham 1954–, cited under Basic Works by Needham). After c. 1980, he increasingly diverted effort into establishing the East Asian History of Science Library and the Needham Research Institute, which is now the leading center for research in Chinese science outside Asia. Although he began with the idea of writing a single volume, this quickly expanded to a scheme of seven, which as Needham wrote them underwent fission into multiple fascicules (e.g., four tomes on alchemy) of as large as 750 pages. His historiography remained in many respects typical of that period, when most technical historians were scientists, engineers, or physicians interested primarily in their own intellectual ancestry. He saw his task as documenting positive achievements, particularly those earlier in China than in Europe. His criterion was knowledge that had been validated by modern science. By contrast, his marked curiosity about alchemy, magic, and other unconventional subjects (following the lead of Thorndike 1923–1958) made his work richer than that of most contemporaries who wrote on technical topics.

Thorndike, Lynn. A History of Magic and Experimental Science. 6 vols. History of Science Society Publications, n.s. 4. New York: Macmillan, 1923–1958.
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Thorndike argued in this massive work that his two subjects were intimately related. This generated much controversy in a period of predominantly positivist historiography.
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Biographies of Needham

There are several biographies of Needham—two by people unprepared to deal with his historic work (Goldsmith 1995, Winchester 2008), and others by collaborators (a video interview, MacDonald 1990; Blue 1997; Ho 2005). For straightforward documentation of his professional life, see Gurdon and Rodbard 2000. Robinson 2004, a personal reminiscence, gives an exceptional impression of the man, as does Holorenshaw 1973.

Blue, Gregory. “Joseph Needham—a Publication History.” Chinese Science 14 (1997): 90–132.
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The most comprehensive of several published bibliographies.
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Goldsmith, Maurice. Joseph Needham: 20th-Century Renaissance Man. Profiles. Paris: UNESCO Publications, 1995.
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An admiring and informative account by an acquaintance.
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Gurdon, J. B., and Barbara Rodbard. “Joseph Needham, C.H., F.R.S., F.B.A.: 9 December 1900–24 March 1995.” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 46 (November 2000): 366–376.
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A standard account of Needham’s career.
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Ho Peng Yoke. Reminiscence of a Roving Scholar: Science, Humanities, and Joseph Needham. Singapore: World Scientific, 2005.
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Well-informed remarks by the collaborator who succeeded him as director of the Needham Research Institute.
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Holorenshaw, Henry. “The Making of an Honorary Taoist.” In Changing Perspectives in the History of Science: Essays in Honour of Joseph Needham. Edited by Mikuláš Teich and Robert Young, 1–20. London: Heinemann, 1973.
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A revealing personal sketch by “one who knows him better than most people,” emphasizing that “the deepest springs of his being are connected with the conviction of the unity of all peoples in the human race.” For the identity of the pseudonymous author, see p. 472 of the same volume.
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MacDonald, Rod, dir. Joseph Needham. VHS. London: University of London, Institute of Historical Research, 1990.
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Instructive interview by a former assistant.
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Robinson, Kenneth G. “Joseph Needham: A Soliloquy.” In Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. 7, The Social Background, Part 2, General Conclusions and Reflections. Edited by Kenneth G. Robinson, 232–240. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
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A moving, informative reminiscence of Needham by a long-term collaborator, prompted by Needham’s funeral.
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Winchester, Simon. The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. New York: Harper, 2008.
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Sniggering biography by a writer who specializes in rollicking tales of English eccentrics; squeezes Needham into the mold of a chain-smoking, skirt-sniffing, morris-dancing, superbrain fellow traveler.
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Needham’s Thought

Three studies are primarily concerned with Needham’s thought. Blue 1999 is an overview. Nakayama 1973 characterizes intellectual habits deriving from Needham’s early career as a biologist. Blue 2001 dissects the by-no-means simple character of Needham’s Marxist historiography.

Blue, Gregory. “Science(s), Civilization(s), Historie(s): A Continuing Dialogue with Joseph Needham.” Paper presented at a seminar at New Delhi in September 1996. In Situating the History of Science: Dialogues with Joseph Needham. Edited by S. Irfan Habib and Dhruv Raina, 29–72. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.
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An overview of Needham’s work and its background.
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Blue, Gregory. “Joseph Needham, Heterodox Marxism, and Chinese Science.” Paper presented at the 20th International Congress of History of Science, Liège, Belgium, 20–26 July 1997. In Science and Technology in East Asia: The Legacy of Joseph Needham. Edited by Alain Arrault and Catherine Jami, 11–20. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001.
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Suggests that Marxism was an essential part of Needham’s historical writing, but only as one of several theoretical approaches on which he drew.
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Nakayama, Shigeru. “Joseph Needham, Organic Philosopher.” In Chinese Science: Explorations of an Ancient Tradition. Edited by Shigeru Nakayama and Nathan Sivin, 23–43. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973.
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On the special character of Needham’s evolutionary and organismic philosophy.
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Precursors

Protestant missionaries in the 19th century voiced a more general question than Needham’s: “Why does China have no science?” Unlike the Jesuits of the previous two centuries, they appealed for funds from parishioners by limning benighted Chinese in need of salvation. Their replies to this question were predictably offhand and ignorant. A few missionaries, less insulated from the culture, were informative about Chinese strengths (e.g., Wylie 1966). Sinology began in Europe in the 17th century, but it established itself in Euro-American university departments only near the beginning of World War II, when the need to understand East Asia attracted support. Before efficient methods of teaching the Chinese language developed, there were few specialists, and their research lay largely in the pre-imperial classics. Many of them did not hesitate to pronounce judgments about any and every aspect of the culture. We find Derk Bodde, who cultivated interests in law, philosophy, and other issues, producing broad generalities on the inability of Chinese to produce science, and on the scientific method (Bodde 1936), as did the historian of science Giovanni Vacca (Vacca 1946). After acquaintance with Needham’s writing, Bodde wrote a book on the intellectual and social backgrounds of Chinese science and technology (Bodde 1991). In China the issue came up more urgently in the early 20th century, when leading intellectuals tried to account for their country’s poverty and weakness. Those involved, whether trained as scientists (Ren 1915) or as humanists (Fung 1922), knew little about Chinese science before modern times and were not motivated to learn more. Ren Hongjun, for instance, a young chemist who later became eminent, oddly chose to write about traditional humanistic scholarship, not natural science. Zhu 1946, written by a university president and China’s leading meteorologist, wrote about the history of science, but when he raised the question of why China supposedly did not produce natural science, he wrote instead on a level of sweeping generality. Needham’s broad, detailed reconnaissance of the technical record, although it drew on a large secondary literature in Chinese, struck most Chinese readers as unprecedented. None of his predecessors had understood the need to create a coherent intellectual structure to support the empirical data; that is, the contents of tens of thousands of books before modern times on the sciences, technology, and medicine. Needham and his collaborators made only what he clearly labeled a preliminary reconnaissance, but the outcome inspired an effervescence of research activity since.

Bodde, Derk. “The Attitude toward Science and Scientific Method in Ancient China.” T’ien Hsia Monthly 2 (1936): 139–160.
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Argues that the classical Chinese language was unsuited for scientific writing, but without examining scientific writing.
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Bodde, Derk. Chinese Thought, Society, and Science: The Intellectual and Social Background of Science and Technology in Pre-modern China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1991.
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Originally intended as a contribution to Science and Civilisation in China but withdrawn on account of the author’s unwillingness to use primary sources after 300 BC.
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Fung, Yu-lan (Feng Youlan). “Why China Has No Science—an Interpretation of the History and Consequences of Chinese Philosophy.” International Journal of Ethics 32.3 (1922): 237–263.
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Fung became a celebrated historian of ancient Chinese philosophy but was unfamiliar with science. Useful only as a specimen of generalization, while ignoring the large scientific literature.
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Ren Hongjun 任鴻雋. “Shuo Zhongguo wu kexue zhi yuanyin” (說中國無科學之原因). Kexue (科學) 1.1 (1915): 8–13.
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On the specious issue of why China “did not have science.” The inaugural issue of the Science Society of China’s journal gave this topic priority. Ren considered the problem fundamental to grasping China’s weakness in his own era.
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Vacca, Giovanni. “Perché non si è sviluppata la scienza in Cina.” In Origini della scienza. By Giovanni Vacca. Quaderni di sintesi 1. Rome: Editrice Partenia, 1946.
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Vacca, a mathematician, Sinologist, and historian of science, was ideally qualified to take up this broad subject, but he did so without reading substantially in the literature.
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Wylie, Alexander. Chinese Researches. Taipei: Cheng-wen, 1966.
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Wylie (b. 1815–d. 1887) was a polymathic missionary who mastered many important sources and wrote on topics in technology, mathematics, and science. Some have not been freshly studied since. This compilation was originally published in 1897.
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Zhu Kezhen 竺可楨. “Weishimo Zhongguo gudai meiyou chansheng ziran kexue?” (為甚麽中國古代沒有產生自然科學) Kexue (科學) 28.3 (1946): 137–141.
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Answers his question of why ancient China did not produce natural science, by analyzing village social organization and feudal thought.
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Early Attacks on Needham’s Work

Reviews of the two introductory volumes of Science and Civilisation in China ranged from the condemnatory to the laudatory. Charles C. Gillispie of Princeton, one of the most eminent American historians of science, with great dissatisfaction called Volume 2, the history of scientific thought, “a Marxist history of Chinese science” (Gillispie 1957, p. 173). His anthropologist colleague, Marion Levy, opined that “Professor Needham seems to have learned the lessons of Marxism by rote, as he learned Chinese characters. His basic intellectual discipline came out of a previous career in biochemistry, which is quite another matter indeed. The resultant overlay is amateurish” (Levy 1958, p. 470). Arthur F. Wright of Stanford, a leading figure among US historians of early China, called Volume 2 “a biased and partial account of Chinese thought which cannot be safely accepted as the basis of further studies” (Wright 1957, pp. 918–919). Karl Wittfogel of the University of Washington, a Communist political scientist turned anti-Communist, castigated Needham as the dupe of Chinese red ideologists (Wittfogel 1958). These notably hostile stances, in the escalating phase of the Cold War, ignored the fact that the book’s viewpoint was centered on Needham’s strong personal faith in a tradition of Anglican socialism that originated in the 17th century (Brook 1996, cited under Politically Impartial Responses). Science and Civilisation in China was typical of European academic Marxist scholarship in its attention to the social and economic causes of change—which, at the time, conventional historiography of science ignored. Needham explicitly disagreed with Marx’s views in many other respects, although in the United States of the late 1950s, reviewers were often uninterested in fine distinctions.

Gillispie, Charles C. “Perspectives.” American Scientist 45.2 (1957): 169–176.
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A review of Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 2, as Marxist.
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Levy, Marion J., Jr. “Some Light on the Far East.” World Politics 10.3 (1958): 462–474.
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Review of Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957), and of Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Volumes 1–2, by an anthropologist.
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Wittfogel, Karl August. “Review of Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 2.” American Anthropologist 60.2 (1958): 398–400.
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Hostile review by a distinguished German Communist scholar of China, who turned anti-Marxist after moving to the United States.
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Wright, Arthur F. “Review of Science and Civilisation in China: Volume II, History of Scientific Thought.” American Historical Review 62.4 (1957): 918–920.
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A Cold War view of Needham’s work.
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Politically Impartial Responses

Others, for instance the Dartmouth historian of philosophy Chan Wing-tsit (Chan 1957) and Derk Bodde of the University of Pennsylvania, engaged with the book’s ideas without attempting to police political correctness. Bodde, for instance, despite criticisms of details, considered the series “destined to become a classic—not only in sinology, but in the broader history of man’s age-old endeavors to understand and control his surrounding world” (Bodde 1957, p. 261). After the first technical fascicle, Volume 3 (on mathematics and astronomy), appeared in 1959, Needham’s work was generally acclaimed for its depth and detail and for the humanistic vision that held it together (see, e.g., Alleton 1975, an appreciation of three books by a French Sinologue; Elvin 1980, a collection of essay reviews by scholars from three countries; and Smart 1960, a review for Nature). By 1984, Arnold Thackray, the editor of the History of Science Society’s journal, when introducing essay reviews of the first ten fascicles of Science and Civilisation in China by Lynn White, an outstanding historian of technology, and Jonathan Spence, a leading historian of late imperial China, asserted that “among historians of science at work today, Needham is unique in the range and grandeur of his vision, and his epic ambitions” (Thackray, et al. 1984, p. 171). White judged him “beyond challenge, the world’s greatest authority in the comparative study of civilizations” (Thackray, et al. 1984, pp. 171, 173). Timothy Brook, shortly after Needham’s death, provided an accurate and fair account of the contributions of Science and Civilisation in China, which “sprouted from a politics committed to Christian socialism, universalism, and the progress of human understanding” (Brook 1996, p. 340).

Alleton, Viviane. “Le grand titrage: Joseph Needham.” Critique 31.337 (1975): 570–579.
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An appreciative overview of the first six fascicles of Science and Civilisation in China and two collections in French of Needham’s essays.
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Bodde, Derk. “Needham on Chinese Philosophy and Science.” Journal of Asian Studies 16.2 (1957): 261–271.
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A detailed review of Volume 2 of Science and Civilization in China (1956) that praises the project and makes a number of detailed corrections.
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Brook, Timothy. “The Sinology of Joseph Needham.” Modern China 22.3 (1996): 340–348.
DOI: 10.1177/009770049602200304Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A penetrating and balanced view of the project.
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Chan, Wing-tsit (Chen Rongjie). “Neo-Confucianism and Chinese Scientific Thought.” Philosophy East and West 6.4 (1957): 309–332.
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A detailed, nuanced critique of Needham’s argument that Neo-Confucianism was a hindrance to the growth of modern science.
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Elvin, Mark, ed. “Symposium: The Work of Joseph Needham.” Past and Present 87.1 (1980): 17–53.
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Good essay reviews of Needham’s writing in Science and Civilisation in China, on philosophy (W. Peterson), mathematics (U. Libbrecht), and astronomy (C. Cullen), Volumes 2 and 3.
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Smart, William M. “Early Science in China.” Nature, supp. 186.4718 (1960): 36–37.
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Discerning review of Volume 3, on mathematics and astronomy (1959), by a distinguished British astronomer.
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Thackray, Arnold, Lynn White Jr., and Jonathan D. Spence. “Science in China.” In Special Issue: Sarton, Science, and History. Isis 75.1 (1984): 171–189.
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Introduction by Thackray (editor of the journal) and perceptive essay reviews of Science and Civilisation in China by White and Spence.
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Comprehensive Critiques

Of several attempts to sum up the strengths and weaknesses of Needham’s work, the most comprehensive and penetrating was that of the sociologist Sal Restivo (Restivo 1979). Although attentive to the Needham Question, its scope is much broader. It lists a dozen variant formations of that question; thirty-three factors that according to Needham favored the emergence of modern science in China or Europe; twenty-nine corresponding inhibiting factors; and several versions of Needham’s “general sociocultural hypothesis.” At the same time, Restivo asserted that Needham’s writing lacks “(1) a careful consideration of what ‘Scientific Revolution’ refers to, and (2) a systematic theoretical program for explaining why it occurred in Western Europe and not in China” (p. 29). Restivo points to the absence not only in Needham’s project but also in responses to his work of “a sense of the comparative history of science as an exercise in the cross-cultural anthropology of knowledge” (p. 34). An issue that recurs throughout Needham’s writing is that of “the Taoists.” His sociological analysis is based in large part on what he believed was their commitment through history to democracy and naturalism, which made them favor, and lead in, scientific research. Their enemy was the reactionary Confucians, who staffed and maintained China’s “bureaucratic feudalism.” Like most students of early China, Needham used “Taoist” and “Confucian” in senses so vague and multivalent that they have no discernible social meaning. Most of those responsible for technical innovation through history were actually members of the scholar-official class that he labeled “Confucian” (Nakayama 2007, Sivin 1995). Another issue that leads to confusion in Needham’s work is the varying quality of its translations from classical Chinese. The general level is high, but exceptions render some of his judgments questionable (Sivin 1971, pp. 315–317). R. S. Cohen called attention to the breadth of Needham’s sense of relevance, which included “mystical apprehensions of Nature, theological speculations, and craft technologies” (Cohen 1964, p. 220). Robert Finlay provided a general evaluation of Needham’s views of world history and their effect on his work, which he sees as a “celebration of Chinese accomplishments which also functions as a critique of Western civilization” (Finlay 2000, p. 267).

Cohen, Robert S. 1964. “Is the Philosophy of Science Germane to the History of Science? The Work of Meyerson and Needham.” In Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of the History of Science: Ithaca 26 VIII 1962–2 IX 1962. Vol 1. Edited by Henry Guerlac, 213–230. Paris: Hermann, 1964.
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Given the quite different scope of the two scholars’ views of the evolution of science, argues that this is a case that the philosophy of science can best resolve.
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Finlay, Robert. “China, the West, and World History in Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China.” Journal of World History 11.2 (2000): 265–303.
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Concentrates on Needham’s views of world history and their effect on his approach and conclusions.
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Nakayama, Shigeru. “Joseph Needham and Taoism.” In Science, Religion, and Society: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and Controversy. Vol. 1. Edited by Arri Eisen and Gary Laderman, 193–194. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2007.
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Summarizes the problematic nature of Needham’s use of the concept of Daoism.
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Restivo, Sal P. “Joseph Needham and the Comparative Sociology of Chinese and Modern Science.” Research in Sociology of Knowledge, Sciences and Art 2 (1979): 25–51.
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A superior analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of Needham’s writings.
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Sivin, Nathan. “Review of Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4, Part 3.” T’oung pao n.s. 57.5 (1971): 306–320.
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Evaluates the quality of translation and other issues in the volume on civil engineering and nautics.
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Sivin, Nathan. “Taoism and Science.” In Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in Ancient China: Researches and Reflections. By Nathan Sivin, 7.1–7.72. Variorum Collected Studies CS512. Aldershot, UK: Variorum, 1995.
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Studies links of Taoism to science in historical writing. Finds Needham’s work better informed on the topic than that of predecessors, but vitiated by vagueness and inattention to the Taoist movements as historic phenomena.
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Broad Analyses of the Question

The penetrating, ruminative analysis of the “grand question” in Cohen 2001 finds in Needham’s writings six explanations for China’s failure to have a scientific revolution, despite its early lead: (1) “modern science could only emerge in a democratic environment,” which was missing; (2) Taoists contributed “favorable impulses for science and technology” (opposed by Confucians), but the inscrutability of the cosmic Tao limited their success; (3) the lack of merchants’ social autonomy negated the force of their mentality, “without which modern, mechanical science is impossible”; (4) the “feudal bureaucracy” fostered some scientific pursuits but hampered many more by holding down the merchant class and by “its general posture of political non-intervention”; (5) Chinese philosophy incorporated a notion of all things ruled by regularities, but lacked the occidental faith in “the inexorable regularities imposed by the Divine Lawgiver of the West”; and (6) the self-regulating equilibrium of Chinese society lacked “the restless roving of dynamic Europe” with its “pluralistic divisions.” Each of these assumes a necessary condition (democracy, a fully knowable cosmic way, merchant mentality, etc.) without any attempt at empirical proof. Needham also seems to consider these six explanations complementary, without ranking them (Cohen 2001, pp. 24–25). Graham’s 1973 critical study of The Grand Titration took a different tack. He observes that “such heterogeneous factors as the meeting of Greek logic and geometry with Indian numerals and algebra, capitalism, the Judeo-Christian sense of linear time and of a cosmic legislator” were, according to Needham, implicated in the origins of modern science. But because we cannot determine which are necessary conditions, it is equally possible that the scientific revolution was due to “any number of complicated, improbable, but quite different conjunctions of circumstances” (Graham 1973, p. 53).

Cohen, H. Floris. “Joseph Needham’s Grand Question and How to Make It Productive for Our Understanding of the Scientific Revolution.” Paper presented at the 20th International Congress of History of Science, Liège, Belgium, 20–26 July 1997. In Science and Technology in East Asia: The Legacy of Joseph Needham. Edited by Alain Arrault and Catherine Jami, 21–31. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001.
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Useful analysis and interesting reflections, but not concrete on how to make the Needham problem productive.
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Graham, A. C. “China, Europe, and the Origins of Modern Science: Needham’s The Grand Titration.” In Chinese Science: Explorations of an Ancient Tradition. Edited by Shigeru Nakayama and Nathan Sivin, 45–69. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973.
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A thorough and original exposé of assumptions in Needham 1969 (cited under Basic Works by Needham).
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Historiographic Critiques of the Question

Nathan Sivin approached the Needham Question historiographically. He argued that why something did not happen at a given place and time is not a historical problem. Why the scientific revolution did not happen in China, in historical terms, is meaningful only as a question about its occurrence in Europe—which was not Needham’s topic. His assumption that what shaped science in every civilization was a quest for the universal science of our own time was conventional in 1950. Those who do history today see technical history as shaped by events, acts, and practices, one at a time, with no foreordained end. Needham’s claim that for sixteen hundred years China was “much more efficient than occidental in applying human natural knowledge to practical human needs” is to some extent true of technology, but only because of the collapse of European high culture between the 2nd and 15th centuries. The assumption that this efficiency came from applying the science of the time is incorrect; Needham fallaciously assumes, but made no attempt to demonstrate, the across-the-board Chinese superiority of science. Furthermore, as William H. McNeill (McNeill 1976, McNeill 1991) has shown in varied studies of world history, revolutionary intellectual change usually enters a civilization from its borders, not its center. Chinese bureaucrats would have been no more able to squelch a fresh complex of scientific ideas than would Catholic schoolmen. There was a scientific revolution in China in the 17th century, at about the same time it took place in France, both of them motivated by new discoveries from Italy. The fact that it had no lasting social consequences in the first case simply shows the assumption that changes in technical knowledge necessarily lead to social change is wrong (Sivin 1982). Despite Needham’s insistence that the answer to his guiding question lay in social and economic causes, not technical ones, he did not draw at all on the sociology and economics of his time (Sivin 1985, p. 39).

McNeill, William H. Plagues and Peoples. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1976.
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On the travel of infectious agents across political borders in early times. Uses published data on different cultures.
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McNeill, William H. The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226561615.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
On the stimuli to change, due consistently to new impulses that traveled across borders.
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Sivin, Nathan. “Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not Take Place in China—or Didn’t It?” Chinese Science 5 (1982): 45–66.
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Examines the assumptions and fallacies of historical thought that underlie the Needham problem. The Edward H. Hume Lecture, Yale University.
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Sivin, Nathan. “Max Weber, Joseph Needham, Benjamin Nelson: The Question of Chinese Science.” In Civilizations East and West: A Memorial Volume for Benjamin Nelson. Edited by E. Victor Walter, 37–49. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1985.
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Contrasts Needham’s arguments about science with those of Weber on capitalism and discusses Nelson’s attempts to reconcile the two.
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Other General Critiques of the Question

Other general critiques of Needham’s problem came from Benjamin Nelson, David Mungello, Wen-yuan Qian, and Justin Yifu Lin. Nelson was a distinguished sociologist who had done important work on medieval and early modern Europe. He saw in Needham’s work an approach that went far beyond that of the seminal historical sociologist Max Weber (b. 1864–d. 1920), but that could be made more productive by attention to Weber’s work. Nelson’s own contribution was to emphasize the transition in 12th- and 13th-century European law and universities to “movements of wider social, civic and religious confraternization and in aspirations to universality in law and science,” which Needham had overlooked (Nelson 1974, p. 473). Nelson did not live to fully develop his argument, but his pupil Toby Huff contributed a volume (Huff 1993) that grew out of Nelson’s teaching. Mungello, a graduate student at Berkeley, wrote from the standpoint of the counterculture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, arguing that “Western science and technology are proving to be rejectable, and the rejection has much to do with the elements of everyday efficacy and faith, elements on which religion and science converge” (Mungello 1972, p. 476; Roszak 1969). Qian, a scientist who had left the People’s Republic of China for the United States, chastised Needham severely for what Qian read in his writings as a historical justification for Communist dictatorship (Qian 1985). Because he depended on Needham for his data rather than on independent research, his argument was not influential. Lin, a well-known economist, answered the Needham Question with the proposition that from 1400 onward, the civil-service examination system diverted “curious geniuses . . . from learning mathematics and conducting controllable experiments” (Lin 2008, p. 69). He does not show that without that system, “curious geniuses” would have learned mathematics and done experiments.

Huff, Toby E. The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
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Argues that science arose only in the West because of its legal concept of corporation, which gave rise to neutral space and free inquiry, concepts that he assumes were integral to modern science. A one-sided analysis, with no fresh research on non-Western science.
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Lin, Justin Yifu. “The Needham Puzzle, the Weber Question, and China’s Miracle: Long-Term Performance since the Sung Dynasty.” China Economic Journal 1.1 (2008): 63–95.
DOI: 10.1080/17538960701565053Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Interesting attempt to trace the ups and downs of Chinese industry over the past thousand years. Lin’s economic analyses are acute, but he seeks a single cause for China’s failure to generate modern science early, and he assumes—like Needham—that it was the aim of Chinese scientific and technological development. The essay is not based on acquaintance with the technical literature.
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Mungello, David E. “On the Significance of the Question ‘Did China Have Science?’” Philosophy East and West 22.4 (1972): 467–478.
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Sees the question as tainted by Needham’s assumption that science is a good.
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Nelson, Benjamin. “Civilizational Complexes and Intercivilizational Encounters.” Sociological Analysis 34.2 (1973): 79–105.
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On pioneers in comparative studies of religion and societies. Analyzes Needham’s work as supplementing that of Weber, to the benefit of both.
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Nelson, Benjamin. “Sciences and Civilizations, ‘East’ and ‘West’: Joseph Needham and Max Weber.” Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 11 (1974): 445–493.
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Continues the argument of Nelson 1973, itemizing the weaknesses in Needham’s approach (pp. 472–474).
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Qian, Wen-yuan. The Great Inertia: Scientific Stagnation in Traditional China. London: Croom Helm, 1985.
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Extrapolates back from the present to see the authoritarian character of Chinese governments as the key hindrance to the development of science.
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Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969.
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An influential inside view of the counterculture of the period. Republished as recently as 1995 as a paperback (Berkeley: University of California Press).
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Critiques of the Question by Philologists

Finally, Derk Bodde (Bodde 1957, Bodde 1979) carried on a protracted debate with Needham over the latter’s assertion that, because China lacked the notion of a divine lawgiver, it had no counterpart to the ancient Greek notion of laws of Nature—a great obstacle, in Needham’s view, to the evolution of modern science. Neither was aware that the Greeks had no concept of laws of nature. Bodde, early in his career (see Bodde 1936, under Precursors), echoed the uninformed opinions of 19th-century figures that the classical Chinese language was unfitted for expressing scientific ideas. The longevity of this notion was extended as late as 1981 by Alfred H. Bloom (Bloom 1981), and then to 1998 by Christoph Harbsmeier in a quirky volume of Science and Civilisation in China on language and logic (Harbsmeier 1998). Harbsmeier cited not a single primary source of science or technology. Robinson 2004 laid this hoary linguistic prejudice to rest once and for all.

Bloom, Alfred H. The Linguistic Shaping of Thought: A Study in the Impact of Language on Thinking in China and the West. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1981.
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On the limitations of thought imposed by the classical and modern Chinese languages.
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Bodde, Derk. “Evidence for ‘Laws of Nature’ in Chinese Thought.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 20.3–4 (1957): 709–727.
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Analysis of the word ze 則, which Needham translated as “rules of nature,” but which Bodde argues denotes laws of nature. Neither view was rigorous. Appended are rejoinders by Needham and the author.
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Bodde, Derk. “Chinese ‘Laws of Nature’: A Reconsideration.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 39.1 (1979): 139–155.
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Additional passages that suggest a lawgiver. Bodde admits that a belief in a lawgiver was not widespread among Chinese thinkers.
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Harbsmeier, Christoph. The Social Background; Part 1, Language and Logic. Vol. 7 of Science and Civilisation in China. Edited by Kenneth G. Robinson. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
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Harbsmeier uses “science” almost exclusively to denote philology and logic, his sole interests.
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Robinson, Kenneth G. “Literary Chinese as a Language for Science.” In Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. 7, The Social Background; Part 2, General Conclusions and Reflections. Edited by Kenneth G. Robinson, 95–198. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
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Examines, and uses historical research to test, claims for the superiority of Latin over classical Chinese for scientific and technological writing.
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Outcomes of the Question

Scholars generally recognized that the great stimulus that Needham’s work gave others lay in his revelations about what the Chinese had actually accomplished, his emphasis on comparison that is well informed on both sides, and his countless examples of the disciplined but unfettered play of the imagination, not in the question that motivated him. Although commentators have praised the Needham Question as heuristic, that word refers to what furthers learning, not ephemeral curiosity. Its heuristic value to Needham was obviously great. Over more than half a century, its value to other historians has turned out to be utterly negligible. By contrast, the heuristic value of Needham’s breadth of vision and ecumenicism has been enormous. The Needham Question aroused a certain amount of immediate enthusiasm among Occidental readers; anyone who had done a little reading about science in China could propose a one-sentence answer to the question that had stumped “the world’s greatest authority in the comparative study of civilizations” (see Thackray, et al. 1984, p. 173, cited under Politically Impartial Responses). No useful answers to the question resulted in Europe, the United States, or Japan (Tsukahara, et al. 2001). In China, however, the question of “why not” had a peculiar resonance with another question that everyone was asking at the end of the Cultural Revolution (1976). It was bluntly phrased: “Why is China now backward?” (Fan 2002). Many prominent scientists were surprised, even shocked, to learn from a foreigner about the glorious technical traditions of their own past. This gave Needham’s question a special poignancy. The outcome was a vogue, for more than a decade, for answering it. Undaunted by Needham’s insistence that any solution is bound to be extremely complicated, amateur historians, many of them professional technologists, proclaimed in print that they had found the one factor that explained China’s failure. Some of the most interesting and least fanciful of these publications were gathered in two anthologies (Fan, et al. 1983; Liu and Wang 2002). The anthology of Liu and Wang even included an otherwise unpublished attempt by a prominent European Sinologist to explain why China “probably” did not develop probabilistic thinking like that of Europe (Yi 2002). This essay in Chinese, redolent of the 1950s, was perhaps the last sophisticated attempt by a non-Chinese to be guided by the Needham problem.

Fan Dainian 范岱年. “Guanyu Zhongguo jindai kexue luohou yuanyin de taolun” (关于中国近代科学落后原因的讨论). In Zhongguo kexue yu kexue geming: Li Yuese nanti ji qi xiangguan wenti yanjiu lun zhu xuan (中国科学与科学革命: 李约瑟难题及其相关问题硏究论著选). Edited by Liu Dun 刘钝 and Wang Yangzong 王扬宗, 625–643. Shenyang, China: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe 辽宁敎育出版社, 2002.
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On discussions of why modern Chinese science is backward. A survey of assertions and debates from c. 1915 to 1997.
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Fan Dainian 范岱年, et al., eds. Kexue chuantong yu wenhua: Zhongguo jindai kexue luohou de yuanyin (科学传统与文化: 中国近代科学落后的原因). Xian, China: Shanxi kexue chubanshe, 1983.
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Twenty-four papers from a historical conference on scientific tradition and culture, and reasons for the backwardness of modern Chinese science.
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Liu Dun 刘钝, and Wang Yangzong 王扬宗, eds. 2002. Zhongguo kexue yu kexue geming: Li Yuese nanti ji qi xiangguan wenti yanjiu lunzhu xuan (中国科学与科学革命: 李约瑟难题及其相关问题硏究论著选). Shenyang, China: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002.
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A Catholic anthology of thirty-one papers on the Needham Question and related subjects, including Chinese translations of classic European essays by Wittfogel, Zilsel, and others and of recent Euro-American studies, and old and new Chinese reflections.
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Tsukahara, Togo, Keizo Hashimoto, and Noriaki Matsumura. “Needham’s Impact on Japanese History of Science.” Paper presented at the 20th International Congress of History of Science, Liège, Belgium, 20–26 July 1997. In Science and Technology in East Asia: The Legacy of Joseph Needham. Edited by Alain Arrault and Catherine Jami, 85–93. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001.
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Insightful on the interplay between Needham’s work and that of Japanese historians of Chinese science. The Needham Question played no role.
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Yi Maoke 伊懋可 (Mark Elvin). “Geren de yunqi—Weishemma qianjindai Zhongguo keneng shuo meiyou fazhan gailü sixiang” (个人的运气—为什么前近代中国可能没有发展概率思想). In Zhongguo kexue yu kexue geming: Li Yuese nanti ji qi xiangguan wenti yanjiu lun zhu xuan (中国科学与科学革命: 李约瑟难题及其相关问题硏究论著选). Edited by Liu Dun 刘钝 and Wang Yangzong 王扬宗, 426–496. Shenyang, China: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002.
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“Personal luck: Why premodern China—probably—did not develop probabilistic thinking.” Explores analogues of probability in Chinese thought. Typical imposition of modern Western criteria on the history of Chinese thought.
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Aftermath

The inspiration offered by the Science and Civilisation in China series motivated a rapid expansion of research on scientific, medical, and technological thought and practice in China. Its volumes continue to appear, and twelve monographs have already been published in an ongoing Needham Research Institute Series. A survey of the state of the field in 1988 showed a worldwide total of nearly one thousand specialists—people whose published work was based on primary sources or artifacts (Sivin 1988). Marta Hanson’s Resources web page has provided a current online guide to databases, bibliographies, and syllabi on the history of Chinese science and medicine. The first specialist journal outside East Asia, originally called Chinese Science but now titled East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, began publication in 1975. There has been an International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine since 1998. Although Japanese work on the history of Chinese science began early in the 20th century, it too was stimulated by the breadth of Needham’s research (Tsukahara, et al. 2001, cited under Outcomes of the Question). In India, however, local circumstances have practically ended study of the long-term history of science (Raina and Habib 1999). Although Needham’s period of study in his historical research ended at about 1600 and tended to be sketchy about developments after roughly 1400, some of the later fascicles by colleagues have included the last centuries of imperial China. An excellent early-21st-century textbook surveys the period 1550–1900 (Elman 2005). There has been a great deal of writing on comparisons between China and Europe, most of it comparing individual ideas or methods, but with some significant general contributions. Shigeru Nakayama took a valuable new tack in his comparative study of educational and scientific institutions (Nakayama 1984). The question of how to broadly compare scientific traditions as a whole was explored in Lloyd and Sivin 2002.

East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine. 1991–.
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Published as Chinese Science between 1975 and 1998. An annual periodical for specialists.
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Elman, Benjamin A. On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
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The best general history. As the title announces, concentrates on the motivations and approaches of the Chinese rather than on what was relevant to modern science. See also the abridged textbook version, A Cultural History of Modern Science in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
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Habib, S. Irfan, and Dhruv Raina, eds. Situating the History of Science: Dialogues with Joseph Needham. Papers presented at a seminar at New Delhi in September 1996. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.
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Twelve papers, mostly broad reflections on Needham, from a 1996 conference.
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Hanson, Marta. History of Medicine and Culture in China: Resources.
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Continuously updated online bibliography of the history of Chinese medicine and science. Does not systematically include the history of technology.
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Lloyd, Geoffrey, and Nathan Sivin. The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.
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Uses the period 300 BCE–200 CE to explore making comparisons useful and valid.
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Nakayama, Shigeru. Academic and Scientific Traditions in China, Japan, and the West. Translated by Jerry Dusenbury. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1984.
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English version of the author’s Rekishi toshite no gakumon 歴史としての学問 (Academia as history; Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 1974). Important comparative study of educational institutions in China, Japan, Europe, and the Middle East.
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Raina, Dhruv, and S. Irfan Habib. “The Missing Picture: The Non-emergence of a Needhamian History of Sciences in India.” Paper presented at a seminar at New Delhi in September 1996. In Situating the History of Science: Dialogues with Joseph Needham. Edited by S. Irfan Habib and Dhruv Raina, 279–302. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.
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On the cultural (and to a smaller extent, political) circumstances that have ruled out modern histories of the long term.
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Sivin, Nathan. “Science and Medicine in Imperial China—the State of the Field.” Journal of Asian Studies 47.1 (1988): 41–90.
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Conspectus of scholarship, problematics, methods of research, and results.