Joseph Needham (1900-1995) On Chinese Science, Culture and History
In a 1947 Conway Memorial Lecture in London, Joseph Needham,
the physician and scholar of the history of Chinese science and technology, changed the title of his talk from Science,
Mysticism, and Ethics in Chinese Thought to the more bold and broader title
Science and Society in Ancient China[1]. In addition to establishing his medical
career and practice, Needham devoted much of his life in an undertaking of the
study of ancient and pre-modern Chinese science and technology. The result of that dedication have resulted
in his now famous encyclopedic series that has grown into 9 or more volumes and
that has been continued after his death.
The lecture is significant not only for its timing, for it was delivered
only months before the Chinese Revolution thrust away the nationalist rule of Kuomintang
government. More importantly, Needham
put forth the intriguing and major question facing scholars of Chinese and
Western European civilizations: why didn’t
China invent modern science and technology?
After all, Needham noted, China had advanced far beyond its Western
counterparts in most areas of science and technology from ancient times through
the medieval periods. Its advances in
chemistry, agriculture and medicine held landmark advances and was credited
with the key transfer of knowledge in numerous inventions and discoveries,
including gunpowder, that led to the ultimate development of modern science,
mathematics and technology in the early modern and industrial revolutions of
Europe and the Americas. Further, why
was it that capitalism, the Renaissance, and industrial revolution was an
invention of the West?
What Needham realized was that one needed to understand the
underlying social structure and organization that fostered scientific and
cultural development. Out of this social organization came the major products
we associate with Chinese technology, including paper making, book making,
block printing, the magnetic compass and navigation, and gunpowder. Indeed, the
more Needham studied this phenomenon, the more he came to question why modern
science and technology did not orginate in China. To a certain extent the origins of Chinese
civilization arose from its river basins and agriculture based around the
Yellow River. While this was not
dissimilar to the river basin and delta societies of the Nile in Egypt, the
Indus in India and the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia. In China, the working of metal crafts and
trades, particularly bronze gave a durable metal that could be poured and
molded into vessels of ceremonial and utilitarian purpose, and could be used
for weapons, both offensive and defensive.
Yet was seemed unique in China was the relative insularity of the Yellow
Basin from its Middle Eastern and Western counterparts. While some Western diplomatic and very
limited commercial diplomacy and tentative trade contacts were made with China,
for the most part China developed in relative isolation.
In this early period we find some of the earliest poems of
Shih Ching, and ancient folk songs that attribute qualities of peasant life and
dances at agricultural festival seasons in the Spring and Fall. These poems and songs enabled mating between
young men and women. It out of this
milieu that we find a literature of wise sayings of wondering or semi-reclusive
Taoist hermits, that are encountered by the wise sage and philosopher Confucius.
Needham notes these were Taoist hermits who withdrew from society to
contemplate nature, that are found in the collected writings of Tao Teh Ching,
The Classic of the Virtue of the Way.
Needham rightly notes that this forms one of the earliest attempts at
scientific enquiry that would become more systematic as it meets the more bureaucratic
organization and rationale of the Confucian elite society.
By the 2nd century BCE we find references to
philosophers and alchemists who promise the elusive elixir of the philosopher’s
stone and the ability of changing or making precious gold vessels that yield a
drink of immortality. It is about this
time as well that the ascendance of the power of the feminine takes prominence,
for nature is in Taoist thought has a feminine mystique and quality. This
Taoist strain is in marked juxtaposition to the emphatic masculine emphasis of
Confucian thought and society that is organized around the rise of the bureaucratic
state and order.
The stories of Chuangtze on nature and the King of Wei who
encounters a butcher who has solved how to cut up a bullock in merely three
strokes of his cleaver, when others require fifteen. The butcher claims it is his knowledge of The
Way, and the lifelong study of nature that allows him this insight. What we find Needham argues is a disputation
between the Taoist Way and the Confucian system. The former is the more philosophical and
contemplative on the nature world, the latter is more systematic and based on
rationale and codification of rules. There is a class difference emerging in
the two systems of thought. The
Confucians write and rule without performing manual labor, while Taoism
appealed to the artisan and workman whose knowledge of manual labor and the
natural and material world required a markedly different philosophy. Hence in some Taoist decrees, we find the
admonition “Banish wisdom, discard knowledge,” as an attack on Confucianism. Needham
then offers an original insight that suggests the Taoists sought a return to a
traditional society that preempted the rise of the feudal order and state, with
its military aristocracy of warriors and lords and Confucian bureaucratic elite.
Over time, Needham suggests Taoism became the basis of oppositional
philosophies that opposed the state.
Those in exile or out of favor could turn to Taoist practice and
doctrine as a way of countering the official stance of the state.
What is also unique in Chinese society and history is the
nearly complete absence of slaves, particularly captives of war or peoples of
conquered nations. What may have
contributed to that choice may also have been the efficiency of Chinese agriculture
and manual labor techniques. These
included the invention of the breast harness for horses that was superior to
the Mesopotamian and ancient and medieval European throat and girth harness
that restricted the animal’s pulling power and maneuverability. By contrast the Chinese breast-strap harness
with its curved side harness allowed greater mobility and pulling power for the
horse and was invented at the beginning of the Han Dynasty in the 2nd
century BCE, some 600 to 800 years before its arrival in Europe, where it shows
up between 600 and 1000 CE.
Needham concluded his lecture by noting the need for more
comparative and in-depth studies of Chinese and other civilizations. In 1947, Needham was still compiling his
great project and over the next half-century and more this encyclopedic endeavor
has grown into separate volumes on chemistry, medicine, the manual arts,
biology and pharmacy, among other fields.
Over the next half century, Needham’s project expanded and
grew from his personal initiative and dedication into a major collaborative
international project between 1954 with the publication of his first volume up
through the final volume on medicine Volume 6.3 that appeared shortly after his
death, and subsequent volumes that have begun and appeared posthumously in an
ongoing endeavor that is a tribute to his life and scholarship. In one of these volumes on medicine, Volume
6.6, the editor Nate Silvin noted that Lu and Needham had discovered records of
the existence of modern immunology for small pox emerged in China between 1500
and 1600 CE, some 100-200 years before its arrival in Turkey and Europe[2]. Thus Needham and his colleagues were
extending their project and more importantly the continuing development toward
modern medicine and science itself into the early modern period. This suggest how much Needham had changed and
expanded beyond the ancient and medieval periodization of this his initial lecture
in 1947. Certainly points of fusion between Western
science and Chinese science occurred at various points and especially in areas
of mathematics, astronomy, botany and medicine, including the role of hygiene
and sanitation.
Bibliography
Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilization in China:
Biology and Biological Technology.
Vol. 6 Biology and Biological Technology; Part VI Medicine, Cambridge,
U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
———. Science and Society in Ancient China.
Conway Memorial Lecture. London: Watts
& Co., 1947.
[1] Joseph Needham, Science and Society
in Ancient China, Conway Memorial Lecture (London: Watts & Co., 1947).
[2] Joseph Needham, Science and
Civilization in China: Biology and
Biological Technology, vol. 6 Biology and Biological Technology; Part VI
Medicine (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
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