Discovering Chinese Science and Technology: A Critical Review
In: Asian Review of World HistoriesSearch for other papers by Xin Zhang in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
For most of the twentieth century, the investigation into the development of science and technology in China has been based on the assumption that China lacked the conditions to achieve that on its own before it was exposed to Western knowledge. The same assumption has led many inquiries into the search for shortcomings in Chinese civilization or the failure to embrace Western knowledge. It was only near the very end of the twentieth century that a breakthrough finally arrived to allow scholars to free themselves from the assumption. This article traces the history of the field as it evolved through nearly a century from denying China’s own identity to finally recognizing it. I aim to show, one of the main reasons many researchers had held this rather Western-centric view for nearly a century was to the influence of the “rise of the West” historical narrative, which dominated the discourse on world history. Only after the narrative was seriously questioned did we begin to witness significant changes in the field toward realizing China’s own achievements and historical trajectory in the development of science and technology.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Balazs, Etienne. 1964. Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy: Variations on a Theme. Translated by H. M. Wright. Edited by Authur F. Wright. New Haven: Yale University Press.
-
Bloom, Alfred H. 1981. The Linguistic Shaping of Thought: A Study in the Impact of Language on Thinking in China and the West. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
-
Bodde, Derk. 1991. Chinese Thought, Society, and Science: The Intellectual and Social Background of Science and Technology in Pre-Modern China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
-
Bray, Francesca. 1997. Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press.
-
Bray, Francesca. 2000. Technology and Society in Ming China, 1368–1644. Washington: American Historical Association.
-
Bray, Francesca. 2013. Technology, Gender and History in Imperial China: Great Transformations Reconsidered. London: Routledge.
-
Breisach, Ernst. 2007. Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
-
Brockey, Liam Matthew. 2007. Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
-
Chemla, Karine. 2017. “Changing Mathematical Cultures, Conceptual History, and the Circulation of Knowledge: A Case Study Based on Mathematical Sources from Ancient China.” In Cultures without Culturalism: The Making of Scientific Knowledge, edited by Karine Chemla and Evelyn Fox Keller, 352–398. Durham: Duke University Press.
-
Davids, Karel. 2012. Religion, Technology, and the Great and Little Divergences: China and Europe Compared, c. 700–1800. Leiden: Brill.
-
Deng, Kent. 2009. “Movers and Shakers of Knowledge in China during the Ming-Qing Period.” In History of Technology, edited by Ian Inkster, vol. 29, 57–80. London: Continuum.
-
Diamond, Jared M. 2005. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton.
-
Dunne, George H. 1962. Generation of Giants: The Story of the Jesuits in China in the Last Decades of the Ming Dynasty. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
-
Elman, Benjamin A. 2009. A Cultural History of Modern Science in China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
-
Elman, Benjamin A. 2005. On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
-
Elman, Benjamin A. “‘Universal Science’ versus ‘Chinese Science’: The Changing Identity of Natural Studies in China, 1850–1930.” Historiography East and West 1 (2003): 68–116.
-
Elvin, Mark. 1972. “The High-Level Equilibrium Trap: The Causes of the Decline of Invention in the Traditional Chinese Textile Industries.” In Economic Organization in Chinese Society, edited by W. E. Willmott, 137–172. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
-
Elvin, Mark. “The Historian as Haruspex.” New Left Review 52 (2008): 83–109.
-
Elvin, Mark. 1973. The Pattern of the Chinese Past: A Social and Economic Interpretation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
-
Elvin, Mark. 2004. The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China. New Haven: Yale University Press.
-
Engelfriet, Peter M. 1998. Euclid in China: The Genesis of the First Chinese Translation of Euclid’s Elements, Books I–VI (Jihe Yuanben, Beijing, 1607) and its Reception up to 1723. Leiden: Brill.
-
Fan, Fa-ti. 2004. British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire, and Cultural Encounter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
-
Gernet, Jacques. 1982. A History of Chinese Civilization. New York: Cambridge University Press.
-
Gernet, Jacques. 1985. China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Golas, Peter J. 2015. Picturing Technology in China: From Earliest Times to the Nineteenth Century. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
-
Hart, Roger. 2013. Imagined Civilizations: China, the West, and Their First Encounter. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
-
Hsu, Elisabeth. 1999. The Transmission of Chinese Medicine. Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Huff, Toby E. 2011. Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution: A Global Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.
-
Huff, Toby E. 1993. The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Huff, Toby E. 2003. The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.
-
Inkster, Ian. 2009. History of Technology. Vol. 29. London: Continuum.
-
Jami, Catherine. 2012. The Emperor’s New Mathematics: Western Learning and Imperial Authority During the Kangxi Reign (1662–1722). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Jami, Catherine. 2008. “Tomé Pereira (1645–1708), Clockmaker, Musician and Interpreter at the Kangxi Court: Portuguese Interests and the Transmission of Science.” In The Jesuits, the Padroado and East Asian Science (1552–1773), edited by Luís Saraiva and Catherine Jami, 187–204. Singapore: World Scientific.
-
Lang, Graeme. 1997. “Structural Factors in the Origins of Modern Science: A Comparison of China and Europe.” In East Asian Cultural and Historical Perspectives: Histories and Society, Culture and Literatures, edited by Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Jennifer W. Jay, 71–96. Edmonton: University of Alberta.
-
Levenson, Joseph Richmond. 1968. Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: A Trilogy. 3 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press.
-
Lipsey, Richard G., Kenneth Carlaw, and Clifford Bekar. 2005. Economic Transformations: General Purpose Technologies and Long-Term Economic Growth. New York: Oxford University Press.
-
Liu, Jerry. 2009. “Cultural Logics for the Regime of Useful Knowledge During the Ming and Early Qing China c. 1400–1700.” In History of Technology, vol. 29, edited by Ian Inkster, 29–56. London: Continuum.
-
Lloyd, G. E. R. 1996. Adversaries and Authorities: Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Lloyd, G. E. R. 2002. The Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Magone, Rui. 2012. “Portugal and the Jesuit Mission to China: Trends in Historiography.” In Europe and China: Science and the Arts in the 17th and 18th Centuries, edited by Luís Saraiva, 3–30. Singapore: World Scientific.
-
Martzloff, Jean-Claude. 2006. A History of Chinese Mathematics. New York: Springer.
-
McClellan, James E., and Harold Dorn. 1999. Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
-
Morrison, Ken. 2006. Marx, Durkheim, Weber: Formations of Modern Social Thought. 2nd ed. London: Sage.
-
Mungello, David E. 1994. The Forgotten Christians of Hangzhou. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
-
Needham, Joseph. 1956. Science and Civilisation in China: History of Scientific Thought. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Needham, Joseph. 1959. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. 3, Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Needham, Joseph. 1954. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. 7, part 2: The Social Background: General Conclusions and Reflections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Needham, Joseph. 1969. The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West. London: Allen and Unwin.
-
Needham, Joseph. 1969. The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
-
Pomeranz, Kenneth. 2000. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
-
Qian, Wen-yuan. 1985. The Great Inertia: Scientific Stagnation in Traditional China. London: Croom Helm.
-
Russell, Bertrand. 1922. The Problem of China. New York: Century.
-
Schäfer, Dagmar, ed. 2012. Cultures of Knowledge: Technology in Chinese History. Leiden: Brill.
-
Sivin, Nathan. 1968. Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
-
Sivin, Nathan. 1973. Copernicus in China. Wroclaw: Ossolineum.
-
Sivin, Nathan. “On ‘China’s Opposition to Western Science During the Late Ming and Early Ch’ing.’” Isis 2 (1965): 201–205.
-
Sivin, Nathan. “Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not Take Place in China – or Did It?” Environmentalist 1 (1985): 39–50.
-
Soboul, Albert. 1958. Les Sans-Culottes Parisiens en L’an Ii. Paris: Librairie Clavreuil.
-
Spence, Jonathan D. 1984. The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. New York: Viking Penguin.
-
Standaert, Nicholas S. J. “New Trends in the Historiography of Christianity in China.” The Catholic Historical Review 4 (1997): 573–613.
-
Standaert, Nicholas S. J. “Xu Guangqi’s Conversion as a Multifaceted Process.” 2001. In Statecraft and Intellectual Renewal in Late Ming China: The Cross-Cultural Synthesis of Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), edited by Catherine Jami, Peter Engelfriet, and Gregory Blue, 170–185. Leiden: Brill.
-
Standaert, Nicholas S. J. 1988. Yang Tingyun, Confucian and Christian in Late Ming China: His Life and Thought. Vol. 19. Leiden: Brill.
-
Sun, Shangyang. 1993. Li Madou yu Xu Guangqi (Matteo Ricci and Xu Quangqi). 1st ed. Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe.
-
Thompson, E. P. 1963. The Making of the English Working Class. London: V. Gollancz.
-
Vogel, Hans Ulrich, and Günter Dux, eds. 2010. Concepts of Nature: A Chinese-European Cross-Cultural Perspective. Leiden: Brill.
-
Wakeman, Lea H. 2009. “Chinese Archives and American Scholarship on Modern Chinese History.” In Telling Chinese History: A Selection of Essays, edited by Lea H. Wakeman, 315–329. Berkeley: University of California Press.
-
Wong, George C. “China’s Opposition to Western Science During the Late Ming and Early Ch’ing.” Isis 54 no. 1 (1963): 29–49.
-
Wright, David. 2000. Translating Science: The Transmission of Western Chemistry into Late Imperial China, 1840–1900. Leiden: Brill.
-
Wright, Mary Clabaugh. 1957. The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T’ung-Chih Restoration, 1862–1874. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
-
Zhang, Qiong. 2015. Making the New World Their Own: Chinese Encounters with Jesuit Science in the Age of Discovery. Leiden: Brill.
-
Zhang, Yongtang. 1994. Ming mo qing chu Li xue Yu Ke xue Guan xi Zai lun (Reevaluation of the relation between studies of principle and science during the Late Ming and the Early Qing). Chu ban. ed. Taipei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju.
-
Zurndorfer, Harriet. 2009. “China and Science on the Eve of the ‘Great Divergence’ 1600–1800: A Review of Recent Revisionist Scholarship in Western Languages.” In History of Technology, vol. 29, edited by Ian Inkster, 81–102. London: Continuum.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 386 | 233 | 26 |
| Full Text Views | 102 | 10 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 181 | 25 | 8 |
Discovering Chinese Science and Technology: A Critical Review
In: Asian Review of World HistoriesSearch for other papers by Xin Zhang in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
For most of the twentieth century, the investigation into the development of science and technology in China has been based on the assumption that China lacked the conditions to achieve that on its own before it was exposed to Western knowledge. The same assumption has led many inquiries into the search for shortcomings in Chinese civilization or the failure to embrace Western knowledge. It was only near the very end of the twentieth century that a breakthrough finally arrived to allow scholars to free themselves from the assumption. This article traces the history of the field as it evolved through nearly a century from denying China’s own identity to finally recognizing it. I aim to show, one of the main reasons many researchers had held this rather Western-centric view for nearly a century was to the influence of the “rise of the West” historical narrative, which dominated the discourse on world history. Only after the narrative was seriously questioned did we begin to witness significant changes in the field toward realizing China’s own achievements and historical trajectory in the development of science and technology.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 386 | 233 | 26 |
| Full Text Views | 102 | 10 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 181 | 25 | 8 |
