Source: "Late Bloomer: Joseph Needham and <中国科学技术史>the Story" From: The Confusion of Syracuse
Editor's note: A few years ago, I spent half a year in Needham's college, did not cherish precious time, always thought that time and opportunity were infinite, I have wasted my life
Joseph Needham, born 9 December 1900, died 24 March 1995, Order of the Companions of Honour, Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), Fellow of the British Academy FBA for short). The two major academic societies, the Royal Society and The British Academy, are equivalent to the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Joseph Needham was one of the few British academicians, and he was the only living academician of both houses. In addition, Needham has received many national, institutional, and university honors and awards, and won the Sutton Prize, the highest award in the history of science. He is also a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and won the first prize of the National Natural Science Award of China. Needham's research spans a wide range. He spent the first half of his life as a biochemist and was the Sir William Dunn Reader in Biochemistry, Cambridge. He spent the rest of his life as a historian and sinologist and pioneer of the history of science and technology in China. At Cambridge University, he served as Master of Gonville and Caius College, founding the Cambridge Library of East Asian History of Science and the Needham Institute in Cambridge, which has become one of the world's leading centers for the study of the history of Chinese science and technology. In the field of Chinese science and technology history, some of the knowledge that we are familiar with today and have become common knowledge, such as the "four great inventions" of ancient China—papermaking, printing, gumpowder and the compass—were comprehensively and systematically introduced to Western readers. In addition to the most famous SCC, Needham has 385 publications such as research monographs and academic papers in the fields of biochemistry and the history of science, including his own books, translations, collaborative works, edited books and 150 papers. There is no doubt that it is rare for a person to achieve such fruitful results and receive so many honors in his life, so he deservedly deserves to be praised as a "Renaissance man of the 20th century". In addition to scientific research, Needham was also an internationalist with the ideal of "world harmony" and an ambassador who actively promoted international scientific and cultural exchanges. From 1943 to 1946, as a representative of scientists from the Royal Society, Needham was appointed by the British government to come to China as a diplomat to support the Chinese people in the war of resistance until the final victory. Joseph Needham enthusiastically won a large amount of international assistance for China's scientific community and actively promoted academic exchanges between China and the United Kingdom. After the victory in World War II, Needham moved to Paris, France, as the founding head of UNESCO's Department of Science, which was established after the war, and continued to enthusiastically support and help scientists from developing countries including China, and promote scientific and cultural exchanges around the world. One of the most impressive examples of Needham's work for the Chinese was that during the Korean War, he participated without hesitation in the international investigation team organized by the International Alliance for Peace and Friendship to investigate the humanitarian spirit of the United States' use of biological and chemical weapons in war, and as the head of the international investigation team's biochemical and chemical expert group, he personally wrote the investigation report. As a result, he was blacklisted by the United States and denied a visa for many years, and could not even attend normal academic conferences. But it is precisely because of Needham's spirit of upholding justice and helping people that he is regarded by the Chinese as one of his staunchest supporters and international friends. Although Needham deserves to be a great man in people's minds, there are a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand spectators. Because Needham is so well-known in China, it is easy to assume that his famous name in Cambridge should also be known and unknown to everyone. But if you ask an Englishman if he knows who "LiYue Se" is, it will definitely confuse people, and I am afraid that no one will know that this is an Englishman's Chinese name. In fact, Needham's original English name is Joseph Needham, and if translated into Chinese, it should be "Joseph Needham". Professor Ho Peng-Yoke (1926-2014), the former director of the Needham Institute, once said with emotion that Joseph Needham in the eyes of the British and Joseph Needham in the minds of Chinese, although both names belong to the same person, are like two different characters. He warned those who wanted to write a biography of Joseph Needham, if only looking at the English sources, that the biography written talked about a man named Joseph Needham; If you only look at Chinese materials, the written biography can only let you know a man named Needham. Whether writing Joseph Needham from a Chinese point of view or Joseph Needham from an English point of view, only one-sided conclusions can be drawn. To write a comprehensive biography, you must start from a wide range of perspectives. ”
"Needham's Question" The series of questions that Needham posed at the beginning of the first volume of the SCC, published in 1954, was later known as the "Needham Question." Although the last volume of the SCC, Conclusions and Reflections, was published, the debate over the "Needham Question" was not over. A simpler and clearer formulation of this question is also found in Joseph Needham's 1964 article "Science and Society in the East and the West", in which he said: Around 1938, when I had the idea to write a systematic, objective, and credible essay on the history of science, scientific thought and technology in the Chinese cultural region, I thought the question was the key: why did modern science (as we know it since the time of Galileo in the 17th century) only take place in Europe? And did not develop in Chinese (or Indian) civilization? As many years passed, as I began to make some discoveries about Chinese science and society, I began to realize that there was another question that was equally important, namely, that between the 1st century BC and the 15th century, Chinese civilization was more efficient than Western civilization at applying natural knowledge to meet the actual needs of human beings. The "Needham Question" is difficult because its two preceding and following questions constitute a paradox. Joseph Needham himself called this the "paradox," saying: When we take a universal view, a great paradox arises. Why did modern science, which mathematized the hypothesis of nature, and its impact on technological progress, rise rapidly in the Galileo-era West? Many people have asked such an obvious question, but few have answered it. But another, equally important issue. Why were East Asian cultures more efficient than Western Europe in terms of the practical application of human knowledge of nature between the 2nd and 16th centuries BC? Only by analysing the socio-economic structure of Eastern and Western cultures, and considering the enormous role of ideological systems, can we find explanations for these two problems. Paradoxes are a particularly interesting category of questions, such as "Ship of Theseus" and "Chicken or Egg?" These philosophical questions raised nearly two thousand years ago seem simple, but we have never given definite answers, but have triggered more thinking about logic and causal problems. Starting from the obvious premise, after making logical deductions, in the end two contradictory conclusions, either answer is not perfect, although it can justify itself, but can not prove the opposite statement wrong, this is the unique feature of paradox. For a long time, "Needham" has almost become synonymous with "the history of Chinese science and technology" on the mainland ... Many people are keen to solve the "Needham problem", which makes Needham a household name. ...... The participants in the discussion included scholars who study Chinese history and culture, as well as people from the fields of science and technology, economics, and education. It can almost be said that everyone who cares about China's future and future is more or less interested in this issue. ...... Different from the Western academic perspective, mainland scholars often understand the "Needham problem" as an exploration of the historical phenomenon of "why modern Chinese science lags behind". ...... In the process of China's modernization, people of insight have always placed science and technology in an important position. From the Opium War, Wei Yuan's proposal of "mastering and destroying the country with great skill to suppress and destroy," the "seeking strength and seeking prosperity" in the foreign affairs movement, to the theory of "saving the country by studying the West" put forward by Yan Fu and others, the trend of thought of "saving the country through science" in the early 20th century, and even the "four modernizations" in the seventies and eighties of the 20th century and today's policy of "rejuvenating the country through science and education," all of them have pinned on the modern Chinese's desire to develop science and technology in order to change China's backward appearance. Therefore, it is natural that when we discuss the historical development of science and technology in China, we cannot help but have a sense of urgency in reality, thus giving the discussion of the "Needham problem" a special meaning. The "Needham question" has generated a continuous and lively discussion. According to Wang Qianguozhong's statistics, between 1980 and 2000, more than 260 papers on the "Needham question" were published in the East and West, at home and abroad, and more than 30 kinds of books were published. It is impossible for us to list these research results one by one, so we select some representative arguments, select their main points, and summarize their general meaning. There is a view that there was no science in ancient China, only technology, and Joseph Needham, because he did not distinguish between "science" and "technology", would mistakenly believe that China's science and technology were ahead of the West in a long history. The reality is that Needham not only distinguished science and technology in terms of content, but also listed scientific ideas separately. In fact, when Joseph Needham first came to China in 1943, in response to the view that Chinese scholars at that time generally believed that China had no science, he had already pointed out: To say that there is no science in China is actually to say that China does not have modern science, not even ancient science. This is simple, because even in the West, modern science did not exist since ancient times, but only after the Middle Ages. Modern science does not start one day or moment and appear suddenly, but evolves and forms, like the "ship of Theseus". Aren't the ideas represented by the ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle part of "ancient science"? Similarly, wasn't the idea of knowing and understanding the world in ancient China part of "ancient science"? Although Joseph Needham admitted that ancient Chinese scientific thought was only in the embryonic and primitive stage of development, and did not have the deductive system represented by formal logic and geometry, which later became the basis of modern science, China was far ahead of its contemporaries in the invention and discovery of practical technology in ancient times. Just as it is still difficult to draw a clear dividing line between science and technology today, we cannot make a strict distinction between ancient science and ancient technology. Although the two are not the same, there are also crossover parts. If we simply distinguish between the two, we can say that "science" is people's idea of knowing and understanding the world, while "technology" is the method and step to achieve a specific goal. However, the methods and steps of practice cannot be created out of thin air without knowledge and understanding of the world, so it is difficult to sever the connection between "science" and "technology". Shouldn't we use "civilization" to summarize the matrix that preceded the birth of modern science, which contained all ancient scientific ideas and technological inventions? The discussion of the concepts of "science", "technology" and "civilization" actually began with the birth of SCC. At that time, the title of the SCC sparked discussion within Cambridge University Press, because the English title was "Science and Civilization in China", while the title of the Chinese book of the Ji Dynasty was "History of Science and Technology in China". Some people are curious to ask, does Cambridge equate "civilization" with "technology"? To this editor's answer Kenden, he was unequivocal, saying: "As far as I know, the title of Needham's book is, and always will be, and should always be, 'Science and Civilization in China,' not 'Science and Technology.'" There is also a view that the "Needham problem" is not really a problem that history should study, so it is a pseudo-problem. In 1980, Xi Wen published an influential article commenting on the "Needham Problem", "Why didn't the scientific revolution happen in China—did it not happen?" , and in this article gives a typical analogy: why did Chinese not outperform the Europeans in terms of scientific revolutions ... In fact, asking this question is very similar to asking the question of why your name does not appear on the third page of today's newspaper. It belongs to a group of questions that can be asked endlessly, and because there are no direct answers, historians do not ask such questions. They will become other issues that are still problems. For example, the question that concerns us can be: "Under what conditions did the scientific revolution take place in Western Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries?" "Yes, the problem that did not occur, not the problem of history; But this does not mean that it is a pseudo-problem, in fact it can still be a profound philosophical problem. Schiffin does not deny that the "Needham problem" is a heuristic question, and that there is no single correct standard answer to the heuristic question, and people can use scientific attitudes and methods to seek various possible answers. Sir Jeffrey Lloyd summed up the "Needham Question" in one simple sentence: "Why did China, which was well ahead before the 17th century, fail to produce modern science independently?" But he also pointed out that Needham's approach to the problem was an oversimplification of complexity. For Western scholars, Needham created a discipline, the comparative history of science and technology, because no one before him even began to fully appreciate China's contribution. ...... We had to ask ancient Chinese people who did research what they thought they were doing, and why, and what they thought were rewarded. How does their work reflect or interact with the values of the society in which they live? They could not have ambitions to become 'scientists' because such a professional category did not exist at that time – in fact, 'scientists' only began to appear in the West in the 19th century. Therefore, he suggested that the two settings of the strong state support of ancient Chinese astronomical observatories and the complete lack of state support by ancient Greek astronomers should be used as mirror images of each other, reflecting on their respective advantages and disadvantages. With the support of the state, Chinese astronomers must observe according to the tasks set by the state, but they have stable jobs ... And in the absence of such help or approval, the Greeks had more freedom to present their own agendas, but had to make a living as much as they could – mainly through astrology, teaching, or speech. For the reasons behind the rise and fall of science and civilization in the East and the West, Needham was inevitably limited by the "paradigm" of thinking by scientists of his time, believing that there were certain promoting factors in the environment in which different civilizations were located (including geographical, hydrological, political, economic, cultural, social and other backgrounds), and there were also some hindrance factors or inhibitors, which determined the trajectory of the development of a civilization. What are the obstacles that hindered the failure of Chinese civilization to produce similar modern science in Asia, which was born in Europe after the 16th century, and which has proved to be one of the basic factors in the formation of the modern world order? On the other hand, what factors made science easier to apply in early Chinese societies than in Greek or medieval European societies?
According to Zhu Kezhen's recollection, as early as 1944, Joseph Needham said in his speech at the 30th anniversary of the founding of the China Science Society held in Meitan, Guizhou: "Science in modern times cannot be produced in China, but is limited by the environment, that is, geographical, climatic, economic and social resistance." Geographically, China is a continental country, which has always been closed and self-contained, different from the maritime cultures of Greece, Rome and Egypt in the West. In terms of climate, it is also very continental, so floods and droughts are prone to occur, and large-scale irrigation systems are necessary; And the bureaucratic feudal forces could not be swept away. In China's economy and society, since the Qin Dynasty, the dictatorship of bureaucrats and doctors has stayed for a long time, and there has been little progress in social production, resulting in the decline of the merchant class, making it impossible for the middle class people to raise their heads, and for the initial development of capitalism. In recent times, science will emerge with capitalism. Zhu Kezhen further pointed out that only with the combination of brain and hand, deductive and inductive methods, can the modern scientific revolution and industrial revolution occur; Although the ancient Greek thinkers had a spirit of curiosity, they were reluctant to do experiments, so they also had limitations; Before Emperor Wudi of Han emphasized agriculture and suppressed commerce, monopolized salt and iron, deposed hundreds of schools, and respected Confucianism, China also had hundreds of schools, but did not develop the deductive ideas of Greece, because of different value orientations, so "in the final analysis, the institutions and feudal ideas of China's agricultural society prevented the production of natural science in ancient China." After half a century, Needham's views have not changed much, and it can be said that the answer he had conceived in mind has been reconfirmed by comparative arguments in the second volume of SCC Volume VII, Conclusions and Reflections: ... Volume VII considers social and economic factors and deals with different themes from previous volumes III to VI. Volumes III to VI deal with various sciences and technologies. We can describe science and technology, but we must explain social and economic factors. As we rationally transition from the history of science to discussing its social and ecological context, the discussion becomes more complex than ever. I am well aware that differences of opinion are bound to exist, especially when time does not stand still. At one point, I had hoped to cover a wide range of social factors that might help solve the problem, but there is a limit to what one can achieve. So now let me limit myself to what I consider most important - the collapse of feudalism in Europe and the rise of the bourgeoisie. This requires us to first consider the nature of the "feudal system". I first started using the term "bureaucratic feudalism" around 1943, when I was in China during World War II. I never felt obligated to use this concept, just found it a useful description. Others reject the term or concept, perhaps preferring to use just "bureaucracy" – but this is just one example of the differences of opinion that are bound to arise in these areas. Of course, at that time "feudal" was a pejorative term that applied to all social and economic features of imperial China; However, the word has always been meaningful and important to me. It was very different from the "military aristocracy" feudalism of Europe. Under the feudal system of Europe, the king was always at the top of the pyramid of nobility of different classes, and each stratum of the pyramid was obliged to come to assist if the king wanted to fight during the term of its own "fief", responsible for providing how many knights, how many archers, how many infantry, and so on. The system may seem as if it is stronger, and all those knights wear armor clanging, but in fact it is more fragile, presumably due to a lack of rationality. For example, the heir of a count may be an idiot, but under the primogeniture system, only he can become the next heir - which is very different from the situation in the Chinese bureaucracy. Chinese bureaucrats were selected through the imperial examination and gained special expertise in their work. In China, each generation must justify their promotion through its own efforts. The heirs and successors of great men can only avoid their own demotion through great efforts. Therefore, the phrase "carriere ouverte aux talents" (careers open to talents) was a principle with a history of more than two thousand years in China before it became a famous French saying. In the environment of the European military aristocracy, modern natural science, although unlikely to appear, turned out and did. When merchants began to move out of their city-states in the 16th century and capitalism rose, first commerce, then industry, modern natural science arose, in the era of Galileo and Torricelli. This was the "rise of the bourgeoisie," and although there were other factors, such as the Protestant Reformation, it occurred first and only in Europe. The volume of this book adopts the view that the ancient and medieval sciences of the world were committed to the form of modern science, but only Europe achieved this goal. The background of Greek logic and "mathesis universalis" is also important. Much remains to be done on the exact nature of the link between modern science and emerging capitalism. ...... Modern science is defined in the third volume of this book, Mathematics, Astronomy, and Earth Science (see "The Scientific Method of Combining Experiment and Mathematics"), on page 375, as the mathematization of hypotheses about nature and their rigorous testing through continuous experimentation. Experiments are fairly new things; The Greeks did relatively little in this regard, and although Chinese were familiar with it, they were mainly for practicality. Only the European Renaissance found out how to test hypotheses about the mathematization of nature through relentless experimentation, thus "discovering the best method of discovery." But I hope no one will interpret all this to mean that I think modern science, which grew up with capitalism, must always be integrated with capitalism. The situation of our time has shown that socialist countries, especially Russia and modern China, are quite capable of developing successful modern science. Of course, in addition to Europe, there was also a military aristocratic feudal system in other parts of the world. I remember thinking when I was in Japan in 1986 that it was strange that modern science did not originate in Japan. But then I reflected that the Japanese did not have the tradition of the Greek city-states, which was extremely important for Europe. ...... It is worth looking at the point of view that compares Chinese towns to Europe. In China, a town was just a node in an administrative network, controlled by officials appointed by the emperor and military commanders (a few below the rank of town bureaucracy). It is the center of a network of outlying villages, and villagers go to the market in the town. ...... China may be a classic example of "bureaucratic feudalism",...... In China, it was as if all the feudal lords in the middle were abolished, leaving only the emperor himself, who ruled "the whole world" by a huge bureaucracy, a situation that European feudal monarchs never dreamed of. If someone doesn't like the expression "bureaucratic feudalism," they might like the term "nosphimeric bureaucratism." Nosphimeric is a word I invented during the war years. In my constant travels, I often come across the bishop of Ronald Church in Hong Kong visiting one of his outlying Anglican congregations, and one day we had the opportunity to meet in Annan, Guizhou. When I talked about various things during the meal, I happened to tell him that I needed a non-pejorative term to describe China's bureaucracy that has always been so prominent, characterized by repression, embezzlement and corruption that is so prominent in the eyes of modern Western businessmen trying to do business in China. Both of our trucks were repaired that night, and his truck was repaired earlier, so he set off first, leaving me a piece of paper that read: "See Acts 5:1-11." When I picked up the Bible, I found that it was the story of Ananias and Sapphira, who promised to give a sum of money to the church, but then withheld part of it, so they were blown up by St. Peter. Now, nosphizein in the Greek New Testament means "seizure," while meros means "part," which, taken together, can form an adjective we need. Little is known how shocked Westerners are when they try to understand China and how deeply rooted in Chinese life the civil service, bureaucratization, and bureaucracy are. Even in folklore, for example by granting official positions to dragons, snakes, gods, the feeling of bureaucracy is everywhere. Even during the war years, I went to the countryside of China and saw red paper plastered on the wall that read "Heavenly officials bless" (may heavenly officials grant peace and prosperity). We don't have this in the West. We have never had such a civil service. ...... In short, to understand Chinese science, technology and medicine, it must be linked to the characteristics of Chinese civilization. That is the point of Volume VII. Elsewhere we have explained how the bureaucratic social ethos initially helped the development of science in China, and only in the more recent period did it impede any development towards modern science. In any case, this is how we compare developments in China and Europe. This raises the question of where in the previous volumes of the SCC lay the dividing point of traditional Chinese science before the advent of modern science in the West. Generally, we try to set it around 1700, which is the time when the Jesuit mission ended; But we often occasionally go beyond it, and there are many instances of it. ...... In Volume V, Part 3, we recognize that if we want to talk about the entry of modern inorganic and organic chemistry into China, we have to go back to the end of the 19th century. ...... When discussing the development of acupuncture, it is clear that the major discovery of acupuncture for pain relief and acupuncture pain relief that allowed for major surgery was made in the 1950s. In writing this foreword to Volume VII, Conclusions and Reflections, I could not have anticipated what I was going to say in the Conclusion. During my time "on the bridge", we have published 16 volumes, and I am sure that our ship will arrive safely in port when there is plenty of time, and there are another 13 or 14 volumes in the hold. I believe that these unpublished volumes, many of which I have read manuscripts or have discussed with authors, will not change my view of the development of science in China or draw conclusions different from those I have stated here. We would now consider this idea of Needham outdated. Shearn explicitly opposed the introduction of so-called "inhibitors", pointing out the arbitrariness of the distinction between "inhibitors" and "enablers": what exactly is meant by "inhibitors"? There are factors that are often cited as the reason why China, despite its leading position in ancient times, was unable to outperform Europe in the scientific revolution. We might as well consider one of them, that is, the vast majority of the former scholar class immersed themselves in books, faced the past, and lived a pampered life with human settings rather than the natural world. In Europe, however, the overwhelming majority of philosophers and famous gentlemen did the scientific revolution, but they did not stand in the way of the great changes that swept Europe. A historian more imaginative than I am might have asked the question: Had scholasticism not existed, these changes had occurred earlier? The "inhibitor" itself causes no less confusion than when it is applied to ideas or technology. One can fully describe Euclidean geometry as a "inhibitor" in the development of non-Euclidean geometry, because as long as people are satisfied with it, they will not move to a new stage. Later scholars tried to further analyze the background from an economic point of view, in order to find the reasons that Needham ignored, and there were some more representative thoughts. Yi Maoke proposed the theory of the "high-level equilibrium trap": due to the limited land resources per capita, China developed highly developed agricultural technology early on, which limited further demand for technologies such as industrial machinery. That is, China's agricultural technology is too well developed and the population density is too high, which in turn hinders the development of science and technology, because the population is too large, the relative price of labor becomes low, so that any technological invention that saves labor seems worthless. Lin Yifu pointed out that the answer to the "Needham problem" we are looking for must be both the reason that made China ahead of the West in ancient times and the reason that made China lag behind the West in modern times. The fundamental reason, his argument, is the size of the population. In the pre-modern period, most technological inventions originated from the experience of craftsmen and farmers, and scientific discoveries were made spontaneously by a few geniuses while observing nature. In modern times, technological inventions are mainly the result of experiments and science. Scientific discoveries are achieved primarily through controlled experiments or the validation of reproducible experiments on mathematical hypotheses and models about nature, which are more reliably carried out by specially trained scientists. In the premodern model of technological invention and scientific discovery, the larger the population in a society, the greater the number of experienced craftsmen, farmers, and geniuses it contained. Therefore, all else being equal, more progress in science and technology and science is more likely to occur in a society with a larger population. China, due to its large population, had a comparative advantage in the pre-modern period, but lagged behind the West in the modern period, as China's technological invention continued to rely on chance and experience, while Europe turned to planned experimentation and science in the scientific revolution of the 17th century. The reason why there was no scientific revolution in China is, I attribute to the content of the Chinese imperial examination and the criteria for promoting officials, which distract intellectuals from continuing to invest in the human capital necessary for modern scientific research. As a result, the likelihood of a transition from primitive to modern science is reduced. In addition to the few explanations we mentioned earlier, there are many attempts to emphasize the differences between China and the West from the perspectives of philosophy, psychology, values, etc. as the answer to the "Needham problem". Overall, there is no final answer to this question, and it remains to be explored. As Professor Liu Dun commented: Chinese devoted himself to the "Needham problem" one after another, trying to give one special solution after another to the strange proposition of why modern science did not produce in ancient China, just as mathematicians tried to solve mathematical problems such as "Fermat's Last Theorem". ...... It seems that finding a "special solution" to this problem will find the crux of "backwardness" and provide useful guidance for the development of science and technology in contemporary China. But, to put it bluntly, many of the answers are repetitive statements, and some even repeat statements made two or three hundred years ago.