Science and Civilisation in China, Part 2, Agriculture

Science and Civilisation in China, Part 2, Agriculture PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521250764
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This second part of the sixth volume of Joseph Needham's great enterprise is the first to be written by a collaborator. Francesca Bray, working closely with Dr Needham, has produced the most comprehensive study of Chinese agriculture to be published in the West. From a huge mass of source material, often confusing and obscure, and from first-hand study in China, she brings order and illumination to a crucial area of Chinese technological development. The main body of the book is an account of the technological history of agriculture, with major sections devoted to field systems, implements and techniques (sowing, harvesting, storing) and crop systems (what has grown and where and how crops rotated). The concluding section contrasts Europe's Agricultural Revolution with agrarian change in North China in the Han and with the 'Green Revolution' in South China in the Sung. In the theoretical analysis which concludes this section we find a vital contribution to the elucidation of the main question posed by Dr Needham's work: why did the Scientific Revolution which transformed the world take place in Europe and not in China?

Science and Civilisation in China, Part 2, Agriculture

Science and Civilisation in China, Part 2, Agriculture PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521250764
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This second part of the sixth volume of Joseph Needham's great enterprise is the first to be written by a collaborator. Francesca Bray, working closely with Dr Needham, has produced the most comprehensive study of Chinese agriculture to be published in the West. From a huge mass of source material, often confusing and obscure, and from first-hand study in China, she brings order and illumination to a crucial area of Chinese technological development. The main body of the book is an account of the technological history of agriculture, with major sections devoted to field systems, implements and techniques (sowing, harvesting, storing) and crop systems (what has grown and where and how crops rotated). The concluding section contrasts Europe's Agricultural Revolution with agrarian change in North China in the Han and with the 'Green Revolution' in South China in the Sung. In the theoretical analysis which concludes this section we find a vital contribution to the elucidation of the main question posed by Dr Needham's work: why did the Scientific Revolution which transformed the world take place in Europe and not in China?

The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5

The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5 PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521467735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
This fifth volume abridgement of Joseph Needham's monumental work is concerned with the staggering civil engineering feats made in early and medieval China.

Science and Civilisation in China, Part 2, Agriculture

Science and Civilisation in China, Part 2, Agriculture PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521250764
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 768

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Book Description
This second part of the sixth volume of Joeph Needham's great enterprise is an account of the technological history of agriculture, with major sections devoted to field systems, implements and techniques (sowing, harvesting, storing) and crop systems (what has grown and where and how crops rotated).

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part 3, Agro-Industries and Forestry

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part 3, Agro-Industries and Forestry PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521419994
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Volume VI Part 3 of Science and Civilisation in China contains two separate works. The first, by Christian Daniels, is a comprehensive history of Chinese sugarcane technology from ancient times to the early twentieth century. Dr. Daniels includes an account of the contribution of Chinese techniques and machinery to the development of world sugar technology in the premodern period, devoting special attention to the transfer of this technology to the countries of Southeast and East Asia in the period after the sixteenth century. The second, by Nicholas K. Menzies, is a history of forestry in China. Dr. Menzies identifies a tradition of forest management that can be traced to the earliest Chinese written records, and describes methods of silviculture, and the major timber species used in Chinese forestry. A final section compares China's history of deforestation with the cases of Europe and Japan. Each of these works will interest scholars of Chinese science, culture, and ancient agriculture as well as historians of science.

Science and Civilisation in China, Part 2, Mechanical Engineering

Science and Civilisation in China, Part 2, Mechanical Engineering PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521058032
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1022

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Book Description
As Dr Needham's immense undertaking gathers momentum it has been found necessary to subdivide volumes into parts, each to be bound and published separately. The first part of Volume 4, already published, deals with the physical sciences; the second with the diverse applications of physics in the many branches of mechanical engineering; and the third will deal with civil and hydraulic engineering and nautical technology. With this part of Volume 4, then, we come to the application by the Chinese of physical principles in the control of forces and in the use of power; we cross the frontier separating tools from the machine. We have already noticed that the ancient Chinese concept of chhi (somewhat similar to the pneuma of the Greeks) asserted itself prominently in acoustics; but we discover here that the Chinese tendency to think pneumatically was also responsible for a whole range of brilliant technological achievements, for example, the double-acting piston-bellows, the rotary winnowing-fan, and the water-powered metallurgical blowing-machine (ancestor of the steam-engine); as well as for some extraordinary insights and predictions in aeronautics.

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part 3, Agro-Industries and Forestry

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part 3, Agro-Industries and Forestry PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521419994
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 770

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Book Description
Volume VI Part 3 of Science and Civilisation in China contains two separate works. The first, by Christian Daniels, is a comprehensive history of Chinese sugarcane technology from ancient times to the early twentieth century. Dr. Daniels includes an account of the contribution of Chinese techniques and machinery to the development of world sugar technology in the premodern period, devoting special attention to the transfer of this technology to the countries of Southeast and East Asia in the period after the sixteenth century. The second, by Nicholas K. Menzies, is a history of forestry in China. Dr. Menzies identifies a tradition of forest management that can be traced to the earliest Chinese written records, and describes methods of silviculture, and the major timber species used in Chinese forestry. A final section compares China's history of deforestation with the cases of Europe and Japan. Each of these works will interest scholars of Chinese science, culture, and ancient agriculture as well as historians of science.

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 7, The Social Background, Part 2, General Conclusions and Reflections

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 7, The Social Background, Part 2, General Conclusions and Reflections PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521087322
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China series. For nearly fifty years, Needham and his collaborators have revealed the ideals, concepts and achievements of China's scientific and technological traditions from the earliest times to about 1800 through this great enterprise. During his long working lifetime, Needham kept in draft various essays, some written with collaborators, in which he set out his broad views on the Chinese social and historical context. These essays, edited by one of his closest collaborators, Kenneth Robinson, are contained in the present volume. A reading of this material makes it possible to reconstruct the assumptions and problematics that underpinned and drove the Needham project throughout the nearly one half century during which he was at the helm. The documents gathered here reveal the intellectual foundations of one of the greatest scholarly enterprises of the twentieth century.

Science and Civilisation in China, Part 13, Mining

Science and Civilisation in China, Part 13, Mining PDF Author: Peter J. Golas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521580007
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 604

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Book Description
The fifth volume of Dr Needham's immense undertaking covers the subjects of chemistry and chemical technology. This, the thirteenth part of the volume, is the first history of Chinese mining to appear in a western language. Covering from the Neolithic period to the present day it deals with the full range of Chinese mining from copper to mercury, arsenic to coal and a large number of other minerals and materials. The author draws extensively not only on written sources but also on archaeological remains, and observation of traditional techniques still in use. The interrelationship between Chinese mining and the social, economic and political conditions in which it took place is examined, and leads the author to conclude that these extraneous factors were probably more important in determining how mining was carried out than technological progress.

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part 3, Agro-Industries and Forestry

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part 3, Agro-Industries and Forestry PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521419994
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 770

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Book Description
Volume VI Part 3 of Science and Civilisation in China contains two separate works. The first, by Christian Daniels, is a comprehensive history of Chinese sugarcane technology from ancient times to the early twentieth century. Dr. Daniels includes an account of the contribution of Chinese techniques and machinery to the development of world sugar technology in the premodern period, devoting special attention to the transfer of this technology to the countries of Southeast and East Asia in the period after the sixteenth century. The second, by Nicholas K. Menzies, is a history of forestry in China. Dr. Menzies identifies a tradition of forest management that can be traced to the earliest Chinese written records, and describes methods of silviculture, and the major timber species used in Chinese forestry. A final section compares China's history of deforestation with the cases of Europe and Japan. Each of these works will interest scholars of Chinese science, culture, and ancient agriculture as well as historians of science.

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part 3, Agro-Industries and Forestry

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part 3, Agro-Industries and Forestry PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521419994
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 934

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Book Description
Contains two separate works. The first, by Christian Daniels, is a comprehensive history of Chinese sugar cane technology from ancient times to the early twentieth century. Dr Daniels includes an account of the contribution of Chinese techniques and machinery to the development of world sugar technology in the pre-modern period, devoting special attention to the transfer of this technology to the countries of South-East and East Asia in the period after the sixteenth century. The second, by Nicholas K. Menzies, is a history of forestry in China. A final section compares China's history of deforestation with the cases of Europe and Japan.