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.

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: Volume 2, History of Scientific Thought

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 2, History of Scientific Thought PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521058001
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 746

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Book Description
The second volume of Dr Joseph Needham's great work Science and Civilisation in China is devoted to the history of scientific thought. Beginning with ancient times, it describes the Confucian milieu in which arose the organic naturalism of the great Taoist school, the scientific philosophy of the Mohists and Logicians, and the quantitative materialism of the Legalists. Thus we are brought on to the fundamental ideas which dominated scientific thinking in the Chinese middle ages. The author opens his discussion by considering the remote and pictographic origins of words fundamental in scientific discourse, and then sets forth the influential doctrines of the Two Forces and the Five Elements. Subsequently he writes of the important sceptical tradition, the effects of Buddhist thought, and the Neo-Confucian climax of Chinese naturalism. Last comes a discussion of the conception of Laws of Nature in China and the West.

Science in Traditional China

Science in Traditional China PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674794399
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
The world's preeminent authority on Chinese science explores the philosophy, social structure, arts, crafts, and even military strategies that form our understanding of Chinese science, making instructive comparisons along the way to similar elements of Indian, Hellenistic, and Arabic cultures. A major portion of the book concentrates on Taoist alchemy that led not only to the invention of gunpowder and firearms, but also, through the search for macrobiotic life-elixirs, to the rise of modern medical chemistry.

The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 1

The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 1 PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521292863
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Volumes I and II of the major series: China: its language, geography and history ; Chinese philosophy and scientific thought.

Bomb, Book and Compass

Bomb, Book and Compass PDF Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141889896
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Before fate intervened, Joseph Needham was a distinguished biochemist at Cambridge University, married to a fellow scientist. In 1937 he was asked to supervise a young Chinese student named Lu Gwei-Djen, and in that moment began the two greatest love affairs of his life - Miss Lu, and China. Miss Lu inspired Needham to travel to China where he initially spent three dangerous years as a wartime diplomat. He established himself as the pre-eminent China scholar of all time, firm in his belief that China would one day achieve world prominence. By the end of his life, Needham had become a truly global figure, travelling endlessly and honoured by all - though banned from America because of his politics. And in 1989, after a fifty-two year affair, he finally married the woman who had first inspired his passion. The Magnificent Barbarian is Simon Winchester at his best - at once a magnificent portrait of one man's remarkable life and a riveting exploration of the country that so engaged him.

Science

Science PDF Author: Patricia Fara
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191655570
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 782

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Book Description
Science: A Four Thousand Year History rewrites science's past. Instead of focussing on difficult experiments and abstract theories, Patricia Fara shows how science has always belonged to the practical world of war, politics, and business. Rather than glorifying scientists as idealized heroes, she tells true stories about real people - men (and some women) who needed to earn their living, who made mistakes, and who trampled down their rivals in their quest for success. Fara sweeps through the centuries, from ancient Babylon right up to the latest hi-tech experiments in genetics and particle physics, illuminating the financial interests, imperial ambitions, and publishing enterprises that have made science the powerful global phenomenon that it is today. She also ranges internationally, illustrating the importance of scientific projects based around the world, from China to the Islamic empire, as well as the more familiar tale of science in Europe, from Copernicus to Charles Darwin and beyond. Above all, this four thousand year history challenges scientific supremacy, arguing controversially that science is successful not because it is always right - but because people have said that it is right.

Chinese Thought, Society, and Science

Chinese Thought, Society, and Science PDF Author: Derk Bodde
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
The Chinese have given the world paper, printing, porcelain, gunpowder, the mariner's compass and other inventions important to the history and development of science. Yet it was Europe, not China, that experienced the scientific and technological revolution that transformed the world from the 17th century onward. In this study, Derk Bodde examines the cultural requisites for science and technology in early China and other pre-modern civilizations.

The Man Who Loved China

The Man Who Loved China PDF Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061795887
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman ("Elegant and scrupulous"—New York Times Book Review) and Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"—Time) brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically advanced country. No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge University, he instantly fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair. He soon became fascinated with China, and his mistress swiftly persuaded the ever-enthusiastic Needham to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire. He searched everywhere for evidence to bolster his conviction that the Chinese were responsible for hundreds of mankind's most familiar innovations—including printing, the compass, explosives, suspension bridges, even toilet paper—often centuries before the rest of the world. His thrilling and dangerous journeys, vividly recreated by Winchester, took him across war-torn China to far-flung outposts, consolidating his deep admiration for the Chinese people. After the war, Needham was determined to tell the world what he had discovered, and began writing his majestic Science and Civilisation in China, describing the country's long and astonishing history of invention and technology. By the time he died, he had produced, essentially single-handedly, seventeen immense volumes, marking him as the greatest one-man encyclopedist ever. Both epic and intimate, The Man Who Loved China tells the sweeping story of China through Needham's remarkable life. Here is an unforgettable tale of what makes men, nations, and, indeed, mankind itself great—related by one of the world's inimitable storytellers.

On Their Own Terms

On Their Own Terms PDF Author: Benjamin A. Elman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674036476
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 606

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Book Description
In On Their Own Terms, Benjamin A. Elman offers a much-needed synthesis of early Chinese science during the Jesuit period (1600-1800) and the modern sciences as they evolved in China under Protestant influence (1840s-1900). By 1600 Europe was ahead of Asia in producing basic machines, such as clocks, levers, and pulleys, that would be necessary for the mechanization of agriculture and industry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Elman shows, Europeans still sought from the Chinese their secrets of producing silk, fine textiles, and porcelain, as well as large-scale tea cultivation. Chinese literati borrowed in turn new algebraic notations of Hindu-Arabic origin, Tychonic cosmology, Euclidian geometry, and various computational advances. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, imperial reformers, early Republicans, Guomindang party cadres, and Chinese Communists have all prioritized science and technology. In this book, Elman gives a nuanced account of the ways in which native Chinese science evolved over four centuries, under the influence of both Jesuit and Protestant missionaries. In the end, he argues, the Chinese produced modern science on their own terms.

A History of Chinese Science and Technology

A History of Chinese Science and Technology PDF Author: Yongxiang Lu
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3662442574
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
A History of Chinese Science and Technology (Volumes 1, 2 & 3) presents 44 individual lectures, beginning with Ancient Chinese Science and Technology in the Process of Human Civilizations and an Overview of Chinese Science and Technology, and continuing with in-depth discussions of several issues in the History of Science and the Needham Puzzle, interspersed with topics on Astronomy, Arithmetic, Agriculture and Medicine, The Four Great Inventions, and various technological areas closely related to clothing, food, shelter and transportation. This book is the most authoritative work on the history of Chinese Science and Technology. It is the Winner of the China Book Award, the Shanghai Book Award (1st prize), and the Classical China International Publishing Project (GAPP, General Administration of Press and Publication of China) and offers an essential resource for academic researchers and non-experts alike. It originated with a series of 44 lectures presented to top Chinese leaders, which received very positive feedback. Written by top Chinese scholars in their respective fields from the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences and many other respected Chinese organizations, the book is intended for scientists, researchers and postgraduate students working in the history of science, philosophy of science and technology, and related disciplines. Yongxiang Lu is a professor, former president and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), and Vice Chairman of the National Congress of China.