Order and Life

Order and Life PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110750483X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
This book contains the text of the Terry Lectures for 1934-5, which discuss the nature, deployment, and hierarchical continuity of biological order.

Order and Life

Order and Life PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110750483X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
This book contains the text of the Terry Lectures for 1934-5, which discuss the nature, deployment, and hierarchical continuity of biological order.

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 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 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.

Within the Four Seas

Within the Four Seas PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136574697
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
First published in 1969. Contains some of Joseph Needham's most significant essays, lectures and broadcasts on the history of Chinese science, technology and culture. Also included are some more personal thoughts stimulated by his own travels and experiences in China, including a number of poems. The book discusses the valuable social and intellectual influences which have flowed to Europe from South as well as East Asia, and suggests that the events of the twentieth century were a natural development of Chinese history, not a deviation from it.

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, Religion and Reality

Science, Religion and Reality PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion and science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description


The Grand Titration

The Grand Titration PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136574484
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
First published in 1969. The historical civilization of China is, with the Indian and European-Semitic, one of the three greatest in the world, yet only relatively recently has any enquiry been begun into its achievements in science and technology. Between the first and fifteenth centuries the Chinese were generally far in advance of Europe and it was not until the scientific revolution of the Renaissance that Europe drew ahead. Throughout those fifteen centuries, and ever since, the West has been profoundly affected by the discoveries and invention emanating from China and East Asia. In this series of essays and lectures, Joseph Needham explores the mystery of China's early lead and Europe's later overtaking.

My Unwritten Books

My Unwritten Books PDF Author: George Steiner
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811217033
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
One of the worlds foremost literary critics meditates upon seven books he long had in mind to write but never did. Massively erudite, the essays are also brave, unflinching, and wholly personal.

Chemical Embryology

Chemical Embryology PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN:
Category : Chemical embryology
Languages : en
Pages : 670

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Book Description