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Joseph Needham

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For the English cricketer, see Joseph Needham (cricketer).

Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham, CH, FRS, FBA (December 9, 1900–March 24, 1995) , also known as Li Yuese (李約瑟; Pinyin: Lǐ Yuēsè: Wade-Giles: Li Yüeh-Sê), was a British academic and sinologist.

 This article contains Chinese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.

Needham achieved international renown of his prolific research and writing on the history of Chinese science.

This polymath was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1941;[1] and he was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1971.[2] When the Queen conferred the Companionship of Honour in 1992, the Royal Society published a notice stating that "one can count the number of living holders of these three titles on one finger of one hand."[3]

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Needham was the only child of a Scottish family in London: his father was a doctor and his mother, Alicia Adelaïde Needham née Montgomery (1863–1945), was a composer and music teacher. Needham was educated at Cambridge University, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1921, master's degree in January 1925 and doctorate in October 1925. After graduation, he worked in F.G. Hopkins's laboratory at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, specialising in embryology and morphogenesis. Although his career as biochemist and an academic was well established, his career developed in unanticipated directions during and after World War II.

[edit] Career

Three Chinese scientists came to work with Needham in 1936: Lu Gwei-djen, Wang Ying-lai (王應睞), and Chen Shi-chang (沈詩章). Lu (1904–91), daughter of a Nanjingese pharmacist, taught Needham Classical Chinese. This ignited Needham's interest in China's technological and scientific past.

Under the Royal Society's direction, Needham was the director of the Sino-British Science Co-operation Office in Chongqing from 1942 to 1946. Needham collaborated with the historian Wang Ling (王玲), who solidified Needham's passion for Chinese scientific history.

Needham wrote his first book on the history of Chinese technology in 1945, titled Chinese Science. He also met numerous Chinese scholars, including the painter Wu Zuoren (吳作人), and travelled to sites in western China, including Dunhuang and Yunnan. He also visited educational institutions, from which large amounts of references and materials were collected, which would aid his editing of Science and Civilisation in China Series.

After two years' tenure as the first head of the Natural Science division at UNESCO in Paris, France — indeed, it was Needham who insisted that Science should be included in the organisation's mandate — he returned to Gonville and Caius College in 1948, when Cambridge University Press partially funded his Science and Civilisation in China series. He devoted much energy to the history of Chinese science until his retirement in 1990, even though he continued to teach biochemistry until 1966. He also supported the controversial Chinese communist claims of American biological warfare as an inspector from 1952 to 1953 in North Korea during the Korean War. Needham's biographer Simon Winchester comments on this incident and Needham's general infatuation with communism: "Needham was intellectually in love with communism; and yet communist spymasters and agents, it turned out, had pitilessly duped him." (The Man Who Loved China, p. 212).

In 1965, with Derek Bryan, a retired diplomat, Needham established the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, which for some years provided the only way for the British to visit the People's Republic of China.

[edit] Later life

Needham was first married to Dorothy (née Moyle, 1896–1987). In 1989, two years after Dorothy's death, Needham married Lu Gwei-djen. He suffered from Parkinson's disease from 1982, and died at the age of 94 at his Cambridge home. In 2008 the Chair of Chinese in the University of Cambridge was endowed in honour of Joseph Needham as the Joseph Needham Professorship of Chinese History, Science, and Civilization.

[edit] Honours

In 1961, Needham was awarded the Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society and in 1966 he became Master of Gonville and Caius College. In 1984, Needham became the fourth recipient of the J.D. Bernal Award, awarded by the Society for Social Studies of Science. In 1990, he was awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize by Fukuoka City.

The Needham Research Institute, devoted to the study of China's scientific history, was opened in 1985 by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

[edit] Science and Civilisation in China

Main article: Science and Civilization in China

In 1954, Needham with an international team of collaborators, started a project to study the science and civilisation of ancient China. This project produced a series of volumes titled Science and Civilisation in China {SCC) published by the Cambridge University Press. The project is now proceeding under the guidance of the Publications Board of the Needham Research Institute, chaired by Christopher Cullen.[4]

The massive project produced a series of volumes under Needham's direct supervision; and the regular production of further volumes continued after his death in 1995. Successive volumes have been published as they became ready, which means that they have not appeared in the order originally contemplated in the project's prospectus -- see Needham's SCC organizating scheme:

Chronological list of published SCC volumes:

Date Title Vol./
Part		 Editor/
Contributors		 Notes
1954 Introductory Orientations 1 Joseph Needham,
Wang Ling (research assistant)		 >
1956 History of Scientific Thought 2 Joseph Needham,
Wang Ling (research assistant)		 OCLC
1959 Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and Earth 3 Joseph Needham,
Wang Ling (research assistant)		 OCLC
1962 Physics 4/01 Joseph Needham,
Wang Ling (research assistant),
Kenneth Robinson		 OCLC
1965 Mechanical Engineering 4/02 Joseph Needham,
Wang Ling		 >
1971 Civil Engineering and Nautics 4/03 Joseph Needham,
Wang Ling,
Lu Gwei-djen		 >
1974 Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Magisteries of Gold and Immortality 5/02 Joseph Needham,
Lu Gwei-djen		 >
1976 Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Historical Survey, from Cinnabar Elixirs to Synthetic Insulin 5/03 Joseph Needham,
Ho Ping-Yu [Ho Peng-Yoke],
Lu Gwei-djen		 >
1980 Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Apparatus and Theory 5/04 Joseph Needham,
Lu Gwei-djen,
Nathan Sivin		 >
1983 Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Physiological Alchemy 5/05 Joseph Needham,
Lu Gwei-djen		 >
1985 Paper and Printing 5/01 Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin >
1986 Textile Technology: Spinning and Reeling 5/09 Dieter Kuhn >
1986 Botany 6/01 Joseph Needham,
Lu Gwei-djen,
Huang Hsing-Tsung		 >
1987 Military Technology: The Gunpowder Epic 5/07 Joseph Needham,
Ho Ping-Yu [Ho Peng-Yoke],
Lu Gwei-djen,
Wang Ling		 >
1988 Agriculture 6/02 Francesca Bray >
1994 Military Technology: Missiles and Sieges 5/06 Joseph Needham,
Robin D.S. Yates,
Krzysztof Gawlikowski,
Edward McEwen,
Wang Ling
1996 Agroindustries and Forestry 6/03 Christian A. Daniels,
Nicholas K. Menzies		 >
1998 Language and Logic 7/01 Christoph Harbsmeier >
1999 Mining 5/13 Peter Golas >
2000 Fermentations and Food Science 6/05 Huang Hsing-Tsung >
2000 Medicine 6/06 Joseph Needham,
Lu Gwei-djen,
(edited by Nathan Sivin)		 >
2004 Ceramic Technology 5/12 Rose Kerr,
Nigel Wood,
Ts'ai Mei-fen,
Zhang Fukang		 >
2004 General Conclusions and Reflections 7/02 Joseph Needham,
(edited by Kenneth Girdwood Robinson),
contributions by Ray Huang,
introduction by Mark Elvin
 OCLC
2008 Ferrous Metallurgy 5/11 Donald B. Wagner >
2__? Work in progress 5/08 Volume editor/contributors unknown >
2__? Work in progress 5/10 Volume editor/contributors unknown >
2__? Work in progress 6/04 Volume editor/contributors unknown >

[edit] Evaluations and critiques of Needham and his Grand Question

"Needham's Grand Question", also known as "The Needham Question", is why China had been overtaken by the West in science and technology, despite its earlier successes. His works attribute significant weight to the impact of Confucianism and Taoism on the pace of Chinese scientific discovery, and emphasizes what it describes as the 'diffusionist' approach of Chinese science as opposed to a perceived independent inventiveness in the western world.

Needham's work has been criticized by some scholars for its strong inclination to exaggerate Chinese technological achievements and its propensity to prove a Chinese origin for the wide range of objects his work covered.[5] Nathan Sivin, one of Needham's collaborators, while agreeing that Needham's achievement was monumental, suggested that the "Needham question," as a counterfactual hypothesis, was not susceptible of a useful answer: "It is striking that this question – Why didn't the Chinese beat Europeans to the Scientific Revolution? – happens to be one of the few questions that people often ask in public places about why something didn't happen history. It is analogous to the question of why your name did not appear on page 3 of today's newspaper." [6]


Needham's political views were unorthodox and his lifestyle controversial. His work in science was based in an idiosyncratic form of Christian socialism and after 1949 his sympathy with Chinese culture was extended to the new government. Needham agreed to be an inspector in North Korea (1952-53) during the Korean War and in his report he supported the controversial Chinese communist claims that the Americans had used biological warfare there. Needham's biographer Simon Winchester comments that "Needham was intellectually in love with communism; and yet communist spymasters and agents, it turned out, had pitilessly duped him" [7] Winchester also notes that because of his assertions Needham was blacklisted by the U.S. government until well into the 1970s.

[edit] Selected works

  • Science, Religion and Reality (1925)
  • Chemical Embryology (1931)
  • The Great Amphibium; four lectures on the position of religion in a world dominated by science (1931)
  • Perspectives in Biochemistry; thirty-one essays presented to Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins by past and present members of his laboratory (1937)
  • History Is On Our Side (1947)
  • Science Outpost; papers of the Sino-British science co-operation office (British council scientific office in China) 1942-1946 (1948)
  • Science and Civilisation in China (1954, etc), 25 volumes to date
  • Science and Civilization in China, by Joseph Needham, with the research assistance [and collaboration] of Wang Ling (1954-59) 2 Volumes
  • A History of Embryology (1959)
  • The Grand Titration: science and society in East and West (1969)
  • Within the Four Seas: the dialogue of east and west (1969)
  • Clerks and Craftsmen in China and the West: lectures and addresses on the history of science and technology (1970)
  • Chinese Science; explorations of an ancient tradition (1973)
  • Moulds of Understanding: a pattern of natural philosophy (1976)
  • The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China, volume 1: an abridgement of Joseph Needham's original text (1978)
  • The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China, volume 2: an abridgement of Joseph Needham's original text (1978)
  • The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China, volume 3: an abridgement of Joseph Needham's original text (1978)
  • Science in Traditional China (1982)
  • Science in Traditional China : a comparative perspective (1982)
  • The Genius of China (1986)
  • Heavenly Clockwork : the great astronomical clocks of medieval China (1986)
  • The Hall of Heavenly Records : Korean astronomical instruments and clocks, 1380-1780 (1986)

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Winchester, Simon. (2008). The Man Who Loved China, pp. 28-29.
  2. ^ a b Winchester, p. 238.
  3. ^ a b Winchester, p. 250.
  4. ^ "Science and Civilisation in China". Needham Research Institute. Retrieved on 2008-07-09.
  5. ^ Pierre-Yves Manguin: “Trading Ships of the South China Sea. Shipbuilding Techniques and Their Role in the History of the Development of Asian Trade Networks”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 36, No. 3. (1993), pp. 253-280 (268, Fn.26; Robert Finlay, "China, the West, and World History in Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China," Journal of World History 11 (Fall 2000): 265-303.
  6. ^ Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not Take Place in China – Or Didn't It?" in Nathan Sivin, Science in Ancient China (Aldershot, Hants: Variorum, 1995), chapter VII)
  7. ^ The Man Who Loved China, p. 212.

[edit] References


[edit] External links

[edit] English

[edit] Chinese

Preceded by:
Sir Nevill Mott		 Master of Gonville and Caius College
1966–1976		 Succeeded by:
Sir William Wade

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