Science and Civilisation in China State of the Project

To commemorate the 80th birthday on 9 December 1980 of Dr Joseph Needham – a Member of our Editorial Board – we are here publishing a somewhat condensed progress report of what has been rightly called ‘the greatest single act of historical synthesis and intercultural communication ever attempted by one man’. After describing its contents, Dr Needham gives a preliminary outline of his methodology, how he has quarried Chinese literature and iconography, how he has immersed himself in China's living tradition to interpret correctly her past and how he has mastered the often century-old technical terminology of Chinese science – only thus could he build his oecumenical university. He concludes here with the hope that this vast study, so felicitously begun, will continue ‘as limitless as is all history’

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