East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (EASTM - Universität Tübingen)

Yano, Michio

Medicine and Divination in India

Sivin, Nathan

 12 
Ho Peng Yoke: 
A Personal Introduction 
 
I have often wished that I knew Ho Peng Yoke for more than half his lifetime. It 
would have been interesting to see him growing up in Ipoh, a tin-producing town 
in Malaya—obviously not an easy childhood, and much harder when the Japa-
nese occupation interrupted his education for six years. His biographer will no 
doubt find it challenging to reconstruct his scientific education in Singapore 
during that city-state’s postwar period of dizzying change.  
We met because I had decided to write a doctoral dissertation on Chinese al-
chemy, under the profound misapprehension that it was an early form of chemis-
try. My advisors at Harvard gladly cordially approved the topic, but were totally 
unprepared to advise me on it. Since in the early 1960’s Americans of my genera-
tion had no hope of working in China, I was eager to find someone knowledgea-
ble about alchemy in an accessible place; that led me promptly to Peng Yoke. 
When he welcomed me to Singapore in 1962, he was Reader in the History of 
Science at what was then the University of Malaya in Singapore (where he had 
taken his Ph.D. and would later take a D.Sc.), and belonged to the Department of 
Physics. Although his colleagues esteemed his talent and industry as a historian, 
this was not a seamlessly happy place to be. The Professor of Physics, a distin-
guished atmospheric physicist of Indian descent, felt that he should run his de-
partment like an ashram, and expected his subordinates to spend the mornings in 
his office engaged in elevated conversation. This they did with good grace, but 
most of them were young and eager experimentalists whose Chinese backgrounds 
encompassed no such tradition of talking when one could be making progress in 
one’s studies.  
This led to a certain amount of chafing, but it did not interfere with the 
warmth of everyone’s hospitality. It was a great luxury to have in Peng Yoke 
someone with whom to discuss problems in my sources. He even encouraged me 
to do some laboratory work that might elucidate what my Tang alchemist, Sun 
Simo (or Simiao 孫 思 邈, alive 673), aimed to do. I took advantage of his offer 
when I came across Scarlet Snow and Flowing Pearl Elixir, a formula that I could 
not explicate, but that was not too complicated for a go at carrying out the 1300-
year-old preparation. The Tang source called for heating a mixture of realgar 
(arsenic sulfide), vinegar and salt, in two cast-iron crucibles sealed mouth to 
mouth, until the container maintains the same color as the fire. This would be ca. 
900º C, but since there were no iron crucibles available in Singapore, I substitut-
ed nickel ones. After the stipulated twenty-four hours I cooled the electric fur-
nace down and found that the contents had eaten right through the crucibles and 
had disappeared. Peng Yoke realized before I did that the only product that could 
possibly dissolve nickel was metallic arsenic, and that this preparation of it was 
by far the earliest known.  
 13 
I was resolved to complete the preparation and see what the formula asserted 
was a strikingly beautiful product. I hit on the idea of sealing the ingredients in 
heavy-walled pyrex glass tubing. I had determined that the melting point of pyrex 
was well above 900º C, but I was too inexperienced to realize that it would soften 
enough at that temperature to respond to the pressure of the vapour inside. The 
sealing of the tubing was simple enough. We put the vessel in the furnace, started 
it up, and walked back to Peng Yoke’s office. As we were sitting there, the phone 
rang. Peng Yoke answered it, and then uttered a sentence never before said, and 
probably never said again since: “Nathan, that was the chemistry lab calling to 
say that your elixir of immortality has just exploded in the electric furnace.” 
It was not long (1964) until Peng Yoke moved on to fill the Professorship of 
Chinese Studies at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. The city had be-
come the political center of Malaysia, and its university was developing rapidly. 
He shortly (1966) published his first book, The Astronomical Chapters of the 
Chin Shu, a helpfully annotated translation of the Treatise on Astrology (A.D. 
644). The preface to this still invaluable work acknowledged the help of Joseph 
Needham at every step from choosing the topic to suggesting improvements in 
what was originally a doctoral dissertation. The first joint paper by the two schol-
ars (on ancient comets) had appeared in 1957. Peng Yoke became one of the 
small group of collaborators whose work made Science and Civilisation in China 
and many ancillary publications possible. The volumes of SCC on alchemy and 
military technology listed him as a collaborator, but he actually contributed re-
search to just about every volume that Needham wrote from 1970 on.  
I visited Peng Yoke only once in Kuala Lumpur, where he was making his 
mark on that rapidly modernizing city. But as the university increasingly de-
manded that Malay be the language of all instruction, including those courses on 
East Asian languages, it became difficult to attract Chinese Studies faculty and 
research students. This difficulty was one reason that he moved on in 1973 to 
Australia, where he became Foundation Professor and first Chairman of the new 
School of Modern Asian Studies at Griffith University. He remained there until 
his retirement in 1989, although he spent 1984-1987 on leave at the University of 
Hong Kong as Head of the Department of Chinese and Master of Robert Black 
College.  
Despite the heavy administrative burden that he bore between 1964 and 
1989—which made it possible to accomplish so much in institution-building—he 
published an average of nearly a book or monograph, and more than one several 
essays, per year. These were of several more or less distinct kinds: contributions 
to the SCC project; collaborations with research students and other scholars on 
diverse topics of shared interest; studies of primary sources that threw light on 
the history of divination and number (shu 數), which he explicated as an im-
portant qualitative as well as quantitative conception; and textbooks such as Li, 
Qi, and Shu. An Introduction to Science and Civilisation in China (1985), which 
combines Needham’s general perspectives with Peng Yoke’s own studies of 
number.  
14 
 
EASTM 24 (2005) 
A look at his contributions makes it clear that a distinguishing feature of the 
best writing on Chinese science is still polymathy. This makes the field stand out 
in an academic world in which authors in most fields devote their lives to learn-
ing more and more about very little. For instance, his contributions to a recent 
encyclopedia include articles on astrology, astronomy, alchemy, mathematics, 
magic squares, gunpowder, and navigation, in addition to several biographies. 
One can hardly speak of Peng Yoke’s retirement in 1989, since he promptly 
accepted Needham’s invitation to succeed him as Director of the Needham Re-
search Institute. That entailed completing the Institute’s transition from a schol-
ar’s own working collection to an institution that would serve investigators from 
all over the world. At the time, the library was housed in a building borrowed 
from Cambridge University Press. It had a couple of staff members paid for out 
of Needham’s pocket, but everyone else was an unpaid volunteer—and so was 
Peng Yoke when he accepted the directorship.  
Needham planned a building that would meet the collection’s growing needs 
and at the same time be beautiful and pleasurable to work in. Peng Yoke knew 
that his main responsibility in taking over would be raising the funds to build the 
building, pay a staff, buy books, and establish an endowment that would make 
possible a full-time, paid director. In concentrating on these goals, he had the 
help of three charitable trusts, one each in Cambridge, Hong Kong, and New 
York, and a good many generous personal friends in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, 
and elsewhere. It was not possible to give funding this priority and run the Insti-
tute at the same time, but Christopher Cullen made the on-the-spot, day-to-day 
decisions there as part-time Deputy Director in addition to his full-time appoint-
ment and program-building at London University; Sir Geoffrey Lloyd vitalized 
the U.K. Trust as its Chairman; and Peng Yoke’s periodic stays in Cambridge 
kept him involved in the long-term planning.  
To make a long story short, with a great deal of help and good will from the 
Trustees and others, by the time Peng Yoke retired from the Directorship late in 
2002, he had attained all of these goals. The building, on the grounds of Robin-
son College, is a gem of Cambridge architecture, with a first-class collection, and 
it is already one of the most intellectually lively places in a lively academic town. 
Peng Yoke made it possible for the third Director to devote his full energies to 
guiding the evolution of the Institute.  
But to think of Ho Peng Yoke as merely a researcher, author and administra-
tor is to miss the deepest point. The personal generosity that I experienced, the 
warmth with which he has always welcomed people in need of a mentor or advi-
sor, are engraved in the memories of a great many scholars the world over. This 
collection testifies to the esteem and gratitude that these qualities have elicited. 
 
Nathan Sivin 
Department of the History and Sociology of Science 
University of Pennsylvania, PA 
16 April 2003 


Ho Peng Yoke: A Personal Introduction

East Asian 
Science, Technology, 
and Medicine 
 
Number 23 
2005 
 
A journal dedicated to the study of traditional and modern  
East Asian science, technology, and medicine. 
 
 
 
Editor:  
Hans Ulrich Vogel 
 
Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik 
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen 
Wilhelmstr. 133 
72074 Tübingen / Germany 
FAX: 0049 - 7071 - 295733 
E-Mail: eastm@uni-tuebingen.de 
 
 
Managing and Production Editors: 
He Heng, Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik, Tübingen 
Tobias Wissler, Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik, Tübingen 
 
English Language Editor:  
John P. C. Moffett, Needham Research Institute, Cambridge (UK) 
 
Editorial Consultant: 
Jutta Rall-Niu, Seminar für Sprache und Kultur Chinas, Universität Hamburg 
 
Local Advisory Board: 
Klaus J. Antoni, Seminar für Japanologie, Tübingen 
Dieter Eikemeier, Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik, Tübingen 
Viktoria Eschbach-Szabo, Seminar für Japanologie, Tübingen 
Robert Horres, Seminar für Japanologie, Tübingen 
Achim Mittag, Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik, Tübingen 
 
 
 EDITORIAL COMMITTEE 
Bridie Andrews, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University 
Francesca Bray, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa 
Barbara 
Christopher Cullen, Department of History, SOAS, University of London  
Benjamin A. Elman, East Asian Studies and History, Princeton University 
Charlotte Furth, Department of  History, University of Southern California, Los 
Angeles 
Hashimoto Keizō, Faculty of Sociology, Kansai University, Osaka 
Huang Yi-Long, Institute of History, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 
Jeon Sang-woon, Cultural Properties Committee Korea, Seoul 
Catherine Jami, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris 
Yung Sik Kim, College of Humanities, Seoul National University 
Dieter Kuhn, Institut für Kulturwissenschaften Ost- und Südasiens - Sinologie, 
Universität Würzburg 
Angela Ki Che Leung, Sun Yat-Sen Institute for Social Sciences and Philosophy, 
Academia Sinica, Taipei 
Liu Bing, Institute of  Science, Technology and Society, Tsinghua University, 
Beijing 
Liu Dun, Institute for the History of Natural Science, Academia Sinica, Beijing 
Morris Low, Department of Asian Languages and Studies, University of 
Queensland, Brisbane 
Georges Métailié, Centre Alexandre Koyré, CNRS-EHESS-MNHN, Paris 
Shi Yunli, Department of the History of  Science and Scientific Archaeology, 
University  of  Science and Technology of China, Hefei 
Nathan Sivin, Department of the History and Sociology of Science, University of 
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 
C. Michele Thompson, Department of History, Southern Connecticut State 
University, New Haven 
Tsukahara Togo, History and Philosophy of  Science, Technology and Medicine, 
Kobe University 
Paul U. Unschuld, Institut für Geschichte der Medizin, Ludwig-Maximilians-
Universität München 
Donald B. Wagner, Department of Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen 
Yoshida Tadashi, Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University, Sendai 
 
 
 
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Editorial

Cover

Yates, Robin D. S.

The History of Military Divination in China

Contents 
 
Special Issue 
in Honor of Prof. Ho Peng Yoke’s Eightieth Birthday 
 
Note from the Editor 7 
 
Introduction from the Guest Editor 
—CHRISTOPHER CULLEN 9 
 
Ho Peng Yoke: A Personal Introduction 
—NATHAN SIVIN  12 
 
The History of Military Divination in China 
—ROBIN D.S. YATES  15 
 
Medicine and Divination in India 
—MICHIO YANO  44 
 
Medicine and Astrology: Their Encounter on a Cross-cultural Occasion 
—CHANG CHE-CHIA  62 
 
Divination and Medicine in China and Greece: A Comparative 
Perspective on the Baoshan Illness Divinations 
—LISA RAPHALS  78 
 
Seers and Jesters: Predicting the Future and Punning by Graph Analysis 
—BERNHARD FÜHRER   (to be published in issue 25) 
 
Astral Divination in the Context of Mesopotamian Divination, Medicine, 
Religion, Magic, Society, and Scholarship 
—DAVID BROWN   (to be published in issue 25) 
Reviews 
 
Claudia von Collani (ed.), Joachim Bouvet S.J. Journal des voyages 
—reviewed by Catherine Jami 104 
 
Luís Saraiva (ed.), History of Mathematical Sciences: Portugal 
and East Asia II. Scientific Practices and the Portuguese 
Expansion in Asia, 1498-1759 
—reviewed by Andrea Bréard 107 
 
David Y. H. Wu and Tan Chee-beng (eds.), Changing Chinese 
Foodways in Asia 
—reviewed by Christine M. Du Bois 110 
 
Ole Döring (ed.), Chinese Scientists and Responsibility: Ethical 
Issues of Human Genetics in Chinese and International Contexts 
—reviewed by Silke Schicktanz 112 
 
Roel Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China 
—reviewed by Vincent Ziswiler 115 
 
Noёl Golvers, Ferdinand Verbiest, S.J. (1623-1688) and the Chinese 
Heaven: The Composition of the Astronomical Corpus, its 
Diffusion and Reception in the European Republic of Letters 
—reviewed by Keizo Hashimoto 122 


Wang, Zuoyue

145 Reviews 
Laurence Schneider, Biology and Revolution in Twentieth-Century China. 
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. 320 pp. 
 
Zuoyue Wang 
 
[Zuoyue Wang is an associate professor of history at California State Polytech-
nic University, Pomona, USA. His article with Peter Neushul entitled “Between 
the Devil and the Deep Sea: C. K. Tseng, Mariculture, and the Politics of Sci-
ence in Modern China,” Isis (March 2000), won the 2003 Derek Price / Rod 
Webster Prize from the History of Science Society.] 
 
 
The key to understanding science and society in modern China is, according to 
Laurence Schneider, the idea of control: science as a way to control nature, sci-
ence as a subject of control itself for the purpose of nation-building, and, finally, 
scientists as a target of control by the successive regimes of the Chinese party-
state. In this masterful and richly-documented study, Schneider, a distinguished 
historian of China and science in China, examines the special case of biology, 
especially genetics, to reach a number of illuminating insights on the interactions 
between science and its broader context in China in the twentieth century in 
general. It is a remarkable achievement in both the history of science and in 
Chinese history. 
Modern genetics, as with most other disciplines of modern science, was in-
troduced in China when a group of young, talented Chinese students received 
training in the field abroad, primarily in the US, and returned to China in the 
1920s-1930s. Having studied often with the masters of modern genetics such as 
Thomas Morgan, these pioneers, most prominently Tan Jiazhen, helped build the 
first educational institutions in biology and carried out cutting-edge research in 
China. In a meticulous, archives-based examination of the thriving biological 
programs at three universities—National Central, Yanjing, and Nanjing—during 
the Republican era (1911-1949), Schneider not only introduced many of the 
leading Chinese geneticists in the twentieth century, but also sketched their 
broader scientific, institutional, and social-cultural context in this period. Geneti-
cists had to balance between basic genetic research and agricultural applications, 
handle the tension between the scientific community and the Nationalist state, 
and balance between dependence on and independence from foreign, especially 
American, institutions and influence. 
Many of the tensions latent in the Republican era were then dramatically and 
often tragically amplified under Mao Zedong, especially during the early years 
of the People’s Republic when Lysenkoism, imported from the Soviet Union, 
devastated much of the Chinese genetic community. In many ways, the section 
on Chinese Lysenkoism forms the heart of the book. Based on interviews and 
other primary sources, Schneider charts the rise of Lysenkoism in China both as 
an outdated rival to Mendel-Morgan genetics and as a politically and ideologi-
146 EASTM 23 (2005) 
cally driven model of party science. Its decline came as a result of the liberal 
interlude during the mid-1950s, culminating in the famous 1956 Qingdao con-
ference on genetics that Schneider and other scholars have studied in detail pre-
viously. 
Why did the Chinese Communists Party (CCP) first support and then aban-
don Lysenkoism? Imitation of the Soviets was not, Schneider argues, convinc-
ingly, the main reason for the Chinese party policy because the pattern of attack-
ing and then rehabilitating science would repeat itself many times in the subse-
quent years, even after the bitter breakup with the Soviet Union in the early 
1960s. Instead, Schneider points to Mao’s antipathy toward scientists from the 
Republican period as motivating his recurrent attacks on them. Their elitism, 
apolitical stand, and foreign background made the scientists potentially subver-
sive to Mao’s utopian search for social equality and his obsession with sovereign 
control. Thus, as Schneider puts it, “if Soviet Lysenkoism had not existed, the 
CCP would have invented something like it on its own” (p. 177). In the end, it’s 
not the science, but the “self-contained authority of a cosmopolitan science 
community [that] posed a threat to the authority of Mao’s Communism” (p. 
281). This conclusion parallels those from other studies that look at scientific 
communities as institutions of prototype civil society in various authoritarian 
regimes. 
The book also contains a brief but useful section on the Deng Xiaoping pe-
riod, 1976-2000, when the state control of science and scientists was finally 
relaxed. Yet, while the post-Mao reform certainly led to the marketization of 
Chinese science and less dependence on the state financially, one may argue that 
political reforms, which affected the control of scientists as much as other citi-
zens, have not kept pace with those in the economic arena. 
In sum, Laurence Schneider’s Biology and Revolution serves as both an ex-
cellent introduction to the history of science in twentieth-century China and an 
in-depth historical study of Chinese genetics and society. It’s clearly-written and 
well-organized, suitable for use in both undergraduate and graduate courses. I do 
have a few quibbles: I wish that the book had paid more attention to Chinese 
scientists’ nationalism, which arguably shaped their interactions with both the 
Nationalist and the Communist party states as much as their pursuit of profes-
sional autonomy. I also wish that the book had engaged more fully with the 
recent literature in the history of science and technology and offered more com-
parisons with science in other national and political contexts. There are some 
errors in pinyin spellings, and it would have been helpful to provide the Chinese 
characters in the glossary of Chinese names. But these are minor complaints 
about a book that stands with James Reardon-Anderson’s The Study of Change 
as one of the best studies in the history of science in modern China. 


Laurence Schneider, Biology and Revolution in Twentieth-Century China

Schicktanz, Silke

112 EASTM 24 (2005) 
Ole Döring (ed.), Chinese Scientists and Responsibility: Ethical Issues of Human 
Genetics in Chinese and International Contexts. Hamburg: Institut für 
Asienkunde, 1999. 257 pp. 
 
Silke Schicktanz 
 
[Silke Schicktanz is Junior-Professor for History, Theory, Ethics in Medicine at 
the University of Göttingen, Germany. She teaches in bioethics. She has pub-
lished co-edited books on ethics in transplantation medicine, public participa-
tion in the bioethical debate and on cultural aspects of biomedicine. Her latest 
research interest is the relationship between cultural identity, understanding of 
the human body and normative values for bioethical reasoning. Currently she is 
working in a European project together with social scientists, philosophers and 
ethnologists on the socio-cultural contexts of organ transplantation and genetic 
testing and the European differences in bioethics.] 
 
 
The ambivalent relationship between science and ethics is a hot topic of ongoing 
academic and public debate in many countries, especially in the field of bio-
ethics. Bioethics, understood as the moral-philosophical reasoning on life sci-
ence and the treatment of living beings, does not only include biomedical issues 
such as organ transplantation, genetics, stem cell research or life prolonging 
techniques, but also biotechnology in agriculture, animal experimentation, and 
environmental policies.  
Despite the differentiation and institutionalization of bioethics, the most 
prominent field still seems to be biomedical ethics. Faced with the globalization 
of biomedical science, as seen for example with the Human Genome Project one 
of the most successful scientific global interactions, and the global threats of 
infectious diseases like AIDS, the question remains how moral values and scien-
tific responsibility and regulation can be managed in an international setting. 
However, the first step is to learn more about local solutions and problems. Only 
then would global solutions become plausible and realistic.  
The need for a system of global ethics and international bioethics is one rea-
son why more and more bioethicists, philosophers and politicians are interested 
in cultural studies of medicine and national specificities in ethical issues. An-
other reason is that there are specific research topics in the relationship between 
culture, scientific development and moral disputes that can only be examined 
properly within one (dynamic) picture.  
These reasons provide the background for this book edited by Ole Döring. 
As an expert on China’s history and philosophy, he organized the symposium 
Aspects of Ethics in Medical Science in China: Initiating an Ethical Debate in 
Hamburg in 1998. The book in hand is the result of this conference, bringing 
together a selection of revised versions of papers presented at it. The book is 
composed of sixteen rather short and survey-like papers with an appendix pro-
113 Reviews 
viding further information on the symposium and the contributors. The composi-
tion of the group of contributors is not only international (China, Malaysia, 
Hong Kong, Germany, and the USA), but also interdisciplinary (clinical geneti-
cists, physicians, virologists, social scientists, philosophers, and historians). The 
majority of the contributions deal with the problem of human genetics, its oppor-
tunities and especially the social responsibilities attached, mostly in China, but 
also in Germany. In addition, many other issues, such as HIV-treatment, public 
health care and cloning, are raised. As the range of topics is very broad and 
sometimes unconnected, only a selection of papers, those which focus on the 
recent situation in China, will be discussed. I will conclude with some general 
impressions, however.  
Qiu Renzong, philosopher and bioethicist, gives a broad overview of bio-
medical ethical issues discussed in China. The bioethical debate in China has 
developed since the early 1980s. Nowadays, it is a structured and institutional-
ized academic research field with its own journals. Medical ethical courses are 
offered to all medical students in China (as the contribution by Chen Renbiao 
and Qiu Xiangxing explores in detail). Four main issues are identified by Qiu: 
euthanasia, assisted reproduction, HIV-prevention, and the health care system. 
Yang Huanming, a Chinese geneticist, formulates his concerns about the abuse 
and misuse of genetic information. These concerns are based on three condi-
tions. Firstly, there is a demand-driven effect in genetic services, which results in 
badly trained geneticists and inappropriate genetic testing. This is due to the fact 
that China, with its large population, has a large number of clients. Therefore, 
secondly, mistakes and bad counselling can result in a chain reaction. Thirdly, 
there are the lessons from history, both from within Chinese culture but also 
from outside (this is where other authors refer to eugenics in Germany, Scandi-
navia or the USA). Here, Yang Huanming refers to the abuse of scientific 
knowledge for political and ideological reasons. In this sense, he is a scientist 
who regards science as a politically and culturally neutral complex and argues 
for a social and ethical embedding of science and technology. According to him, 
a basic standard must be freedom of speech, or, more concretely, the principles 
of informed consent and privacy. Like other contributors, he pleads for more 
education to achieve this goal. While education seems to have an intrinsic value 
for most people, the question remains whether education is the sole key to re-
sponsibility and safety. Slightly different is the contribution by Shao Yiming, 
who addresses the ethical issues in AIDS-research and therapy. As someone who 
has detailed knowledge of HIV/AIDS research in China, he speaks in support of 
a respectful way to treat all HIV-patients, regardless of the way they were in-
fected. The social discrimination of patients still occurs in hospitals. In his opin-
ion, the main problem is—as in most developing countries—the limited access 
to the expensive HIV-therapies. Therefore, he criticises the role of international 
pharmaceutical companies that do not provide affordable drugs and invest in 
vaccine research. Stephen T. S. Lam, a clinical geneticist, describes and discusses 
the policy of abortion, sterilization and genetic control in Hong Kong and China. 
114 EASTM 24 (2005) 
The practice of using abortion or sterilization as a means of genetic control, for 
eugenic reasons, is indubitable. Legislation in China and Taiwan stipulates pre-
marital check-ups, which include checks for genetic diseases. In Hong Kong, on 
the other hand, no such legislation exists (at the time of publication). Therefore, 
a mixture between cautiousness and pragmatism prevails. Abortion for eugenic 
reasons (if the child will suffer from physical or mental abnormalities so as to be 
seriously handicapped) is allowed until the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy but 
not later. Sterilization of mentally handicapped people is allowed, but has to pass 
a hurdle of medical proofs and legal counselling.  
From a bioethical point of view, it is interesting that many authors refer to 
the so-called ‘four principle approach’ that is very prominent in the United 
States and Western Europe. It comprises respect for patients’ autonomy, doing 
good (beneficence), doing no harm (non-maleficence) and being fair (justice). 
Obviously, these four principles can conflict. Without a rule for a hierarchy or a 
balance between these four principles, they should be understood as heuristic 
tool for detecting ethical problems. One interesting insight is the way the rela-
tionship between the physician, the patient, the family and society as a whole is 
described and reflected in China. While Western biomedical ethics stress the 
autonomy of the patient as a critical reaction to medical paternalism and abuse in 
medical research, many Chinese bioethicists emphasize a balance between indi-
vidual and social interests. In contrast, the Neo-Confucian perspective on human 
genetics, provided by Lee Shui-chuen, differs. According to him, biotechnology 
(including such very controversial techniques as human cloning and surrogate 
motherhood) is good because it relieves pain and suffering. Unfortunately, a 
critical discussion of the scientific, anthropological and psychological underly-
ing meaning of ‘pain’ or ‘human defect’ is missing.  
The whole discussion seems to be framed by the perspective of scientists and 
researchers who have to consider and reflect upon their responsibilities. In this 
sense, we find a more expert-driven debate in which the relationship of the ex-
pert to the patient (or lay person) is discussed, but not necessarily vice versa. 
In summary, the book conveys different impressions that provide single puz-
zle pieces of the debate in China. It serves as a helpful initial entrance into the 
bioethical debate concerning China and Eastern Asia. However, the heterogene-
ous selection does not really provide a systematic and well inter-connected 
whole. The general topic of responsibility in terms of ethics and scientific prac-
tise often remains too vague. 
 


Ole Döring (ed.), Chinese Scientists and Responsibility: Ethical Issues of Human Genetics in Chinese and International Contexts

Vogel, Hans Ulrich

7 
Note from the Editor 
 
 
This issue of EASTM starts with an article by Nathan Sivin on the concept of 
cultural manifolds as an approach to research on ancient science. The key notion 
of this method is that cultural manifolds not only include the various dimensions 
of a complex historical phenomenon, but also the interactions that make all these 
aspects a single whole. Taking the famous calendar reform of 1280 as a case 
study, the author explains the political, bureaucratic, personal and technical di-
mensions of the Season-Granting astronomical system (Shoushi li  授時曆). He 
highlights both the innovative aspects rooted in the special political and personal 
circumstances of this important project as well as the elements of organizational 
inertia and technical limitations. Other examples of complicated historical prob-
lems to which the concept of cultural manifolds can be applied in a fruitful and 
innovative way are polymathy and comparative research on the circumstances 
and developments of science in China and Japan. The author strongly urges 
broader application of this approach in order to gain a more complete and realis-
tic picture of historical complexities with their inseparable and interrelated ele-
ments, such as politics, organisational structures, society, economy, religion, 
personal experience, or technical skills. 
Based on the consultation of a large number of ancient Chinese texts and ap-
proaching his subject from a comparative perspective, Roel Sterckx stresses in 
his paper on animal classification that in early China hardly any attempt was 
made to taxonomise animals according to biological criteria and thereby mani-
fest detached and proto-scientific observation, categorization and classification. 
Most of the passages dealing with animals contextualise animals in a social, 
moral and literary environment. The aim of this type of “zoography,” which 
became especially intense during the establishment of a unified empire, was to 
establish social and political control over these phenomena – a control that oper-
ated through texts, rituals, and correlative schemes. The author criticises the 
prevailing trend, especially among Chinese science historians, to infer a [proto-
]scientific attitude from early Chinese sources. He doubts that there was any 
substantial drive in ancient and pre-modern China towards a comprehension of 
biological morphology or physiology and verification of species. He is also criti-
cal of the widespread developmental scheme that symbolic folk classifications 
had necessarily to precede the scientific approach. Sterckx shows that classifica-
tion of the animal world was carried out by a) lexicographic classification with 
the principal aim of rendering texts free of doubt, b) ritual classification accord-
ing to socio-religious criteria and the overall structure of the ritualised state, and 
c) correlative classification serving to regulate human society by adjusting its 
workings to patterns in nature. The agent ultimately capable of comprehending 
and relating all these phenomena together within a structured and hierarchical 
cosmos was the sage or ruler rather than the naturalist. In early China, classifica-
tion through integration and correlation prevailed over classification through 
differentiation, and rather than classifying the whole as a collection of parts, 
    8 
 
early Chinese taxonomisation was the establishment of a comprehensive whole 
encompassing all parts. 
Mathieu Torck’s article deals with the role of scurvy in Chinese maritime travel. 
While reports about this disease are numerous in the Western context from the 
era of great maritime expeditions onwards, in Asian sources they are rather rare. 
In view of the fact that the oxidation process of vitamin C runs considerably 
faster in the bodies of Asians than in those of Europeans and other populations, 
the interesting question arises of how the Chinese coped with this ailment. Draw-
ing on a wide range of scattered sources, especially those on maritime travel, the 
author unearths materials indicating how Chinese ocean-going ships provisioned 
their crews at home and en route. One astonishing story Torck brings to light is 
that Chinese seafarers may have grown their own vegetables aboard their ships. 
Apart from loading grain, livestock, water, etc., they also carried with them fruits, 
especially lemons and oranges, fresh and preserved vegetables, and tea, all 
sources of vitamin C. Descriptions of the disease itself are even rarer. In fact, 
what evidence there is does not come from a maritime context, but from military 
border camps in the north of China. All this seems to suggest that, due to an age-
old tradition of more balanced nutrition, Chinese seafarers had far fewer prob-
lems with scurvy than their European contemporaries. More research is, however, 
needed for a further clarification of this highly interesting research topic. 
This issue also contains the second part of Volker Scheid’s comprehensive study 
of the Menghe孟 河 and Ding 丁 scholarly currents from 1600 to 2000, this time 
concentrating on the period from the late nineteenth to the end of the twentieth 
centuries. He deals especially with such key figures as Ma Peizhi 馬 培 之 
(1820-1903) and Ding Ganren 丁 甘 仁 (1865-1926), and how they became 
identified as the founding fathers of their respective currents. The transitions 
from the imperial period to the Republic and then to the People’s Republic are 
outlined, along with the economic, social, political and cultural consequences for 
the Menghe physicians, including the attraction exerted by Shanghai as the new-
ly arising metropolitan centre, with its special stratum of potential customers and 
patients and thus novel opportunities for earning money and gaining fame. This 
eastward process of diffusion of the Menghe scholarly current from its place of 
origin began with the Taiping rebellion after the mid-nineteenth century. Later, 
during the political turmoil of the twentieth century, it continued towards Hong 
Kong, San Francisco and New York. Scheid also provides ample evidence of the 
willingness of Menghe physicians to integrate into their practice ideas and treat-
ments from other local and regional medical traditions, combine traditional 
methods and approaches with the exigencies of a new period, and make flexible 
use of kinship, lineage, teacher-disciple relationships, native place organisations, 
professional associations, schools and medical journals to provide a deeper layer 
of stability in a period of rapid transformation. The opening of the new Ding 
scholarly current, founded on the medical practice and social activities of Ding 
Ganren (1824-1926), represents in many ways the variety and hybridity of this 
transformational period. This finds, for instance, its expression in the different 
kinds of disciples and students affiliated to Ding Ganren: members of the Ding 
    9 
 
family; members of other Menghe families; personal disciples within the old-
style apprenticeship system; and students enrolled at his new educational institu-
tions. In his conclusion, Scheid points to the enduring and important role of 
different kinds of networks in Chinese medicine leading to the establishment of 
medical lineages, scholarly currents and genealogies of descent. These multiple 
networks, though socially constructed, were not imaginary but real structures 
serving to connect the past to the present, and functioning in their continuity as 
vehicles for change. In Scheid’s view, the concept of the scholarly current is not 
only a useful tool around which a history and anthropology of Chinese medicine 
can be organised, but also enables us to better understand continuity and change 
in Chinese medicine. Taking into account both the social environment as well as 
the cultural and historical contexts, Scheid’s method  represents a combination of 
approaches that will also prove fruitful in other fields of Chinese or East Asian 
science, technology, and medicine. 
In addition to the four articles described above, this issue also contains four book 
reviews. As ever, it could not have been produced without the substantial help of 
the editorial staff, including our consultants and language revisers, and the sup-
port of the anonymous referees and book reviewers. To all of them we are deeply 
indebted and thus would like to express our gratitude.  
The next issue of EASTM will be rather voluminous. It will contain a collection 
of articles dealing with divinatory practices and astrology in the cultural contexts 
of ancient and medieval China, ancient Greece, India, and the Ancient Near East. 
This special issue, which has Director of the Needham Research Institute Chris-
topher Cullen as guest editor, and which has a personal introduction by Nathan 
Sivin, will include articles by Lisa Raphals, David Brown, Bernhard Führer, 
Chang Che-chia, Robin D. S. Yates, and Michio Yano, and will be dedicated to 
Professor Ho Peng Yoke in honour of his outstanding contributions to the field 
of the history of Chinese science. 
 
 
 
Hans Ulrich Vogel 
Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik 
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen 


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Medicine and Divination in India

Ho Peng Yoke: A Personal Introduction

Editorial

Cover

The History of Military Divination in China

Contents

Laurence Schneider, Biology and Revolution in Twentieth-Century China

Ole Döring (ed.), Chinese Scientists and Responsibility: Ethical Issues of Human Genetics in Chinese and International Contexts

Note from the Editor

Introduction from the Guest Editor: Special Issue in Honor of Prof. Ho Peng Yoke's Eightieth Birthday

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