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

Lo, Vivienne

Crossing the Neiguan 内關 "Inner Pass" : A Nei/Wai 内外 "Inner/Outer" Distinction in Early Chinese Medicine

Sivin, Nathan

Christoph Harbsmeier, Science and Civilisation in China. Volume 7, The Social Background, Part 1: Language and Logic in Traditional China

Engelhardt, Ute

153 Reviews
Thomas Heise, Qigong in der VR China: Entwicklung, Theorie und Praxis.
Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, 1999. 272 pp.
Ute Engelhardt
[Ute Engelhardt teaches at the Institute of East Asian Studies at Munich Univer-
sity. Her current research involves Chinese traditional health techniques as
Qigong, the history of dietetics and archaeological findings concerning the his-
tory of Chinese Medicine.]
After publishing a variety of articles on the subject of psychotherapy and psy-
chiatry in China, the doctor and psychiatrist Thomas Heise chose to concentrate
his sinological dissertation on the subject of Qigong in the People's Republic of
China. It is undoubtedly a controversial subject which is currently being given a
great deal of attention in view of the Chinese government's decision in summer
1999 to ban the Falun gong movement.
The author, whose knowledge of Qigong, Taiji and Chinese medicine has
been gathered in practice through a series of extended visits to China, has sub-
divided his work into "one part which traces historical development with regard
to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and cultural developments, and another
part which concentrates on Qigong practices themselves looking at the different
stylistic elements and explaining their affiliations to specific styles, and by fo-
cusing on these two complementary aspects to gain, thereby, a clearer under-
standing of modern Chinese attitudes and the changes that have taken place in
recent years" (p. 20). To this end, Heise has divided his book into eight chapters:
he begins with a brief and general introduction in which he defines the term
Qigong and examines how this practice has been received in the West. The sec-
ond chapter looks at TCM and how it relates to Qigong, dominated by an as-
semblage of information about Chinese medicine already amply well-known in
the West, while very little attention, if any, is given to the proclaimed purpose of
the book to establish a relation between TCM and Qigong.
The third chapter is devoted to "Shamanism and the origins of Qigong."
Here, quite rightly, Heise identifies both a superficiality to, and a certain dearth
of, references to shamanism in modern Qigong literature. In contrast, he tries to
provide "a rather less nebulous picture of early Chinese history until the Han
Period (206 BC) and to outline its relation to Qigong" (p. 53). There may well be
reason here to question the usefulness in this context of discussing a general
relationship between shamanism and Qigong on the basis of (often old) Western
secondary literature, and whether it would not have been more useful to examine
the shamanic origins of certain individual practices, as Catherine Despeux did,
154 EASTM 17 (2000)
for example, with daoyin exercises ("Guiding and Pulling"),1 or to study the
magico-religious elements in particular texts about early Qigong practices with
regard to their roots in shamanism, using the Mawangdui manuscripts,2 for ex-
ample.
In Chapter 4 the author turns his attention to TCM and the development of its
importance to society; here once again the concrete relationships to Qigong are
given rather scant attention. However, in Chapter 5, the author examines in
depth the historical development of Qigong between 1949 and 1989. In this
interesting overview the author collects impressions from some 300 books on
modern Qigong and thus provides a profound insight into the most important
literature published on this subject in recent years. After brief introductions to
some selected exemplary books from the early years of Qigong in the People's
Republic of China, he turns to the context of "Qigong fever" between 1983 and
1989, assigning Qigong exercises to individual styles presented within a com-
prehensive overview. It is noticeable here that, in allocating the individual
Qigong styles, he relies entirely on the judgement of the Chinese authors without
analysing the style and its elements more closely himself and assigning them
accordingly. As a result, and without doubt or hesitation, he describes for exam-
ple Li Hongzhi's Falun gong as Buddhist exercises (p. 120), and does not stop
for a moment to question this categorisation. The same goes for Chapter 6 in
which the Qigong sub-groups are presented. Here, too, Heise relies entirely on
modern Chinese sources, which he often cites in detail, with extended translated
extracts, without undertaking any analysis or offering a critical alternative divi-
sion of Qigong styles and groups.
The author's own practical experience gathered in Tiantan Park in Beijing
and complemented with interviews with Qigong experts provides the basis for
Chapter 7 on the practice of Qigong. Unfortunately, here again description of all
the experience gained seems to take preference over any critical evaluation. In
the book's closing chapter, Heise provides a summary of the role of Qigong in
culture, society and politics.
The book has an elementary index and is extensively illustrated, but the text
does not contain any Chinese characters, except in the bibliography.
On the whole, it is an impressive book on account of the quantity of material
that it deals with and the careful presentation of this material. This is why it is
useful as a comprehensive overview of contemporary Chinese Qigong literature.
However, a closer analysis and more critical examination of the existing material
might have been desirable. This would probably have meant a restriction in
scope, but many of the subjects (e.g. detailed evaluation of the contents and the
                                                
1 Catherine Despeux, "Gymnastics: the ancient tradition," in Livia Kohn (ed.), Taoist
Meditation and Longevity Techniques (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for
Chinese Studies Publications, 1989), pp. 224-261.
2 Donald Harper, Early Chinese Medical Manuscripts: The Mawangdui Medical
Manuscripts (London: Wellcome Asian Medical Monographs, 1998).
155 Reviews
development of various Qigong journals, presented here only in descriptive
overview, or much closer analysis of the different Qigong styles, ibid.) would
have lent themselves well to individual, in-depth study.


Qigong in der VR China: Entwicklung, Theorie und Praxis

Nylan, Michael

148 EASTM 17 (2000)
Sun Xiaochun and Jacob Kistemaker, The Chinese Sky during the Han: Constel-
lating Stars and Society. Leiden: Brill, 1997. 240 pages, 8 tables, 3 fold-out
maps.
Michael Nylan
[Michael Nylan currently teaches at Bryn Mawr College. At present, her re-
search focuses on three major areas: (1) the Five Classics and their reception;
(2) domestic life in Warring States through Nanbeichao, with particular atten-
tion both to material culture and to definitions of pleasure; and (3) the role of
textuality, written and oral, in the production and transmission of traditions.]
This work by Sun and Kistemaker would ascertain by Fourier analysis the positional
astronomy of the Chinese sky during Han and then present "the cultural
background" behind the constellations' names (pp. 9, 11, 95). The book in conse-
quence divides into two parts, the first highly technical and the second of greater
potential interest to the non-specialist, whose conceptual fit is less than ideal. After a
brief general introduction to the Chinese sky, the authors undertake to date the core
of the received text of the Shishi xingjing (Mr. Shi's Star Classic) to the first half of
the first century BC, though some later material has been interpolated (p. 102). The
authors then build a plausible case that the Star Classic probably reflects careful
observations made in connection with the replacement of the Sifen calendar by the
Taichu calendar in 104 BC (the first to require the armillary sphere in addition to the
gnomon and water clock), possibly those made by Xianyu Wanren's group of
twenty-two astronomers in the years 78-76 BC. (Obviously, the authors' findings
only hold true if their assumption is correct that all observations were made from a
single instrument in a single location, the Han capital of Chang'an. But if they
presumed the contrary—that considerable data noise or variation was produced by
observations made at different times and places, then they would then also have to
posit an even greater degree of accuracy for the ancient Chinese astronomy, which
seems most unlikely. In fact, the fairly systematic nature of the errors found in the
data, which are more apt to represent instrument error than human error, suggest that
the chosen armillary sphere was one degree off from complete accuracy [p. 64].)
Having established the authenticity of the Shishi xingjing, the authors marshal a
range of early sources (with most Song and pre-Song) to reconstruct three different
(if overlapping) versions of the Han sky according to the competing star systems
then in use, on the understanding that the systems associated with Gan De and
Wuxian were devised later, as supplements, in Han (pp. 81, 85). As the authors note,
their proposed star maps differ "appreciably from reconstructions from the Qing
catalogues" (p. xi), though the authors admit that such attempts can never be exact,
since it was often only the major stars of each constellation that were visible (p. 93).
Though I am neither a trained mathematician nor a professional astronomer,
conversations with an expert (Jerry Sellwood of Rutgers University, New Jersey)
149 Reviews
confirmed my impression that the first half of the book by Sun and Kistemaker
makes a contribution to the field. Simply put, if modern researchers are to use the
ancient Chinese astronomical records, the positions the early Chinese assigned
celestial phenomena must first be known, since (a) events were typically recorded by
reference to the major constellations and (b) since the names and positions of the
constellations have changed - in some cases significantly - over time. The relative
dates of the Shishi and Gan De star systems need to be more secure also, if scholarly
work is to proceed smoothly. (See New Perspectives on Chu Culture, ed. Thomas
Lawton [Washington, D.C., Freer Gallery, 1991], p. 38.)
The second part of the book, comprising Chapters Five and Six (which is ap-
proximately one-third the total length of the text), turns abruptly to what it calls "the
cultural background" of the Chinese sky, however. The authors intend their findings
there to prompt further study on the possibility of foreign influence—especially the
Babylonian, Indian, and Arabic—on the origin and development of certain features
of the Han sky, in particular with regard to the twenty-eight lunar lodges (xiu). But
their working premise emphasizes the existence of a huge conceptual gap between
the Chinese ideas of the stars and those of other Asiatic cultures. According to the
authors, the majority of the Chinese star names "are not from myths and legends,
like in [sic] the Sumerian or Greek skies, but from specific material objects related to
human society and activity" (p. 96; pp. xiii-iv). The either/or dichotomy, pitting
myth and legend against a logic peculiar to the material world (which makes the
early Chinese the first thorough-going materialists in the process), is unfortunate.
For while the authors believe that star names indicating a tight correlation of the
celestial and terrestrial worlds under the close supervision of Star Officers (xingguan
) prove an unusual preoccupation by the Chinese people with material objects,
their evidence fails to convince. Constellations named—in apparently pedestrian
fashion—after a variety of military installations do not preclude a mythological
association with, for instance, the god Qiyou, who makes a frequent appearance in
Han tombs, as Derk Bodde's Festivals in Classical China (Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 1975) notes. And how can the authors be so sure that the Han
court astrologers "designed" the sky (i.e., configured and named the constellations),
rather than that they inherited and then systematized traditional configurations and
names (p. 3)?
A number of problems add to the confusion in Chapters Five or Six. Perhaps the
worst stems from the authors' propensity to draw firm conclusions from source
material liable to alternate constructions, a propensity evident in the very first para-
graphs offered in support of their hypothesis (pp. 96-97). To explain Sima Qian's
decision to name a treatise devoted to Heaven's patterns as Tianguan  ("Ce-
lestial Officers"), the authors quote the Shiji suoyin written some six centuries after
Sima Qian (ca. 145-86 BC) by Sima Zhen, which says (by their translation):
150 EASTM 17 (2000)
The guan means constellations. Constellations in the sky are
ranked high and low, like the ranks of officials in human society;
hence the name Celestial Officials. (Shiji 27:1289)1
Based on the "like," the authors conclude: "Thus the celestial projection was a
reflection of human society." The Suoyin may understand Sima Qian's intent (not to
mention that the statement seems a commonplace from the modern point of view).
But if the authors mean to reconstruct the Han frame of mind, their confidence in
this conclusion is certainly unwarranted, given the famous passage from the "Great
Commentary" to the Changes, which makes the fact of "heaven being high and earth
low" the ultimate model upon which different ranks in human society are based (Xi
A/1).
The authors then go on to cite Zhang Heng's speculation (found also in Shiji
27:1289) that
Stars materially originated from the earth below; but their es-
sence was perfected above. They are randomly scattered in the
sky, but every one of them has its own distant connections. In the
wilderness stars denote articles and objects; in the court, they
denote officials; among people, they denote human action.
The translation, short as it is, is problematic at several points. Two characters at the
start of the passage have been overlooked. Talk of "random scattering" also seems
inappropriate, since randomness in arrangement would undermine Zhang Heng's
point that each of the stars has its jurisdiction over one discrete portion of life on
earth ("has its own connections" in their rendering). And if the starry xiang 
("images") only "denote" objects in the real world, standing as pale symbols for
them, they are far less powerful than the end of Zhang Heng's comments relating the
constellations to the gods (shen ) and fortune (jixiong ) [inexplicably omitted
in the translation] would indicate. Nonetheless, the authors argue, "Thus it was
clearly argued [presumably by Zhang Heng, in the authors' view] that the sky was a
reflection of the earthly world and society."2 With such a ham-fisted approach, read-
ers can hardly be surprised when the authors say of the sentence, "Huangdi has four
faces," that "this can only mean [emphasis mine] that Huangdi was related to four
seasons and four directions" (p. 120).
Despite an occasional passage of stellar clarity (pun intended), as on p. 107, the
work is marred by other errors in Chapters Five and Six, including: (1) the incorrect
                                                
1 Note that the authors do not employ modern citation forms. At best, they refer only to
the book from which a quotation is drawn. References to various editions made in this review
are therefore my own.
2 Another odd translation is found on p. 5, where the authors allege that Sima Qian
wanted to get a "total perspective (of the Universe) of my own" (reading cheng yi jia zhi shu).
151 Reviews
dating of certain key sources; (2) a failure to acknowledge changes in historical
context; and (3) contradictory explanations of concepts important in the Zhan'guo
and Han periods. Two instances of incorrect dating of sources should suffice: the
"Yao dian" chapter of the Documents is repeatedly assigned to 2,300 BC, a date
which no textual scholar could support, and the Chunqiu fanlu, much of which is
now thought to date to the Six Dynasties, is ascribed in toto to Dong Zhongshu (ca.
176-104 BC) (p. 105).3 One example can demonstrate the anachronistic construction
of an unchanging early China: Page 103 speaks of "China being the center of the flat
earth, the 'Empire of the Middle'," ruled by an emperor who had to maintain
celestial-terrestrial harmonies through the announcement of the calendar "by the
emperor in the Bright Hall Mingtang in the first month of the new year." It is quite
unclear which time period this passage describes; none is specifically mentioned and
no fewer than three historical periods are mentioned in preceding paragraphs: the
Yin-Shang, the early Zhou, or the Chunqiu period. Setting aside the issue of "China"
as a modern construct of the nation-state tending to impose on a geographic area
anachronistic political fictions, the term Zhongguo (here, the "Empire of the
Middle") had precise, if varying connotations over the course of time: on the Shang-
Yin oracle bones, it refers to the capital and during the Chunqiu period, the Central
States as heirs to a common culture. Why, then, "the Empire of the Middle"? And
since there is no evidence that the Mingtang was the location of annual calendrical
announcements prior to mid-Han times, has the topic switched to Han?4 At points
the muddle is so pervasive that authors cannot even decide whether legendary
figures actually existed or not. Page 117, for examples, writes of the "legendary Fu
Xi," only to use that culture-hero's supposed discovery of the Luo Writing (Luoshu)
"on the back of a river turtle" as the basis for the conclusion that the Four Images
(one of which is the Dark Warrior, a turtle wrapped with a serpent) may be traced
back to "very ancient times."
Having introduced serious anachronisms while ignoring the process of historical
change, the authors use a number of basic concepts in ways that are bound to trip up
the ordinary reader, if not the specialist. For instance, the authors cannot decide
whether the cosmological term wuxing  refers to objects, elements, or phases
(p. 104). Altogether four star maps are identified as the "earliest" (pp. 20, 89) by the
book, and no detailed comparison is made of them. Nor do the authors exhibit a
nuanced appreciation of the complex ties that bound professional classicists (the Ru,
purveyors of what the authors call Confucianism), Daoism (by which they mean
Zhuangzi and Laozi), and the technical experts of Han times, though Gu Jiegang
began to explore this area some sixty years ago.
                                                
3 The main text concedes only a "reorganization" of the "Yaodian" by "later compilers" in
Eastern Zhou (pp. 17-18).
4 Similarly, the authors cite a Neolithic burial to show the origin of the Green Dragon and
White Tiger, but they do not address the significance of the Chu burials at Yunmeng or the
Qin burials at Tianshi.
152 EASTM 17 (2000)
No one should underestimate the inherent difficulty—or significance—of re-
search into the social construction of the constellations. Such research has begun to
be undertaken by a number of scholars, including Ho Peng-yoke and Michael
Loewe in Cambridge, Marc Kalinowski in France, and Li Ling in China. A much
greater familiarity with the history of thought in the early period seems to be the
virtual precondition for a heightened sensitivity to the strange pronouncements and
multiple interpretations presented in the relevant materials. Such familiarity, of
course, rests upon the examination of a broader range of evidence drawn from the
Han and pre-Han periods than Sun and Kistemaker have reviewed. Both the Odes
and the Zuozhuan, for example, shed light on the position of the dry gourd (hugua
) near the Celestial Ford. The apocrypha so carefully studied by Chen Pan and
compiled by Yasui Kôzan and Nakamura Chôhati should be mined for passages
on the star deities, and consideration must go to the Sackler Chu Silk Manuscript
and early almanacs, as well. The history of early Buddhism is relevant, too, to the as-
trology of Eastern Han, as Tsukamoto Zenryû shows.5 No doubt a whole mono-
graph could be written on the trope of the celestial journey by boat or bridge alone,
which figures so prominently in Han tomb art. Perhaps it behoves all of us who are
interested in early Tianwen to take on much smaller slices of the Han sky in our
research, in the hope of extending our present knowledge beyond vague generalities.
                                                
5 Tsukamoto Zenryû, A History of Early Chinese Buddhism, 2 vols., trans. from the
Japanese by Leon Hurvitz (Tokyo, Kodansha International, 1985), I, 27-32, speaks
extensively about the astrology and spirits of the Eastern Han period.


Sun Xiaochun and Jacob Kistemaker, The Chinese Sky during the Han: Constellating Stars and Society

Vogel, Hans Ulrich

7Note from the Editor
This issue of EASTM has to start with the sad news of the death of Professor
Yabuuti Kiyosi on June 2, 2000. In his obituary, Hashimoto Keizo describes
with great feeling not only the most important stages in the life of this eminent
scholar, but also makes clear once again just how much the field of the history of
East Asian science and technology owes to his ground-breaking work. Together
with the late Joseph Needham (1900-1995), Yabuuti Kiyoshi must be considered
one of the founders of this field of research, nurturing many scholars now well
established in the academic world. His influential books and articles on the his-
tory of Chinese astronomy and calendrical systems will no doubt continue to
form the basis for the education of up-and-coming scholars for many years to
come.
Issue No. 17 of EASTM contains two articles on the history of Chinese
medicine and one contribution on colour pigments in ancient China. This, and
the number of papers reaching us, show that China is still an important subject in
EASTM, despite the change of the name of the journal. It may, however, be
helpful for readers to know that the next special issue of EASTM will be on the
history of Vietnamese science and technology, and I am happy to announce that
one of our Editorial Committee members, Michele C. Thompson from the De-
partment of History, Southern Connecticut State University, will act as guest
editor of this forthcoming special issue. This certainly will act as a counterbal-
ance to the heavy stress on Chinese matters in this number.
Vivienne Lo's article on aspects of the distinction between "inner" (nei )
and "outer" (wai ) in early Chinese medicine guides us expertly through the
medical theories, concepts and practices as they are revealed in different types of
medical sources of the second and first centuries B.C., especially the medical
texts discovered during archaeological excavations at Zhangjiashan and
Mawangdui. The author traces the complexities in the evolution of a range of
important concepts, such as qi  and yin/yang , in early Chinese medicine.
Moreover, she elucidates the interrelationships between the medical notions of
yin and yang and nei and wai, as well as the locus of the distinction between
"inner" and "outer," that is, the idea of the so-called "inner pass" (neiguan 
). The pinpointing of the exact location of this "inner pass" is, however, a
problem that in its historical dimension became increasingly complex. Lo seeks
to relate all these notions to the cultural and social environment. This allows her
to establish a number of relationships and analogies between medical and
acumoxa practices on the one hand, and nourishing-life (yangsheng ) prac-
tices, like breath- and sexual-cultivation and therapeutic gymnastics, on the
other. She also explores representations of nei/wai distinctions in cosmological
thought, as well as notions of emotions, self-cultivation, and body politic.
Chao Yüan-ling's article deals with the question of whether we can speak of
a professionalization of physicians in late imperial China. "Profession" and "pro-
fessionalization" are clearly Western concepts. Can there be, she asks, a univer-
8 EASTM 17 (2000)
sal concept of professionalization transcending cultural boundaries? She argues
that although such factors as licensing laws, formal medical instruction, and a
growth in political and social power of physicians were absent in late imperial
China, there existed demarcating boundaries of inclusion and exclusion brought
about by the increasing participation of elites in medical practice. The criteria of
legitimacy for this emerging group of physicians was based upon a tradition of
the transmission of classical texts, rather than hereditary knowledge with a fam-
ily, their sense of identity fostered by literary networks. Thus, not institutional or
legal means were at play, but cultural and social factors. Apart from examining
divergent interpretations of a famous passage in the Liji  (Book of Rites)
offered by various commentators through the ages, as well as the contest be-
tween textual study and medical practice, the author also discusses the creation
of the textual tradition in medicine and of the notion of the ideal "Confucian
physician" (ruyi ). Finally, she explores how group identity and profession-
alization of elite physicians, especially in the Jiangnan region, was enhanced by
both classical learning and medical practice. Debates about the meaning of the
term sanshi  as contained in the famous Liji passage reflected, so she ar-
gues, a growing tension between hereditary physicians whose knowledge came
from accumulated experience, and elite physicians whose knowledge was mainly
based on texts. However, what is also clear is that even for the ideal Confucian
physician efficiency in treatment and healing continued to play an important role
in the reputation and the validation of a physician's status.
The interesting article by Heinz Berke and Hans G. Wiedemann deals with
the chemistry and fabrication of the ancient anthropogenic pigments Chinese
Blue and Purple in the China of the Qin and Han periods. These pigments
consist of solid barium copper silicate compounds with definite chemical
compositions. The authors show that, because blue colours do not occur in
nature in sufficient quantities, mankind had to develop specific methods of
manufacturing them. By reproducing these two types of pigments by
independent synthetic experiments, the authors reconstructed the original
recipes, still a complicated task even for skilled chemists today. Berke and
Wiedemann make clear that for the production of such anthropogenic pigments a
solid empirical foundation and a high level of technical skill was necessary.
Moreover, it required the availability of the quite rare barium minerals barite and
witherite. Their investigations are mainly based on chemical findings, including
archeometrical studies of six original samples. By examining the respective
degrees of thermal and chemical properties, they explain why in the production
process Chinese Purple can be regarded as a precursor to Chinese Blue. Based
on their results, the authors then ponder on the highly probable relationship
between Chinese Blue and Purple on the one hand and Egyptian Blue on the
other. They think it highly probable that the knowledge of the preparation of
Egyptian Blue was transmitted to China via Inner Asia at a very early period.
Apart from these three substantial articles, this issue contains also a number
of book reviews, one of them by Nathan Sivin on Christoph Harbsmeier's re-
9cently published volume on language and logic in the Science and Civilisation in
China series.
We are happy to announce that both Bridie Andrews from the Department of
the History of Science, Harvard University, and Tadashi Yoshida from the Cen-
ter for Northeast Asian Studies of Tohoku University, Sendai, have joined our
Editorial Committee. Moreover, the Local Advisory Board was further strength-
ened by Viktoria Eschbach-Szabo of the Seminar für Japanologie so that now all
the professors of Tübingen's East Asian institutes are involved. I am especially
grateful to Jutta Rall-Niu, John Moffett and Michael Schön for their constant
commitment and invaluable help in producing this issue, as well as to Thomas
Gaiser, librarian at Tübingen's Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik, and Tony
Butler of the Chemistry Department at St. Andrews University. Thomas Gaiser
generously helped us in solving all kinds of tricky computer problems, while
Tony Butler kindly checked the chemical English of Berke and Wiedemann's
article. The members of the Editorial Committee have proved to be a great
source of support and advice, for which I offer my sincere thanks. Naturally, I
would also like to thank to those who have sacrificed their time and effort in
evaluating papers submitted to EASTM. I hope that with the experience gathered
in the compilation of this issue we will be able to produce the next numbers of
EASTM in a more timely fashion.
Hans Ulrich Vogel
Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen


Note from the Editor

Chao, Yüan-ling

The Ideal Physician in Late Imperial China: The Question of Sanshi 三世

Contents
Note from the Editor     7
Obituary – Dr. Yabuuti Kiyosi  (1906-2000)
—HASHIMOTO KEIZO   10
Crossing the Neiguan  "Inner Pass": A Nei/wai "Inner/Outer"
Distinction in Early Chinese Medicine
—VIVIENNE LO   15
The Ideal Physician in Late Imperial China: The Question of Sanshi 
—CHAO YÜAN-LING   66
The Chemistry and Fabrication of the Anthropogenic Pigments Chinese
Blue and Purple in Ancient China
— HEINZ BERKE  AND  HANS G. WIEDEMANN   94
REVIEWS
Christoph Harbsmeier, Science and Civilisation in China. Volume 7,
The Social Background,Part 1: Language and Logic in Traditional
China—reviewed by Nathan Sivin 121
Donald B. Wagner, The Traditional Chinese Iron Industry and its
Modern Fate—reviewed by Peter J. Golas 134
P.Y. Ho and F. P. Lisowski, A Brief History of Chinese Medicine
and Its Influence—reviewed by Chao Yüan-ling 137
Irfan Habib and Dhruv Raina (eds.), Situating the History of Science:
Dialogues with Joseph Needham—reviewed by Fu Daiwie 142
Sun Xiaochun and Jacob Kistemaker, The Chinese Sky during the Han:
Constellating Stars and Society—reviewed by Michael Nylan 148
Thomas Heise, Qigong in der VR China: Entwicklung, Theorie und
Praxis—reviewed by Ute Engelhardt 153
Kuriyama Shigehisa, The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence
of Greek and Chinese Medicine—reviewed by Elisabeth Hsu 156


137 Reviews
P.Y. Ho and F.P. Lisowski, A Brief History of Chinese Medicine and Its Influ-
ence. 2nd ed. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Company, 1998. xii,
114 pp.
Chao Yüan-ling
[Chao Yüan-ling is currently associate professor in History at Middle Tennessee
State University. She received her Ph.D. in History from UCLA in 1995. Her
research is in the history of medicine in late imperial China. At present, she is
working on a manuscript titled "Medicine and Society in Late Imperial China: A
Study of Physicians in Suzhou."]
The history of medicine in China is still a relatively young field and one glance
at the bookshelves on the history of medicine at any library will reveal the pau-
city of books on Chinese medicine and its history in the English language. That
is why this book is a welcome addition to the scholarship on the history of medi-
cine in China. This book is a revision of Ho and Lisowski's previous work titled
Concepts of Chinese Science and Traditional Healing Arts: A Historical Review
(Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Company, 1993). The thinness of this
volume belies the ambition of its authors and the comprehensive nature of its
contents. In 114 pages, they strive to introduce the basic concepts of traditional
Chinese medicine, outline the major historical development of medicine in China
from the 29th century BC to the 20th century, and investigate the influence of
Chinese medicine on the outside world. The authors make it clear that this book
is intended as an introduction to the field, hoping to stimulate readers to pursue
further research.
Early works on the history of medicine have generally portrayed Chinese
medicine as an inert and static body of knowledge. For example, in A Short His-
tory of Medicine, Erwin H. Ackerknecht claims that both Indian and Chinese
medicine "froze relatively early into rigid dogmatism and continued in this static
form throughout the centuries to the present time."1 Ackerknecht also believed
that Western interest in acupuncture was merely a fad and any efficacy from
treatment was due "through suggestion."2 More recent works have done much to
revise this picture and paid more attention to tracing and elaborating on the the-
ory and practice of traditional Chinese medicine.3
                                                
1 Erwin H. Ackerknecht, A Short History of Medicine, revised edition (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 45-46.
2 Ibid., p. 45.
3 See for example Lois N. Manger, A History of Medicine (New York: Marcel
Dekker, Inc., 1982) and Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History
of Humanity (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.,1997).
138 EASTM 17 (2000)
The recent growth of interest in Chinese medicine as an alternative to West-
ern biological medicine has generated a proliferation of works on the subject.
Most popular English language books on Chinese medicine tend to provide a
general outline of the theories of yin and yang and qi, focusing particularly on
the practice of acupuncture, but little attempt is made to place the development
of Chinese medicine within the intellectual and social background from which it
emerged. Academic works which attempt to situate medicine within the intel-
lectual and social landscape are few. For readers who are looking for more than
just a narration of the basic concepts in Chinese medicine, this brief introduction
to the history of Chinese medicine will provide a better understanding of the
intellectual and social forces that helped to shape medical tradition in China.
The book is divided into two parts. Part I gives an overview of the major
concepts and history of Chinese medicine. Part II looks at the influence of Chi-
nese medicine outside of China. For Part II, the authors have chosen to focus on
Japan and the Islamic world.
Traditional Chinese medicine is based upon an elaborate set of theories. The
discussion on the basic concepts of traditional Chinese medicine draws much on
Ho's earlier work Li, Qi and Shu: An Introduction to Science and Civilization in
China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985). Here again the authors
explain the concepts of li , qi , and shu  as the basic principles under
which operated "from astronomy to astrology, from alchemy to magic, from
ethics to politics, and from philosophy to the art of healing" (p. 15). It is from
these basic principles that yin  and yang  and wuxing are born. The
fundamental principles that permeate Chinese science and medicine originate
from the traditional belief in the harmony of nature and the close relationship
between heaven (tian ), earth (di ), and man (ren ).
In this small volume, the authors provide a glimpse of the rich canonical tra-
dition of Chinese medicine. Two of the earliest works of Chinese medicine are
attributed to ancient legendary sages, lending them authority and prestige. These
are the Shennong bencaojing      (Pharmacopoeia of the Heavenly
Husbandman) and the Huangdi Neijing     (The Yellow Emperor's
Manual of Corporeal Medicine). Both were compiled over a period of time by
different authors and reached their final forms probably some time during the
Western Han dynasty (206 BC - 24 AD). The Shennong bencaojing is China's
earliest pharmacopoeia and predates Greek and Roman texts by many centuries.
Shennong (The Heavenly Husbandman) is considered the legendary founder
of Chinese medicine and represented the earliest phase of medicine among the
Chinese people. Early medicine was closely intertwined with magic, but by the
time of the Zhou  dynasty (11th to 3rd centuries BC) they had separated. It
was also during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods of the East-
ern Zhou that the earliest medical writings were compiled. These were finalized
during the Western Han dynasty and attributed to the legendary Huangdi (Yel-
low Emperor). The Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor's Manual of Corpo-
real Medicine) remains the most authoritative of medical writings, and, together
139 Reviews
with the pharmacopoeia, provided the foundation for the medical canonical tra-
dition.
Scholars traditionally accept as genuine the two parts of the Huangdi Neijing
that are extant: the Suwen   (Questions and Answers about Living Matter)
and the Lingshu   (The Vital Axis). There have been attempts at translation
of the Huangdi Neijing, the earliest being The Yellow Emperor's Classic of In-
ternal Medicine by Ilza Veith, though contrary to the belief of the authors he did
not translate the entire work, only chapters 1-34. A relatively new translation is
Ni Maoshing's The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine (Boston: Shambhala
Publications, 1995). For anyone interested in the evolution of the Huangdi Nei-
jing, the work of Donald Keegan remains indispensable (The Forms of a Tradi-
tion: The Structure and History of the Huang-ti nei-ching, PhD Dissertation,
University of California, Berkeley, 1986).
The earliest medical writings, however, are those discovered in a tomb at
Mawangdui in 1974. Donald Harper has recently published Early Chinese Medi-
cal Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1997), which examines the seven medical manuscripts discov-
ered there. These reveal much about the medical knowledge of the 3rd and early
2nd centuries BC.
Ho and Lisowski introduce the reader to the textual tradition all the way
through to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) as they discuss important develop-
ments in medicine through the centuries. Chinese medicine made important ad-
vances during the Later Han dynasty (25-220 AD), and the Shanghan zabinglun
     (Discourse on Fevers and Miscellaneous Illnesses) written by
Zhang Ji   (150-219), considered next in importance to the Huangdi
Neijing, was produced during this time. The textual tradition continued to
flourish with works on various different aspects of medicine. For example
Huangfu Mi    of the 3rd century wrote Zhenjiu jiayijing     
(Systematic Manual of Acupuncture) which became a classic on acupuncture.
Later Wang Shuhe    (265-317) wrote the Maijing   (Manual on the
Pulses), which became a canon on pulse reading. The Song Dynasty  (960-
1279) government was closely involved in the publication of pharmacopeoias
and medical texts. Physicians such as Liu Wansu    (1110-1200) and
Zhang Congzheng    (1156-1228) not only wrote commentaries on the
medical canons, but also initiated new directions in treatment. The Ming 
(1368-1644) and Qing  Dynasties also saw important developments in medi-
cine, not least being the publication of Li Shizhen's Bencao gangmu    
(The Great Pharmacopoeia).
Surprisingly, however, they make no mention of the development of wenbing
 (warm factor disorder) in late imperial times, nor Wu Youxing's   
seminal work Wenyilun    (Treatise on Heat Factor Disorders). This was a
major development in medical theory and treatment and a separation from the
shanghan   (cold damage) tradition which had been dominant until the early
Ming. The origin of the term wenbing can be traced back to the Huangdi Neijing
140 EASTM 17 (2000)
Suwen, which not only provided this term used for warm factor disorders, but
also dealt with the relationships of the causes of the diseases and their relation-
ship to epidemics. All the way through to the Song Dynasty, even though sepa-
rate methods of treatment were developed for wenbing and shanghan, the former
was always placed within the category of the latter. The first systematic advo-
cacy of a new category for warm factor disorders began with Liu Wansu of the
Jin period (1115-1234). The major theoretical advance concerning the infectious
nature of wenbing was provided by the late Ming physician Wu Youxing, who
personally experienced a series of epidemics that ravaged the empire around
1408-1643. Wu argued that epidemics were not to be explained solely by refer-
ence to the year and season, nor were they caused by the invasion of the liuyin
  (six excesses), but rather they were caused by liqi   (pestilential qi)
which entered the human body through the nose and mouth. The emergence of
the wenbing school is also closely tied to the formation of a medical community
in the lower Yangzi region in late imperial times. Those interested in the wen-
bing school will find Marta Hanson's dissertation, titled Inventing a Tradition in
Chinese Medicine: From Universal Canon to Local Medical Knowledge in
South China, the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century (University of
Pennsylvania, 1997) helpful.
One of the main focuses of Ho and Lisowski is the exchange of medical
knowledge between China and the outside world, indeed, Part II of this book
provides separate discussions on the history of medicine in Japan and the Islamic
world, giving additional information on these two medical systems that were
influenced by China. They believe that there is "one unitary science of Nature,"
therefore "one can expect to trace an absolute continuity between the first begin-
nings of medicine in ancient Babylonia, through the advancing natural knowl-
edge of historic China, India, the Islamic world and the classical Western world
to modern times" (p. 2). Prior to the European Renaissance, Asia possessed the
most advanced systems of medicine. It was Chinese, Indian (Ayurveda), Arabic
(Unani) and Persian medicine that laid the basis for the formation of modern
European medicine. Chinese medicine in particular had a significant impact on
her neighbors and in turn was influenced by them.
Ho and Lisowski mention that Emperor A'soka (273-232 BC) of the
Mauryan empire sent Buddhist monks to China but were rebuffed by Qin
Shihuangdi    . It is regrettable that they did not provide the textual
reference source for this encounter. The Tang Dynasty (618-907) was one of the
most cosmopolitan dynasties in China and it was during this time that there was
extensive contact with the outside world, both to the east and the west. The
authors believe that the idea of examinations was borrowed from China first by
the Arabs, and finally reached the West in the 12th century, when Roger of
Sicily passed laws for the state examination of physicians. This was followed in
1224 by the medical school in Salerno granting students who passed an
examination the title of Doctor Medicinae. Thus, they believe that, "[i]t would
hardly be possible to imagine a deeper effect of the environing culture on
141 Reviews
medicine than this 'bureaucratization' of medical knowledge, which had the
extremely happy effect of protecting people at large from the activities of
ignorant physicians" (p. 33).
The Tang was also the time when there was frequent contact with Korea,
Japan and Vietnam, in addition to exchanges with India and the Arab world. The
influence of Chinese medicine is still strong in these countries. The Nestorians
who arrived in China in the 7th century also translated works on medicine, intro-
ducing the Greek Four Elements theory. When the Mongols conquered China in
the 13th century, cultural exchanges between the East and West intensified, and
the Mongol rulers in China were particularly interested in medicine.
After reading A Brief History of Chinese Medicine and Its Influence, how-
ever, one might come away with the impression that it was classically trained
physicians who dominated health care and medical practice in traditional China.
This was far from the case. Although the presence of these physicians is most
pronounced in the dynastic histories and local gazetteers, most people in late
imperial China probably consulted folk healers and visited temples in seeking
treatment for the ailments they suffered. Religious healing was a prominent part
of the medical landscape. Sources and information on folk traditions are scarce,
but we can gain a glimpse of their significance through the writings of physi-
cians, who constantly complained of the "superstition" of the common people
and the latter's tendency to use divination and religious prayers to heal illnesses.
Even though these elite physicians felt morally superior to the folk and religious
healers, they still had to compete with them for patients.
As a book that is intended to stimulate the readers to pursue the study of the
history of medicine in China, it is unfortunate that the authors did not provide a
more extensive and updated bibliography of works in the field in the section on
"Further Reading." For example Nathan Sivin's works, though mentioned in the
text, were not listed. For anyone interested in the history of Chinese medicine,
the first six chapters in Sivin's Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China
(Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan Press,
1987) are invaluable. Also, even though Paul Unschuld's Medicine in China: A
History of Ideas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) has some
problems in interpretation, it is still useful as an example of linking the devel-
opment in medicine to larger social and intellectual forces. There is also an ex-
cellent article by Francesca Bray on "Chinese Medicine" in Companion Ency-
clopedia of the History of Medicine, edited by W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter, vol.
1 (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 728-754. For a discussion of epidemics and
medicine, there is Carol Benedict's Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-century China
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).
There are also minor oversights, such as the date for the Song Dynasty on p.
10. But aside from its over-emphasis on the elite tradition and the need for a
better reading list, this book is well-written and impressive in its attempt to be
comprehensive. It serves well as an introduction to the history of Chinese medi-
cine.
142 EASTM 17 (2000)


P. Y. Ho and F. P. Lisowski, A Brief History of Chinese Medicine and Its Influence

Fu, Daiwie

142 EASTM 17 (2000)
Irfan Habib and Dhruv Raina (eds.), Situating the History of Science: Dialogues
with Joseph Needham, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. x, 358 pp.
Fu Daiwie
[Fu Daiwie teaches at Tsing-Hua University of Taiwan. His current research is
in two areas: Cultural history of science and biji-texts in Song China; Gen-
der/sexuality in Taiwan's modern history of medicine.]
This is a very special and much needed collection of papers concerning "dia-
loguing with Needham" at the end of the 20th century. The collection has its
origin in a conference organized jointly by India's National Institute of Science,
Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS), the Delhi Science Forum,
and the Maison de Sciences de l'Homme, Paris, held at New Delhi in September
1996. This indeed seems to be just the kind of cooperation and place for a con-
ference that would have pleased Needham himself, while the conference itself,
'Science the Refreshing River,' according to the editors of this volume, "was
conceived of as a homage to Joseph Needham and inspired by and reflecting
Needham's lifelong engagement with crossing disciplinary and institutional
boundaries..." (Preface, vii).
Basically, Situating the History of Science (Situating hereafter) consists of 13
essays in the following categories: introduction, the social epistemology of
Needhamian historiography, historiography of the sciences, and the universality
of science reconsidered. The contributors of these essays primarily come from
France and India, with a few from Canada and the United Kingdom, and they are
mostly historians, sociologists, theorists of science studies and development
studies, as well as philosophers. Interestingly, there seems to be no contributor
or participant from East Asia or China, whose history Needham and his
collaborators spent most of their energy in studying.
What are the major issues which have been chosen for this collection of pa-
pers intended as a homage to Needham? At least two recur throughout Situating,
and seem to be the focus of most papers, namely, the end of cold-war ideology
and extreme internalism in the history of science, and the so-called cultural turn
in science studies, with its more extreme directions such as post-modernism and
cultural studies. Indeed, I think that one special strength and attraction of this
volume, with Needham and his legacy in mind, is that it provides the opportunity
to learn what these scholars in science studies (specialised in Chinese and Indian
sciences!) say about these hot topics, already so thoroughly discussed by "main-
stream" Western intellectuals.
It is certainly interesting to see how the "cold-war ideology" (characterised
by a neutral and apolitical stance, plus extreme internalistic orientation in history
of science) is used by a number of papers to explain the decline of "the Needham
spirit" during that era. Thus, according to Elzinga's paper, we saw in the cold-
143 Reviews
war years the eclipse of the social history of science, or the abstraction of
science from its social/political contexts, and presumably a decline of spirit of
social responsibility among scientists. In a different way, in Raina & Habib's
paper, we can perceive this problem in the non-emergence of a Needhamian
history of sciences in post-war India. Although this is certainly not the place to
discuss the launch of a full-scale attack on Thomas Kuhn in Steve Fuller's new
book, some of Fuller's earlier mockings of Kuhn's popular "normal science" talks
(supposedly used if not specially designed by cold-war ideology to suppress
"critical rationalism"), or Fuller's "parable for postmodern times" (1992), were
cited by Elzinga (p. 100) and highlighted in the Introduction (by Raina, p. 6) to
underscore the problem and influence of cold-war ideology on the history of
science in general. With the official close of the cold-war era, the historiography
of the history of science therefore should be set free and granted a new
departure, and with it, a revival of some of Needham's more sophisticated
historical visions.
While very much applauding the recent scholarship on the history of cold-
war science by Paul Forman and others, I am somewhat uneasy about this heavy
attack on internalism and the supposed essential connection between it and cold-
war ideology. To avoid throwing out the baby with the bath water, we should not
ignore the better aspects achieved by the internalist historians of science in past
decades. Moreover, dialectically speaking, without the challenges and develop-
ments in internalism during the cold-war era, the level of sophistication in social
studies of science could not have reached the height we have now. Instead, we
might still be stuck with the traditional "Bernalism, social class and the social
function of science" (p. 99). The supposed essential connection between inter-
nalism and cold-war ideology is indeed an issue that is both revealing and prob-
lematic. Much more detailed studies are needed in order to better reveal the ex-
tent to which our academic identities and scholarship have been constructed by
cold-war discourses. How strong was its hold, and who has been able to actually
escape from it? But it is also problematic in the sense that it is easy to discern
many challenges and developments in the cold-war era in both the history of
science and the social activism of scientists—challenges that are in contradiction
with dominant cold-war ideology. Social studies of science and sociology of
scientific knowledge (SSK) had already emerged in the 1970's, and social aware-
ness and activism among scientists has been developing again since World War
II, most especially after the protests of the 1960's. Thus, the whole picture is
certainly a good deal more complicated. Meanwhile, prompted by these post-
cold-war reflections, I was also wondering about what our own communities in
the history of Chinese science were doing during that era, both as historians and
social intellectuals.
Besides the end of the cold-war, the end of the 20th century has also been
characterised as the end of many other things in science studies, such as the end
of objectivity, rationality, and universality, as some more radical trends of the
general "cultural turn" of science studies would have it. Where is Needham's
144 EASTM 17 (2000)
heritage then to be situated in this cultural turn? For the sake of argument, I shall
divide the issue of this cultural turn into two aspects in order to better engage in
a dialogue with this volume under review; first, the positive theme of turning
away from the traditional Eurocentric narrative of history of science under such
guises as objectivity and universality, and secondly, the negative theme of
stressing the culturally constructive and historically contingent nature of various
scientific traditions to the extent of denying abstract rationality, embracing an-
thropological relativism, and finally treating discourses of objectivity and truth
as forms of power strategies.
Let me first discuss the positive theme of turning away from Eurocentrism
and affirming various non-European knowledge traditions. It is certainly on this
score that Needham's heritage and his collective efforts acquire a firm position in
the changing picture of the history of science and are highly regarded by con-
temporary feminist science studies activists, such as Sandra Harding and others.
Thus Raina and Habib have aptly considered Needham's works as "the first de-
centring" of the Eurocentric Old Big Picture of science (p. 284), well before the
contemporary second decentring in the cultural turn. The general collective
achievement by Needham and others in this respect is endorsed by all contribu-
tors of this volume. More specifically, however, Needham's special theories and
governing models in this first "decentring" are not without their problems.1 For
example, his cross-cultural diffusion theory of science and technology in history,
important for his argument concerning the great Chinese contributions to modern
science, has often been challenged by critics (see Blue's article, pp. 49-50). Al-
though his diffusion theory has potential, as further considered and developed by
Fuller and Paty's articles in this volume, much more elaboration is needed. I will
come back to this later. As for his dominant model for the relationship between
modern science and various ethnoscientific traditions (European included),
nothing is more famous than his "rivers and sea" metaphor: "the older streams of
science in different civilizations like rivers flowing into the ocean of modern
science" (p. 220). However, as accurately pointed out by Chemla in her article,
this model has serious limitations, most specifically that it often ignores knowl-
edge traditions that had no chance to flow into the ocean (forming an "inland
lake" instead), and by taking modern science as the "ocean," Needham often
unwittingly privileged the European scientific tradition.
Moreover, there is the famous problem for Needham that he uses "modern
scientific disciplinary categories to classify and analyse traditional Chinese
                                                
1 In Gregory Blue's article of this volume, "Science(s), Civilization(s), Historie(s)," p.
49, he cited Derk Bodde's book, and comments "[Bodde's] criticism of Needham's appre-
ciation of Daoism may well be telling, and seems to be fairly widely shared, though
Needham himself remained unrepentant." I would just like to indicate here a recent re-
evaluation of the relationship between science and Daoism by Alexei Volkov, who found
merits in Needham's original formulation and questioned instead Sivin's later criticism of
Needham's Daoist appreciation. See Volkov's "Science and Daoism: An Introduction," in
Taiwanese Journal for Philosophy & History of Science no. 8 (1996-1997), pp.1-58.
145 Reviews
thinking about nature" (p. 46). There is much that could be said about this prob-
lem—perhaps one of the most commonly made mistakes by historians of non-
European knowledge traditions—but I must stop here in order to continue my
review. These suspicious residuals of Eurocentrism, therefore, are still present in
Needham's first decentring, and often pointed out by his critics in the second
decentring, all of whom were actually standing on his shoulders in order to see
further. Now, since the first decentring was incomplete, how about the second
decentring?
Let us turn to the "negative theme" of the cultural turn. If we consider the ne-
gations proclaimed by the cultural turn from simple perspectives like rationalism
or realism, it is easy to arrive at the conclusion that the notions of the objectivity
and universality of science are under serious attack. The much feared relativism
seems to be winning the day. However, the situation is, of course, much more
subtle. In a certain sense, Elzinga's article argues that Needham's "ecumenical
science" project is on the same side as Said's post-colonial "hybridity" in going
against "Seyyed Hossein Nasr's gnosis-oriented call for a resacralization of sci-
ence" (p. 103), or any other "totalizing narratives, whether they come from East
or West" (p. 104). It is impressive to read how Elzinga tries, very seriously, to
situate Needham's vision and project within the difficult and philosophically
demanding discourses of post-colonial hybridity and difference. This is indeed a
dialogue of great effort. However, when Elzinga tries to criticise hyperreflexity
and postmodern hybridity from a Needhamian perspective, it looks a bit too sim-
ple, and much more elaboration is really needed. Let me say a few more words
on this point.
Against post-colonial difference and incommensurability, Elzinga poses
Needhamian projects of cross-cultural comparative studies. And against the
negation of universality of science, Paty poses cross-cultural transmission and
diffusion of knowledge as a new form of universality (p. 317). From a strategic
point of view, both Elzinga and Paty seem to have taken a clever position in
overcoming the negations and reinstating modern science in a new ecumenical
spirit. However, there are tremendous epistemological difficulties to overcome
before a sophisticated theory of cross-cultural comparison can be established.
Theories of post-colonial difference or Kuhnian incommensurability in history
of science cannot simply be dismissed by the charge of hyperreflexity. They are
either to be refuted or we must live with them.2 It is one thing to listen to this
Needhamian dialogue and its discontent: "How then do we get out of this blind
alley in which cultural analysis of a hyperreflexity kind leads to an infinite re-
gress, disabling us from doing anything but comparison as a work of bric-a-brac
juxtapositions?" (p. 111). But it is quite another to construct a social and episte-
mological theory of cross-cultural comparison or dialogue that can meet the
                                                
2 For a discussion of Kuhnian incommensurablity, with the history of Chinese science
in mind, see Daiwie Fu "Higher Taxonomy and Higher Incommensurability," Studies in
History and Philosophy of Science vol. 26, no.2 (1995), pp.273-294.
146 EASTM 17 (2000)
challenges from incommensurability, or that can achieve deeper meaning, and
thus go beyond the mere bric-a-brac juxtaposition kind of shallow comparison.
However, so far as I can see in this volume, an adequate epistemology for cross-
cultural comparison or dialogue has yet to be constructed and tested.
Despite a strategic angle that has been highlighted by Elzinga, Paty, and pos-
sibly Fuller in this volume, it seems to me that the real content is yet to be
fleshed out. No wonder, perhaps, that Raina and Habib express uneasiness re-
garding the future of civilisation studies in the light of the second decentring. In
a very interesting paper, "The Missing Picture," Raina and Habib finally bring us
back to the issue of how to situate Needham's projects in the horizons of Asian
people, historians and intellectuals, be they Indians, Chinese, or Taiwanese. It is
a very pleasant experience to read how Raina and Habib explain the social and
conceptual obstacles in the way of the non-emergence of a Needhamian history
of sciences of India. So many factors concerning the development of history of
science in various third world Asian countries are common! In the end, Raina
and Habib have reflected to the point of asking not merely the non-emergence
question, but also "why a Needhamian history of sciences of India" in the first
place (p. 298). Indeed, besides the fact that Needham's voluminous works have
enriched the history of Chinese science corpus, and the fact that he substantially
contributed to the Western "recognition" of Chinese national achievements, how
else should or would Needham's vision and project relate to the concerns of East
Asian historians and scientists?
While receiving numerous exceptional plaudits from China, Needham seems
to exert little influence on the historiography of science as evidenced in the case
of mathematics, according to Jami's article in this volume. Therefore, Jami is
tempted to conclude that "the main value of Needham's enterprise from the view-
point dominant in China is that, as a distinguished member of the Western scien-
tific establishment, he granted recognition and legitimacy to China's scientific
tradition" (p. 272). Naturally, I do not believe that Needham's enterprise
deserves only this much to the East Asian people. While post-colonialism intel-
lectuals like Said were worrying about the power effect radiated from the impe-
rial orientalist establishment, the career of Needham's SCC corpus in East Asia is
a rather different story. We East Asian historians and intellectuals should instead
worry about the "uses and abuses" of Needham's works by Asian powers and
nationalistic technocrats.3 Indeed it is by no means uncommon that problems and
shortcomings of Needham's projects viewed from the cultural turn (or from the
second decentring), actually become virtues and axioms of many US-trained
                                                
3 In a recent article on "crossing taxonomies and boundaries," I discuss the merits and
problems of Needham's methodology of comparative histories of science with Dr. Chris-
topher Cullen. I specifically wrote: "[SCC] is fruitful,...only in the beginning phases, and
I must confess that, as a historian of Chinese science, I often feel [in East Asia] the his-
torical burden of its greatness." See my "Crossing Taxonomies and Boundaries: A Critical
Note on Comparative History of Science and Zhao Youqin's 'Optics'," Taiwanese Journal
for Philosophy & History of Science no. 8 (1996-1997), p.110.
147 Reviews
East Asian technocrats. It is an irony sometimes for me doing the history of
Chinese science in East Asia, that, while admiring Needham's vision and spirit, I
often need to criticize Needhamian products, especially those made in East Asia.


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Contents

P. Y. Ho and F. P. Lisowski, A Brief History of Chinese Medicine and Its Influence

Irfan Habib and Dhruv Raina (eds.), Situating the History of Science: Dialogues with Joseph Needham

Hybrid Science versus Modernity: The Practice of the Jiangnan Arsenal, 1864-1897

370

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