Joseph Needham
Last update: 03 Oct 1994 12:02
First version:
His contributions to biology and the history of science. How he came to be
such a true-red Marxist. He suggests that scientific and proto-scientific
movements have historically been allied with mysiticism, democracy and crafts
guilds --- how strong is the evidence, or is this just the wish-fulfillment of
a deeply religious and Marxist scientist?
When will his autobiography be translated into English?
More than recommended:
- Science and Civilisation in China, 7 vols., incomplete at
the time of his death in 1995. I confess to have gotten no further than
Vol. IV, Part 1 in consecutive reading, before skipping ahead to what he was
able to publish on alchemy. George
Steiner called it the only worthy successor of Proust, as an effort to
re-create in memory a vanished world; I like it better than Proust, not least
because I have no desire to kick the narrator in the seat of the pants.
Of course it's too long (unless you're an undergraduate at Cal and cut
classes for a few weeks to read it by Strawberry Creek): but the authorized
abridgement by Colin Ronan, The Shorter Science and Civilisation in
China, is fine; and for a brief taste of the Master himself, there is
his Science in Traditional China.
- There is a nice appreciation by Philip Morrison...
Merely recommended:
- Order and Life, one of the best expositions of modern
ideas of biological order and levels of
organization
- A History of Embryology
- Clerks and Craftsmen in China and the West
- The Grand Titration, including Time and Eastern
Man
- Moulds of Understanding
- Maurice Goldsmith, Joseph Needham: 20th-century Renaissance
Man is the only real biography in English, written just before Needham
died. It stays, for the most part, just on the right side of hagiography, but
really Needham deserves something more critical.
To read:
- Christopher Harbsmeier, Science and Civilisation in
China, vol. 7, The Social Background pt. 1, Languange
and Logic in Traditional China [Blurb]
- Joseph Needham, Biochemistry and Morphogenesis QH491 N4
bio
- Max Pettersson, Complexity and Evolution [A sort of
authorized continuation of Needham's views about integrative levels and the
like]