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As Dr Needham's immense undertaking gathers momentum it has been found necessary to subdivide volumes into parts, each to be bound and published separately. The first part of Volume 4, already published, deals with the physical sciences; the second with the diverse applications of physics in the many branches of mechanical engineering; and the third will deal with civil and hydraulic engineering and nautical technology. With this part of Volume 4, then, we come to the application by the Chinese of physical principles in the control of forces and in the use of power; we cross the frontier separating tools from the machine. We have already noticed that the ancient Chinese concept of chhi (somewhat similar to the pneuma of the Greeks) asserted itself prominently in acoustics; but we discover here that the Chinese tendency to think pneumatically was also responsible for a whole range of brilliant technological achievements, for example, the double-acting piston-bellows, the rotary winnowing-fan, and the water-powered metallurgical blowing-machine (ancestor of the steam-engine); as well as for some extraordinary insights and predictions in aeronautics.
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China series. For nearly fifty years, Needham and his collaborators have revealed the ideals, concepts and achievements of China's scientific and technological traditions from the earliest times to about 1800 through this great enterprise. During his long working lifetime, Needham kept in draft various essays, some written with collaborators, in which he set out his broad views on the Chinese social and historical context. These essays, edited by one of his closest collaborators, Kenneth Robinson, are contained in the present volume. A reading of this material makes it possible to reconstruct the assumptions and problematics that underpinned and drove the Needham project throughout the nearly one half century during which he was at the helm. The documents gathered here reveal the intellectual foundations of one of the greatest scholarly enterprises of the twentieth century.
This second part of the sixth volume of Joeph Needham's great enterprise is an account of the technological history of agriculture, with major sections devoted to field systems, implements and techniques (sowing, harvesting, storing) and crop systems (what has grown and where and how crops rotated).
The International Symposium on the History of Machines and Mechanisms is the main activity of the Permanent Commission (PC) for the History of Mechanism and Machine Science (HMM) of the International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science (IFToMM). The first symposium, HMM2000, was initiated by Dr. Marco Ceccarelli and was held at the University of Cassino (Cassino, Italy) on May 11–13, 2000. The second symposium, HMM2004, was chaired by Dr. Marco Ceccarelli and held at the same venue on May 12–15, 2004. The third symposium, HMM2008, was chaired by Dr. Hong-Sen Yan and held at the National Cheng Kung University (Tainan, Taiwan) on November 11–14, 2008. The mission of IFToMM is to promote research and development in the field of machines and mechanisms by theoretical and experimental methods, along with their practical applications. The aim of HMM2008 is to establish an international forum for presenting and discussing historical developments in the field of Mechanism and Machine Science (MMS). The subject area covers all aspects of the development of HMM, such as machine, mechanism, kinematics, design method, etc., that are related to people, events, objects, anything that assisted in the development of the HMM, and presented in the forms of reasoning and ar- ments, demonstration and identification, and description and evaluation.
A reissue with a foreword and supplement, of a modern classic published in 1960. The invention of the mechanical clock was one of the most important turning points in the history of science and technology. This study revealed six centuries of mechanical clockwork preceding the first mechanical escapement clocks of the West of about AD 1300. Detailed and fully illustrated accounts of elaborate Chinese clocks are accompanied by a discussion of the social context of the Chinese inventions and an assessment of their possible transmission to medieval Europe. For this revised edition, Dr Joseph Needham has contributed a new foreword on recent research and perceptions. In a supplement John H. Combridge details a modern reconstruction of Su Sung's timekeeping device, which together with textual studies modifies our understanding of this important early technology.
This fifth volume abridgement of Joseph Needham's monumental work is concerned with the staggering civil engineering feats made in early and medieval China.
This book explores the history of mechanical engineering since the Bronze Age. Focusing on machinery inventions and the development of mechanical technology, it also discusses the machinery industry and modern mechanical education. The evolution of machinery is divided into three stages: Ancient (before the European Renaissance), Modern (mainly including the two Industrial Revolutions) and Contemporary (since the Revolution in Physics, especially post Second World War). The book not only clarifies the development of mechanical engineering, but also reveals the driving forces behind it – e.g. the economy, national defense and human scientific research activities – to highlight the links between technology and society; mechanical engineering and the natural sciences; and mechanical engineering and related technological areas. Though mainly intended as a textbook or supplemental reading for graduate students, the book also offers a unique resource for researchers and engineers in mechanical engineering who wish to broaden their horizons.
The Tang dynasty is often called China’s “golden age,” a period of commercial, religious, and cultural connections from Korea and Japan to the Persian Gulf, and a time of unsurpassed literary creativity. Mark Lewis captures a dynamic era in which the empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Chinese rule, painting and ceramic arts flourished, women played a major role both as rulers and in the economy, and China produced its finest lyric poets in Wang Wei, Li Bo, and Du Fu. The Chinese engaged in extensive trade on sea and land. Merchants from Inner Asia settled in the capital, while Chinese entrepreneurs set off for the wider world, the beginning of a global diaspora. The emergence of an economically and culturally dominant south that was controlled from a northern capital set a pattern for the rest of Chinese imperial history. Poems celebrated the glories of the capital, meditated on individual loneliness in its midst, and described heroic young men and beautiful women who filled city streets and bars. Despite the romantic aura attached to the Tang, it was not a time of unending peace. In 756, General An Lushan led a revolt that shook the country to its core, weakening the government to such a degree that by the early tenth century, regional warlordism gripped many areas, heralding the decline of the Great Tang.
This book shows the ways in which English, French, and German eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century encyclopaedias dealt with things Chinese, offering an analysis of the broad variety of sources and an overview of the main strands of discourse on China.
Although the history of technological and scientific illustrations is a well-established field in the West, scholarship on the much longer Chinese experience is still undeveloped. This work by Peter Golas is a short, illustrated overview tracing the subject to pre-Han inscriptions but focusing mainly on the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. His main theme is that technological drawings developed in a different way in China from in the West largely because they were made by artists rather than by specialist illustrators or practitioners of technology. He examines the techniques of these artists, their use of painting, woodblock prints and the book, and what their drawings reveal about changing technology in agriculture, industry, architecture, astronomical, military, and other spheres. The text is elegantly written, and the images, about 100 in all, are carefully chosen. This is likely to appeal to both scholars and general readers.