Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 7 The Social Background: Part 2 General Conclusions and Reflections. Cet article n’est pas disponible.Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 7 The Social Background: Part 2 General Conclusions and Reflections

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.

Joseph Needham FRS (1900–1995) was the founder of the Science and Civilisation in China project.

Kenneth Girdwood Robinson joined Joseph Needham in 1979 in Cambridge to help him complete the unpublished volumes of Science and Civilisation in China, and wrote several of the pieces included in the present volume.