Benjamin A. Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005. xxxviii + 567 pages. ISBN: 9780674016859 Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Modern Science in China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. xv + 308 pages. ISBN: 9780674023062

摘要

The two books under review, both by the American scholar Benjamin Elman, mark an epoch in the history of Chinese science: the former book is dedicated to Elman’s teachers, Nathan Sivin and Susan Naquin (and to Elman’s mother), and the latter to his students. Both works detour around Joseph Needham’s famous question about China’s alleged failure to develop modern science, instead incorporating a halfcentury’s scholarship into a narrative that covers four centuries of achievements.