On Their Own Terms

Science in China, 1550-1900

Benjamin A. Elman, Benjamin A. ELMAN

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780674016859
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674036475
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

In On Their Own Terms, Benjamin A. Elman offers a much-needed synthesis of early Chinese science during the Jesuit period (1600-1800) and the modern sciences as they evolved in China under Protestant influence (1840s-1900).

By 1600 Europe was ahead of Asia in producing basic machines, such as clocks, levers, and pulleys, that would be necessary for the mechanization of agriculture and industry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Elman shows, Europeans still sought from the Chinese their secrets of producing silk, fine textiles, and porcelain, as well as large-scale tea cultivation. Chinese literati borrowed in turn new algebraic notations of Hindu-Arabic origin, Tychonic cosmology, Euclidian geometry, and various computational advances.

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, imperial reformers, early Republicans, Guomindang party cadres, and Chinese Communists have all prioritized science and technology. In this book, Elman gives a nuanced account of the ways in which native Chinese science evolved over four centuries, under the influence of both Jesuit and Protestant missionaries. In the end, he argues, the Chinese produced modern science on their own terms.

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Maps, Illustrations, and Tables
• Chinese Dynasties
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• I Introduction
• Prologue
• 1. Ming Classification on the Eve of Jesuit Contact
• II Natural Studies and the Jesuits
• 2. The Late Ming Calendar Crisis and Gregorian Reform
• 3. Sino-Jesuit Accommodations During the Seventeenth Century
• 4. The Limits of Western Learning in the Early Eighteenth Century
• 5. The Jesuit Role as Experts in High Qing Cartography and Technology
• III Evidential Research and Natural Studies
• 6. Evidential Research and the Restoration of Ancient Learning
• 7. Seeking the Truth and High Qing Mathematics
• IV Modern Science and the Protestants
• 8. Protestants, Education, and Modern Science to 1880
• 9. The Construction of Modern Science in Late Qing China
• V Qing Reformism and Modern Science
• 10. Government Arsenals, Science, and Technology in China after 1860
• 11. Displacement of Traditional Chinese Science and Medicinein the Twentieth Century
• Appendixes
• 1. Tang Mathematical Classics
• 2. Some Translations of Chemistry, 1855–1873
• 3. Science Outline Series, 1882–1898
• 4. Partial Chronological List of Arsenals, etc., in China,1861–1892
• Table of Contents for the 1886 Primers for Science Studies(Gezhi qimeng)
• Twenty-three Fields of the Sciences in the 1886 Primers forScience Studies
• Science Compendia Published in China from 1877to 1903
• Some Officially Selected Chinese Prize Essay Topics fromthe Shanghai Polytechnic
• Scientific Societies Formed between 1912 and 1927
• Notes
• Bibliography of Chinese and Japanese Sources
• Acknowledgments
• Credits