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NEWLY PUBLISHED VOLUMES OF SCIENCE AND CIVILISATION IN CHINA
October 2004

Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology
Part 12, Ceramic Technology.

and

Volume 7, Science and Chinese Society
Part 2, General Conclusions and Reflections

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Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology
Part 12, Ceramic Technology.

By Rose Kerr and Nigel Wood
With additional contributions by Ts’ai Mei-fen and Zhang Fukang.

918 pages
(ISBN: 0-521-83833-9)

    The fifth volume of Joseph Needham’s immense undertaking covers the 
subjects of chemistry and chemical technology. This, the twelfth part of 
the volume, explores a range of questions concerning Chinese technology, 
including how were Chinese pots made, glazed and fired? Why did China 
discover porcelain more than one thousand years before the West? What 
are the effects of China’s influence on world ceramics? These questions 
(and many more) are answered in this lavishly illustrated history of 
Chinese ceramic technology. The scene is set through the use of 
historical texts, archaeological excavation, and the principles of 
ceramic science. Chapters follow on the formation of clays and their 
relation to the underlying geologies of China, on kilns and firing, on 
manufacturing methods and sequences, on glazes, pigments and gilding, 
and on the impact of Chinese ceramic technology around the world from 
the seventh to the twenty-first centuries.
    This is a massive volume, unique in its coverage, which brings 
together research materials in several languages for the first time.

Price £120. Please order from Cambridge University Press:

http://titles.cambridge.org/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521838339


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Volume 7, Science and Chinese Society
Part 2, General Conclusions and Reflections

Joseph Needham, Edited by Kenneth Girdwood Robinson, with contributions 
by Ray Huang, and an introduction by Mark Elvin

283 pages
(ISBN: 0-521-08732-5)

   It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Joseph Needham’s 
Science and Civilisation in China. 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, which extended up to his death at the age of 94, 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 
which formed the background to the topics on which he had written so 
copiously. 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. Needham was always original and often provocative, and the 
interest of his viewpoint remains even when the context of the original 
controversy may have been modified with the passing of the years. The 
documents gathered here reveal the intellectual foundations of one of 
the greatest scholarly enterprises of the twentieth century.

Contents include:
1.    Prefaces
2.    Foreword by Joseph Needham
3.    Science and Society in East and West by Joseph Needham
4.    The Roles of Europe and China in the Evolution of Oecumenical Science
     by Joseph Needham
5.    The Nature of Chinese Society: A Technical Interpretation
     By Huang Jen-yü and Joseph Needham
6.    History and Human Values: A Chinese Perspective for Science and 
Technology by Joseph Needham
7.    Literary Chinese As A Language for Science
     by Kenneth Robinson and Joseph Needham
8.    General Conclusions
     (1)    Background Summary
     (2)    Chinese Inventions and Discoveries
     (3)    Modern Science - Why from Europe?
9.    Joseph Needham - A Soliloquy by Kenneth Robinson

Price £65. Please order from Cambridge University Press:
http://titles.cambridge.org/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521087325

-- 
John P.C. Moffett
Librarian
East Asian History of Science Library
Needham Research Institute
8 Sylvester Road
Cambridge CB3 9AF
UK

Tel: (0)1223-311545 ex.223
www.nri.org.uk