Historical Perspectives on East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine brings together over fifty papers by leading contemporary historians from more than a dozen nations. It is the third in a series of books growing out of the tri-annual International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia, the largest and most prestigious gathering of scholars in the field. The current volume broadens the field's traditional focus on China to include path-breaking work on Vietnam, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and even the transmission of Asian science and technology to Europe and the United States. Topics covered include: traditional Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino medicines; Chinese astronomy; Japanese earthquakes; science and technology policy; architecture; the digital revolution; and much else.

Questioning Science in East Asian Contexts brings together twelve essays written by Yung Sik Kim addressing various questions about the social and cultural contexts of science in East Asia. Most of the essays deal with the relationship between science and Confucianism, especially the roles that Confucian thought, values, and institutions have on the development of science. Kim shows that this relationship is very complex and multifaceted, and cannot be dealt with in a simplistic manner. Kim offers comparative perspectives and discusses the problems of intercultural comparisons; he demonstrates that in spite of the potential dangers that accompany these comparisons, they should be made nonetheless as they allow for a better understanding of the situation in East Asia.

Science and Confucian Statecraft in East Asia explores science and technology as practiced in the governments of premodern China and Korea. Contrary to the stereotypical image of East Asian bureaucracy as a generally negative force having hindered free enquiries and scientific progress, this volume offers a more nuanced picture of how science and technology was deployed in the service of state governance in East Asia. Presenting richly documented cases of the major state-sponsored sciences, astronomy, medicine, gunpowder production, and hydraulics, this book illustrates how rulers’ and scholar-officials’ concern for efficient and legitimate governance shaped production, circulation, and application of natural knowledge and useful techniques. Contributors include: Francesca Bray, Christopher Cullen, Asaf Goldschmidt, Cho-ying Li, Jongtae Lim, Peter Lorge, Joong-Yang Moon, Kwon soo Park, Dongwon Shin, Pierre-Étienne Will

How did the Chinese in the 19th century deal with the enormous influx of Western science? What were the patterns behind this watershed in Chinese intellectual history? This work deals with those responsible for the translation of science, the major issues they were confronted with, and their struggles; the Chinese translators’ views of its overpowering influence on, and interaction with their own great tradition, those of the missionary-translators who used natural theology to propagate the Gospel, and those of John Fryer, a ‘secular missionary’, who founded the Shanghai Polytechnic and edited the Chinese Scientific Magazine. With due attention for the techniques of translation, the formation of new terms, the mechanisms behind the ‘struggle for survival’ between the, in this case, chemical terms, all amply illustrated at the hand of original texts. The final chapter charts the intellectual influence of Western science, the role of the scientific metaphor in political discourse, and the translation of science from a collection of mere ‘techniques’ to a source of political inspiration.

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.

In covering the subject of Chinese medicine, this book addresses topics such as oracle bones, the treatment of women, fertility and childbirth, nutrition, acupuncture, and Qi as well as examining Chinese medicine as practiced globally in places such as Africa, Australia, Vietnam, Korea, and the United States.