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KMID : 1123920130270050520
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Korean Journal of Oriental Physiology and Pathology
2013 Volume.27 No. 5 p.520 ~ p.529
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Needham Revisited : Chinese Medicine and Modernity
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Song Seok-Mo
Lee Kwang-Gyu
Lee Sang-Ryoung
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Abstract
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Needham Problem(NP) is the influential question that English historian of Chinese science Joseph Needham raised, "Why modern science had not developed in the Chinese civilisation but only in that of Europe?" Our objectives in this paper are as follows: First, we will revisit NP in the broad context of the emergence of modernity rather than treating it just as an internal problem of Chinese science. After that, the problem of modernity in Chinese medicine will be discussed from the viewpoint of NP. After NP’s intellectual backgrounds are summarized, its value and implications are examined, and then Needham’s own answers are presented. Afterwards, we present supplementary hypotheses, adapted from Weber, as our solution to NP in Chinese science and medicine. Needham thought that the European scientific revolution would not have been possible without the rise of modern capitalism. He also believed that Chinese bureaucratism facilitated early development of Chinese science and in turn, inhibited later radical change by interrupting the rise of capitalism. According to our hypotheses, scientific changes are related to social changes, especially to the legitimation crises, which lead to the alternations of mode of justification in sciences. The Chinese society did not go through the legitimation crises as the European society did, and therefore it failed to produce a radically different kind of justification from the traditional one. This is the reason why there was no revolution in science and medicine in China.
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KEYWORD
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Needham, Needham problem, Needham question, modernity, Chinese medicine, Chinese science
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