Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part 2, Agriculture

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part 2, Agriculture
Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 768
Release: 1984-04-19
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9780521250764

This second part of the sixth volume of Joseph Needham's great enterprise is the first to be written by a collaborator. Francesca Bray, working closely with Dr Needham, has produced the most comprehensive study of Chinese agriculture to be published in the West. From a huge mass of source material, often confusing and obscure, and from first-hand study in China, she brings order and illumination to a crucial area of Chinese technological development. The main body of the book is an account of the technological history of agriculture, with major sections devoted to field systems, implements and techniques (sowing, harvesting, storing) and crop systems (what has grown and where and how crops rotated). The concluding section contrasts Europe's Agricultural Revolution with agrarian change in North China in the Han and with the 'Green Revolution' in South China in the Sung. In the theoretical analysis which concludes this section we find a vital contribution to the elucidation of the main question posed by Dr Needham's work: why did the Scientific Revolution which transformed the world take place in Europe and not in China?

The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5

The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5
Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1978
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521467735

This fifth volume abridgement of Joseph Needham's monumental work is concerned with the staggering civil engineering feats made in early and medieval China.

Science and Civilisation in China, Part 2, Agriculture

Science and Civilisation in China, Part 2, Agriculture
Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 768
Release: 1984-04-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521250764

This second part of the sixth volume of Joeph Needham's great enterprise is an account of the technological history of agriculture, with major sections devoted to field systems, implements and techniques (sowing, harvesting, storing) and crop systems (what has grown and where and how crops rotated).

Science and Civilisation in China, Part 2, Mechanical Engineering

Science and Civilisation in China, Part 2, Mechanical Engineering
Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 1022
Release: 1965-01-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521058032

As Dr Needham's immense undertaking gathers momentum it has been found necessary to subdivide volumes into parts, each to be bound and published separately. The first part of Volume 4, already published, deals with the physical sciences; the second with the diverse applications of physics in the many branches of mechanical engineering; and the third will deal with civil and hydraulic engineering and nautical technology. With this part of Volume 4, then, we come to the application by the Chinese of physical principles in the control of forces and in the use of power; we cross the frontier separating tools from the machine. We have already noticed that the ancient Chinese concept of chhi (somewhat similar to the pneuma of the Greeks) asserted itself prominently in acoustics; but we discover here that the Chinese tendency to think pneumatically was also responsible for a whole range of brilliant technological achievements, for example, the double-acting piston-bellows, the rotary winnowing-fan, and the water-powered metallurgical blowing-machine (ancestor of the steam-engine); as well as for some extraordinary insights and predictions in aeronautics.

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 7, The Social Background, Part 2, General Conclusions and Reflections

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 7, The Social Background, Part 2, General Conclusions and Reflections
Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2004-07-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780521087322

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China series. 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, 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. 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. The documents gathered here reveal the intellectual foundations of one of the greatest scholarly enterprises of the twentieth century.

Science and Civilisation in China, Part 13, Mining

Science and Civilisation in China, Part 13, Mining
Author: Peter J. Golas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 604
Release: 1999-02-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521580007

The fifth volume of Dr Needham's immense undertaking covers the subjects of chemistry and chemical technology. This, the thirteenth part of the volume, is the first history of Chinese mining to appear in a western language. Covering from the Neolithic period to the present day it deals with the full range of Chinese mining from copper to mercury, arsenic to coal and a large number of other minerals and materials. The author draws extensively not only on written sources but also on archaeological remains, and observation of traditional techniques still in use. The interrelationship between Chinese mining and the social, economic and political conditions in which it took place is examined, and leads the author to conclude that these extraneous factors were probably more important in determining how mining was carried out than technological progress.

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part 3, Agro-Industries and Forestry

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part 3, Agro-Industries and Forestry
Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 934
Release: 1996-06-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521419994

Contains two separate works. The first, by Christian Daniels, is a comprehensive history of Chinese sugar cane technology from ancient times to the early twentieth century. Dr Daniels includes an account of the contribution of Chinese techniques and machinery to the development of world sugar technology in the pre-modern period, devoting special attention to the transfer of this technology to the countries of South-East and East Asia in the period after the sixteenth century. The second, by Nicholas K. Menzies, is a history of forestry in China. A final section compares China's history of deforestation with the cases of Europe and Japan.

China’s Cosmopolitan Empire

China’s Cosmopolitan Empire
Author: Mark Edward Lewis
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2009-10-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674265416

The Tang dynasty is often called China’s “golden age,” a period of commercial, religious, and cultural connections from Korea and Japan to the Persian Gulf, and a time of unsurpassed literary creativity. Mark Lewis captures a dynamic era in which the empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Chinese rule, painting and ceramic arts flourished, women played a major role both as rulers and in the economy, and China produced its finest lyric poets in Wang Wei, Li Bo, and Du Fu. The Chinese engaged in extensive trade on sea and land. Merchants from Inner Asia settled in the capital, while Chinese entrepreneurs set off for the wider world, the beginning of a global diaspora. The emergence of an economically and culturally dominant south that was controlled from a northern capital set a pattern for the rest of Chinese imperial history. Poems celebrated the glories of the capital, meditated on individual loneliness in its midst, and described heroic young men and beautiful women who filled city streets and bars. Despite the romantic aura attached to the Tang, it was not a time of unending peace. In 756, General An Lushan led a revolt that shook the country to its core, weakening the government to such a degree that by the early tenth century, regional warlordism gripped many areas, heralding the decline of the Great Tang.

Deconstructing Martial Arts

Deconstructing Martial Arts
Author: Paul Bowman
Publisher: Cardiff University Press
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2019-06-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1911653032

What is the essence of martial arts? What is their place in or relationship with culture and society? Deconstructing Martial Arts analyses familiar issues and debates that arise in scholarly, practitioner and popular cultural discussions and treatments of martial arts and argues that martial arts are dynamic and variable constructs whose meanings and values regularly shift, mutate and transform, depending on the context. It argues that deconstructing martial arts is an invaluable approach to both the scholarly study of martial arts in culture and society and also to wider understandings of what and why martial arts are. Placing martial arts in relation to core questions and concerns of media and cultural studies around identity, value, orientalism, and embodiment, Deconstructing Martial Arts introduces and elaborates deconstruction as a rewarding method of cultural studies.

Sustainable Ecological Agriculture in China

Sustainable Ecological Agriculture in China
Author: Tian Shi
Publisher: Cambria Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 1604977159

Ecological economics emphasizes the two-way interdependencies between the micro and macro levels. Although the questions about ecological agricultural research arise from the local level, their answers may lie at higher levels within the realm of political economy. Therefore, it requires substantial research not only on the links between local production systems and the larger national economy, political structures, and decision-making processes, but also the role and limitations of the national and local authorities in policy development and implementation. There is also scant research on Chinese ecological agriculture published in English. This book helps fill the void. It employs a trans-disciplinary approach to investigate the connection and discrepancy between knowledge and actions. It presents methodological perspectives and practical suggestions for the comprehensive analysis of ecological agriculture as inputs to improved agricultural policy-making for sustainability practices. In this way, this book illuminates the possibility of bridging the gap between local level implementation and the larger political-economic processes. This book helpfully provides a comprehensive analytical framework within which agricultural sustainability can be better analyzed and understood by articulating ecological economics as a policy science to guarantee transparency and fairness in the decision-making process . It shows the important role that traditional culture can play in promoting ecologically and socially sound development. It further emphasizes the imperative to move the ideology of ecological agriculture into the political realm and promotes a continuous dialogue between researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. It also suggests that local government has a significant role to play in establishing appropriate institutional arrangements and policy settings (e.g., bottom-up policy initiatives) for sustainable ecological agricultural development. By elaborating on the methodological synthesis of ecological economics and system dynamics modeling as a holistic approach to facilitate an improved policy-making process for agricultural sustainability, this book demonstrates the effectiveness of this alternative approach to improve policy making process and facilitate the realization of sustainability through a case study in China. This book will be an important resource not only to those interested in China, but also to scholars and policy makers around the world because of its global relevance in the areas of ecological economics, ecological agriculture, sustainable resource management, political economy, system dynamics thinking and modeling, and participation in the policy-making process.