The latest volume in Joseph Needham's magisterial revelation of China's premodern scientific and technological traditions introduces medicine. Five essays are included by Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-djen, edited and expanded upon by the editor, Nathan Sivin. The essays offer broad and readable accounts of medicine in culture, including hygiene and preventive medicine, forensic medicine and immunology. Professor Sivin's extensive introduction discusses these essays, placing them in their historical and medical context, and surveys recent medical discoveries from China, Japan, Europe and the United States.

Science and Civilization in China (5)

History

Needham, Joseph

Wagner, Donald B.

Asia

Cambridge University Press

Comprehensive historical account of the production and use of iron and steel in China in their political and economic context. An initial chapter on the traditional Chinese iron industry introduces the important technical concepts and the ways in which technology, geography, and economics influence political phenomena. Further chapters cover developments from the Han to the Tang, the technical evolution and economic revolution of the Song period, and economic expansion under the Ming. A final chapter investigates the debt of the modern steel industry to Chinese developments.

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 11, Ferrous Metallurgy

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

This book explores the economic history of the traditional Chinese iron industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular emphasis on the interactions among technological, economic and geographic factors. The traditional technology of iron production is described together with the ways in which it changed and developed in response to upheavals wrought by foreign competition, war and revolution and by the growth in China of a modern iron industry.Many of the book's findings are counter-intuitive, and will provide food for thought in the study of Third World industrial development. The author has written widely on the history of science and technology in China, and is currently engaged in writing the volume on ferrous metallurgy for Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China.

The Traditional Chinese Iron Industry and Its Modern Fate (Nias Reports, 32)

Reference

Routledge

Designed as an advanced/intermediate level textbook for students, this book will meet the needs of those making the transition between 'textbook texts' to 'real texts'. Dr Wagner's many years' experience of teaching classical Chinese are brought to bear on one of the most difficult aspects of learning the language - making the progression from introductory textbooks on classical Chinese, which do not present serious philological problems, to real historical texts, in which such problems abound. The text used is the biography of Huo Guang in the Han Shu together with the commentaries compiled by Yan Shigu.

A Classical Chinese Reader: The Han Shu biography of Huo Guang

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Biographies & Memoirs

The Traditional Chinese Iron Industry and Its Modern Fate

After the collapse of Roman civilization, knowledge of mathematics dwindled in Europe. In the Arab world, however, the works of ancient mathematicians like Euclid were preserved and built upon by new thinkers like al-Khwarizmi, who became instrumental in spreading Indian mathematics and numerals to the West. Little known to Western historians, a parallel development of mathematical knowledge was happening in China. A rare glimpse of this world is offered via a translation and elaboration of one of the canons of classical Chinese mathematical education. Wang Xiaotong’s Continuation of ancient mathematics shows us a stage in the development from the 1st to the 14th century CE of the Chinese traditional algebra of polynomials. Here in the 7th century, columns of numbers used in root-extraction procedures are recognized as equations that can be solved numerically, but these equations cannot yet be manipulated. Wang Xiaotong arrives at numerically solvable polynomials through a variety of ad hoc techniques, including geometric constructions and rhetorical algebra. In the 18th century, it would be shown that all of his problems could be solved by straightforward algebraic manipulation of polynomials using 14th-century Chinese methods. Lim and Wagner’s in-depth study of the Continuation brings this work to an audience unfamiliar with the history and particulars of Chinese mathematical knowledge. Their worked examples also illuminate the text and invite comparison with the work of medieval mathematicians in the Middle East and Europe. The work will appeal to historians of mathematics especially but anyone interested in the evolution of Chinese science and technology will also find this very informative.

The Continuation of Ancient Mathematics: Wang Xiaotong’s Jigu suanjing, Algebra and Geometry in 7th-Century China (NIAS Reports, 51)

Lim, Tina Su-lyn

NIAS Press

The activist reign of the Emperor Wu-di (140-87 BC) saw major changes in the government of the Chinese state, its relations with foreign powers, and its economy, including the role of the government in the economy. In 117 BC, several state monopolies were established, and thus began an immense upheaval in the Chinese economy which has remained a matter of controversy through the centuries. This text brings both literary and archaeological evidence to bear in an investigation of the history of the Han state iron monopoly, with special consideration of the reasons for its establishment and for the intense opposition which it provoked.

The State and the Iron Industry in Han China

Business & Money

Economics

Nordic Institute of Asian Studies

This book brings both literary and archaeological evidence to bear in an investigation of the history of the Han state's iron monopoly, and considers the reasons for its establishment and the intense opposition it provoked.

The State and the Iron Industry in Han China (NIAS Reports, 44)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wagner, Donald B.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wagner, Donald B.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wagner, Donald B.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Science and Civilization in China (5)

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 11, Ferrous Metallurgy

The Traditional Chinese Iron Industry and Its Modern Fate (Nias Reports, 32)

A Classical Chinese Reader: The Han Shu biography of Huo Guang

A Classical Chinese Reader: The Han Shu biography of Huo Guang

A Classical Chinese Reader: The Han Shu biography of Huo Guang

The Traditional Chinese Iron Industry and Its Modern Fate

The Continuation of Ancient Mathematics: Wang Xiaotong’s Jigu suanjing, Algebra and Geometry in 7th-Century China (NIAS Reports, 51)

The State and the Iron Industry in Han China

The State and the Iron Industry in Han China (NIAS Reports, 44)