Multicivilizational Exchanges in the Making of Modern Science: Needham’s Dialogical Vision

This book explores how and why exchanges across civilizations have come to enrich science today. The dialogical dimension of the history of science has long been marginalized by an excessive concern on why modern science emerged in Europe, but not in any of the advanced civilizations of the East. This focus upon what has been called Joseph Needham's "Grand Comparative Question" ignores his other project, focused on showing how dialogues between civilizations have nurtured science. Needham's "Grand Dialogical Question" – if we may call it that by parity – has directly or indirectly inspired a vast body of literature showing how interconnections of civilizations over the last three thousand years, and exchanges of cosmological, mathematical, geographical, physical, biological and medical technologies, techniques, practices and knowledge, have been woven together to produce current science. Bringing together scholars whose research range across multiple civilizations and disciplines, this book investigates the scope and limits of Needham's dialogical vision for science.

Arun Bala is a physicist and philosopher of science. He is the author and editor of multiple books, including Complementarity Beyond Physics (2017) and Asia, Europe and the Emergence of Modern Science (2012). He is Director (Research) with Joseph Needham Foundation for Science and Civilization, and a Visiting Scholar with the Institute of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology in University of Toronto.

Raymond W. K. Lau is a sociologist by training. His research interests focus on ancient Chinese thoughts and comparative intellectual developments. He retired as full professor of sociology from the Open University of Hong Kong, and now serves as a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Hong Kong Shue Yan University as well as senior advisor to The Joseph Needham Foundation for Science and Civilization.

Jianjun Mei is an archaeo-metallurgist, specializing in the origins and role of metallurgy in Early China, and cultural interactions between China and the West. He is President of the International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine, and Director of the Needham Research Institute.