Science and Confucian Statecraft 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

Francesca Bray, PhD (1985) University of Cambridge, is Emerita Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Recent books include Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China: The Warp and the Weft (co-edited, Brill, 2007) and Technology, Gender and History in Imperial China: Great Transformations Reconsidered (Routledge, 2013).

Jongtae Lim, Ph.D. (2003), Seoul National University, teaches the history of science in East Asia at that university. He has conducted research on early modern Korean science, particularly the history of Western learning and the scientific exchange between China and Korea.