History of Technology Volume 29: Volume Twenty-nine, 2009

Description

The common question from the western point of view is of the sort; why did China lose its early leadership of productive technologies to Europe during the early modern period? Answers to this seemingly clear enquiry vary from general cultural inwardness to the interferences of imperial governance. This collection surveys such theories but alters the issue by raising the notion that Chinese technologies did not so much fail as move along a path different from that of Europe. Our second collection on the Mindful Hand, also shifts common ground by querying and modifying common views of the links between knowledge and technique in early-modern European development. Scientific or related knowledge was not brought to technique as a socio-cultural gift from an educated elite to the working man. Rather, educated gents, practitioners, instrument makers, craftsfolk and technicians of all kinds intermingled both socially and in terms of the recognition of technical problems as well as in the assemblage of the mental, commercial and cognitive resources required to pursue innovative production projects. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Editorial The Contributors Notes for Contributors Special Issue: Chinese Technological History: The Great Divergence Introduction PATTERNS OF USEFUL AND RELIABLE KNOWLEDGE IN PREMODERN CHINA Notes and References The Needham Question Updated: A Historiographies Survey and Elaboration NEEDHAM'S PUZZLE AND THE GREAT DIVERGENCE: CHINA AND THE WEST FLOWS OF USEFUL AND RELIABLE KNOWLEDGE SITES AND INSTITUTIONS FOR THE GENERATION OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE CULTURES AND COSMOLOGIES FOR INNOVATION IN EUROPE AND CHINA Note Cultural Logics for the Regime of Useful Knowledge during the Ming and Early-Qing China c. 1400-1700 ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION REGIME OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE MING AND EARLY-QING CHINA CULTURAL AMBIANCES OF THE MING AND EARLY-QING KNOWLEDGE REGIME CONCLUSION: ‘WHOSE’ AND ‘WHAT’ USEFUL KNOWLEDGE? Notes and References Movers and Shakers of Knowledge in China during the Ming-Qing Period THE JESUIT PERIOD, c 1600-1840 THE WESTERNIZATION PERIOD, 1840-1910 FINAL REMARKS China and Science on the Eve of the 'Great Divergence' 1600-1800: A Review of Recent Revisionist Scholarship in Western Languages ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF CHINESE SCIENCE IN A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE: OLD AND NEW DEBATES JESUIT SCIENTIFIC MISSION IN CHINA: FLATTERY AS STRATEGY HELPING TO MAKE THE EARTH STAND STILL: THE JESUIT AGENDA AND CHINESE PRIORITIES THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FIRST ENCOUNTER: INTELLECTUAL DEAD END? SOME FURTHER OBSERVATIONS Notes and References Special Issue: The Mindful Hand Introduction: Transcending Boundaries: Mindful Hands in the History of Technology SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY? STUDIES OF THE MINDFUL HAND Notes and References Into the Light: Crystals and the Recreation of Nature in Seventeenth-Century Garden Caves and Cabinets INTRODUCTION THE BELLY OF THE EARTH THE GROTTO OF GANYMEDE CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS: EXAMINER OF CRYSTALS CONCLUSION Notes and References The Mindful Hands of Peasants: Construction of an Eight-Lock Staircase at Fonseranes, 1678-79 THE PROBLEM FORMAL KNOWLEDGE OF ENGINEERING IN LANGUEDOC THE LOCKS OF THE CANAL DU MIDI POLITICAL AND ECONOMIIC PRESSURES IN THE 1670S WOMEN LABOURERS ON THE CANAL DU MIDI HYDRAULICS AND TIMBERING THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THE FONSERANES LOCKS CONCLUSIONS Notes and References Enlightenment in Russian Hands: The Inventions and Identity of Ivan Petrovich Kulibin in Eighteenth-Century St Petersburg INTRODUCTION FORMATION OF AN INVENTOR: KULIBIN IN NIZHNI NOVGOROD BUILDING BRIDGES: KULIBIN AND THE ACADEMY AUTOMATA: KULIBIN'S SELF-MOVING MACHINES INVENTING AUTONOMY: KULIBIN'S OPTICS AND FIREWORKS CONCLUSION Notes and References The Mindful Hand Goes to Japan: Dutch-Japanese Trade in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century GOVERNMENT POLICIES: PRODUCTIVE INITIATIVES AND SOCIO-POLITICAL CONTROL THE URBAN SETTING FROM GOVERNMENT POLICY TO MEDICINE AND ART: 'WESTERN' ANATOMYAND 'REALIST' ILLUSTRATION BACK TO EDO: 'WESTERN' GOODS AND INSTRUMENTS IN THE JAPANESE IMAGINATION CONCLUSION Notes and References The West Had Science and the Rest Had Not? The Queries of the Mindful Hand QUERIES OF THE MINDFUL HAND AT THE LEVEL OF THE WORLD Notes and References Contents of Former Volumes