Rethinking the Needham Question

Raymond W.K. Lau, PhD, was Professor of Sociology at the Hong Kong Metropolitan University until retirement in 2017; he is currently Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Hong Kong Shue Yan University. He has published primary research on the philosophies of Xunzi, Laozi, and Zhuangzi. In Intellectual Developments in Greece and China: Contingency, Institutionalization and Path Dependency (2020), he formulated a theoretical-methodological framework for analyzing intellectual development on a non-essentialist basis, which also underpins the present work. His research into the Needham Question is an extension from that previous work. He is a co-editor and contributor to the volume titled Multicultural Exchanges in the Making of Modern Science: Needham’s Dialogical Vision (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).

• Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: The Needham Question, dialogism versus Eurocentrism and neo-Eurocentrism, and the need to transcend dialogism.- Chapter 3: Analyzing intellectual development on a non-essentialist basis: A theoretical-methodological framework.- Chapter 4: Greece and the Needham Question.- Chapter 5: Social essentialism and sociological reductionism concerning Greece in comparison to China.- Chapter 6: The issue of evidence of knowledge transmission across different civilizations.- Chapter 7: Alleged ‘cultural obstacles’ to knowledge transmission and Huff’s ‘intellectual curiosity’ argument.- Chapter 8: Late-Renaissance scholar agency and the breakthrough into modern science.- Chapter 9: Cultural essentialism and Cohen’s Eurocentric-cum-neo-Eurocentric argument concerning the breakthrough into modern science.- Chapter 10: Conclusion.- Chapter 11: Appendix – Deconstructing cultural essentialism at root: The ‘maritime vs continental civilizations’ narrative.