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Supplemental notes: Chinese and Indian science and pantheism
The Needham Question: Why was modern science born in Europe rather than in China?
Joseph Needham seemed pre-occupied with the question of why modern science originated in Europe rather than in China. This is frequently referred to as "The Needham Question," because it was perhaps the chief intellectual motivation of his study of Chinese science. His oft-quoted answer was China's lack of a theistic perspective of natural order that is intelligible by the human mind:
"There was no confidence that the code of Nature's laws could be unveiled and read, because there was no assurance that a divine being, even more rational than ourselves, had ever formulated such a code capable of being read.... [Nature] was not an order ordained by a rational personal being, and hence there was no guarantee that other rational personal beings would be able to spell out in their own earthly languages the pre-existing divine code of laws which he had previously formulated." Needham, The Grand Titration (Toronto, 1969), p. 327.
We have already discussed the contributions of theistic perspectives to science using the examples of Basil and Augustine, among others. There we have emphasized the theistic perspective of the contingency of the natural order, rather than its necessary character. Needham here points to the theistic confidence that the human mind corresponds to the natural order and can understand the natural order because both the human mind and the natural order have the same origin in the wisdom of the Creator.
Needham's answer stands in need of revision.
Clarification of terms
We have already defined the "divine" as "That on which all else depends, but which is not dependent upon anything else (i.e., it is self-sufficient)." We have explored pagan science in the early explanations of the presocratic natural philosophers, Plato's understanding of Forms, and Aristotle's search for the "natures" of things that cause them to change in an orderly fashion. We have also introduced theistic science, where the divine is something other than nature, something that sustains nature but that also goes beyond nature. With Indian and Chinese science this week we begin to encounter pantheistic science, conducted with the view of reality that sees nature as a part of the divine, contained within the divine. These terms for three different views of reality are summarized in the image below.
Although anyone should hesitate before disagreeing with Needham on an important question regarding Chinese science, I contend that all three views, including pantheism, contributed in important and interesting ways to the development of science.
Note: Someone might define pantheism as affirming that nature and the divine are one, drawing nature and the divine as the same circle, and I would not want to split hairs about that. Similarly, there have been many strands of Hinduism and Buddhism, not all of which were pantheistic, and Hinduism and Buddhism are not the only religions that have shaped these two great cultures. So while it greatly oversimplifies things to refer to Indian and Chinese cultures as pantheistic, we need a general term just for the sake of convenience. (In the same way, there are many varieties of paganism and of theism which we have not discussed as well, but this is not a course in the history of religion!)
Is pantheism therefore incompatible with science?
Was China irrelevant to the development of western science?
In short, no! and no!
In an article by Nathan Sivin you will read in a few moments, you will encounter numerous examples of Chinese science, and I am confident that you will find it impossible to deny that the Chinese scientific tradition was rich and sustained. We should all learn more about it. The cases of India and China demonstrate that pantheistic views were not incompatible with science.
In Sivin's article you will also learn that there were many highly fruitful exchanges between Chinese and European scientific traditions in the late middle ages and early modern periods. Recent advances in the understanding of these historical interactions now make it impossible to regard early modern European science as a strictly internal European development: the birth of early modern science resulted from cross-cultural communication across many cultures, including India and China.
In my view, Needham was led astray in his interpretation of Chinese science because of the unsound nature of his question. We need to reformulate the question!
Instead of asking "Why did the scientific revolution happen only in Europe?" we should be interpreting the scientific revolution as the product of the rich interactions of all medieval and early modern cultures. Then it becomes interesting to ask how pantheism shaped the Indian and Chinese contributions to science.
Sivin can be of some help, because he touches upon what Needham was driving at, but in a more productive way. On p. 170, Sivin quotes the astronomer Shen Kua (1031-1095) to illustrate the alleged Chinese lack of confidence in the ability of human reason to comprehend the order of nature. Sivin states
"The typical belief was rather that natural processes wove a pattern of constant relations too subtle and too multivariant to be understood completely by what we would call empirical investigation or mathematical analysis."
Nathan Sivin, "Science and Medicine in Chinese History," in Nathan Sivin, Science in Ancient China: Researches and Reflections (Ashgate, Variorum, 1995), section VI, p. 170.
Sivin here gives Needham's point a different twist: where Needham saw this reticence as a lack of confidence in the ability of the human mind to comprehend the natural order, Sivin sees it as an admission of the inexhaustibility of the richness of nature. But this idea that the natural order is inexhaustible in its wisdom was equally characteristic of theists like Basil and Augustine. Therefore it cannot be used to explain why modern science did not develop in India or China. Nor can it be used to justify the assertion that science and pantheism are incompatible.
I hope that you will be critical of the assumptions that lie behind "the Needham Question," whenever you hear of it, and that you will be persuaded by the evidence Sivin presents that Chinese science was not only substantial in its own right but also significant for the development of western science.
Do you have a great quote for this page? Let me know! (If used, a new quote is worth 1 point extra credit)
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HSCI 3013. History
of Science to 17th century |
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Many thanks to the pedagogical model developed in Mythology and Folklore and other online courses by Laura Gibbs, which have been an inspiration for this course.
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This course is currently undergoing major reconstruction to bring it into alignment with the new version of the course at Janux |
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