On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550-1900

In On Their Own Terms, Benjamin A. Elman offers a much-needed synthesis of early Chinese science during the Jesuit period (1600-1800) and the modern sciences as they evolved in China under Protestant influence (1840s-1900). By 1600 Europe was ahead of Asia in producing basic machines, such as clocks, levers, and pulleys, that would be necessary for the mechanization of agriculture and industry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Elman shows, Europeans still sought from the Chinese their secrets of producing silk, fine textiles, and porcelain, as well as large-scale tea cultivation. Chinese literati borrowed in turn new algebraic notations of Hindu-Arabic origin, Tychonic cosmology, Euclidian geometry, and various computational advances. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, imperial reformers, early Republicans, Guomindang party cadres, and Chinese Communists have all prioritized science and technology. In this book, Elman gives a nuanced account of the ways in which native Chinese science evolved over four centuries, under the influence of both Jesuit and Protestant missionaries. In the end, he argues, the Chinese produced modern science on their own terms.

Table of Contents:
List of Maps, Illustrations, and Tables Chinese Dynasties Abbreviations Preface I. INTRODUCTION Prologue Finding the Correct Conceptual Grid What Should Be the Literati Theory of Knowledge? Late Ming Classicism in the Context of Commercial Expansion Printing Technology and Publishing Naturalization of Anomalies in Ming China and Early Modern Europe 1. Ming Classification on the Eve of Jesuit Contact Ordering Things through Names Collecting the Collectors Late Ming Statecraft, Mathematics, and Christianity Mathematics, and Christianity II. NATURAL STUDIES AND THE JESUITS 2. The Late Ming Calendar Crisis and Gregorian Reform Development of the Ming Astro-calendric Bureau Evolution of the Late Ming Calendar Crisis Gregorian Reform Jesuits and Late Ming Calendar Reform 3. Sino-Jesuit Accommodations During the Seventeenth Century European Scientia and Natural Studies in Ming-Qing China Literati Attacks on Calendar Reform in the Early Qing Ferdinand Verbiest and the Kangxi Emperor 4. The Limits of Western Learning in the Early Eighteenth Century The Kangxi Emperor and Mei Wending The Rites Controversy and Its Legacy French Jesuits in the Kangxi Court The Newtonian Century and the Limits of Scientific Transmission to China 5. The Jesuit Role as Experts in High Qing Cartography and Technology Mensuration and Cartography in the Eighteenth Century Cartography, Sino-Russian Relations, and Qing Imperial Interests The Jesuit Role in Qing Arts, Instruments, and Technology III. EVIDENTIAL RESEARCH AND NATURAL STUDIES 6. Evidential Research and the Restoration of Ancient Learning Early Qing Critiques of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming Medical Works and the Recovery of Antiquity Chen Yuanlong and the Mirror of Origins Encyclopedia Revival of Ancient Chinese Mathematics 7. Seeking the Truth and High Qing Mathematics High Qing Views of the Investigation of Things Mathematics in an Age of Evidential Research Nativism and Early Nineteenth-Century Mathematics IV. MODERN SCIENCE AND THE PROTESTANTS 8. Protestants, Education, and Modern Science to 1880 Protestant Missionaries in China Protestants and Modern Science in Shanghai Introduction of Modern Mathematics and the Calculus The Shanghai Polytechnic and Reading Room 9. The Construction of Modern Science in Late Qing China Early Science Primers Edkins's Primers for Science and the Problem of Darwin in China From the Scientific Book Depot to the China Prize Essay Contest Prize Essay Topics and Their Scientific Content Medical Missionaries since 1872 and Medical Questions as Prize Essay Topics Natural Theology, Darwin, and Evolution V Qing Reformism and Modern Science 10. Government Arsenals, Science, and Technology in China after 1860 From Chinese Working for Missionaries to Missionaries Working for the Dynasty Post-Taiping Reformers and Late Qing Science The Jiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai Technical Learning in the Jiangnan Arsenal and Fuzhou Navy Yard Naval Warfare and the Refraction of Qing Reforms into Failure Reconsidering the Foreign Affairs Movement 11. Displacement of Traditional Chinese Science and Medicine in the Twentieth Century Western Learning Mediated through Japan Naval Warfare and the Refraction of Qing Reforms into Failure Science and the 1898 Reformers From Traditional to Modern Mathematics Modern Medicine in China Influence of Meiji Japan on Modern Science in China APPENDIXES 1. Tang Mathematical Classics 2. Some Translations of Chemistry, 1855-1873 3. Science Outline Series, 1882-1898 4. Partial Chronological List of Arsenals, etc., in China, 1861-1892 5. Table of Contents for the 1886 Primers for Science Studies (Gezhi qimeng) 6. Twenty-three Fields of the Sciences in the 1886 Primers for Science Studies 7. Science Compendia Published in China from 1877 to 1903 8. Some Officially Selected Chinese Prize Essay Topics from the Shanghai Polytechnic 9. Scientific Societies Formed between 1912 and 1927 Notes Bibliography of Chinese and Japanese Sources Acknowledgments Credits Index

About the Author :
Benjamin A. Elman is Gordon Wu ’58 Professor of Chinese Studies at Princeton University.

Review :
Elman's robust book is...replete with telling facts, compelling arguments, and persuasive conclusions. Over the past two decades, Elman has made major contributions to Chinese social-intellectual history by writing books about the evidential scholarship movement, Jiangnan regional academic lineages, and the civil service examination system in late imperial China. Building on the strengths and research of all his previous books, Elman synthesizes for the first time the history of Chinese and Western sciences in China from 1550 to 1900. On their Own Terms is a fascinating and impressively scholarly study of the way in which the science of the west was selectively and effectively taken up by the Chinese...This book is a major contribution to the understanding of many things from the motives and methods of the Jesuits to the history of mathematics. While many of the landmarks in this magisterial study by Benjamin A. Elman may be familiar, he connects some of them in new and interesting ways. Among these are the parallels that Elman draws between "natural studies and the Jesuits" of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and "modern science and the Protestants" of the nineteenth century. Heretofore, these two fields were seldom studied by the same scholars, much less either compared or melded into one narrative.