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

Since the mid-19th century, imperial reformers, Republicans, Guomindang party cadres, and Communists have all prioritized science and technology. Elman offers an account of the evolution of native Chinese science over four centuries under the influence of missionaries. In the end, he argues, the Chinese produced modern science on their own terms.

Table of Contents:
List of Maps, Illustrations, and Tables xi Chinese Dynasties xv Abbreviations xix Preface xxi I Introduction 1 Prologue 3 Finding the Correct Conceptual Grid 4 What Should Be the Literati Theory of Knowledge? 5 Late Ming Classicism in the Context of Commercial Expansion 9 Printing Technology and Publishing 16 Naturalization of Anomalies in Ming China and Early Modern Europe 20 1. Ming Classification on the Eve of Jesuit Contact 24 Ordering Things through Names 24 Collecting the Collectors 34 Late Ming Statecraft, Mathematics, and Christianity 53 Collecting Things in Texts 57 II Natural Studies and the Jesuits 61 2. The Late Ming Calendar Crisis and Gregorian Reform 63 Development of the Ming Astro-calendric Bureau 65 Evolution of the Late Ming Calendar Crisis 73 Gregorian Reform 80 Jesuits and Late Ming Calendar Reform 84 3. Sino-Jesuit Accommodations During the Seventeenth Century 107 European Scientia and Natural Studies in Ming-Qing China 107 Literati Attacks on Calendar Reform in the Early Qing 133 Ferdinand Verbiest and the Kangxi Emperor 144 4. The Limits of Western Learning in the Early Eighteenth Century 150 The Kangxi Emperor and Mei Wending 150 The Rites Controversy and Its Legacy 160 French Jesuits in the Kangxi Court 169 The Newtonian Century and the Limits of Scientific Transmission to China 183 5. The Jesuit Role as Experts in High Qing Cartography and Technology 190 Mensuration and Cartography in the Eighteenth Century 191 Cartography, Sino-Russian Relations, and Qing Imperial Interests 200 The Jesuit Role in Qing Arts, Instruments, and Technology 205 III Evidential Research and Natural Studies 223 6. Evidential Research and the Restoration of Ancient Learning 225 Early Qjng Critiques of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming 226 Medical Works and the Recovery of Antiquity 227 Chen Yuanlong and the Mirror of Origins Encyclopedia 236 Revival of Ancient Chinese Mathematics 244 7. Seeking the Truth and High Qing Mathematics 255 High Qing Views of the Investigation of Things 255 Mathematics in an Age of Evidential Research 262 Nativism and Early Nineteenth-Century Mathematics 270 IV Modern Science and the Protestants 281 8. Protestants, Education, and Modern Science to 1880 283 Protestant Missionaries in China 283 Protestants and Modern Science in Shanghai 296 Introduction of Modern Mathematics and the Calculus 303 The Shanghai Polytechnic and Reading Room 308 9. The Construction of Modern Science in Late Qing China 320 Early Science Primers 321 Edkins's Primers for Science and the Problem of Darwin in China 323 From the Scientific Book Depot to the China Prize Essay Contest 332 Prize Essay Topics and Their Scientific Content 340 Medical Missionaries since 1872 and Medical Questions as Prize Essay Topics 342 Natural Theology, Darwin, and Evolution 345 V Qing Reformism and Modern Science 353 10. Government Arsenals, Science, and Technology in China after 1860 355 From Chinese Working for Missionaries to Missionaries Working for the Dynasty 356 Post-Taiping Reformers and Late Qing Science 357 The iangnan Arsenal in Shanghai 359 Technical Learning in the iangnan Arsenal and Fuzhou Navy Yard 368 Naval Warfare and the Refraction of Qing Reforms into Failure 376 Reconsidering the Foreign Affairs Movement 386 11. Displacement of Traditional Chinese Science and Medicine in the Twentieth Century 396 Western Learning Mediated through Japan 396 Science and the 1898 Reformers 398 From Traditional to Modern Mathematics 403 Modern Medicine in China 405 Influence of Meiji Japan on Modern Science in China 408 Appendixes 1. Tang Mathematical Classics 423 2. Some Translations of Chemistry, 1855-1873 425 3. Science Outline Series, 1882-1898 426 4. Partial Chronological List of Arsenals, etc., in China, 1861-1892 427 5. Table of Contents for the 1886 Primersfor Science Studies (Gezhi qimeng) 428 6. Twenty-three Fields of the Sciences in the 1886 Primersfor Science Studies 429 7. Science Compendia Published in China from 1877 to 1903 430 8. Some Officially Selected Chinese Prize Essay Topics from the Shanghai Polytechnic 433 9. Scientific Societies Formed between 1912 and 1927 434 Notes 437 Bibliography of Chinese and Japanese Sources 527 Acknowledgments 541 Credits 543 Index 545

About the Author :
Benjamin A. Elman is Professor of East Asian Studies and History, 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. -- Marta E. Hanson American Historical Review 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. Chronique 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. -- John Henderson International History Review