East Asian STS is like an elephant whose shape we are trying to determine by touching it in the dark. It appears differently to different investigators. This is a good thing, as is amply demonstrated by the three exciting articles in this forum. The articles display an impressive range and diversity of viewpoints, which is a sign of the intellectual vibrancy of East Asian STS. Still, behind these differences, I think that we can identify two main issues, one concerned with STS theories and the other with "East Asia." The former is more extensively dealt with in Jia-shin Chen's and Ruey-Lin Chen's articles. (The two authors have the same last name. To avoid confusion, I shall use their first names in this paper. All the other authors are cited by their last names.) The latter is the focus of Warwick Anderson's article. In all three articles, however, the two issues are closely related, and their discussions shed light on both of these fundamental problems in East Asian STS.
