The two books under review, both by the American scholar Benjamin Elman, mark an epoch in the history of Chinese science: the former book is dedicated to Elman's teachers, Nathan Sivin and Susan Naquin (and to Elman's mother), and the latter to his students. Both works detour around Joseph Needham's famous question about China's alleged failure to develop modern science, instead incorporating a half-century's scholarship into a narrative that covers four centuries of achievements.
While Needham's training in biochemistry led him to emphasize mathematized and testable hypotheses and experiments, Elman views science as a body of knowledge produced through the systematic study of nature and universe. Where Needham saw no indigenous development, Elman speaks of lively engagement with the Jesuits from 1550 to 1800 and the Protestant missionaries from 1840 to 1900.
