This special issue is devoted to exploring the manifestations of Mr. Science in May Fourth China and to examining this icon’s significance not only to China’s modern era but also to our understandings of science and society beyond. In this introduction, the co-editors make a case for critically engaging Mr. Science and, by extension, questions of science in early twentieth century China, particularly in light of China’s emergence as a scientific and technological superpower today—a fact which has, incidentally, been framed by the current PRC government as a realization of May Fourth dreams. In concurrently reinvigorating Mr. Science’s idealism, critical edge, and cosmopolitanism while challenging his common association with scientism, the articles in this special issue offer new insights into topics from science and democracy to universality without Eurocentricism, which are of relevance and interest to both modern Chinese history and the global history of science.
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If you read EASTS but have never heard of Mr. Science, we, the authors of this special issue, have had you in mind from the start of our project. To regular readers of EASTS, we need not recount the exciting developments that have been taking place in both the history of STM (science, technology, and medicine) and STS (science, technology, and society) in East Asia over the past two decades. Against this backdrop, it is somewhat of a pity, though, that so little attention has been paid to China’s “Mr. Science,” even during his centennial in 2019. This is a pity because Mr. Science stands for a golden moment when science played a key role in a pivotal event in China’s long twentieth century—the May Fourth Movement in 1919, which the current PRC government marks as the very beginning of “modern history” in China. Given that one of the central objectives of STS is to understand how science features in history, we thought that we should not pass up this once-in-a-century opportunity to present his game-changing role in Chinese history to STS scholars around the globe.
