The man who loved China
by Simon Winchester · first published 2008
100% recommend
In sumptuous and illuminating detail, Simon Winchester, the bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman ("Elegant and scrupulous"—New York Times Book Review) and Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"—Time) brings to life the extraordinary story of Joseph Needham, the brilliant Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically advanced country.No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual, who practiced nudism and was devoted to a quirky brand of folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a bioch
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Very interesting piece (and serendipitous for me since I was reading The Man Who Loved China [very well-written bio, btw]). "Thus Joseph Needham acquired what administrators at lonely outposts in the British Empire used to call a 'sleeping dictionary.' ” It has often been commented that one…
on “In Search of Chinese Science (2009)” ↗…Begun in 1954, still in production -- the series is not yet completed, 7 volumes, 27 books. Simon Winchester (also author of The Perfectionists, mentioned in this thread, has an excellent biography, The Man Who Loved China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_Ch...
on “Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?” ↗…the 24 completed volumes gives a sense of the scope of invention and discovery covered. There are at least two more volumes forthcoming. http://www.nri.cam.ac.uk/science.html Simon Winchester's The Man who Loved China gives the background for this story, and is highly recommended. Again: while the particulars here are distorted, the underlying truth isn't: there was a phenomenal civilisation in China during the…
on “When Roman “Barbarians” Met the Asian Enlightenment” ↗I really recommend The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester. My brother picked it for a family book club and I was blown away. Amazing story and person.
on “Jonathan Daly's fav books about individuals who changed the way we see the world” ↗…biography of that epic work's creator, Joseph Needham, is highly engaging, and also recommended. It's a lighter read than most the other works I've recommended so far: https://www.worldcat.org/title/man-who-loved-china-joseph-ne...
on “Saudi Arabia's Oil Wealth Is About to Get a Reality Check” ↗…WWII, and proposed a 5-6 volume treatment in the 1950s. Seven decades later the work continues, with the total volume count approaching 30. Author Simon Winchester tells the story of Needham in The Man who Loved China (a single volume, should you fear to ask -- not a foregone conclusion as several digests of S&CIC run to multiple volumes themselves). The breadth, scope, and precociousness of China's explorations in…
on “When Roman “Barbarians” Met the Asian Enlightenment” ↗…biochemist and sinologist, whose research and writing were emperiled by his naive participation in what turned out to be a Chinese- and Soviet-led propaganda campaign. Documented in Simon Winchester's The Man who Loved China. 3. I've authored or contributed to a number of Wikipedia articles myself. In some cases, particularly in noting the blatant disinformation campaigns of Koch Industries and Libertarian partisans in…
on “Watching Wikipedia's extinction event from a distance” ↗…of 2016, there are 24 volumes of the work completed, with another three still in process (Needham himself died in 1995). The story is the subject of journalist and author Simon Winchester's book, The Man Who Loved China. There are also several condensations and abridged summaries of Needham's work, including the single-volume The Genius of China (1986) and a five volume work, The Shorter Science and Civilisation. The…
on “How to Write the History of Science?” ↗…set), it's fascinating to leaf through. There are several digests, one a single volume, another a mere ten (!), rather than the 30 or so of the full work. Simon Winchester has written a biography, The Man Who Loved China. Philosphy covers a fair bit of general knowledge development, and Peter Adamson's series in his History of Philosophy project includes Western, Arabic/Islamic, Indian, Africana, and eventually Chinese…
on “James Burke Interview [video]” ↗