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Archaeological and pictoral evidence, the bulk of it hitherto unpublished in the West, is brought together with Chinese textual sources (which are extensively translated and interpreted) to illustrate Chinese achievements in this field. Professor Kuhn's study reveals the way in which Chinese textile-technological inventiveness has influenced textile production in other regions of the world and in medieval Europe. It explains how textile technology reached its high point between the tenth and thirteenth centuries and attempts to indicate the reasons for its subsequent relative decline. The development of the textile industry in Europe was a key factor in the rise of capitalism. 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In the theoretical analysis which concludes this section we find a vital contribution to the elucidation of the main question posed by Dr Needham's work: why did the Scientific Revolution which transformed the world take place in Europe and not in China?","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49971934298385,"sku":"GOR013825699","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49972178256145,"sku":"GOR011847747","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52111317172497,"sku":"NIN9780521250764","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53448129937681,"sku":"GOR014925905","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0521250765.jpg?v=1751072488"},{"product_id":"science-and-civilisation-in-china-part-6-medicine-book-joseph-needham-9780521632621","title":"Science and Civilisation in China, Part 6, Medicine","description":"The latest volume in Joseph Needham's magisterial review of China's premodern scientific and technological traditions introduces the history of medicine. Following the deaths of Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-Djen, a considerable amount of written material on the development of Chinese medicine awaited publication. This material has been gathered together by the editor, Nathan Sivin, in the five essays contained in this volume. They offer a broad and readable account of medicine in culture, including hygiene and preventive medicine, forensic medicine and immunology, and the examinations taken by some Chinese physicians for more than a thousand years. Professor Sivin has edited the essays, expanding them where appropriate and incorporating the results of recent research. His extensive introduction discusses the contributions of Needham and Lu, placing the essays in context, and surveys recent scholarship from China, Japan, Europe and the United States.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49972357890321,"sku":"GOR013825921","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0521632625.jpg?v=1750741051"},{"product_id":"within-four-seas-book-j-needham-9780049310087","title":"Within Four Seas","description":"First published in 1969.\u003cbr\u003e Contains some of Joseph Needham's most significant essays, lectures and broadcasts on the history of Chinese science, technology and culture. 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A brief introduction is given to the Chinese background of Korean astronomy and astronomical instrument-making and to the renaissance of Korean astronomy in the early fifteenth century. In a detailed examination of the instruments made under the supervision of King Sejong in the 1430s, there is documentation of the re-equipping of the Royal Observatory, with identification of the individual instruments involved. 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He also discusses the valuable social and intellectual influences which have for centuries flowed to Europe from South as well as East Asia. He suggests that this century’s happenings in the Chinese Republic are a natural development of all Chinese history, not a deviation from it.    The present Master of Caius has had an unusual intellectual history. Trained in the biomedical of Frederick Gowland Hopkins at Cambridge, he made his name with ‘Chemical Embryology’ and ‘Biochemistry and Morphogenesis’ as a scientific worker on the borderline of physiological chemistry and the morphological sciences. This was the field of work for which he was elected into the Fellowship of the Royal Society. And those were the years in which we published his books of essays ‘Time, the Refreshing River’ and ‘History is on Our Side.’   But after several decades a new influence appeared in the form of certain young Chinese scientists who came to work with him and his colleagues in Cambridge; through them he acquired the beginnings of his knowledge of the language and culture of China. When the Second World War made China and Britain allies, Joseph Needham was asked to lead a mission of scientific and technological liaison which gave him four years of life in China, ranging widely in the course of his work through most of the historic provinces. 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