Science and civilisation in China

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1. dredmorbiusAug 2022
   Look up Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China for an absolute mind-blowing realisation of the development of Chinese technology.

   In fairness, the extent was largely unknown to Chinese of the time (the project began in the 1950s, it remains in process).

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_Ch...

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2. dredmorbiusJul 2022
   I have similar memories.

   The epic exploration of east Asian technology, Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China, devotes an entire volume (Vol 6, Part 5) to fermentation and food science. (The series itself is simply phenomenal.)

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_Ch...

   Canning arrived late to the scene, in the 19th century. It requires glass jars (which are re-usable), and in modern practice, lids which are replaced for each fresh batch. Prior to this, curing and fermentation were heavily relied on for long-term food storage: saurkraut, kimchee, salami, cheese, yoghurt, kefir, tofu, miso, tempeh, many forms of pickling, and of course, fermented alcohols (often employing grains or fruit).

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fermented_foods

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3. contingenciesApr 2020
   I have uncovered early mid-20th century imported machines in China in the past, in fact I had an exchange with an HN user who plans on visiting one I found in a mining museum in Gejiu, Yunnan recently. I have seen many interesting domestic products using cheap processors. There were certainly entire Chinese domestic TV entertainment platforms based upon cheap chips (ca. late ~1980s/early 1990s), unsure if they were locally produced but suspect so. Personnel at the current foundries would be a good source of oral history, it would be a great project (but be careful not to conduct it in any way that could be conceived as national security related research). I believe a lot of the chip producers are currently using last-generation gear purchased from Taiwan (who allegedly have a policy of offloading last gen stuff to the mainland but keeping bleeding edge 'at home' on the island).

   Also interestingly, Asia is rife with great history with respect to pre-Unicode input systems, romanization systems, glyph and font development, sorting, and so forth. Premodern international script efforts such as Phagspa are awesome, the use of Farsi as a lingua franca, Tamil innovations in keeping giant-keychain style records in lieu of inscribed palm leaves, abugidas, the development of the Korean script, non-Chinese pictographic scripts such as Nushu, Naxi and Yi, etc.

   For early calculating devices and automata in China, especially hydraulic and astronomic, look no further than Needham's amazing Science and Civilisation in China, which is ultra expensive to get hold of in print but thanks for great glory of Kazakhstan many volumes of which are now available on libgen for your home learning pleasure.

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4. dredmorbiusJul 2019
   The technologies developed in ancient China are staggering, the more so as they'd been largely fogotten by / rendered invisible to the Chinese themselves.

   A find of the past few years has been Joseph Needham's truly epic Science and Civilisation in China. 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...

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5. dpauFeb 2019
   Nice article, but I find it strange that not once was the gorilla in the room mentioned- China. Wedgwood was working in a world that had been re-shaped by Chinese export porcelain, one of the first examples of a truly global product and marketing "brand". Chinese porcelain was of extremely high quality (some of it unrivaled even today), technologically advanced, culturally complex, and cherished by the European nobility. European potters like Wedgwood were desperately trying to re-create the purity and beauty of the Chinese product. I would argue that what Wedgwood came up with was not only technologically inferior but also a strange cultural mishmash of influences with less cultural value than Chinese porcelain.

   I highly recommend Joseph Needham's "Science and Civilisation in China" Volume 5, Part 12, covers Ceramic Technology: https://books.google.com/books?id=mabcHwmAD5oC

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6. dredmorbiusJul 2017
   If you want your mind blown on China and technology: Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China.

   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_...

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