| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Methods/Theory

S. Irfan Habib and Dhruv Raina, editors. Situating the History of Science: Dialogues with Joseph Needham. New York: Oxford University Press. 1999. Pp. x, 358. $35.00.

Not many of the people who have dipped into the voluminous writings of Joseph Needham (1900–1995) and his collaborators on science, technology, and medicine in China before modern times are aware of his many other careers: his eminence in English biochemistry, philosophy, and history before World War II; his wartime years in the Chinese hinterland helping displaced scientists continue their research; his decade in Paris during which, as the cliché has it, he put the S in UNESCO; his seventy years as fellow, with a term as master, of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; the transformation, in his last years, of his working library into a well-used international research institute; and his lifelong international political activism. 1

The dozen essays in this volume explore themes, large and small, in Needham's work: the applicability of his methods and insights to non-European cultures other than China; the prospects for a world history of science, or at least one freed from European ethnocentricism; and the universality and unity of modern science itself. The subtitle claims that the papers are dialogues with Needham, and several are that. They derive from a memorial conference held at New Delhi in 1996 that brought together academics and career researchers in a wide variety of fields. The diversity of the essays reflects Needham's endless efforts toward "the promotion of human solidarity, social justice, scientific progress, intellectual tolerance and creativity and peace," even when some of these were distinctly unfashionable stands (p. 64). . . .

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