| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 104.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Christoph Harbsmeier. Science and Civilisation in China. Volume 7, Part 1: Language and Logic. Edited by Kenneth Robinson. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1998. Pp. xxiv, 479. $115.00.

In the grand undertaking to insert China's history of science into a narrative hitherto mostly focused on the West, the "Science and Civilisation in China" series begun by the late Joseph Needham in 1954, the present volume can claim a special place: it deals not with one of the sciences in China but with the prerequisite for science discourse, which is logical argumentation. Christoph Harbsmeier asks whether literary Chinese as a language provided the operative tools to articulate science, and whether China developed a logical method. The traditional summary denial of both questions has received a more systematic exposition with Chad Hansen's Language and Logic in Ancient China (1983). 1

Harbsmeier benefits from his broad familiarity with the relevant literature (including Japanese and Russian contributions); years of research on Chinese grammar, rhetoric, and logic informed by an "anthropological" approach that studies them as cultural practices; and a knowledge of the original sources and the scholarship concerning the European history of language and logic that allows him to make learned comparisons far beyond the easy references to a helplessly essentialized "West" often found in Chinese studies. . . .

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