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Bomb, book and compass : Joseph Needham and…
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Bomb, book and compass : Joseph Needham and the great secrets of China (Original 2008; 2009. Auflage)

von Simon Winchester

MitgliederRezensionenBeliebtheitDurchschnittliche BewertungDiskussionen / Diskussionen
1,6517110,566 (3.79)1 / 113
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. This married Englishman, a freethinking intellectual, while working at Cambridge University in 1937, fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair. He became fascinated with China, and embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire. He searched everywhere for evidence to bolster his conviction that the Chinese were responsible for hundreds of mankind's most familiar innovations--including printing, the compass, explosives, suspension bridges, even toilet paper--often centuries before the rest of the world. His dangerous journeys took him across war-torn China to far-flung outposts, consolidating his deep admiration for the Chinese people. After the war, Needham began writing what became a seventeen-volume encyclopedia, Science and Civilisation in China.--From publisher description.… (mehr)
Mitglied:Pauntley
Titel:Bomb, book and compass : Joseph Needham and the great secrets of China
Autoren:Simon Winchester
Info:London : Penguin, 2009.
Sammlungen:Deine Bibliothek
Bewertung:
Tags:Keine

Werk-Informationen

Der Mann, der China liebte. Wie ein exzentrischer Engländer unser Bild vom Reich der Mitte neu bestimmte. von Simon Winchester (2008)

  1. 30
    The shorter Science and civilisation in China: An abridgement of Joseph Needham's original text von Colin Alistair Ronan (wildbill)
    wildbill: An abridgment of Needham's great tome.
  2. 20
    So weit die Knie tragen von Rory Stewart (rakerman)
    rakerman: In many ways Rory Stewart is the modern equivalent of Joseph Needham - an informed observer of and participant in another country's history (Afghanistan, in Stewart's case)
  3. 00
    Time Exposure: The Autobiography of William Henry Jackson von William Henry Jackson (rakerman)
    rakerman: because William Henry Jackson did extraordinary things including documenting a new country, albeit as an American photographer, rather than a British scientist and scholar
  4. 00
    Ring of Fire von Lawrence Blair (rakerman)
    rakerman: because the Blairs were also mad English adventurers exploring a new land
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» Siehe auch 113 Erwähnungen/Diskussionen

What a singular and fascinating man Needham was, definitely someone I would have loved to have had over "for dinner". His native curiosity, intelligence, determination, and peculiar eccentricities all blended into a one-of-a-kind marvel. In addition, the epilogue described a modern China I recognize. After spending several months there, I can attest to the prediction that they could easily 'eat our lunch'. Thank you Joseph Needham, for helping correct the world's impression of this "force-to-be-reckoned-with" country. ( )
  jemisonreads | Jan 22, 2024 |
I liked this book, but not as much as, say, [b:Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded|25017|Krakatoa The Day the World Exploded|Simon Winchester|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1407108467s/25017.jpg|2084098].

I think it left me a little off-put in a few places by what seemed an unexamined transmission (e.g., to pick a random fact I checked, "The Chinese invented the stirrup." But the invention of the stirrup has other claimants, and in addition was preceded by 2 or 3 centuries by 'toe loops' in India. So did the Chinese invent the stirrup from whole cloth, adopt it, or modify an idea/model from India? We are simply told, "The Chinese invented the stirrup.")

There also seemed to be only one very short passage that addresses the difference between pure and applied science, and none at all that addresses the difference between invention and science; so we're seemingly given the invention of the stirrup as an example of Chinese science. Certainly invention, engineering, and applied science matter; and can drive pure science. But this conflation is confusing and, I think, misleading.

On the other hand, I feel like I was left with very little knowledge of the product of Needham's interest (obsession? opus?) I don't feel like I have any sense, even at a broad level, of the development of 'science' in China, or even of the progression of invention/engineering. I'd have liked more of that, since China certainly did originate a great many inventions and more than a little "science."

That said, a fast moving, engaging story overall; and I certainly learned about a genius of great stature that I had never heard of before. ( )
  dcunning11235 | Aug 12, 2023 |
Simon Winchester sets the standard for non-fiction writing in my view. Having said that I'm not a great reader of non-fiction, so the only other book I've read by him was [b:The Map That Changed the World|25014|The Map That Changed the World|Simon Winchester|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1436981852s/25014.jpg|1413457]. In both instances does a wonderful job of choosing a fascinating subject and exploring his life with humour, clarity and perspective. The admiration Winchester feels for both Joseph Needham (the subject of this book) and William Smith (The Map that Changed the World) radiates from every page, as does his passionate interest in the subjects they studied.

The writing is very tight - neither overly chatty or too formal - and the structure of the book obviously carefully thought through. There is a wonderful balance of human interest, history and science and no fact or story is told without good reason. I'll probably return to fiction again with my next book, but I'll keep other Simon Winchester books in the back of my head as reads when I feel like reading a true story. ( )
  robfwalter | Jul 31, 2023 |
If you have an interest in China, science or British and American history in the 20th Century this book is for you. A fascinating story of a British professor every bit as good as "The Professor and the Madman" and another story of a remarkable book to come out of a British University. ( )
  kevn57 | Dec 8, 2021 |
Joseph Needham's is an interesting life, and Winchester always tells a story well, lucidly, and engagingly. The science of China, and Needham's Science and Civilisation in China is a good story. Needham's life was unconventional, and his socialism to this reader is grating. He was fellow traveler enough to become a communist dupe during the Korean War, almost ruining his reputation, and apparently blind to the havoc wreaked by the communist Chinese he so loved. I abhor privileged, spoiled academics like Needham who espouse communistic ideals and turn a blind eye to communist crimes and abuses, all the while sitting ensconced in their ivory towers, enjoying fine meals, fancy living, never worrying about the next paycheck, and generally living high on the hog of a capitalism and democracy they denigrate. It means I can't like the man, though his scholarship and life might be important. ( )
  tuckerresearch | Jun 10, 2021 |
Simon Winchester tells the story, or part of it, in “The Man Who Loved China,” and like the other books of his I have read, it is amusing but unsatisfying. “The Professor and the Madman,” which first brought him to attention, was probably his best-crafted work. Since then he has tackled a number of curious and interesting topics, and instead of doing a good job of them has turned out incomplete bestsellers, full of chatty excursions and as much irrelevant salaciousness as he can fit into footnotes, but never quite telling the story that the subtitles pretend is inside the covers.
hinzugefügt von IslandDave | bearbeitenThe Maui News, Harry Eager (Mar 5, 2011)
 
What happened after the rise of modern natural science c.1600 could not be like what came before, with the result that ‘both capitalist and socialist societies today are in qualitatively different situations from all preceding societies.’ There was no way back to the past, but there was a way forward. Needham never abandoned his belief in potential progress. Science and technology did not create the good society, but the tools that could bring it about, not least in China. ‘This is perhaps the promised peace on earth, and whoever puts first the real needs of real people will inherit it.’ All the same, Needham will not be remembered for his passionate longing for a better human future, or even for his biology-inspired organic Marxism, but for his extraordinary achievement in exploring and re-creating a past. Yet he remains a neglected thinker, remembered only in textbooks of developmental biology, and still awaits a biographer with a fuller understanding than Winchester’s of a remarkable man and the times and contexts that made him.
 
The name Joseph Needham is not well-known. Simon Winchester, who has written a succinct and enjoyable account of his life, first came across him while writing a travel book, The River at the Centre of the World (1996). He wanted to find out about the boats that plied the Yangtze, and Needham, he learnt, was one of two authorities on the matter. A notably eccentric Cambridge scholar, Needham was actually a biochemist by training, but his outstanding achievement was the 24-volumeScience and Civilisation in China, the first volume of which was published in 1954.
 
Winchester, who worked as a journalist in Asia, is no stranger to what he once called "this delicious strangeness of China." He knows the territory well, which helps explain why his chronicle of Needham's four years there shines so vividly. When the scene moves back to Cambridge and to the details of organizing and publishing Needham's scientific book, Winchester's writing loses some of its luster.
hinzugefügt von IslandDave | bearbeitenHouston Chronicle, Barbara Liss (Jul 20, 2008)
 
Winchester has spent a good deal of his career as a journalist in East Asia, so it’s not surprising that the liveliest stretch of his narrative presents Needham’s first encounter with the country whose language he had mastered from afar. Early in 1943, Needham was sent to China by the British Foreign Office, charged with organizing aid for Chinese scholars and scientists in flight from the Japanese invasion, who were attempting to re-establish their universities in the inner provinces. His travels over the next few years took him from the jungles of the Burmese border to the Gobi Desert and the seacoast of Fujian, on 11 expeditions that covered roughly 30,000 miles. He lived a life of grand adventure in wartime China, and Winchester presents its dangers and pleasures with panache. Whether Needham is donkey racing near ancient Buddhist caves or packed into a train full of refugees speeding across a soon-to-be-bombed railway bridge, the exhilaration of this part of his life is immediately engaging. And so are the colorful characters who come his way.
hinzugefügt von IslandDave | bearbeitenNew York Times, Alida Becker (Jun 6, 2008)
 
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(Prologue) The battered old Douglas C-47 Skytrain of the China National Aviation Corporation, its chocolate brown fuselage battle-scarred with bullet holes and dents, shuddered its way down through the rain clouds, the pilot following the slow bends of the Yangzi River until he had the sand-spit landing field in sight in front of him and the cliffs of China's capital city to his left.
Joseph Needham, a man highly regarded for his ability as a builder of bridges - between science and faith, privilege and poverty, the Old World and the New, and, most famously of all, between China and the West - was obliged to make an early start in the craft, as the only child of a mother and father who were ineluctably shacked in a spectacularly disastrous Edwardian marriage.
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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. This married Englishman, a freethinking intellectual, while working at Cambridge University in 1937, fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair. He became fascinated with China, and embarked on a series of extraordinary expeditions to the farthest frontiers of this ancient empire. He searched everywhere for evidence to bolster his conviction that the Chinese were responsible for hundreds of mankind's most familiar innovations--including printing, the compass, explosives, suspension bridges, even toilet paper--often centuries before the rest of the world. His dangerous journeys took him across war-torn China to far-flung outposts, consolidating his deep admiration for the Chinese people. After the war, Needham began writing what became a seventeen-volume encyclopedia, Science and Civilisation in China.--From publisher description.

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