Download or read book The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China Volume 5 written by Joseph Needham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1978 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fifth volume abridgement of Joseph Needham's monumental work is concerned with the staggering civil engineering feats made in early and medieval China.

Download or read book The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China Volume 1 written by Joseph Needham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1978 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volumes I and II of the major series: China: its language, geography and history ; Chinese philosophy and scientific thought.

Download or read book Science and Civilisation in China written by Joseph Needham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1971 with total page 1190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Science and Civilisation in China Volume 3 Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth written by Joseph Needham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1959 with total page 1146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After two volumes mainly introductory, Dr Needham now embarks upon his systematic study of the development of the natural sciences in China. The Sciences of the Earth follow: geography and cartography, geology, seismology and mineralogy. Dr Needham distinguishes parallel traditions of scientific cartography and religious cosmography in East and West, discussing orbocentric wheel-maps, the origins of the rectangular grid system, sailing charts and relief maps, Chinese survey methods, and the impact of Renaissance cartography on the East. Finally-and here Dr Needham's work has no Western predecessors-there are full accounts of the Chinese contribution to geology and mineralogy.

Download or read book Science in Traditional China written by Joseph Needham and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world's preeminent authority on Chinese science explores the philosophy, social structure, arts, crafts, and even military strategies that form our understanding of Chinese science, making instructive comparisons along the way to similar elements of Indian, Hellenistic, and Arabic cultures. A major portion of the book concentrates on Taoist alchemy that led not only to the invention of gunpowder and firearms, but also, through the search for macrobiotic life-elixirs, to the rise of modern medical chemistry.

Download or read book Science and Civilisation in China Volume 2 History of Scientific Thought written by Joseph Needham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1956-01-03 with total page 746 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second volume of Dr Joseph Needham's great work Science and Civilisation in China is devoted to the history of scientific thought. Beginning with ancient times, it describes the Confucian milieu in which arose the organic naturalism of the great Taoist school, the scientific philosophy of the Mohists and Logicians, and the quantitative materialism of the Legalists. Thus we are brought on to the fundamental ideas which dominated scientific thinking in the Chinese middle ages. The author opens his discussion by considering the remote and pictographic origins of words fundamental in scientific discourse, and then sets forth the influential doctrines of the Two Forces and the Five Elements. Subsequently he writes of the important sceptical tradition, the effects of Buddhist thought, and the Neo-Confucian climax of Chinese naturalism. Last comes a discussion of the conception of Laws of Nature in China and the West.

Download or read book The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China Volume 3 written by Joseph Needham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1978 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A section of Volume IV, part 1 and a section of Volume IV, part 3 of the major series:

Download or read book Science and Civilisation in China Part 2 Mechanical Engineering written by Joseph Needham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1965-01-02 with total page 1022 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Dr Needham's immense undertaking gathers momentum it has been found necessary to subdivide volumes into parts, each to be bound and published separately. The first part of Volume 4, already published, deals with the physical sciences; the second with the diverse applications of physics in the many branches of mechanical engineering; and the third will deal with civil and hydraulic engineering and nautical technology. With this part of Volume 4, then, we come to the application by the Chinese of physical principles in the control of forces and in the use of power; we cross the frontier separating tools from the machine. We have already noticed that the ancient Chinese concept of chhi (somewhat similar to the pneuma of the Greeks) asserted itself prominently in acoustics; but we discover here that the Chinese tendency to think pneumatically was also responsible for a whole range of brilliant technological achievements, for example, the double-acting piston-bellows, the rotary winnowing-fan, and the water-powered metallurgical blowing-machine (ancestor of the steam-engine); as well as for some extraordinary insights and predictions in aeronautics.

Download or read book Science and Civilisation in China Part 6 Medicine written by Joseph Needham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-04-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Grand Titration written by Joseph Needham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1969. The historical civilization of China is, with the Indian and European-Semitic, one of the three greatest in the world, yet only relatively recently has any enquiry been begun into its achievements in science and technology. Between the first and fifteenth centuries the Chinese were generally far in advance of Europe and it was not until the scientific revolution of the Renaissance that Europe drew ahead. Throughout those fifteen centuries, and ever since, the West has been profoundly affected by the discoveries and invention emanating from China and East Asia. In this series of essays and lectures, Joseph Needham explores the mystery of China's early lead and Europe's later overtaking.

Download or read book The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China written by Colin A. Ronan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994-06-24 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Digesting the main sections of Volume IV of Dr. Needham's magnum opus, this book is concerned with the immense advances made in early and medieval China in mechanical engineering. It discusses in simple but eminently readable terms the status of engineers, their tools and materials, then basic mechanical principles, followed by machinery powered by animals, man and even by steam, vehicles for land transport, six centuries of hidden clockwork, windmills and aeronautics. Since China was far ahead of the West in ancient and medieval times, this volume helps make clear the immense debt owed by Western civilization to the Chinese. Such debts included the important mechanical principles of transforming rotary motion to a to-and-fro motion of a crank and vice-versa. They invented the first efficient harness for horses and the first mechanical clocks.

Download or read book Cells to Civilizations written by Enrico Coen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling investigation into the relationships between our biological past and cultural progress, "Cells to Civilizations" presents a remarkable story of living change.

Download or read book Fermentations and Food Science written by H. T. Huang and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 788 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China Volume 2 written by Joseph Needham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1978 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 2 contains Volume III and a section of Volume IV, Part 1 of the major series: Mathematics, Astronomy, Meteorology, Geography & map-making, Geology & related sciences, Physics (excluding electricity & magnetism).

Download or read book Civilization written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower “A dazzling history of Western ideas.” —The Economist “Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal “[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors. Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.

Download or read book Science and Civilisation in China Volume 1 Introductory Orientations written by Joseph Needham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1956-01-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr Joseph Needham's account of the Chinese achievement in science and technology will stand as one of the great works of our time. It has been acclaimed by specialists in both East and West and also by readers with wider and more general interests. The text, based on research of a high critical quality, is supported by many hundreds of illustrations and is imbued with a warm appreciation of China. Volume I is an introductory volume, in which Dr Needham prepares his readers for the study of a whole human culture. He begins by examining the structure of the Chinese language; he reviews the geography of China and the long history of its people, and discusses the scientific contacts which have occurred throughout the centuries, between Europe and East Asia.

Download or read book Energy and Civilization written by Vaclav Smil and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.