This volume, which is based on the Terry Lectures delivered at Yale University in 1935, deals with the problem of the unity of natural knowledge. It considers the cleavage between the inorganic and biological sciences, and between the theology of intelligibility and that of inexplicability. Under the heading "The Nature of Biological Order" it considers some of the opinions which biologists, physicists, and philosophers hold regarding the form of organization which living things exhibit. The discussion is continued under the headings "The Deployment of Biological Order" and "The Hierarchical...

Joseph Needham, who died in 1995, was the greatest British historian of China of the last 100 years. His Science and Civilisation in China series caused a seismic shift in western perceptions of China, revealed as perhaps the world's most scientifically and technically productive country in pre-modern times. But why did the scientific and industrial revolutions not happen in China? Joseph Needham reflects on possible answers to this question in the concluding volume of this series and provides fascinating insights into his great intellectual quest.

This assembly of lectures, each on a major aspect of the development of biochemistry, should appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of science and the nature of living things. Seven of the eight lectures are by eminent biochemists and describe the development of their own subject from the inside; the eighth is a more general one by a professional historian of science. They contain a good deal of information not readily available elsewhere and do not require a special knowledge of biochemistry. The lectures were originally given as a series, over a period of several years, under the...

A reissue with a foreword and supplement, of a modern classic published in 1960. The invention of the mechanical clock was one of the most important turning points in the history of science and technology. This study revealed six centuries of mechanical clockwork preceding the first mechanical escapement clocks of the West of about AD 1300. Detailed and fully illustrated accounts of elaborate Chinese clocks are accompanied by a discussion of the social context of the Chinese inventions and an assessment of their possible transmission to medieval Europe. For this revised edition, Dr Joseph...

This unique book ranges across the physical, biological and social sciences in the development of its primary theme, that there are nine major "integrative levels" that can be recognized. The term integrative levels was first used by Joseph Needham in 1937, and has two key features. The first is that members of a given integrative level are unified entities and the second is that a member of one level is commonly composed of parts that are members of the next lower level. Thus fundamental particles form Level 1 while Level 9 is that of sovereign states. This theme has been developed by Max...

An in-depth examination of Teilhard de Chardin's knowledge of the Middle and Far East, especially China, his comments on eastern religions, and his comparative reflections on mysticism and spirituality.

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....

First published in 1959 as the second edition of a 1934 original, this book describes the Western history of embryology from prehistoric concepts of foetal growth through Graeco-Roman antiquity to the close of the eighteenth century. The text is illustrated with plates and diagrams showing the development of scientific understanding over time, first through artistic representations of gestation and later through scientific drawings and sketches. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of medicine.

First published in 1931, the books in this set form Needham's mammoth three-volume work on the subject of physico-chemical embryology.

Originally published in 1938, this book contains the text of ten lectures arranged by the History of Science Committee at the University of Cambridge in 1936. Each speaker covered a different aspect of scientific endeavour, focussing mostly on advances made in the period between 1895 and 1935 in fields such as parasitology, radioactivity, astronomy and evolution theory. The lecturers include such scientific notables as Lord Rutherford, Professor George Nuttall and Sir William Dampier, chosen for the fact that they had 'made fundamental contributions to science' in the previous forty years....