Needham's Grand Question

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Joseph Needham wrote the magisterial Science and Civilization in China sparked by an encounter while working at Cambridge as a biochemist in 1936. Three Chinese scientists visited him: Lu Gwei-djen, Wang Ying-lai, and Chen Shi-chang - they taught him Classical Chinese, and shared the wonders of Chinese Civilization of past centuries.

In doing so, they wondered aloud as to why China had been overshot by the West in science and technology, despite its earlier successes. This became Needham's Grand Question, and the entire series was a quest to answer this question.

He was sent to China in World War II to work with local scientists and provide them technological advice against the Japanese invasion. He stayed for three years in Sechan or Chongqing, traveling around unoccupied China. He wrote his first book on the history of Chinese technology in 1945, Chinese Science. He also established a rapport with the Chinese historian, Wang Ling, who went on to help him immeasurably in his project.

He never really did find the Grand Answer to his Grand Question, preferring to believe instead that China was far superior to the West, and almost all Western advances had been pre-dated by Chinese ones.

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