If, as is demonstrably the case, (the Chinese) were recording sunspot cycles a millennium and a half before Europeans noted the existence of such blemishes on the solar orb, if every component of the parhelic system received a technical name a thousand years before Europeans began to study them, and if that key instrument of scientific revolution, the mechanical clock, began its career in early +8th-century China rather than (as is usually supposed) in +14th-century Europe, there must be something wrong with conventional ideas about the uniquely scientific genius of Western civilization.11
Yet the point here is not just a condescending recognition of the fact that "Chinamen too" were capable of rational thought. One of Needham's key working hypotheses, repeatedly corroborated by his results, is that progress in science and technology is, in the main, continuous. In other words, while particular techniques and inventions may indeed be lost, while particular theories and types of technical development will certainly be superseded, the major advances in mankind's knowledge and control of nature tend to be incorporated as stages within one cumulative line of development. Although such incorporation will necessarily be problematic at any given moment, it nevertheless seems clear from the long-range historical point of view that there is only one unitary science of nature. In this sense Needham is consciously doing more than documenting the history of Chinese science and technology, and this has been one of his major accomplishments. In the words of one recent commentator:
In the course of broadening and deepening our integral understanding of traditional Chinese culture, practically every paragraph that Needham has written has been designed to be world history, and to urge upon his readers a more humane perception of the future.13
Serious and widespread comparative study of the history of science would have been almost impracticable before the appearance of his work, but it is now inevitable.
Needham has concretely illustrated his point about the continuity of scientific advance with frequent examples of technical transmissions between distinct cultural regions - perhaps the medieval equivalent of what we nowadays refer to as "technology transfer." While scholars such as Lynn White have shown the important debt which modern science owed to the advances in medieval European science and technology, Needham has equally demonstrated that the development of European science, and production in general, was repeatedly pushed forward by incorporation of techniques generated within the civilizations of Asia and Africa in general, and within Chinese civilization in particular. A glance at Table I will give some impression of the scale and importance of the techniques which travelled westward from China to Europe in the first 17 centuries of our era. Transmission was in certain cases by direct diffusion, in other cases by stimulus diffusion; we see here 24 types of technical innovation which, to varying degrees, succeeded in revolutionizing aspects of European life. And it might be added that Table I was admittedly incomplete at the time of its publication in 1954 - since then, many more examples of westward diffusion have been adduced. On the other hand, it is interesting to consider the mechanical elements which the West was able to contribute to Chinese civilization at the time of the Jesuits (+seventeenth century): these numbered only two: the Archimedean screw and the crankshaft. In general, the results of Needham's work clearly show that from the first to the fifteenth centuries of our era the scientific and technical level of Chinese civilization was far higher than that of Europe. The technological transmissions then were heavily one-sided, toward Europe, and while mankind's mastery over nature in the long run exhibited a synthetic continuity, its progress was international and by no means confined to that region of the world in which modern science eventually emerged. Somewhat paradoxically, however, the many techniques which had been invented and developed within other, more advanced civilizations often proved to have (to employ an apt phrase) much more explosive effects in the relatively backward regions of northern and western Europe than in their countries of origin.14
TABLE 1. Transmission of mechanical and other techniques from China to the West
Approximate lag in centuries (a) Square-pallet chain-pump 15 (b) Edge-runner mill 13 Edge-runner mill with application of water-power 9 (c) Metallurgical blowing-engines, water-power 11 (d) Rotary fan and rotary winnowing machine 14 (e) Piston-bellows. c.14 (f) Draw-loom 4 (g) Silk-handling machinery (a form of flyer for laying thread evenly on reels appears in the +11th century, and water-power is applied to spinning mills in the +14th) 3-13 (h) Wheelbarrow 9-10 (i) Sailing-carriage 11 (j) Wagon-mill 12 (k) Efficient harness for draught animals: Breast-strap (postilion) 8 Collar 6 (1) Cross-bow (as an individual arm) 13 (m) Kite c.12
Helicopter top (spun by cord) 14 Zoetrope (moved by ascending hot-air current) c.10 (o) Deep drilling 11 (p) Cast iron 10-12 (q) "Cardan" suspension 8- 9 (r) Segmental arch bridge 7 (s) Iron-chain suspension bridge 10-13 (t) Canal lock gates 7-17 (u) Nautical construction principles >10 (v) Stern-post rudder c. 4 (w) Gunpowder 5- 6 Gunpowder used as a war technique 4 (x) Magnetic compass (lodestone spoon) 11 Magnetic compass with needle 4 Magnetic compass used for navigation 2 Paper 10 Printing (block) 6 Printing (movable type) 4 Printing (metal movable type) 1 (z) Porcelain 11-13 Source: SCC, Vol. 1, p. 242.
