ABSTRACT
The definition and the cultural implications of the term “science” have posed serious problems for resolving debates as to whether the Chinese ever had the capability of practicing “science” or the reasons why the Chinese, although apparently more advanced in the traditional sciences and in technology than western peoples for centuries, were not, like their western counterparts, able to make the breakthrough to modern science in the seventeenth century. This latter question was made famous by the late eminent historian of Chinese science and technology Joseph Needham (Jin, Fan, and Liu 1996). Clearly, it was not the Chinese who developed modern science in which mathematical hypotheses about the natural world are tested using a systematic, empirical, and experimental method with the aim of generating theories or discovering general laws. Indeed, the term “science” has a rich intellectual history in the western tradition that cannot be matched in China: there was no word for science in the Chinese classical literary language, and the current word used nowadays, kexue, is a neologism. Nathan Sivin (1995) is certainly correct in suggesting that the Chinese had many and various sciences but no overarching science.
