Ming Empire Forever: Right Answer to Needham Question

By Frank Wei

Since 1930s, there is a famous hot yet pending topic in the academic community, it is called "Needham Question". The Question is raised first by Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (1900--1995, British biochemist, expert of history of science and technology and the author of the work "Science and Civilization in China") in 1930s when he started to study the history of Chinese science and technology. The theme of the Question is: why the Industrial Revolution and Modern Science originated in Europe after the Renaissance rather than in other civilizations, such as India and Arab, and particularly in China, a large oriental country with long history and great civilization and led the science and technology for a long period till the end of 17th century?
In 1976, American economist Kenneth Ewart Boulding (1910--1993) call the Question as "Needham's Grand Question", also known as "Great Divergence" between China and Europe in the 18th to 19th centuries. The essence of "Needham Question" is: why the modern science and technology and industrial revolution did not originate in China, the world most developed and prosperous country in respects of science, technology and economy in late Ming Dynasty (1368--1644)? For this Question, the Chinese and foreign scholars try to solve it from the perspectives of geological environment of China, Chinese language, characters, culture and values, the ways of thinking of Chinese, political institution, philosophy and humanistic ideas of ancient China, the economic pattern of ancient China (small-scale farming economy) and national characters of the Chinese, etc., compare the differences between China and the West in these respects and give different answers to this Question. However, all these answers to the Question do not come to the point, they ignore the abnormal history or dark period of China (similar to the Middle Ages in Europe) after the fall of Ming Empire (1368--1644), and deny the impacts of the actions made by the rulers on the development of a country.
The reason why Joseph Needham has such question is that he has no concept of macro history and knows nothing or little about the history of China after the fall of the Ming Empire in 1644, he does not understand the research method of history and attempts to find the answer to this question from horizontal comparison between China and Europe in the same historical period, it is natural and inevitable that he could not get the right answer to the Question. Looking from the perspective of vertical macro history, the Needham Question is not a question hard to solve.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FBLRCBLD
• ISBN13: 9798285854845
• Release Date: June 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 426 Pages
• Weight: 1.73 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"