Fifth International Conference on the History of Science in ChinaAuthor(s): Nathan SivinSource: Isis, Vol. 80, No. 1 (Mar., 1989), pp. 80-81Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/234346 .

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NEWS OF THE PROFESSION

FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN CHINA

The Fifth International Conference on the History of Science in China was held at the University of California, San Diego, 5-10 August 1988. It was organized by Joseph C. Y. Chen, with Lin Shao-chi as cochair- man; both are professors at the university. The conference was supported by the Wei- Kung Institute and the Chinese community of San Diego. Among the 132 registrants were 38 scholars from the People's Repub- lic of China, 10 from Taiwan, 6 from Japan, 6 from elsewhere in Asia, and 2 from Aus- tralia. France was represented by 7 schol- ars, Germany by 4, and the United King- dom by 3.

Four lectures were given in plenary ses- sion (this and other lists are in the original order of the program): Lu Gwei-djen and Joseph Needham (Cambridge), "A History of Forensic Medicine in China" (read by Christopher Cullen); N. Sivin (Philadel- phia), "On Understanding the Language of Classical Chinese Medicine"; Ho Peng Yoke (Melbourne), "The Chinese Pseudo- Science of Fate-Calculation, with Special Reference to the Ziping Method"; and Ke Jun (Beijing), "The Present Stage of Re- search in China on the History of Metal- lurgy."

Although large meetings of this kind are by policy not selective about the papers presented, this one had scholarly merit of several kinds. Several sessions brought to- gether contributions on topics heretofore neglected, especially language and science, technical issues in printing and the diffu- sion of printed books, social responsibility, and modern science and technology. The session on new methodologies in the his- tory of medicine, which gave overdue at- tention to anthropological analysis, was un- precedented. Perhaps most important, this was the first conference in which scholars beginning their careers were well repre- sented. Partly for this reason, a number of papers provided new discoveries, interpre- tations, or frames of understanding.

Among newly discovered or newly ex- ploited documents were notices from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries claiming

exclusive rights to print a book, which Ming-Sun Poon (Hong Kong) related to the history of copyrights; pictorial sources on ancient cookery, particularly tomb paint- ings and reliefs, gathered by Tanaka Tan (Kyoto); and records assembled by several scholars to document wartime Japanese bi- ological warfare experiments on human subjects. Although one speaker claimed that among the "fruits" of this war crime were "positive results," John W. Powell (San Francisco) suggested that a strain of epidemic hemorrhagic fever made more vir- ulent by experimental work in this project was responsible for many casualties during the Korean War period and has become en- demic in parts of Asia.

Among the new topics were an early nineteenth-century attempt to correlate certain natural phenomena with an earth- quake, whose significance for the history of earthquake prediction was demonstrated by Qi Shuqin (Taiyuan); and traditional methods of making gold foil and tinfoil, studied from documents and present- day traditional practice by Wang Kezhi (Beijing).

Excellent surveys of recent discoveries in fast-moving fields were presented by Cai Jingfeng for recently excavated medical documents, Ke Jun for archaeometallurgy, and Bai Shangshu for mathematics (all of Beijing). The last paper did not include im- portant developments outside China.

As for methodology, laboratory experi- mentation to learn the results of ancient al- chemical and medical procedures is slowly gaining momentum, as reported by Meng Naichang (Taiyuan, not present) and V. Torres and his colleagues (Irvine). Interest- ing among the methodological innovations was a statistical analysis by Charlotte Furth (Long Beach) of Ming dynasty medical case records using a computer spreadsheet.

Papers that plausibly revised the conven- tional wisdom included a demonstration by Fu Dai-Wie (Taichung) that claims for early Chinese priorities based on superficial com- parisons, such as the "discovery" of the Cavalieri theorem a thousand years early,

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NEWS OF THE PROFESSION-ISIS, 80: 1: 301 (1989) 81

turn out, when the documents are read with care, to be unhistorical and misleading; a suggestion by Peter Chang (Taipei) that the Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao (1782), a stan- dard classical bibliography, may diverge considerably from the original version; and an analysis by Marc Kalinowski (Paris) of the early "sky as a cover" (gaitian) cosmol- ogy that finds its content strongly in- fluenced by the invention of the armillary sphere.

Several studies of more conventional types explored new topics or conspicuously combined philological and scientific skills. Jurgen Kovacs (Munich) outlined his study of the Yin hai ching wei, a book on eye dis- orders probably of the Ming period, using a methodology equally strong in ophthalmol- ogy and Sinology. Huang Yilong (Tai- chung) drew applause for the rigor and eru- dition of his critical study that proved the so-called supernova of A.D. 185 was a comet. Dai Nianzu (Beijing) not only out-

lined for the first time the history of bronze "water-spouting bowls," which spout like a fountain when they are filled with water and their handles are rubbed, but demon- strated the effect on an actual artifact brought from China.

There were a few comparative studies. Among them was an outstanding paper by Tsien Tsuen-hsuin (Chicago), which out- lined social, economic, and political differ- ences that affected both the development of printing in East and West and its role in change.

For information about the sixth confer- ence, to be held in Cambridge, England, in August 1990, contact the Needham Re- search Institute, 8 Sylvester Road, Cam- bridge CB3 9AF.

NATHAN SIVIN Department of History and

Sociology of Science University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6310

INTERNATIONAL SUMMER INSTITUTE IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

The First International Summer Institute in the German Democratic Republic: History and Philosophy of Science took place in three East German cities, with excursions to at least ten more, during 17 June to 5 July 1988. The German hosts were Karl- Friedrich Wessel (Subdepartment [Bereich] for Philosophical Problems of the Natural Sciences, Philosophy Department, Hum- boldt University of Berlin), Herbert Horz (Academy of Sciences of the GDR), and Helga E. Horz (Philosophy Department, HUB); the North American organizers comprised Robert S. Cohen (Boston Uni- versity), Erwin Hiebert (Harvard Univer- sity), and me.

Delivering papers (in German or English, as the speaker wished) were twenty-nine North Americans and thirty-one East Ger- mans, including twelve representatives of the cohost, the Akademie der Wissenschaf- ten der DDR, and nineteen representatives of various universities and archives. A very helpful cadre of twenty-two junior faculty members (Nachwuchswissenschaftler) from the Bereich managed housing, food, and transportation for the nineteen-day stay in Berlin, Erfurt, and Leipzig.

Some quantitative description will con- vey the human picture. The ratios of women to men giving talks were North

American 24.1 percent (7/29), German 19.3 percent (6/31), while 31.8 percent (7/22) of the support faculty and staff were women. Special guests included two representatives of the Ministry of Higher and Vocational Education, the dean of the Faculty of the University of Berlin, and the dean of the Medical Academy at Erfurt. Thus the proj- ect involved well over a hundred persons, and the spirit was extraordinarily amicable. Owing to teaching duties, though, many German professors could only attend for a day or two. This meant that German junior faculty, Ph.D.s, and doctoral students who accompanied us had the most benefit. For the breakdown of those attending by rank and continent or country, see Table 1.

The hosts arranged sightseeing and cul- tural offerings daily. Archival forays were encouraged: those who had written well ahead were rewarded with manuscript col- lections already ordered and waiting for them upon their arrival at the archives in Berlin, Leipzig, Jena, and Halle. North Americans obtained funding from the Na- tional Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Inter- national Research and Exchanges Board, the German Academic Service, and their home universities. Limited travel supple- ments came from the royalties of the Bos-

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