Customer Reviews

Bomb, Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China. by Simon Winchester

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This a rich and glorious book about the life of Joseph Needham who until the Australian ABC Science Show late 2008 I had not heard of before. The more I heard and the more I read about him, the more fascinating the story. (To whet your appetite, listen to the podcasts of the Science Show: Google "science show joseph needham" to find the links.)

Joseph Needham wrote the multi-volume Science and Civilisation in China. Volume 1: Introductory Orientations series. A towering intellect in his own field of biological research, a Chinese graduate student came from China to study with him at Cambridge University and they fell in love. He in turn fell in love with the Chinese language and pretty much all things Chinese.

He pursued his interest as a British diplomat selected to help lift the spirits of Chinese science, and provide material assistance in the form of books and instruments, during the Japanese occupation of WW2. He performed his tasks admirably, traveling widely and seeing in motion all kinds of research and technological advances in China that surprised and intrigued him. For instance, he saw an orchard worker grafting fruit trees using a technique unknown in the West. When did that technology arise in China? Was it before it arose in the West? Yes.

His longest and most difficult trek was to a set of caves far inland where he had heard of printed books that were manufactured long before printing was invented in the West. A stunning confirmation of technological advances in China.

This is a magnificent book of a towering intellect with a sweeping take on a range of interests. Part intellectual biography. Part travelogue. But mainly a well-written history of an amazing man.

It's a great story but the further I read the more I began to wonder whether it was really Needhams story or Winchesters glib understanding of his subject and his ceaseless ability to construct something out of nothing.

For example on page 139 Winchester notes that Dunhuang was first discovered and reported to the West by Sir Aurel Stein in 1907. Needham arrived there in October 1943 little realizing that Stein, his "hero was very close by" in Kabul. Stein was dying "just a few hundred miles away from Needham" across the Hindu Kush mountains.

The reality is that Kabul is over 2300Km away from Dunhuang. Thank goodness Needham didn't have Winchesters book or he might have been tempted to make the trip for a deathbed chat with the man whose discovery of Dunhuang... "was in all probability, the single object that most inspired Needham to write his great work on China..." One look at Google Earth suggests to me with Winchesters help Needham would have died before putting pen to paper.

This portentous, unsubstantiated (by any footnote) crap permeates the entire book. Another objectionable piece on page 247-8 concerns the suggestion that the Unabomber might have acquired his bomb making knowledge from his attendance at a lecture by Needham in 1978 on "Gunpowder: Its Origins and Uses".

"One can only wonder what might have happened, or not have happened, (Ok Simon have it both ways) had the State Department's ban on Needham remained in place, denying the Unabomber the opportunity to hear him and learn about Chinese techniques..."

But this should be more than a biography of Needham. I expected to find more about the "Bomb Book and Compass" and "The Great Secrets of China", but on these aspects there is very little. But I concede the American title "The Man Who Loved China" is more accurate description of the contents.

Not one of the pages of Chinese Inventions listed in the appendix is explored in any depth or with any scholarship that I trust Needham undertook in the decades he took to write up his findings. There is in fact far more space devoted to Needhams sexual proclivities and those of bit-players in the Needham story like Rewi Alley.

Finally there is a glib discussion of the "Needham Question" but frankly there is much more substance in the current entry on Needham in Wikipedia.

Surely there is a better book on Needham and his subject without resorting to Needham's 24 volumes.

Joseph Needham was born in 1900 and lived into old age; the Second World War conveniently bisected his life, and his post-war life was spent absorbed in his series of volumes on China. His earlier life established him as a biologist and embryologist, though he's also described as a biochemist. He was fortunate, or skilled, in obtaining the Cambridge version of tenure in his 20s, and never experienced financial hardship. He fell in love, first, with the Chinese language (and one of its people); and, second, with the country itself, and in particular its scientific history; or rather its techniques and observations. Although he seems to be not very well-known now, he unquestionably led people in the 'west' to become better informed on China.

'Science and Civilisation in China', his magnum opus, which was continued after his death, tries to list and date Chinese achievements, and answer the question: Why did China fall behind in (or not develop) modern science?

I'm afraid Winchester's book is not very good, and is laden with Cold War and other propagandist material. The central core of the book, after his upbringing and early life, deals with Needham's visit to China as part of an official British group in the second half of the Second World War. Winchester presents this as a terrific adventure, in the parts of China not occupied by the Japanese. This is about as realistic a view as TV adventure programmes, where the camera crews, sound people, backup food supplies, spare parts, medical arrangements, security, communications etc are left out. For one thing, the Japanese codes had (I think) been cracked. The actual reasons for Needham's visit seem not to be known; probably something to do with global power struggles, perhaps related to Mao. Needham was certainly an odd one out, and the Chinese could see this, and he made many firm friends, while making his detailed diary notes on techniques, landscapes and people in immaculate handwriting. Unfortunately Winchester has no interest in, or understanding of, science; he doesn't even describe Needham's early volumes for which he was made an FRS, the pinnacle of scientific establishment respectability. (Or his wife's volume). So Winchester's accounts of Needham's journeys are sketchy, and describe travel problems rather than purposes. A rather bitter communication quoted in the book - an expedition by lorries [trucks] costing £3,000 which could have been done by air.. accompanied by his Chinese mistress .. dog Chinese writing - seems likely to be more accurate.

It's unclear why Needham was sent; many career diplomats must have been fluent in Chinese. There's a passage in the book where Needham's diaries, usually overflowing, were silent - when in the company of Murray MacLehose, an ex-Hong Kong governor supposedly training Chinese guerillas against the Japanese. Some of Needham's papers remain closed, apparently at the whim of a librarian, until 2045, though these may be to do with subjects such as nudism, which Needham liked - though my guess is this may be more to do with the discomforts of swimming clothing at that time than any desire for exposure.

Anyway it seems Needham proposed his book in 1948 and funding was granted by CUP; he wasn't even required to do his normal work. He had accumulated a lot of material, all shipped back to Britain at public expense - the 'nearly limitless allowance then offered to repatriated diplomats' gets a mention. His collection was supplemented by a gift from a Chinese friend of the 'Imperial Chinese encyclopedia', a collection of 'all the important' Chinese writings, commissioned in 1700; and by a British Museum collection, something like the Chinese equivalent of the Elgin marbles, found in an extremely dry cave and spirited away in 1907 as twenty-four wagonloads.

During the Korean War Needham was involved in a controversy over biological warfare by the Americans - Winchester has a chapter on this, and notes a typical 'Cold War' 'think tank' - the 'hitherto unknown .. Intelligence Research Department of the British Foreign Office'. Poor Needham was somewhat 'ostracized' - not really the right word - including being refused visas to the USA - but this faded away as his volumes were published, and his reputation increased.

Let's consider the science first. Needham's biological knowledge was of course helpful in assessing human biology - medicine, births/ marriages/ deaths, health, and nutrition; vitamins, and even proteins, were fairly recent discoveries. Not just human biology: Winchester writes of Needham's first experience on China, watching a gardener grafting, entranced by the different techniques the man was using. Needham of course was familiar with microscopic life. Needham's chemistry enabled him to interpret rocks, mineral extraction, hydrocarbons. Needham had some interest in motor cars - the times were ideal for amateur enthusiasts - which must have helped with technology. All of this however gave him a rather condescending overview of Chinese accomplishments. His accounts of Chinese geography use western geological expressions, for example. The labs he saw seemed mostly to be duplicating work long ago carried out in the west - microscopical observations of Chinese flora and fauna, for instance. The question is therefore whether Needham overstated his case; maybe the discoveries and inventions he found had amounted to little, or been tucked away in some remote part of China, or just been an outcome of observation? It's significant that Needham wrote a great deal on Chinese 'alchemy' (he used the Arabic term), which is pre-scientific and empirical - as in fact it would have to have been. Needham reads somewhat like these highly unconvincing BBC programmes, claiming that Muslims achieved tremendous feats. Suggesting part of the motive for funding Needham might have been to flatter China.

Needham is not very good on maths - I know this from reading his volumes. There's not much on Newton, who invented the algebra of varying quantities in a fairly restricted range of situations. He also doesn't say much of broad hypotheses such as Darwin/ Wallace. Winchester doesn't make much attempt to deal with subtle differences in perception of the world, for instance whether 'induction' would have made sense to the Chinese.

So much for Winchester on the 'science' part of 'Science and Civilisation'. As to civilisation, Needham was very impressed by the Chinese not believing in God, something he'd been taught was universal. However, Winchester doesn't mention this. Needham was always left-wing in the genuine, not Jewish/'red', sense. However, he was something of a naive Marxist, although Winchester isn't very good on this aspect of Needham's character. Needham's books are sweeping on such things as 'the feudal system'. Winchester doesn't mention Bertrand Russell, whose book on China was published when Needham was in his early 20s, and whose attitude to China was pretty much identical to Needham's. Russell's book isn't even in the bibliography. It was probably suppressed almost as a reflex by Winchester, as Russell's Autobiography mentions Needham specifically in relation to chemical and biological warfare in Vietnam, and the refusal to allow a 'Viet Cong' (Winchester's word) to London to give evidence about it. Russell was apologetic in retrospect to Needham, for disbelieving him.

As to global power struggles, it seems unlikely that Needham had a clue about Jews in Russia - many others of course were like that, including Winchester. All the secret backroom stuff - who founded the UN, who controlled the 'World Bank', the truth about who McCarthy was hunting, the fakes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and for that matter the probable fake of Nanking - is omitted or not known by Winchester. It seems *possible* that China was viewed as Russia was; the success of Jews in making money from it, while crushing the population, must have suggested the same thing in China: maybe the Korean war, and the ignoring of 'communist China' through the 1950s and 1960s, was juggling to get control of China? It's impossible to be sure, of course.

Winchester's book has plenty of nice touches - amusing stuff on Cambridge being entirely out of touch, Needham's liking for female company, which he extended into theory - he imagined Chinese mandarins conversing with erudite wives and concubines - and practice. When he was left alone in old age, he proposed to three women, who all turned him down. There's some touching detail of land in Cambridge donated to his nascent Institute. On the other hand, Winchester doesn't have doubts about Marco Polo, has no idea about atrocities in Korea and Vietnam, doesn't understand 'communism', dismisses rather abruptly Needham's facty poems on Cambridge life. Winchester generally has little feel for the control of information; he thinks newspapers reflect public opinions, for example; he gives a rather absurd list of reviewers of Needham's first volume on China. And he has no idea about science, giving an account of Jiuquan, a space centre - of course Winchester doesn't understand science fraud - and describes the vast new city of Chongqing in a superficial way. Winchester thinks China's racial attitude of superiority is a 'case-hardened sense of inner certitude that this vast array of invention has given to it'. Clearly nonsense, since westerners had to discover or invent the tradition.

This is a very fine book, but if you are reading this in the USA, ignore this title. It's the UK edition that was published in the USA as The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. The USA edition can be purchased for half the price.