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Science and Civilisation in China, Part 2, Agriculture

Part of the Science and Civilisation in China series
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This second part of the sixth volume of Joseph Needham's great enterprise is the first to be written by a collaborator.

Francesca Bray, working closely with Dr Needham, has produced the most comprehensive study of Chinese agriculture to be published in the West.

From a huge mass of source material, often confusing and obscure, and from first-hand study in China, she brings order and illumination to a crucial area of Chinese technological development.

The main body of the book is an account of the technological history of agriculture, with major sections devoted to field systems, implements and techniques (sowing, harvesting, storing) and crop systems (what has grown and where and how crops rotated).

The concluding section contrasts Europe's Agricultural Revolution with agrarian change in North China in the Han and with the 'Green Revolution' in South China in the Sung.

In the theoretical analysis which concludes this section we find a vital contribution to the elucidation of the main question posed by Dr Needham's work: why did the Scientific Revolution which transformed the world take place in Europe and not in China?

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£245.00
Product Details
Cambridge University Press
0521250765 / 9780521250764
Hardback
19/04/1984
United Kingdom
768 pages, Worked examples or Exercises
200 x 253 mm, 1915 grams
Professional & Vocational Learn More