[quote=“sjcma”]I’m just curious as to why you prefer to side with Hegel and Granet as opposed to Needham, who is also quite respected (you can take a look at his research institute here: nri.org.uk/index.html). Some would argue though that he is a bit too enthusiastic about Chinese achievements in some of his publications. However, he does have the advantage of having lived in a more modern time than both Hegel and Granet and hence has more access to the most current research/materials on matters Chinese. Personally, I think the truth is somewhere in between.
I do think that this line is very true during the dynastic eras: China had sciences but no science, no single conception or word for the overarching sum of them all.
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It’s also my impression that Needham is a bit too enthusiastic about Chinese achievements. Needhman differs from Hegel and Granet from not having spent a lot of time with western philosophy and its methods (or problems).
It was Needham’s Grand Question I was thinking of earlier–why China had been overshot by the West in science and technology, despite its earlier success.
I might not have exactly meant I side more with Hegel and Granet. But I do take them very seriously. Unforunately, many of Granet’s works are not available in any language except the original French. I highly recommend his books, and learning French if you haven’t yet. 
Chinese Civilization is available in English.
Here’s part of it’s introduction:
[Chinese] tradition was already fixed at about the time of the Christian era—towards the epoch when the country of China, at length united, forms a vast Empire. The civilization created in China soon spread its light throughout the whole of the Far East. Thanks to numerous contacts, it was itself enriched. The Chinese, however, endeavoured to realize a traditional ideal, which they defined with increasing strictness.
They are attached to this so passionately that they themselves represent it to be the finest heritage of their race. Several thousands of years before the Christian era, their ancestors (they did not doubt) were initiated by sages into that discipline of life which was their strength. The pure civilization of the earliest ages was the source of a perfect cohesion, and the greatest China dates from the most ancient times. Its unity is broken or is restored according to whether an order of civilization, in principle unchangeable, shines resplendent or more faint.
These systematic views have the value of dogma and correspond to an active belief. They have been the inspiration at the heart of all the attempts at historic synthesis; over long centuries they exercised a decisive influence on the presentation, the transmission and the restoration of documents. We do not possess a single one that can be considered first hand and untampered with. Historians, arehæologists, exegetes, remain impregnated with traditional piety, even when they pose simply as learned men, and even when a “fault-finding” spirit seems to animate them. They determine the facts or the dates, establish texts, lop off interpolations, classify works, not with objective detachment, but in the hope of rendering more acute and purer, in themselves and in their readers, the consciousness of an ideal that history cannot explain, for it precedes history.
Else where Granet notes “that under the veneer of an orthodoxy which claimed to reign uncontested, the moral life continued to develop freely.” Despite this, how much tradition has remained? Why are there no classics of philosophy or custom that are less than 2000 years old? Why do people continue to love books like the Great Learning or the Classic of Rites? So many still read them with the respect they give to ancestors.
I agree a more accurate depiction probably lies somewhere in between Granet, Hegel, and Needham. My tendancy to side with Hegel and Granet is probably due to me being Chinese and having a much greater knowledge of western philosophy.
I don’t doubt that a great deal of scientific advances were made in China. It is something I plan to look into. Yet having an interest in semiotics (the study of signs) and western philology, it’s hard for me to not look at language. There’s something to be said about Chinese tradition. I still continue to think why wasn’t there a proliferation of thought like the Hundred Schools throughout China’s history.Despite whatever advances were made, custom and tradition remains. They probably animate most knowledge China has produced, much like Platonism and Christianity in the west.
Tradition retains a strong hold on the common people. Lets think of women. Irigaray, a psychoanalyst and feminist that I greatly admire says “women cannot be women and speak in a sensible coherent manner.” She has a great deal of training from Lacanian psychoanalysis, linguistics, and semiotics. Lacan’s sayings “woman does not exist” and “women are not whole” are vigorously discussed among many feminists. Irigaray has spent a lot of time thinking that women have not been able to define their own sexuality; she’s said much about what’s prevented it and tried to find some way out. She hasn’t necessarily prescribed anything but has tried to present the problems.
I’m not sure what else to say. I need to spend a lot more time reading and thinking.
Upon recommending a few articles to a student, Granet said “Read slowly and always slowly.”
Besides, I learn best in a school environment. Product of my upbringing I guess. Or perhaps it’s because I’m an unmotivated procrastinator. :s
I’m not sure how different. When I think of science, I think of it’s original meaning, knowledge.[/quote]
Or do you just find that I’m a stupid ass? 
