"I Am Not a Sinologist"--An Interview with Dr. Joseph Needham

Q: Sinorama first contacted you when we had just begun our series on "World Sinology and Sinologists" back in 1988. Unfortunately, you were busy at that time and could not give us an interview. . . .

A: No, no, no, I am not a sinologist. I started up as a scientist. I was a biochemist, an embryologist.

Q: Yes, that is true, but when talking about people who have contributed to the Western knowledge of China, you and Arthur Waley have had a deep and lasting influence. But neither of you want to be called "sinologists", as if it is a bad word!

A: Oh no, that is not what I meant. I knew Arthur Waley quite well. He would take a book off the shelf and read it out like an ordinary person would French into English, or German into English. But he had done other things as well--he was a poet.

But once a scientist always a scientist. I became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1941, soon after I started research on Chinese things. If you want to know how it happened that I changed over, I can tell you that easily.

We had three Chinese research students who came to Cambridge to research for their PhDs. They came to the lab in 1937, at a time when I was very busy on embryology and biochemistry. They made an enormous impression on me, much more than Cambridge did on them I think. So I started to learn the language, never thinking it would be of any use to me.

There was Shen Shih-chang who worked with me, and Lu Gwei-djen who worked with my first wife. Then there was Wang Ying-lai, who worked in the Maltino Institute with David Caline. They all went different ways afterwards. For example, Wang Ying-lai went back to China and became president of the Academia Sinica, Shanghai branch, and he is very well known now and quite an old man. Shen Shih-chang went to Yale and spent the rest of his life there.

Lu Gwei-djen went back and became a professor of nutritional science. Then she came out and did nine years at UNESCO. Finally, she came here and we got married last year. At the lunch afterwards, following the ceremony in the college chapel, I said that it may have seemed rather astonishing for two octogenarians to be standing up there together, but my motto was "better late than never." It worked alright.

Q: Congratulations! I noticed that the Chinese version of The Great Titration bears the dedication to Lu Gwei-djen:

You, the Explainer, the Antithesis. . .

The Assurance of a link

No separation can break.

Can you tell us more about Dr. Lu and how she influenced and helped you in your work?

A. That is right. That was a poem I wrote. If you can get Within Four Seas from the third shelf down on the left, then I can show you. She played a large part and we collaborated for years. Some of the papers I am putting in the medical volume now were by her.

Q: The examples of Arthur Waley and yourself seem to say something about the whole way in which we should approach the study of China. Is it better to come from a field of study unconnected with China?

A: A very good idea, I think. And if you learn Chinese as a labor of love, as I did, then it is much easier than if you learn it in the regular way.

Q: You say that you started on the project Science and Civilisation in China as "a labor of love," but I believe it was also to fight against what you perceived to be the complete neglect of other cultures by people in the West.

A: The main reason was the Chinese research students I mentioned before. We always used to say that something must be done about the history of science in China. It is quite wrong that it should be thought of as something that has never been associated with China at all.

We said something must be done and we got out the first sketch of the plan. Then, after I first went to China, I met Wang Ling, Wang Ling worked on the gunpowder story, and he worked very well. Then he came and joined me in Cambridge.

Q: Having read some of the speeches you have made over the past thirty-five years, it comes across that Science and Civilisation is not merely an academic exercise at all, but that the motive behind it is dissatisfaction with a kind of cultural chauvinism.

A: That is quite right. Quite right, certainly quite right. One of the biggest motivations of my life has been to bring justice to people who did not have it before.

Q: I think that is of great interest now, because recently there has been a debate in Britain about how history should be studied and of course there have been a lot of calls for pupils to study more British history. So do you think the situation has changed very much over the past 35 years?

A: Well, I do not know. I am quite in favor of people studying more history, that is neither here nor there. But I think they ought to study the history of other peoples; it is more important than British history.

Q: I am very curious as to what kind of education gave you the ability to study so widely across two cultures and pioneer into new areas in the way that you have done.

A: I had an ordinary public school education at Oundle. I was under a very fine headmaster there. He used to say, "You must think spaciously my boy! Think spaciously!" And he always used to say, "You will be alright my boy once you have found your obsession." I found my obsession alright.

Then I came up as a medical student at Caius, because my father was a general practitioner at that time and I was supposed to follow in his footsteps. I admired him very much, I used to help him as an assistant in the operating theatre, handing the forceps and catgut to him. I saw my first operation at the age of nine and got half a guinea for it. It was an operation for appendictis. My father was very relieved that I did not fall over backwards at the sight of blood.

I did not admire my mother at all. She was a musician and composer. She had a great influence on me though because she was not afraid to under take things and I think that this was very important for Science and Civilisation. I never would have undertaken it had I been my father's son only.

Q: Did you have any hesitation or doubts when you moved from being a successful embryologist to falling in love with China and beginning your research on Science and Civilisation?

A: Yes, it was a very frightening time after the War. It was a very schizophrenic period because I had to give lectures on the subjects of biochemistry and embryology. Nevertheless, I was writing the book. I remember I was writing on Chinese shipping and the construction of Chinese ships and having to go off and lecture on medical matters. It was a very scary time really, from 1950 to 1960. But when I became master of Caius in 1959, then I could give up the teaching.

Q: So at what stage is Science and Civilisation now at?

A: Well, the plans are that the last volume is already far advanced: Volume Ⅶ, on the social and economic structure of China in relation to science and technology. Kenneth Robinson is editing it. There will be four volumes in that.

Next one to come will be Volume V part 6, on bows, crossbows, pre-gunpowder artillery and siege warfare. That is part of the military section. Then I think after that will be Volume V part 9, which is the history of looms and weaving, by Dieter Kuhn.

Gwei-djen and I took a serious decision about a dozen years ago to decide whether we could hope to finish it ourselves alone and not give over anything to other people. We decided we could not do that, we would never be able to finish it alone, so we got various people to do things.

Q: Now that the Needham Research Institute has moved to this new building and you have chosen a successor, does it mean that the project will continue ad infinitum?

A: Yes. Dr. Ho Ping-yoke is the director. This new place is very good and was ready for occupation in 1986. It is purpose-built. It has a lovely veranda outside, with red pillars like a Chinese temple; you saw, perhaps, the white lattice work of the veranda railings. The south wing is now being built and it crosses the stream by a segmental arch bridge, like Li Ch'un's, which was built in A.D. 610.

Q: Yes, the architecture has a very strong Chinese flavor about it. Is it your own inspiration?

A: No, the architect is a Frenchman, Christophe Grillet. He thought of things and we talked them over together.

Q: About ten years ago you talked in an interview about setting up a library of East Asian science. Having collected your materials over so many years of hard work so that researchers from all over the world can use them, it seems that your plan has been fully realized. Is the Institute and its library open for use by students from outside now?

A: No, only research students. We do not have ordinary students. We have research students. Undergraduates would not be any good.

Q: When you yourself began learning Chinese, sinology was still a very rare field. However, Cambridge had its first chair of Chinese in 1888. Did you teach yourself Chinese or did you have anything to do with the Chinese department?

A: No, I learned by myself but there were Chinese friends around. I did not go to the Oriental Faculty. I went to Haloun. You have to realize, you see, that a Chinese professor, a sinologist, is very perturbed when a young scientist comes to him and says he must learn Chinese or bust. So he said come to coffee every Monday afternoon and have a go reading his translation of the Kuantse. It was quite simple and a wonderful way of learning Chinese.

I find it not so difficult to speak Chinese but it is quite difficult to know the characters.

I used to make a dictionary according to the order of the strokes from left to right and up to down, but it was only for my own use.

Q: You devote your whole life to the study of China. Has your work on Chinese culture had an affect on your personal life and the way you think?

A: Well, I don't know. You cannot have more than to be married to someone. (laughs)

Q: I remember you said that you fell in love with China very early on, in 1942, when you first went there?

A: I did. In 1937 really, from then onwards.

Q: It is said that when you first went to China the thing that made the deepest impression on you was when you saw the complete set of the Tao Tsang in Shaansi. On your name card your other name is Tan Yao, which sounds very Taoist. Would you say you are a Taoist?

A: I have said that of all the great religions of China the most interesting one to me is Taoism, because the tao-chia (Taoists) and the tao-chiao (Taoism) are very interesting. I think that one of the most liberating experiences in my life--having been brought up as a Church of England Christian--was the time I went to China and found that more than a quarter of the human race did not have the need to believe in a personal God or a Creator.

Now I view present-day cosmology with great interest. I read a book recently by Gribbin and Rhys on the stuff of the universe. Of course, recently there was also Steven Hawking's book which was very interesting. They both do not hesitate to apply the Christian term "Creation" to the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe. I think that is all wrong because I would much rather have it a steady state with no Creation. I do not know what the truth will turn out to be.

Q: You said in 1975 that the West could benefit from the humanizing effect of Chinese culture. . .

A: I think that is true. Chinese culture acts as a force against scientism and materialism. Quite true.

Q: Over the decades have you seen anything concrete happening, such as with the fashions for things like Chinese medicine, Tai Ch'i and Taoism? Of course, acupuncture is the most generally accepted of such things in the West.

A: Gwei-djen and I did a book on acupuncture, you know. Celestial Lancets we called it. Acupuncture is one of the things where we have to bring down the story to a much later date than normal. Usually we finish about AD 700 or AD 800, but you have to bring the acupuncture story down to modern times because the acupuncture analgesia was only discovered in recent times, twenty years ago. It must work by mobilizing the endorphines and encepholines in the brain. Not many people know that our own brains make substances that are fifty times the potency of morphine, for instance. No doubt it helps to withstand pain and is very quickly destroyed. So that was a discovery of quite modern times.

Q: Apart from Chinese medicine, the oriental way of seeing the environment and the relationship of life with nature seems to have given rise to new ideas. I read somewhere that Toynbee said the Western style of life had already proved how damaging it is to the environment and perhaps some developing area like China should not be allowed to make the same mistake but should find its own way forwards.

A: That is quite right. I could not agree more. It remains to be seen what the Chinese will do adout pollution. Chinese culture will be more environmentally friendly.

One of the strangest things that happened to me in my lifetime was when Desmond Bernal was alive. Since his time it has been very questioned whether science is for the benefit of humanity. The charge against capitalism and the capitalist state was that it did not allow science to be used for the benefit of mankind; it kept it back and kept it for other purposes, like war.

Since then the pollution of the environment has become so terrible, the destruction of the ozone layer and the consequent rise in skin cancer and the greenhouse effect and so on, it is so terrible now that what can you do except sit up and wonder whether it was quite true that science was always for the benefit of humanity. I question that myself.

Q: At the same time, some Western people seem very worried about Chinese modernization: can you imagine if every household in China has a refrigerator, then the whole world will be destroyed by CFC gases. So, for the world's sake, the Chinese had better go back to their ancestors, go back to nature, or something . . . please do not modernize!

A: That is right. But all they have to do there is find some other substance which will not affect the greenhouse effect. There are such substances now, but the trouble is that they do not put them into action.

Q: That is just using science to solve the harmful consequences of science. This circular route makes us wonder whether the fact that our ancestors did noth have an industrial revolution was not because they could not have one but because they were far-sighted enough not to want to have one?

A: No, I do not think so. We take a rather special view about the failure of China to develop science. We think it is due to the social and economic structure of the two civilizations. We think that China was always bureaucratic and that bureaucratic feudalism may have been alright for an agrarian civilization, but it would not do for an industrial one. So we think that while every ancient nation was tending towards modern science, it was only in Europe that it could arise in its fullness.

The reason for that, we think, is the rise of the bourgeoisie, which did not happen anywhere else in the world. There seems to be a certain similarity between modern science and the rise of the bourgeoisie. For example, the bourgeois values seem to have a great deference towards the results of experimental research, and I think that is very much to do with why capitalism only arose in Western Europe.

That does not mean to say at all that modern socialist societies cannot do any better at science because, for example, the Sputnik was a Russian thing, and that was not due to modern society but due to socialism having taken over. That is a very important point, I think. Historically, it was dependent on capitalism, but not eventually.

Q: I do not know if you are familiar with the Chinese astrophysicist Professor Fang Li-chih, who is viewed by many people as a Chinese Galileo, not only because he is a leading scientific figure but even more so because he upholds the critical spirit of science in opposing dogmatism.

A: Yes, I know him. You can't do science without having a critical spirit. The democracy movement in China is a very troublesome thing, isn't it? I think that is dying down, but only temporarily. It will come up again. Eastern Europe has had the most extraordinary development lately, and Russia too has a democracy movement.

Q: I think some people, like Fang Li-chih-- and of course the Chinese Communists--see a direct link between the recent troubles, the democracy movement, and influence from the West. You yourself do not see any fundamental conflict between a critical scientific spirit and traditional Chinese culture?

A: No, I don't really. Because there was rather good science done in the middle ages and ancient times in China.

Q: We have asked all the questions on our list, but I wonder if you would like to say something to sum up your feelings about your project and what you have achieved, or not achieved?

A: No, I don't think I could really. I think we have achieved all we set out to do but the thing is not finished yet. I don't think I shall see the end of it myself but it will come to an end one day. I think the Institute will be a very useful place for people to work.

Q: Could it not be an ongoing project, like an encyclopedia, constantly being updated?

A: Oh yes. We expect that. The volumes will be revised and updated. They have already been to some extent. And we think the other thing is that it will be very useful to have a series of conflated bibliographies and conflated indexes. It will be very useful.

Q: You said a few years ago that you must live to the age of eighty-six if you are to finish the project. Now we are very happy to see that you are going to have your ninetieth birthday. Does this longevity have any thing to do with Taoist medicine?

A: No, no. I have just kept active. But there is always a price to pay (points at his legs). I used to have very good handwriting, too. But these days I cannot even recognize it myself.

Q: You do not mean that you have done all this work by hand and without the use of a typewriter or computer?

A: Oh yes. My handwriting used to be very good.

Q: Confucius said, "At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right." What would you add on from your experience of being eighty and even ninety?

A: I shall be ninety on December 9 and . . . it is alright.

[Picture Caption]

Joseph Needham gets to his office by noon and still works a five-hour day.

Joseph Needham sees his marriage to a Dr. Lu Gwei-djen as underlining his love of Chinese culture.

When Dr. Lu Gwei-djen visited Taiwan with Needham in 1984 her most lasting impression was of the bullish reporters. Somebody has already started writing her biography.

The Needham Research Institute is situated in the scenic grounds of Robinson College, Cambridge.

Needham's portrait, by James Wood, hangs in the Hall of Gonville and Caius College, where he was once master. Most portraits of professors show them in their academic robes, but Needham is thoroughly pleaded to have been portrayed in "tradition-breaking" Chinese garb.

A glimpse of the couple's new house--they are still busy settling in.

Chinese elements like this figure of Confucius seen through an octagonal window can be seen everywhere at the Institute. The architect is French and this bust of Needham is situated by the front door.

Coming out on the verandah Needham can name all the Chinese plants in the garden. Perhaps not so sprightly as he once was, he still managed to visit Japan in September!

Joseph Needham sees his marriage to a Dr. Lu Gwei-djen as underlining his love of Chinese culture.

When Dr. Lu Gwei-djen visited Taiwan with Needham in 1984 her most lasting impression was of the bullish reporters. Somebody has already started writing her biography.

The Needham Research Institute is situated in the scenic grounds of Robinson College, Cambridge.

Needham's portrait, by James Wood, hangs in the Hall of Gonville and Caius College, where he was once master. Most portraits of professors show them in their academic robes, but Needham is thoroughly pleaded to have been portrayed in "tradition-breaking" Chinese garb.

A glimpse of the couple's new house--they are still busy settling in.

Coming out on the verandah Needham can name all the Chinese plants in the garden. Perhaps not so sprightly as he once was, he still managed to visit Japan in September!

Coming out on the verandah Needham can name all the Chinese plants in the garden. Perhaps not so sprightly as he once was, he still managed to visit Japan in September!