Science and Technology of The Han Dynasty - Modern Perspectives On Science and Technology During Han

Modern Perspectives On Science and Technology During Han

Jin Guantao, a professor of the Institute of Chinese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Fan Hongye, a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Science Policy and Managerial Science, and Liu Qingfeng, a professor of the Institute of Chinese Culture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, assert that the latter part of the Han Dynasty was a unique period in the history of premodern Chinese science and technology. They compare it to the incredible pace of scientific and technological growth during the Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE). However, they also argue that without the influence of proto-scientific precepts in the ancient philosophy of Mohism, Chinese science continued to lack a definitive structure:

From the middle and late Eastern Han to the early Wei and Jin dynasties, the net growth of ancient Chinese science and technology experienced a peak (second only to that of the Northern Song dynasty). . .Han studies of the Confucian classics, which for a long time had hindered the socialization of science, were declining. If Mohism, rich in scientific thought, had rapidly grown and strengthened, the situation might have been very favorable to the development of a scientific structure. However, this did not happen because the seeds of the primitive structure of science were never formed. During the late Eastern Han, disastrous upheavals again occurred in the process of social transformation, leading to the greatest social disorder in Chinese history. One can imagine the effect of this calamity on science.

Joseph Needham (1900–1995), a late Professor from the University of Cambridge and author of the groundbreaking Science and Civilization in China series, stated that the "Han time (especially the Later Han) was one of the relatively important periods as regards the history of science in China." He noted the advancements during Han of astronomy and calendrical sciences, the "beginnings of systematic botany and zoology", as well as the philosophical skepticism and rationalist thought embodied in Han works such as the Lunheng by the philosopher Wang Chong (27–100 CE).