Books by Joseph Needham

Somebody actually went out and looked at Joseph Needham’s many volumes on Chinese technology and science, or Science and Civilisation [in China] , as he called it, and he discovered something—which I guess we all knew, but they put numbers on it—almost nothing that Needham pointed out as an innovation happens after 1400. There’s complete stagnation setting in and some of the things that they knew how to make in earlier times, like the sophisticated clocks that they built in the 11th century, the...