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The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece

Author: Geoffrey Lloyd and Nathan Sivin

Publisher: Yale University Press, New Haven, CT

Publication date: 2002

Reviewer: Bridie Andrews

EN

"Too often in the history of science in non-Western societies, historians have asked why a particular society or culture did not develop 'true' knowledge about the natural environment. This tendency is especially pronounced in the case of China. There, some Western observers have lauded Chinese observational precision and technological development while others have insisted that ancient China had no real science. ... In their different ways, both of the authors of The Way and the Word have spent their careers undermining the chauvinism that undergirds such questions....The [book], more than a decade in the making, is ... a brilliantly executed study of the investigation of the natural environment in early China and Greece. At once engaging and packed with distilled scholarship, it is a model that I hope will be much emulated."

Link to full review in Science

Reference: Science 301, 464 (2003)

Price: US$35; £25

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