Towards a Fruitful Formulation of Needham’s Grand Question

Abstract

As it stands, Needham’s Grand Question is simply too general and ill-posed to be answered in a meaningful way. In this paper it is argued that Needham’s Grand Question, to wit Why did science emerge in the West and not in China?, can only be fruitfully pursued, (1) on the condition that one explicates the assumptions and conceptions involved in an informative and motivated way, and (2) on the condition that the question is concretized and fine-tuned by means of and in terms of a series of specific questions. In this paper, I attempt to reformulate Needham’s Grand Question on the basis of a minimal conception of modern science. Next I will split up the Grand Question into a series of more specific, controllable and arguably more fruitful questions. * The author is Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Research Foundation (FWOFlanders) and is indebted to Erik Weber and the anonymous referee for their comments and suggestions.