Science And Medicine In Early China Summary

“The Way and the Word; Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece”

Reading Precis

Geoffrey Lloyd and Nathan Sivin’s text “The Way and the Word; Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece” might be more accurately titled “The Way and the Word; Science and Medicine in Early Greece, with Very Little Information About Early China.” This document is much more of a discourse on the philosophers, scientists, doctors and lecturers of Classical Greece than a comparison between two distinguished cultures. It is possible this was written for an audience which is already quite familiar with scientific culture during the Han Dynasty, and perhaps this is detailed in earlier chapters. However, the text is essentially, almost completely, focused on

But the nearly insignificant blips about Han Chinese intellectualism and scientific culture are used only to showcase the, in what seems to be the opinion of the authors, ‘better’ culture of the Greeks. Lloyd and Sivin credit the Greek political system of democracy and relative freedom of all citizens to take part in the political process, and the experimentation of differing political constitutions, for the Greek competitiveness which “in both politics and cosmology… positively favored trying out radical new proposals, both in thought and theory and in action” (180.) The authors pay particular attention to the philosophical presence of debate and the democratic political system of Hellenistic Greece to explain the inherent competitiveness of Greek science. Indeed, in the “Why Elements, Why Nature” section of the text, Lloyd and Sivin surmise that the reason why Greeks studied the world around them was because of “certain features of Greek intellectual life, notably its fierce competitiveness, influenced the focus on [the questions of nature, elements and reality.] The ongoing disagreement on the questions in turn helped to stoke that competitiveness” (157.) The “features of Greek life” they are referring to is the inherent, even encouraged rivalry between many schools of thought, a questioning of the accepted truths of ancient texts, and finally the deep importance of debating within the scientific and