Author Description

This book, inspired by the sociologist Gnnter Dux, co-edited by the historian Hans Ulrich Vogel, and introduced by Mark Elvin, is a collective intellectual masterpiece written by sonic of the world's leading scholars. Its purpose is to illuminate premodern Chinese ways of thinking about Nature by comparing them with their counterpart traditions in Europe. In so doing it also subtly reshapes our understanding of premodern European concepts of the natural world. The domains covered principally include philosophy, language, poetry, science, and mathematics, and their relations with society, technology, and politics. By analyzing the frequent partial similarities between these great two cultural areas in the context of their overall contrasts, it points the way for the first tune to defining accurately the differences that have been critical for world history. Hans Ulrich Vogel, Ph.D. (1983) in Sinology, Zurich University is Professor of Chinese History and Society at Tubingen University. He has published mainly on the history of society, economy, science and technology in premodern China. Gnnter Dux, Dr. iur., University of Bonn, is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Freiburg University; Germany. He has published mainly on the sociology of culture, sociology of social and cultural change and sociology of politics. Mark Elvin, Ph.D. (1968) in Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge, is Professor Emeritus of Chinese History at the Australian National University. He has published mainly on economic and environmental history as well as history of technology in China.