Dr. Catherine Jami
Volume 4 part III of Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China (1971), is devoted to civil engineering and nautics. It is dedicated jointly to a Chinese historian and to a British engineer. This contribution focuses on the latter, Herbert Chatley, whose career is neatly summarized in the dedication: “Herbert Chatley, once professor of engineering at Thang-shan College and chief engineer of the Huang-po Conservancy, an ‘Old China Hand’ who loved the Chinese people, historian of the engineers of Cathay and Manzi.’
Chatley’s name does not appear in the front matter of this volume: there are 12 bibliographical entries under his name at the end of the volume; 18 more, devoted to the history of astronomy, are found in volume 3 of Science and Civilisation in China; his publications are also mentioned in volume 1. The correspondence between Chatley and Needham preserved in the latter’s archives at the Needham Research Institute (Cambridge, UK), shows that between 1948, when Needham returned to Cambridge after two years working at UNESCO, and 1955, when Chatley died, they were in regular correspondence. All the exchanges follow the same pattern: Needham asks Chatley for some information concerning Chinese science and technology, and the latter responds, often in one or two paragraphs. Needham habitually cut Chatley’s letters into pieces so as to include each of his answers in the file corresponding to the volume of Science and Civilisation in China that he intended to write on the topic.
Based on this correspondence, and on Chatley’s publications, I will discuss the construction of Chatley’s expertise on the history of Chinese science and technology, and the ways in which some sections of Science and Civilisation in China draw on his studies. Although Chatley was not an academic sinologist, he published in academic journals as well as in engineering journals. He had first-hand knowledge of Chinese technical and hydraulic artefacts, as well as a useful grasp of classical Chinese. In that respect, his approach to traditional Chinese science and technology was gained in a way similar to Needham’s. And conversely, it is through Needham’s grand œuvre that Chatley remains visible as a contributor to our understanding of premodern Chinese science and technology.
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OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Editor (6. Oktober 2021). Dr. Catherine Jami. Chinawissen vernetzt / Sinologia in rete / Savoirs sur la Chine en réseau. Abgerufen am 14. Juni 2025 von https://sinonet.hypotheses.org/199