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Science and Religion in Medieval China: Some Comments on Recently Published Work by Nathan Sivin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2009
Extract
The publication of two volumes of collected papers by Nathan Sivin is an event that should be welcomed by every centre where Chinese studies are taken seriously. For all his considerable reputation in a difficult area of specialized research namely the history of Chinese science, he has never sought to capitalize on his status as a specialist to “blind us with science”, but rather has written with an eye to broader problems, problems of concern at least to anyone professionally interested in the Chinese element in human experience, and (one would hope) many more besides. The spread of his concerns has meant in the past that many smaller college libraries have not possessed the periodicals and conference volumes in which his work has appeared, so this set of republished papers serves a useful function in itself. But in the second of these volumes in particular we find a number of previously unpublished works, including one of over seventy pages on a topic of considerable importance. Rather than leave this unexpected bounty simply for college librarians to acquire in order to make good existing gaps (and to have on the record the full Sivin bibliography to 1995 which may be found in the second volume), there would seem to be every reason to draw the attention of a broader number of readers to the appearance of important work which has existed for a while in draft form, but which has not been made generally available until now.
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References
1 These remarks have been prompted by the appearance of Sivin, Nathan, Science in Ancient China: Researches and Reflections (Variorum Collected Studies Series, CS 506), xviii, 274 pages,Google Scholar and Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in Ancient China: Researches and Reflections (Variorum Collected Studies Series, CS 512), xii, 314 pages, both published by Variorum, Aldershot, Hampshire and Brookfield, Vermont, 1995: I regret that limitations in my own scholarship preclude a fuller review of these works, both of which contain hitherto unpublished items, though the essay on which I have chosen to concentrate is by far the longest such piece.Google Scholar
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8 Amidst a wealth of scholarship, much of it inspired by the pioneering research of the late Anna Seidel, one might mention Harper, Donald, “Resurrection in Warring States popular religion”, Taoist Resources, V.2 (12, 1994), pp. 13–28,Google Scholar and Cedzich, Angelika, “Ghosts, demons, law and order: grave quelling texts and early Taoist liturgy”, Taoist Resources, IV.2 (1993), pp. 23–33.Google Scholar
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21 Ishii, pp. 88–91, provides a conspectus of his scholarship.
22 Ishii, p. 102.
23 Nathan Sivin's own pioneering work on Sun, Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary Studies (Cambridge, MA, 1968),Google Scholar gives full credit to the Buddhist sources for Sun's life in a biographical survey which may now be expanded in the light of recent research on the compilation of T'ang historical sources by Twitchett, Denis, The Writing of Official History Under the T'ang (Cambridge, 1992);CrossRefGoogle Scholar note also the excerpts from the official record on Sun to be found elsewhere, as indicated in Orientalistische Literaturzeitung, LXXXV.3 (1990). col. 350.Google Scholar
24 This suggestion was made in a conference paper for the 6th International Conference on the History of Science in China. I regret that I have not yet been able to revise it in the light of the very helpful comments given at the time by Nathan Sivin himself and by Prof. K. M. Schipper. For the citation of Sun suggesting initiation, see footnote 18 of article VI in this collection (p. 312 in the original in History of Religions, as mentioned above).
25 Note in the New Testament the verdict given in Mark 9, verses 38, 39.
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