ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Evolution and Utopia: Joseph Needham and H. G. Wells on the New World Order, 1940-1942

• In Event: China Observed: Science and the British Encounter with China in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

English Abstract

Before Joseph Needham (1900-1995) visited China during the World War II, he had a lively correspondence with his fellow English writer Herbert George Wells (1866-1946). Their correspondence began when Needham defended Wells’s new book, The New World Order (1940). In the book, Wells argued that in order to rebuild and maintain international peace after the war, a “socialist” global government under scientific planning and guidance was necessary; meanwhile, in order to protect individual liberty under global socialism, a set of human rights must be established and codified as universal laws. After Wells’s book was published, it was widely criticized by observers from both ends of the political spectrum. Needham tried to defend Wells by writing to the Nature magazine. He believed that Wells’s progressive ideas and the utopian world-state were not illusion. He also argued that the social and psychological evolution of humans was a continuation of biological evolution, from simple forms to more complex organizations, which was the same trend as the cosmic and biological evolution. Both Wells and Needham shared the socialist ideal of world politics and advocated promoting the integration of international affairs under the principle of collectivism. China, as an ancient civilization with the potential for revitalizing, was a fascinating case for both Needham and Wells, and an integral part in their utopian frameworks. The Needham-Wells correspondence also captures the tip of the iceberg of the entanglement between science, politics, ideology and international affairs in the mid-twentieth century.

Author

• Hsiang-Fu Huang, Nankai University