ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

On the Fringe? Constructing and Contesting Boundaries of “Science” in Modern China

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

This panel addresses various historical moments when “modern science” met Chinese long-standing epistemologies. It draws inspiration from historian of science Michael Gordin’s conceptual thinking of the “fringe” to explore the historical processes through which existing knowledge systems encountered Western science at the crossroads. The presenters of this panel collectively showcase the century-long process of making science in modern China —a process in which competing ontologies, evidential regimes, and political agendas confronted, overlapped, and reshaped one another. Ultimately, this panel asks a methodological question that puzzles and haunts historians of non-European regions: is it possible to provincialize Europe in the history of modern science? This panel proposes that the answer lies in how we historicize and contextualize the processes of boundary making and contestation that ultimately constructed what could be considered “scientific” or “nonscientific” at various historical turning points. Science was thereby positioned to negotiate and negate various systems of knowledge, challenging and being challenged by plural worlds.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Bernard Lightman, York University

Individual Presentations

• Rendering the Invisible Qi: Xianzhen, Projective Methods, and Hybrid Craft in the Late Qing Inner Court - Zhaoyi Ma, Nangyang Technological University

• Weather Knowledge between Science and Superstition in Pre-World War II China - Xinyue Zhang, Yale University

• Good Medicine, Bad Medicine, Weird Medicine: Fighting Shaman Healing with Cooperation between Western and Chinese Medicine - Yaming You, Duke University

Session Organizer

• Yaming You, Duke University