Reading Needham Now

Abstract

What possible futures can be opened up by creatively reading an encyclopedic text not as a repository for information and historical facts but along two other lines instead: as an archive of concepts and of generative narrative detritus? This essay will reencounter Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China (SCC) according to these two readings. Reading collaboratively, the authors proceed through the early, more general volumes of SCC. McKenzie Wark works with the main text, in connection with Needham’s earlier writings, to explore conceptual tools he offered for understanding and living in our current moment. Carla Nappi reads the footnotes to think about voicing, context, and how we write the history of science. These contrasting approaches in a collaboratively written piece play with forms of writing and reading, taking Needham as an anchor and inspiration.