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The Gunpowder Epic is one of three planned publications on military technology within Dr Needham's immense undertaking.

This highly illustrated volume offers a comprehensive account of botanical knowledge in China before the introduction of modern botany. Georges Metailie explores the perception and use of a wealth of plants in China until the end of the seventeenth century, proposing a new, non-teleological view of knowledge in ancient China.

How were Chinese pots made, glazed and fired? Why did China discover porcelain more than one thousand years before the West? What are the effects of China's influence on world ceramics? These questions (and many more) are answered in this history of Chinese ceramic technology.

Comprehensive historical account of the production and use of iron and steel in China in their political and economic context. The technology that came originally from the West was transformed in China to a large-scale concentrated industry whose relations with the state were a major factor in Chinese history.

After two volumes mainly introductory, Dr Needham now embarks upon his systematic study of the development of the natural sciences in China. The Sciences of the Earth follow: geography and cartography, geology, seismology and mineralogy. Dr Needham distinguishes parallel traditions of scientific cartography and religious cosmography in East and West, discussing orbocentric wheel-maps, the origins of the rectangular grid system, sailing charts and relief maps, Chinese survey methods, and the impact of Renaissance cartography on the East. Finally-and here Dr Needham's work has no Western predecessors-there are full accounts of the Chinese contribution to geology and mineralogy.

The second volume of Dr Joseph Needham's great work Science and Civilisation in China is devoted to the history of scientific thought. Beginning with ancient times, it describes the Confucian milieu in which arose the organic naturalism of the great Taoist school, the scientific philosophy of the Mohists and Logicians, and the quantitative materialism of the Legalists. Thus we are brought on to the fundamental ideas which dominated scientific thinking in the Chinese middle ages. The author opens his discussion by considering the remote and pictographic origins of words fundamental in scientific discourse, and then sets forth the influential doctrines of the Two Forces and the Five Elements. Subsequently he writes of the important sceptical tradition, the effects of Buddhist thought, and the Neo-Confucian climax of Chinese naturalism. Last comes a discussion of the conception of Laws of Nature in China and the West.

The latest volume in Joseph Needham's magisterial review of China's premodern scientific and technological traditions introduces the history of medicine. Following the deaths of Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-Djen, a considerable amount of written material on the development of Chinese medicine awaited publication. This material has been gathered together by the editor, Nathan Sivin, in the five essays contained in this volume. They offer a broad and readable account of medicine in culture, including hygiene and preventive medicine, forensic medicine and immunology, and the examinations taken by some Chinese physicians for more than a thousand years. Professor Sivin has edited the essays, expanding them where appropriate and incorporating the results of recent research. His extensive introduction discusses the contributions of Needham and Lu, placing the essays in context, and surveys recent scholarship from China, Japan, Europe and the United States.

This study, the first of two parts, gives a comprehensive account of Chinese textiles and textile technology.

This is the first history of Chinese mining to appear in a western language. The author draws extensively not only on written material but on his own observations of traditional techniques in use today. The technology is placed in the context of the political, social and economic conditions in China.

Volume 6. Part III of Science and Civilisation in China contains two separate works. The first, by Christian Daniels, is a comprehensive history of Chinese sugar cane technology from ancient times to the early twentieth century. The second, by Nicholas K. Menzies, is a history of forestry in China.

Volume V Part 6 is the first of the three parts of Science and Civilisation in China which deal with the art of war in ancient and medieval China. Four sections follow the introduction: on the simple bow; on the cross-bow, standard weapon of the Han armies; and on pre-gunpowder artillery, including the invention of the trebuchet.

As Dr Needham's immense undertaking gathers momentum it has been found necessary to subdivide volumes into parts, each bound and published separately. The first two parts of Volume IV deal respectively with the physical sciences and with the diverse applications of physics in the many branches of mechanical engineering. The third deals with civil and hydraulic engineering and with nautical technology.

This second part of the sixth volume of Joeph Needham's great enterprise is an account of the technological history of agriculture, with major sections devoted to field systems, implements and techniques (sowing, harvesting, storing) and crop systems (what has grown and where and how crops rotated).

The fifth volume of Dr Needham's immense undertaking, like the fourth, is subdivided into parts for ease of presentation and assimilation, each part bound and published separately. The volume as a whole covers the subjects of alchemy, early chemistry, and chemical technology.

The sixth volume of Dr Needham's immense undertaking, like the fourth and fifth, is subdivided into parts for ease of presentation and assimilation, each part bound and published separately. The volume as a whole covers the subjects of biology and biological technology (which includes botany and agriculture, zoology, all aspects of medicine, and pharmaceutics).

The fifth volume of Dr Needham's immense undertaking, like the fourth, is subdivided into parts for ease of assimilation and presentation, each part bound and published separately. The volume as a whole covers the subjects of alchemy, early chemistry, and chemical technology (which includes military invention, especially gunpowder and rockets; paper and printing; textiles; mining and metallurgy; the salt industry; and ceramics).

The fifth volume of Dr Needham's immense undertaking, like the fourth, is subdivided into parts for ease of assimilation and presentation, each part bound and published separately. The volume as a whole covers the subjects of alchemy, early chemistry, and chemical technology (which includes military invention, especially gunpowder and rockets; paper and printing; textiles; mining and metallurgy; the salt industry; and ceramics).

Surveying the conceptual history of logical terminology in ancient China, this unique work in the Science and Civilisation in China series examines how the basic features of classical Chinese language made it a suitable medium for science in ancient China.

Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China series caused a seismic shift in western perceptions of China. But why did the scientific and industrial revolutions not happen in China? In the concluding volume of this series, Needham reflects on this question and gives fascinating insights into his great intellectual quest.

Today Chinese cuisine is enjoyed all over the world, yet little is known about the technologies involved in making its characteristic ingredients. As the first history of Chinese food technology in a western language, this books fills the gap outlining the origins and evolution of the major food processing techniques.