-----Original Message-----
From: CurtAdams@aol.com <CurtAdams@aol.com>
To: extropians@extropy.org <extropians@extropy.org>
Date: 11 May 2001 05:09
Subject: Re: Traditional China as a counterexample to "spikism"
:
Do you have any sourcces you can point me to on the conservatising cultural
innovations of the Ming or the sources of Sung technical dynamism?
Most of the work was originally done in specialist journals but recently it
has been making its way into more accessible publications. There is a brief
but suggestive survey in Peter Jay: Road to Riches or The Wealth of Man
(London, 2000; Weidenfield & Nicolson) pp 93-104. Two more excellent recent
works are Kenneth Pomeranz: The Great Divergence (Princeton, 2000) - it's
worth having a look at the excellent reviews of this book on Amazon- and
Timothy Brook: The Confusions of Pleasure (University of California 1999),
this one looks at the cultural roots of the policies of the Ming. I'd also
recommend Gang Deng: The Pre-Modern Chinese Economy (London, 1999;
Routledge) , John Merson: Roads to Xanadu: East and West in the Making of
the Modern World (London, 1989; Weidenfield and Nicolson) and Mark Elvin:
The Pattern of the Chinese Past (London, 1973; Eyre Methuen) - I have
problems with some of his arguments but the book is full of otherwise hard
to get information. On technology there's Joseph Needham's monumental work.
Interesting that you did work on the military weakness of the Sung, that's
another very interesting story
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