K. Buhrman
Although Needham’s project was well received by the Japanese history of science community,
the interest in resemblances and precursors to modern science in Japanese history, driven largely
by the interests of groups of Japanese scientists earlier in this century, has been much more influ-
ential. Given this preoccupation, it should be no surprise that the history of science in Japan not
only began as a field of inquiry by scientists, but that scientists have continued to be major players
in the field to this day.^11 Compared to the field of the history of science in Europe, the influence
of scientist- historians on the field in the Japanese- language historiography is notably stronger.
There is a general divide between internalist (the view that change is driven by problems and
developments within the field) and externalist (the position that change is driven by broader
socio- economic and political factors) approaches in the history of science. One might also make
a distinction between internally (written by practitioners of the science) and externally produced
histories of science (undertaken by historians with more or less knowledge of the field being
studied).^12 Although advantages can be found in all of these approaches, internally produced
histories in particular have a tendency to read the preoccupations of the modern field into the
records of the past, and project the mindset of the scientist backward onto historical actors. In
internally produced histories, the standard for evaluating premodern techniques is usually
modern scientific knowledge and methods. Certainly, comparing premodern results to those
derived from modern scientific methods can be useful as a tool for comparison or for understand-
ing knowledge from the past that requires two types of translation: not only linguistic, but also
translating the paradigm in which such knowledge made sense for past actors. Familiarity with
modern science can help scholars describe techniques for a wider, non- specialist audience: for
example, chemistry and materials science are modern professional fields that do not have ana-
logues in premodern Japan, yet they explain the factors that make certain metal alloys more rigid
or more flexible, and so provide a way for the techniques of the past to be explained to readers in
the present. It cannot be denied that it is useful for historians of premodern knowledge of nature
and craft to know something of the relevant modern science or technology, to help make sense
of what object it is that is being described or discussed.
There are, however, pitfalls to this sort of projection of modern perspectives onto the past.
For example, a tenth- century diviner would have attached very different meanings and import
to celestial phenomena than a modern astronomer would. Contrary to popular depictions of the
history of science, these different meanings were not a matter of being unable to adequately
explain or predict phenomena—although lunar eclipses were effectively predictable well before
the tenth century, they still triggered the regular commission of Buddhist ceremonies and other
apotropaic rituals.^13 A further weakness of this approach is that it divides up knowledge based on
modern fields of study (as well as on modern distinctions of what is and is not science).
Another issue is that focus on modern fields can lead to rather truncated histories that do not
reach far into the premodern era. Descriptions of chemistry or physics are a case in point, for
knowledge of how to manipulate materials to make new ones (metallurgy) and at least a non-
theorized awareness of properties of fluid dynamics (for irrigation) and properties of motion
(what is sometimes called “naïve physics”) must be presumed to have been present among the
Japanese by ancient times.^14 Furthermore, placing modern boundaries on what should be
considered in the history of science also takes material out of context: as when scholars preserve
the observations of the night sky or a sick patient, while deleting descriptions of the divination
process or the rituals that were also part of the work of the premodern specialist or technician.
Still another danger to an internalist approach is conceptual. A focus on modern fields of sci-
entific knowledge and practice has fallen out of favor in current trends in the history of science as
a whole. While the popular history of science is still focused on how modern science came to be,
centered on the Scientific Revolution in Europe, historians of science have brought the existence