Since the mid-nineteenth century, the most consistent aspect of Chinese history has been change, such as political reforms and revolutions, reconfigurations of social structures, ideological shifts, and so on. Still, in the midst of such dramatic transformations some still points stand out which are negative in the two undermentioned authors' opinions. Two recent dissertations have made significant contributions to our understanding of modern science in China—Zhang Jian's “Science Associations and Social Change in Modern China: A Study of the Science Society of China” and Sigrid Schmalzer's “The People's Peking Man: Popular Science and Human Identity in Twentieth-Century China,” now available in book form. By juxtaposing them, I hope to point out some differences as well as the similarity in their perspectives, all of which may suggest a number of trends in the field of science and technology studies.
