Shen Kuo
Praise, critique, and criticism

In the Routledge Curzon Encyclopedia of Confucianism, Xinzhong Yao states that Shen Kuo's legacy was tainted by his eager involvement in Wang Anshi's New Policies reforms, his actions criticized in the later traditional histories. However, Shen's reputation as a polymath has been well regarded. Joseph Needham stated that Shen Kuo was "one of the greatest scientific minds in Chinese history." The French sinologist Jacques Gernet is of the opinion that Shen possessed an "amazingly modern mind." Yao states of Shen's thorough recording of natural sciences in his Dream Pool Essays:

We must regard Shen Kuo's collection as an indispensable primary source attesting to the unmatched level of attainment achieved by Chinese science prior to the twelfth century.

However, Toby E. Huff writes that Shen Kuo's "scattered set" of writings lacks clear-cut organization and "theoretical acuteness," that is, scientific theory. Nathan Sivin wrote that Shen's originality stands "cheek by jowl with trivial didacticism, court anecdotes, and ephemeral curiosities" that provide little insight. Donald Holzman writes that Shen "has nowhere organized his observations into anything like a general theory." Huff writes that this was a systemic problem of early Chinese science, which lacked systematic treatment that could be found in European works such as the Concordance and Discordant Canons by the lawyer Gratian of Bologna (fl. 12th century). In regard to an overarching concept of science which could branch together all the various sciences studied by the Chinese, Sivin asserts that the writings of Shen Kuo "do not indicate that he achieved, or even sought, an integrated framework for his diverse knowledge; the one common thread is the varied responsibilities of his career as a high civil servant."
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