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the sciences being transmitted from the West to China, but even took them as part
and parcel of classical studies (Elman, 2015, pp. 103–138). In fact, Liang Qichao
(梁启超 1873–1929) had long noted that Qing scholars paid great attention to
knowledge of hydraulic and astronomical studies (Liang, 1998, pp. 55–57); he even
regarded phonological studies then as the “precursor of science” (Liang, 1998, p.
104). Whereas Liang never explored deeper into the origins of the “precursor of
science,” Elman goes a step further when he not only clarifies the key points of
Qing paradigms of scholarship, but also gives a good answer to Needham’s
question as to why modern science did not emerge in China.
Michael A. Gillespie (2008, p. 274) points out: “To put the matter more starkly,
in the face of the long drawn out death of God, science can provide a coherent
account of the whole only by making man or nature or both in some sense divine.”
In Europe, when Rene Descartes took nature instead of transcendental God as the
object of belief, from which he expected to obtain the most indubitable and
objective knowledge, science and modernity represented by it came forth in time.
Elman’s narrative invests evidential research or “plain learning” of the Qing phi-
lologists with a similar significance. As a branch of learning in pursuit of precise
truth, textology no longer followed the metaphysical system constructed by Neo
Confucianism, but took an objective and empirical stance toward the Classics as
well as natural things. Therefore, this shift in the academic paradigm, from Song
Learning to Han Learning, reveals the connotations of a deeper motivation—
indicating a transition from the metaphysical Li School of Confucianism (理学)to
“practical” learning or “concrete studies”—which meant more than an academic
event. It played a critical role in the transformation of modern Chinese culture, and
even meant, in a sense, Chinese-style “modernization” shift. To put it bluntly, the
shift of emphasis from Song Learning to Han Learning during the Qing Dynasty
brought about unprecedented freedom of thought, which opened the way for
China to embrace modern science.

3 The Imperial Civil Examination System and the
Changes of Social Thought

The Imperial Civil Examination System has been taken as the major source for the
study of social and institutional history of China by Fei Xiaotong (费孝通 1910–
2005) and Pan Guangdan (潘光旦 1899–1967) in “The Imperial Civil Examination
System and Social Mobility” (Fei, 1947, pp. 1–21) and by He Bingdi (何炳棣 1917–
2012) in Social History of the Ming and Qing (《明清社会史论》) (He, 2019). Many
previous researchers believed that the reason why the Imperial Civil Examination