Joseph Needham offered a vision of history that united his understanding of the physical world with his interpretation of social process, in which the material, social, and ideal realms were reciprocally constituted. This essay explores Needham's ideas about matter and form to show how he developed a systematic theory of materialism in his early writings on science and social change. Shifting the ground of discourse in Needham's project from "science" to "materialism," the essay brings him into conversation with new materialists to reflect on the ongoing challenges in theorizing the relationship between social and material phenomena. Calling into question an all-encompassing materiality that sacrifices the role of determinate structures and histories in the production of the world, the essay asks: How can we formulate a framework of material/-ity/-ism that does not dispense with or occlude the already embedded politics of culture, social relations of production, and historical contingency?

中文翻译：

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Needham、物质、形式和我们

约瑟夫·李约瑟 (Joseph Needham) 提出了一种历史观，将他对物理世界的理解与他对社会过程的解释结合起来，其中物质、社会和理想领域相互构成。本文探讨了尼达姆关于物质和形式的思想，以展示他如何在他关于科学和社会变革的早期著作中发展出系统的唯物主义理论。这篇文章将李约瑟项目中的话语基础从“科学”转移到“唯物主义”，让他与新唯物主义者进行对话，以反思在将社会现象与物质现象之间的关系理论化方面面临的持续挑战。这篇文章质疑了一种无所不包的物质性，这种物质性牺牲了确定性结构和历史在世界生产中的作用，并提出了以下问题：