Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China is considered a seminal text for the study of Chinese science and culture. Even Needham's greatest critics have acknowledged the significance of his work. Laurence Picken, an ethnomusicologist who reviewed one of the earlier volumes of SCC, called it "perhaps the greatest single act of historical synthesis and intercultural communication ever attempted by one man." In The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry, H. Floris Cohen writes, "Yet I would not feel free to embark, in the following, upon a critical treatment of Needham's views on the Science Revolution and its absence in China without first summing up, as I have just done, what many before me have said in expressed their awed admiration for the overall achievement."

Science and Civilisation in China is highly valued by historians for its extensive bibliography, lengthy footnotes, and its English translations of Chinese primary sources. Many of the primary sources that Needham used were unknown to most Western historians prior to the publication of SCC. It's rare to find a single recently published work on Chinese science or technology that doesn't cite Needham as a secondary source. And for historians of science without a working knowledge of Chinese, SCC in China is often the only available resource for English translations of important Chinese primary sources such as the Nong Shu and the Wujing Zongyao.

Some of the older volumes of the series can be out of date. The field of East Asian archaeology has changed considerably in the last few decades, and Needham's work obviously doesn't incorporate the most recent developments in archaeology. For example, in Volume 5 Part 7 of SCC, Needham brings up the bomb-shells of the Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba, a Japanese handscroll by Takezaki Suenaga. But the existence of these pottery bombs did not become conclusively verified until the recent excavations of Mongol shipwrecks off the coast of Japan. I would still recommend reading Needham's earlier work, but it should be supplemented with more recent literature.

Newer volumes from the series don't have this problem, but they aren't written by Needham. Cambridge University Press decided to continue the SCC series after Needham passed away in 1995. Outside historians were brought in to write the newer volumes. The most recent volume in the series, Volume 5 Part 11, was written by Donald B. Wagner and published in 2008. More upcoming volumes are planned by CUP.

Because of the sheer scope of Needham's work, it's no surprise that it has attracted considerable amounts of praise and criticism. Needham's desire for a "grand titration" of the history of science, i.e. the belief that scientific discoveries should be credited to the great civilizations of the West and the East, was considered overzealous and controversial in the fifties and sixties when most historians of science focuses exclusively on the West. Much has also been written of his Christian Marxist background, and of the Weberian and Marxist influences on his methodology. However, Needham was not a Marxist historian in the same manner as Eric Hobsbawm or other British Marxists. He was a devout Anglican that did not adhere to orthodox Soviet or Chinese Marxist historiography. The Marxist thesis that the rise of capitalism in Europe led to the rise of modern science in Europe became the foundation for Needham's own Grand Question, which asks why modern science emerged in the West and not in Asia.

Andre Gunder Frank's Re-Orient criticizes Needham for his Eurocentric assumptions borrowed from Marx. Needham's famous Grand Question presupposes that science was a uniquely Western phenomenon. Frank observes: "Alas, it was also originally Needham's Marxist and Weberian point of departure. As Needham found more and more evidence about science and technology in China, he struggled to liberate himself from his Eurocentric original sin, which had inherited directly from Marx... But Needham never quite succeeded, perhaps because his concentration on China prevented him from sufficiently revising his still ethnocentric view of Europe itself." Needham's assertion that China lacked a scientific revolution was also critiqued by Nathan Sivin. Sivin writes, "A scientific revolution, by the criteria that historians of science use, did take place in China in the eighteenth century. It did not, however, have the social consequences that we assume a scientific revolution will have. The most obvious conclusion is that those assumptions are mistaken."

Needham's work on the Science and Civilisation in China is useful for its wealth of primary sources, and I would recommend it just on that basis.

For further reading, see Nathan Sivin's "Why the Scientific Revolution did not take place in China –or didn't It?", Andre Gunder Frank's ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age, H. Floris Cohen's The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry, Timothy Brook's "The Sinology of Joseph Needham," Gregory Blue's "Joseph Needham, Heterodox Marxism and the Social Background to Chinese Science," and Roger Hart's "Beyond Science and Civilization: A Post-Needham Critique."