Yet Needham was, in fact, also on a collision course with the Cambridge school of historians. At that time the orthodox Western view of history held by such people was that European culture had grown out of that of classical Greece to become the center of world civilization--areas such as China were hardly to be taken very seriously. An example of this was when the celebrated Cambridge historian of science.
他真正用心處，其實是針對當時「劍橋史學派」代表的所謂西方「正統史學派」﹘﹘他們獨尊希臘以來以歐洲為中心的文化為正統，輕視中國史學。