C  2008 Institute for Research in Classical Philosophy and Science All rights reserved ISSN 1549–4497 (online) ISSN 1549–4470 (print) ISSN 1549–4489 (CD-ROM) Aestimatio 5 (2008) 157--163 Naturwissenschaften im Kulturvergleich.Europa–Islam–China by Karl Wulff Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Harri Deutsch, 2006. Pp. iv + 408. ISBN 978--3--8171--1782--6. Paper ¤ 36.00 Reviewed by Andrea Bréard Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille andrea.breard@math.univ-lille1.fr This book is a poor attempt to contribute to an old debate: the origins of modern science. It attempts in particular to explain why modern natural science originated in Western Europe as late as the 17th century, and why only there and not in China or the Arab world. The question has become well known as the Needham puzzle [see Needham 1969, Graham 1973]. The book’s object of inquiry and title are thus suspiciously close to Toby Huff’s slightly earlier work The Rise of Early Modern Science:Islam, China and the West [1993]. The same holds for the book’s conclusion: it was the neutral institutional space provided by universities and the ‘scientific popular masses’ [72] which these institutions produced as well as the factors (free inquiry, reason, legal theories, religion, the separation of state and church and Greek philosophy of nature) that led to their establishment that allowed the development of modern science in Europe or the West. Wulff demonstrates that all of these elements were absent in China, and most of them likewise in the Arab world. From the preface, the reader might expect this book to contain some profound discussions of the nature of science. As the author, a natural scientist in the field of physics, chemistry, and biology, claims: I am of the opinion, that only on such a basis, one should write about natural science. [i] It is, thus, all the more surprising that the book contains only very little mathematics and astronomy, close to nothing about natural science or their precursors, but mostly information on the cultural context of ancient Greece and more than 100 pages concerning the history of Chinese civilization and philosophy, of which the author