Download or read book Astral Sciences in Early Imperial China written by Daniel Patrick Morgan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-03 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging monolithic modern narratives about 'Chinese science', Daniel Patrick Morgan examines the astral sciences in China c.221 BCE–750 CE as a study in the disunities of scientific cultures and the narratives by which ancients and moderns alike have fought to instil them with a sense of unity. The book focuses on four unifying 'legends' recounted by contemporary subjects: the first two, redolent of antiquity, are the 'observing of signs' and 'granting of seasons' by ancient sage kings; and the other two, redolent of modernity, involve the pursuit of 'accuracy' and historical 'accumulation' to this end. Juxtaposing legend with the messy realities of practice, Morgan reveals how such narratives were told, imagined, and re-imagined in response to evolving tensions. He argues that, whether or not 'empiricism' and 'progress' are real, we must consider the real effects of such narratives as believed in and acted upon in the history of astronomy in China.
Download or read book Astral Sciences in Early Imperial China written by Daniel Patrick Morgan and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative history of astronomy in China, 221 BCE-750 CE, stressing plurality, change and the unifying power of myth-making.
Download or read book Astral Sciences in Early Imperial China written by Daniel Patrick Morgan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-03 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative history of astronomy in China, 221 BCE-750 CE, stressing plurality, change and the unifying power of myth-making.
Download or read book Astrology and Cosmology in Early China written by David W. Pankenier and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-10 with total page 617 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a vast array of scholarship, this pioneering text illustrates how profoundly astronomical phenomena shaped ancient Chinese civilization.
Download or read book Astrology and Cosmology in Early China written by David William Pankenier and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Astronomy Calendar and Science in Imperial China written by Kang Lu and published by Ali Shah Publisher. This book was released on 2023-08-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presented within this book are a series of insightful textual case studies that delve into the realm of "calendro-astronomy" during the span of 250 B.C. to A.D. 250. Through a comprehensive exploration of various sources, this work uncovers a multifaceted understanding of the astral sciences, particularly focusing on calendrics, eclipses, and planetary astronomy. By meticulously balancing transmitted knowledge with excavated materials, the author sheds light on the technical knowledge of the era, its modes of production and consumption, as well as its dissemination beyond the confines of elite courtly settings. Three primary elements shape the narrative: (1) the elucidation of a silk manuscript titled "Wuxing zhan" from 168 B.C., providing insights into military planetary astronomy and astrology; (2) the examination of calendars and state li manuals obtained through archaeological endeavors; and (3) an in-depth exploration of the records within the "Jin shu" from A.D. 648, which chronicle the discourse surrounding a failed li reform attempt in A.D. 226. By embracing these distinct facets, the book showcases a rich array of astral sciences, highlighting variations in genre, social context, and epistemology across mathematical astronomy, hemerology, and omenology. The intricate processes of knowledge transfer and integration between these disciplines are also rigorously explored.
Download or read book Overlapping Cosmologies In Asia written by Bill M. Mak and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-02-28 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new, transnational, and interdisciplinary understanding of cosmology in Asian history. Cosmologies were not coherent systems belonging to separate cultures but rather complex bodies of knowledge and practice that regularly coexisted and co-mingled in extraordinarily diverse ways.
Download or read book Sacred Landscapes of Imperial China written by Giulio Magli and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-06-15 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses the magnificent imperial necropolises of ancient China from the perspective of Archaeoastronomy, a science which takes into account the landscape in which ancient monuments are placed, focusing especially but not exclusively on the celestial aspects. The power of the Chinese emperors was based on the so-called Mandate of Heaven: the rulers were believed to act as intermediaries between the sky gods and the Earth, and consequently, the architecture of their tombs, starting from the world-famous mausoleum of the first emperor, was closely linked to the celestial cycles and to the cosmos. This relationship, however, also had to take into account various other factors and doctrines, first the Zhao-Mu doctrine in the Han period and later the various forms of Feng Shui. As a result, over the centuries, diverse sacred landscapes were constructed. Among the sites analysed in the book are the “pyramids” of Xi’an from the Han dynasty, the mountain tombs of the Tang dynasty, and the Ming and Qing imperial tombs. The book explains how considerations such as astronomical orientation and topographical orientation according to the principles of Feng Shui played a fundamental role at these sites.
Download or read book The Exercise of the Spatial Imagination in Pre Modern China written by Garret Pagenstecher Olberding and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-02-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is distinctive for its extraordinarily interdisciplinary investigations into a little discussed topic, the spatial imagination. It probes the exercise of the spatial imagination in pre-modern China across five general areas: pictorial representation, literary description, cartographic mappings, and the intertwining of heavenly and earthly space. It recommends that the spatial imagination in the pre-modern world cannot adequately be captured using a linear, militarily framed conceptualization. The scope and varying perspectives on the spatial imagination analyzed in the volume’s essays reveal a complex range of aspects that informs how space was designed and utilized. Due to the complexity and advanced scholarly level of the papers, the primary readership will be other scholars and advanced graduate students in history, history of science, geography, art history, religious studies, literature, and, broadly, sinology.
Download or read book Heavenly Numbers written by Christopher Cullen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a history of the development of mathematical astronomy in China, from the late third century BCE, to the early 3rd century CE - a period often referred to as 'early imperial China'. It narrates the changes in ways of understanding the movements of the heavens and the heavenly bodies that took place during those four and a half centuries, and tells the stories of the institutions and individuals involved in those changes. It gives clear explanations of technical practice in observation, instrumentation, and calculation, and the steady accumulation of data over many years - but it centres on the activity of the individual human beings who observed the heavens, recorded what they saw, and made calculations to analyse and eventually make predictions about the motions of the celestial bodies. It is these individuals, their observations, their calculations, and the words they left to us that provide the narrative thread that runs through this work. Throughout the book, the author gives clear translations of original material that allow the reader direct access to what the people in this book said about themselves and what they tried to do.
Download or read book Handbook of Divination and Prognostication in China written by Michael Lackner and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-05-20 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book that systematically explores the manifold aspects of divination and prognostication in traditional and modern China.
Download or read book Mathematical Commentaries in the Ancient World written by Karine Chemla and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-09 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comparative analysis of the techniques and procedures of important mathematical commentaries in five ancient cultures from China to Greece.
Download or read book Monographs in Tang Official Historiography written by Daniel Patrick Morgan and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the role of medieval authors in writing the history of ancient science. It features essays that explore the content, structure, and ideas behind technical writings on medieval Chinese state history. In particular, it looks at the Ten Treatises of the current History of Sui, which provide insights into the writing on the history of such fields as astronomy, astrology, omenology, economics, law, geography, metrology, and library science. Three treatises are known to have been written by Li Chunfeng, one of the most important mathematicians, astronomers, and astrologers in Chinese history. The book not only opens a new window on the figure of Li Chunfeng by exploring what his writings as a historian of science tell us about him as a scientist and vice versa, it also discusses how and on what basis the individual treatises were written. The essays address such themes as (1) the recycling of sources and the question of reliability and objectivity in premodern history-writing; (2) the tug of war between conservatism and innovation; (3) the imposition of the author’s voice, worldview, and personal and professional history in writing a history of a field of technical expertise in a state history; (4) the degree to which modern historians are compelled to speak to their own milieu and ideological beliefs.
Download or read book Chinese Thought written by Roel Sterckx and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the PEN Hessel-Tiltman Prize 'A terrific book, rich and endlessly thought provoking. . . If you are looking for one book to understand the core ideas of Chinese civilisation, read this' - Michael Wood An engrossing history of ancient Chinese philosophy and culture from an eminent Cambridge expert We are often told that the twenty-first century is bound to become China's century. Never before has Chinese culture been so physically, digitally, economically or aesthetically present in everyday Western life. But how much do we really know about its origins and key beliefs? How did the ancient Chinese think about the world? In this enlightening book, Roel Sterckx, one of the foremost experts in Chinese thought, takes us through centuries of Chinese history, from Confucius to Daoism to the Legalists. The great questions that have occupied China's brightest minds were not about who and what we are, but rather how we should live our lives, how we should organise society and how we can secure the well-being of those who live with us and for whom we carry responsibility. With evocative examples from philosophy, literature and everyday life, Sterckx shows us how the ancient Chinese have shaped the thinking of a civilization that is now influencing our own.
Download or read book Eclipse and Revelation written by Henrike Lange and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two questions guide this seven-year project: First, how can we approach the phenomenon, representation, and interpretation of total solar eclipses? Second, how can we heal the historical divide separating the natural sciences from the humanities, arts, history, and theology? The result of this interdisciplinary investigation into eclipses is an exciting look behind the scenes - into labs, archives, and museums, as well as around fieldwork in astronomy, meteorology, animal behaviour, and ecophysiology. Carefully prepared for readers from all backgrounds, these voices invite us to imagine a liberated mode of discovery, perception, creativity, and knowledge-production across the traditional academic divisions. A uniquely prismatic representation of total solar eclipses emerges, itself rising to a model of communal thinking, together, across disciplinary borders. This book is Tom McLeish's final project and scholarly testament. Dedicated to him and to astrophysicist Jay M. Pasachoff (contributing author of a chapter about the solar corona, also Pasachoff's final piece of writing), the volume is a friendly companion to the chase of knowledge, encouraging its readers to embark upon their own interdisciplinary journey of discovery.
Download or read book The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China written by Michelle H. Wang and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the first English-language monograph on the early history of cartography in China. Its chief players are three maps found in tombs that date from the fourth to the second century BCE and together constitute the entire known corpus of ancient Chinese maps (ditu). A millennium separates them from the next available map from 1136 CE. Most scholars study them through the lens of modern, empirical definitions of maps and their use. This book offers an alternative view by drawing on methods not just from cartography but from art history, archaeology, and religion. It argues that, as tomb objects, the maps were designed to be simultaneously functional for the living and the dead-that each map was drawn to serve navigational purposes of guiding the living from one town to another as well as to diagram ritual order, thereby taming the unknown territory of the dead. In contrast with traditional scholarship, The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China proposes that ditu can "speak" through their forms. Departing from dominant theories of representation that forge a narrow path from form to meaning, the book braids together two main strands of argumentation to explore the multifaceted and multifunctional diagrammatic tradition of rendering space in early China"--
Download or read book Intersections of Religion and Astronomy written by Chris Corbally and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the way in which cultural ideas about "the heavens" shape religious ideas and are shaped by them in return. Our approaches to cosmology have a profound effect on the way in which we each deal with religious questions and participate in the imaginative work of public and private world-building. Employing an interdisciplinary team of international scholars, each chapter shows how religion and cosmology interrelate and matter for real people. Historical and contemporary case studies are included to demonstrate the lived reality of a variety of faith traditions and their interactions with the cosmos. This breadth of scope allows readers to get a unique overview of how religion, science and our view of space have, and will continue to, impact our worldviews. Offering a comprehensive exploration of humanity and its relationship with cosmology, this book will be an important reference for scholars of Religion and Science, Religion and Culture, Interreligious Dialogue and Theology, as well as those interested in Science and Culture and Public Education.
