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Dragon Skies
Chabot Space & Science Center
6:00 pm, Saturday, August 14, 2004
[A portion of this presentation was previously read on December 2, 2000, at the Oakland Museum for their exhibit, Fusion 1700: Wonders of the Time: A Forum on Chinese-Western Relations through Christianity in the Ming-Qing Period]
Those of you who have carefully inspected the Dragon Skies collection on display upstairs will have noticed that some of the largest and most impressive instruments are associated with the early Jesuits from Europe. During the late Ming and early Qing dynasties (from roughly 1550-1800), the Jesuits were the primary agents of Sino-European scientific interchange. In tonight’s presentation we’ll be taking a very brief look at the history of this exchange, and how these instruments are monuments to scientific and cultural cooperation between China and Western Europe during the 16th-18th centuries.
To begin, some historical background will be necessary. As the Dragon Skies exhibit demonstrates, from earliest times Chinese civilization possessed a sophisticated system of astronomy. Prof. Keightley’s July presentation detailed the records of divination and astrological processes dating to the 13th century B.C.E. as recorded on oracle bones. Stellar observation continued throughout Chinese history, data which carefully recorded many important celestial events. Probably the best known example is the description of the Crab Nebula supernova of 1054, noted in the Songshi and the Song huiyao as a “guest star.”
Many agricultural societies, especially large hydraulic cultures such as China’s, require accurate calendars and almanacs to determine seasonal planting, harvesting, flood control and water conservancy, preparations for winter, and many other functions. In addition, belief in astrology required accurate, predictive almanacs announcing stellar events, eclipses, comets, and so on, in order to prescribe the auspicious inauguration of many tasks, both personal and public. Military campaigns, marriages, temple dedications, voyages, feast days, burials and so on, required consulting the stars. (And it’s important to remember that in the period we are considering, astronomy and astrology were still, even in Europe, interrelated and just beginning to split into separate disciplines). China, as with the ancient hydraulic cultures in Egypt, Mesoamerica, and India, for example, making astrological-astronomical predictions were the purview of kings and advisors. In China, the accuracy of the calendar was an important indicator of dynastic legitimacy. Omens were of major political significance, and the role of the emperor as much as his empire was directly affected by the stars. In the official state doctrine of Confucianism, the emperor wielded the “Mandate of Heaven” only so long as his earthly obligations were correctly fulfilled. Exactly when these rites and ceremonies occurred depended on the celestial calculations provided by the Qintianjian 欽天監, or Imperial Astronomical Bureau. This Bureau was a department of the supremely important Board of Rites, whose candidates were chosen via competitive examinations in the Chinese civil service. The examinations were based on knowledge of the Chinese classics, the Sishu 四書 or Four Books, the histories, the odes, and philosophical texts of a moral and ethical nature. But unlike the literary foundations of other offices at the Chinese court, studying astronomy and creating calendars and almanacs also required technical skills not taught in classical studies.
Chinese astronomers had created armillaries, star charts, clocks, and other tools for centuries. Some fulfilled imperial tasks, while others were pursued by independent scholars . But China, often considered to have evolved in isolation from other civilizations, also absorbed elements of other astronomical traditions, such as those from India and Central Asia transmitted along the Silk Road during the Tang dynasty.
Advances in calendrical studies and astronomy were made during the Song dynasty (960-1279), briefly interrupted with the conquest of China by the Mongols in 1268. Yet the unification of the Asian landmass and the coasts from Korea to India under the Mongol empire allowed unprecedented contacts with other lands and cultures, contacts which had existed since 1st century C.E. Roman times via the Silk Road, but had declined after the demise of the Tang dynasty in 907 C.E. Medieval China had maintained contacts with Southeast Asia, India and the Middle East, and even with Europe. During the Sui and Tang dynasties, as Buddhism arrived along the Silk Road, Indian mathematic and astronomical innovations were imported. During the Yuan and early Ming dynasties, tools and techniques from Islamic countries entered China via the South China seas, and Chinese Muslim astronomers, who brought star-mapping skills from the Middle East and Arabia, were employed at court.
Indeed, Western Europe was re-introduced to many Ptolemaic and Greek scientist-philosophers through Arabic translations and transcriptions. Muslim scientists had themselves adapted Indian mathematical theories. The numbers we today call Arabic numbers actually originated in India. We call them Arabic numbers because Leonardo da Pisa (Pisano), better known by his nickname, Fibonacci, learned of them through his travels in North Africa, and called them Arabic numbers when he introduced them in Italy in his book, the Liber abaci, published in 1202. Interestingly, this book also includes problems involving Chinese remainder theorem and problems involving summing arithmetic and geometric series.
During the late Ming and early Qing period we will examine (c. 1550-1800), science in Europe was undergoing radical changes, and the tensions between reason and faith, as exemplified by the cases of Bruno and Galileo, were played out during the period of the old Jesuit China mission. The Jesuits had established a network of colleges where members of the Society (as well as the sons of the elite) were educated, the most prestigious and advanced being the Collegio Romano (Roman College, est. 1551, now the Gregorian). Novices studied the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and at college devoted three years to logic, philosophy, and metaphysics. Most late Ming Jesuit scientific writings pertained to mathematics and natural philosophy (or physica). Many of the early China Jesuits were trained at the Roman College by none other than Christof Clau (1537-1612), better known by his Latin honorific, Clavius, one of the most important mathematicians and astronomers of his day, a correspondent of Galileo, and a major architect of the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582. Clavius reckoned mathematics a fundamental requirement not only for its practical and intellectual value but also by the fact that it prepared the students' mind for the higher pursuits of theology. The training system as defined in the Ratio Studiorum (1599) was the basis for Jesuit education for the next century. In fact, competence in mathematics in the wider sense just mentioned was a requirement for selecting Jesuits for the China mission, and most Jesuits followed the curriculum prescribed in the Ratio in China as well, which states: “Concerning mathematics, the mathematician shall teach, in this order, the [first] six books of Euclid, arithmetic, the sphere [of Sacrobosco], cosmography, astronomy, the theory of the planets, the Alphonsine Tables, optics, and timekeeping. Only the second year philosophy students shall hear his lectures, but sometimes, with permission, also the students of dialectics.”
In the 16th century (as now), China was a subject of great interest to Europeans. The arrival of the Jesuits under the auspices of the Portuguese padroado was to open a cultural window that permitted Europeans the first truly accurate accounts of the Chinese empire, and likewise introduced to the Chinese things that were new, and things that were not really new, but had been forgotten. A area of mutual Chinese-European interest was in science, and therefore science was destined to become an important tool for evangelization in China.
From the start, the early Jesuits realized that the Ming empire was a very different place than other mission areas. China was vast and historically ancient, with a highly developed and complex society, government, culture and language. In many ways China was technologically equal or superior to European society. And from the start it was clear that any mission enterprise in China would require a literary approach. Chinese respect for books, and scholarship had been noted since Marco Polo’s day, and enshrined in the mission principles of the Jesuit Visitor, Alessandro Valignano, was the requirement that missioners learned to read, write and speak Chinese. The most illustrious of the early China Jesuits was, of course, Matteo Ricci, who is widely regarded as the founder of Western sinology. Ricci proved the ideal agent of this historic cultural interchange. His linguistic talents, prodigious memory, and skills in cartography, mathematics, and music, plus his personal qualities, kindly demeanor and respect for Chinese culture allowed him unprecedented access to a wide range of people and places. Especially significant was Ricci’s friendship with the many intellectuals he encountered. Ricci saw that the role of the scholar-official’s in Chinese society had no exact equivalent in Europe. These men were schooled in the Confucian classics and historical literature, and sought their careers through competitive examinations in a civil service system. Ricci coined a term for this class of Chinese scholar-official. He called them the literati. Ricci realized that the evangelization of China was a very long-tem project, and saw that acceptance and respect of the literati class would be a requirement for the future success of the mission.
In 1583, Ricci was granted permission to move from the Portuguese enclave of Macau to Zhaoqing (near Guangzhou [Canton]), and after several moves and travels around the country he was permitted residence Beijing in 1601. Ricci had by now become a much sought-after figure by officials and local gentry. In particular he noted the great curiosity his many visitors displayed regarding the unusual items in his rooms at the Jesuit residence: a planisphere, clocks, prisms, a harpsichord, Western paintings and books, but most of all, he noted their fascination with maps. In particular, on display at Zhaoqing was a world map and at his friends urging, Ricci made copies and translated the place-names into Chinese. This map, printed in late 1584 (and now lost), was the first edition of what became several enlargements and enhancements. With the help of the eminent scholar and friend of the Jesuits Li Zhizao 李之藻, the third and fourth editions entitled Kunyu wan’guo quantu 坤輿萬國全圖 were published in 1603 and 1604. Ricci introduced the Western system of longitude and latitude by essentially grafting it onto the square-grid system used in traditional Chinese cartography. He used European maps by Mercator and Ortelius as the basis for Europe, Africa, and the New World, while the East Asian portion was based on his friend Luo Hongxian’s 羅洪先 (1504-1564) 1579 edition of the Guangyu tu 廣輿圖.
Ricci’s World Map, or Mappamondo contained the first representations on a Chinese map of the America’s, the west coast of Africa, Europe, and the coast of Antarctica. Ming scholars immediately recognized these maps as important improvements on existing cartographic technology. Previously unknown regions were now charted in Chinese style in relatively accurate scale. In fact, many of the foreign place-names used by Chinese today trace their origin to Ricci’s maps. He went on to do much more to introduce Western ideas to China. He wrote his famous Treatise on Friendship, translated the first six books of Euclid into Chinese, wrote influential texts on Western mnemonics and memory techniques, East-West ethics, mathematics, catechisms and discourses using classical Chinese examples; he created the first Chinese-Western dictionary (basically inventing Romanization of Chinese characters), and built harpsichords and musical instruments. He studied classical Chinese texts and adapted Christian concepts to the Confucian system, and his letters and notes back to Europe became the foundation for the field of Chinese studies.
Ricci also contributed to the introduction of Western astronomical theory. With Li Zhizao, he translated and published Clavius’ commentary of Joannes de Sacrabosco’s Sphere (ca. 1230), the Qiankun tiyi 乾坤體義 (On the Structure of Heaven and Earth, 1608), and the Astrolabe, Hun’gai tongxian tushuo 渾蓋通憲圖說 (Illustrated Explanation of Cosmological Patterns, 1607), which discussed stereographic projections for the astrolabe. fixing the geographical latitude at 40° N, corresponding to Beijing, and the angle of obliquity of the ecliptic given as 23 ½° instead of 24° common at the time. The Jingtian gai 經天該, a rhymed star catalog adapted from the Tang dynasty Butian ge 步天歌 (Song for Pacing the Heavens) which insert Western star names, is also attributed to Ricci and Li.
Ricci also made hundreds of friends, many of whom became Christians. Three of the most important Chinese Christians, Xu Guangqi 徐光啟 (1562–1633), Li Zhizao 李之藻 (1565–1630), Yang Tingyun 楊廷筠 (1562–1627) are called the Three Pillars of the Chinese Church. In fact Ricci’s list of accomplishments is so long that later scholars find it incredible he could have done it all in one lifetime, causing some to remark that Fr. Matteo not only invented sinology, but left only commentary for the rest of us. He became, in Wolfgang Franke’s phrase, the “greatest cultural mediator between China and the West of all time.”
Ricci died in Beijing in 1610. Although you sometimes hear him described in the same terms as the later court astronomers, he never held official appointment, but remained an independent scholar. He did receive an imperial stipend to instruct Palace attendants in the maintenance of the gifts he had brought to the emperor from Europe, clocks, musical instruments, and so on, and after his death he was provided with an elaborate state burial with impressive tombstone, including the surrounding estate which became the Jesuit cemetery of Zhalan.
The early China Jesuits were superbly prepared, but very few in number, so in response to Longobardo’s request for men trained as scientists, three Jesuits set sail in 1618 from Portugal, traveling to Goa for further theological training and then on to Macau together on the same ship: Giacomo Rho 羅雅谷 (1593?-1638), Johann Terrenz (Shreck) 鄧玉函 (1576-1630), and Johann Adam Schall von Bell 湯若望 (1592-1666). Some years later they were joined by the great Flemish astronomer and scientist Ferdinand Verbiest 南懷仁 (1623-1688), who would prove the most illustrious of a very illustrious cohort. It was under the direction of Fr. Verbiest that most of the instruments on display at this exhibit were constructed.
Things literally started off with a bang for Rho, Terrenz, and Schall in Macau. After being there less than a year, the city was blockaded by thirteen Dutch ships under Cornelis Reijersen in an attempted takeover of Portuguese holdings on the peninsula in order to claim trading rights with China, Japan, and the Philippines. The Macau harbor was well defended but a raiding party of Dutch marines (with some Japanese, Bandanese, and Malays) landed on the lightly defended eastern side of the peninsula, a tactic which nearly proved successful. Rho, Schall, and Fr. Bruno (Burro), Superior of St. Paul’s, opened fire with four outmoded cannon set up on a low ridge near the College (where the facade of St. Paul’s College now stands) and managed to strike the Dutch raiders powder store, which exploded amidst them and halted their advance. Turning to the next hill, the Dutch were again repulsed, this time by Maccanese and African recruits (possibly from Madagascar) fighting for the Portuguese. The Dutch raiders were forced to retreat at a cost of several hundred dead and the capture of a Dutch captain by Schall.
Jesuit skill with artillery, cannoneering, casting techniques, and the like were a component of the post-renaissance technological revolution. Metallurgy, gunpowder, navigation, ballistic calculation, and so on, were to prove useful once again during the Manchu conquest, when they fought with the Ming loyalists against the Manchus.
Schall and the other Jesuits in Macau were still unable to enter China due to a general persecution of Christianity instigated by the Chinese official Shen Que, and they spent the next two years studying in Macau, until the prohibition was lifted.
Finally, by January 1623, Schall arrived in Beijing, during the reign of the Wanli emperor, widely regarded as a weak and ineffective monarch who presided over the declining Ming dynasty. Ricci’s greatest friend and ally, Xu Guangqi, baptized as Paul, was director of the Board of Rites, and was deeply concerned for his country. The Japanese had invaded Korea, drawing Chinese troops into the fray, provincial control was weakening, local rebellion, especially the Li Zicheng Rebellion, was a serious problem, and the threat of the Manchu tribes on the northeastern border was growing. After Ricci’s death, Xu and Ricci’s fellow Jesuits, primarily Fr. Nicolò Longobardo, wished to utilize Jesuit expertise in technical matters to solidify their acceptance within the nation, and also help strengthen, support and defend the Ming government.
As Director of the Board of Rites, Xu was concerned with the calendar and the Astronomical Bureau. Aware of Schall’s mathematical and astronomical skills, Xu quickly sought Fr. Schall’s help in reforming the calendar, calculating three lunar eclipses for that year, and composing a small treatise on eclipses, which was presented to the ministry of Rites for consideration.
Schall was permitted to travel to Shaanxi Province where he erected a church in Xi’an and concentrated on learning Chinese and conducting missionary work. He published a book on Christian saints with his friend from Beijing, the scientist Wang Zheng (the Chongyitang riji suibi). But in the Spring of 1630 Schall was urgently summoned to Beijing to replace the ailing Fr. Johann Terrenz. Terrenz had been working in the calendar bureau with fellow Jesuit Giacomo Rho and a team of Chinese assistants. Xu Guangqi, head of the bureau, had commissioned the compilation of basic works of astronomy and mathematics which were presented to the emperor in manuscript, a collection known as the Chongzhen lishu. Schall was also supervising the construction of a new collection of astronomical instruments. When the Jesuits first arrived in the late 1500’s, their cosmological basis was the Ptolemaic system as taught at the Collegio Romano, but when they were commissioned to reform the Chinese calendar in 1629 they replaced it with the Tychonic system. The first European-based revised calendar was presented to the emperor and approved on Feb. 28, 1634.
It was also a dangerous time of political change, for in 1644 the Ming dynasty was overthrown by the Manchus, a Tungusic people from the northeast whose mounted bannermen captured the capital and established the Qing dynasty. In the ensuing chaos, many Chinese officials left the capital and refused to serve their new, alien overlords. This left the Jesuits at court in a delicate position, for, as in Macau against the Dutch, the Jesuits had supported Ming resistance to the end, including (once again) supervising the casting of cannon and artillery to defend the capitol. But the resistance failed, and the Manchus gained control of China. Europeans first learned about the Manchu conquest from the book, De Bello Tartarico, by the Jesuit Martino Martini, a cartographer also residing in Beijing.
The new Manchu rulers did not seek reprisal against Schall or the Jesuits, however. Quite the opposite, as they sought legitimacy with the Chinese people (and bureaucracy), they elected to receive these new astronomical and calendrical techniques as an indication of their intention to maintain traditional Confucian rites and rituals as accurately as possible. It is during the Qing dynasty of the Manchus that the Jesuits appear at court in an official capacity.
During the early 17th century, a period of consolidation of Manchu rule, “predictive competitions” between Chinese, Muslim, and European systems were organized by Chinese authorities to uncover which methods gave the most consistently correct results. By 1645 Jesuit success in these “competitions” led to widespread reform and modification of traditional Chinese methods, such as the promulgation in the same year of the Shixian li, a calendar based on the computations published by Schall in his Xinfa suanshu. Despite conservative opposition, Western stellar mathematics became the basis for Imperial astronomical calculations. The Astronomical Bureau was the platform for Jesuit acceptance, but it was also a place of conflict, jealousies, and cultural tensions.
An example would be the famous “Calendar case” of 1657 (a few year before Kangxi’s enthronement). After the suicide of the last Ming emperor in 1644, the year of the Manchu conquest, Adam Schall presented the reformed calendar to the new Manchu rulers and revised the stellar compendium as the Xiyang xinfa lishu 西洋新法曆書 (Calendar Compendium Following the New Western Method), and the system was promulgated in 1645. Schall subsequently ran the Bureau for twenty years, until 1665. But the reliance on foreign scientists who preached a heterodox sect garnered bitter opposition. In 1657 Wu Mingxuan 吳明烜 (who supported the Islamic version of the lunar calendar), accused Schall of faulty predictions. This accusation was dismissed, but in 1664 the anti-Christian, anti-Jesuit minister, Yang Guangxian 楊光先 re-instated Wu’s accusation of Schall to the Board of Rites, specifically that Schall had deliberately chosen an inauspicious date for the funeral of a Manchu prince, and succeeded in bringing the case to trial. Yang was no astronomer, and attacked Schall, his assistants, and Western methods in general as contrary to the Confucian orthodoxy, an attack reminiscent of those against Galileo and heliocentrism in 1632. (And as in Galileo’s case, little heed was paid to the fact that the new system worked correctly).
The upshot of the trial was that Schall and several Chinese assistants were ordered to be executed by the Board of Punishments, and Verbiest, Buglio, and Magalhães sent into exile. Fate intervened when on the morning of their execution the very next day, a huge earthquake struck north China, an event interpreted as a sign that the sentence was unjust. Schall and the Jesuits were pardoned, and their methods officially confirmed. Tragically, the Jesuits’ Chinese assistants were executed nonetheless. The incident is an illustration of the precarious position of anyone serving at court.
After the ascension of the Kangxi emperor in 1662, Schall and the Jesuits became the emperors tutors, in mathematics and the sciences, languages, and many other subjects. Kangxi met with the Jesuits on a daily basis (as his diaries indicate), and enjoyed his lessons, feeling free to criticize shortcomings in the lesson books the Jesuits drew up for him, because after all, he was the emperor of China. He seemed genuinely fond of the Jesuits, especially the older Schall, who he affectionately called mafa, a Manchu word meaning grampa or gramps. (Which is even more funny when you realize that Schall was famously crabby, irascible and quick-tempered). Part of this was genuine curiosity on Kangxi’s part, part was his view that he had to be able to calculate many of these things himself to make sure his servants were doing their jobs correctly.
Under the magnanimous reign of the great Kangxi emperor, the Jesuits enjoyed official rank and patronage. The Kangxi emperor, who reigned for 60 years, from 1662-1722, appointed Verbiest to replace the aged Schall at the Bureau of Astronomy, and the Jesuits held positions there from 1669 until 1805, by which time the Society had been suppressed. It’s important to remember that throughout this period most of the astronomers were Chinese (many of whom were Christians).
Now we come to some of the instruments displayed at the exhibit. Among the tasks assigned the Jesuits was the manufacture of new astronomical instruments for the Imperial Observatory. Verbiest directed the palace workshops in the production of bronze instruments modeled on the designs of the Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe, which he described in his book Astronomiæ instauratæ mechanica, published in 1598. Some instruments were newly cast, while others were improvements or modifications of existing instruments.
The choice of Brahe’s model was fortunate for several reasons. Brahe’s exceptionally accurate data represented a major achievement in astronomical science, and on the basis of his observations Kepler determined the laws of planetary motion and from these laws Newton derived the law of gravity. It wasn’t until telescopes became widespread that it became possible to get more accurate readings. The Beijing Observatory still holds some surprises: Verbiest built two armillary spheres, instruments tested but deemed unreliable by Tycho, plus a zodiacal armillary, among the most complex and impractical of instruments for measurement, which traces its origins to the Islamic methods of Ptolemy's Almagest.
A set of block prints detailing the general construction of the new astronomical instruments has survived in Verbiest’s text, the Lingtai yixiangzhi 靈臺儀象誌 which was included in the Imperial Encyclopedia Gujin tushu huibian 古今圖書匯, and also in Latin in Verbiest’s Astronomia Europaea sub Imperatore Tártarico Sínico Cam Hy. These provide a record of the steps used to create the six large instruments installed at the observatory, or guanxiangtai 觀象台. The general platform layout built during the 12th century was retained. We see the separate platform mounts and protective bases designed for each instrument, and details of the mathematical divisions required for the armillary. The exhibit contains an enlarged, backlit example of an engraving of the observatory. This engraving actually exists in several forms, depending on the source, and over time was re-engraved as the instruments changed.
One sees in these instruments replicas of the tools of Tycho’s famous observatory, Uraniborg, refashioned in China and modeled directly on the Tychonic precedent but with Chinese adaptation and decoration. All of Tycho Brahe's original instruments are lost, most destroyed during the uprisings in Prague in 1619. The great globe ended up at the Round Tower in Copenhagen, where it was destroyed in the fire of 1728.
There are three major types of instruments at the Beijing Observatory:
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Quadrants and sextants used for determining altitudes and azimuths;
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Armillary instruments for measuring right ascensions and declinations, or longitudes and latitudes with respect to the ecliptic;
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Instruments designed for the determination of angular distances between celestial bodies (sextants and the bipartite arc).
The Jesuit introduction of European astronomical mathematics, calculating instruments, and plane and spherical geometry was highly applicable to the adaptable nature of Chinese astronomy, and enhanced by accurate Chinese observations of stellar phenomena, novae, comets, and so on, dating back more than a millennium. The pace with which these importations were accepted was not only due to their immediate and apparent usefulness, but also to the existence of common astronomical techniques based on a “kernel” of common conceptions of space and time, understood by both Chinese and Europeans. Science historian Jean-Claude Martzloff lists four mutually acceptable propositions for Sino-Jesuit scientific exchange:
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Space and time were both deemed quantifiable on the basis of measurement and cataloging of celestial positions.
Eclipses of the sun and moon, ephemeredes of the sun, moon, and planets, solstices and equinoxes, and other celestial phenomena, were considered mathematically predictable from computational techniques, using ready-made computations (tables) and particular algorithmic prescriptions free from the hold of astrology.
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Criterion of validation of predictions hinged on the agreement between the result of predictive computations and observation.
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The perfectibility of predictive systems, i.e. the possibility of reducing the margin of error between theoretical predictions and real observations was generally granted by the most influential astronomers.
Here we might list just a few of the many astronomical treatises and tables that were produced by the Jesuits. The Tianwen lüe 天文略 (Epitome of Questions on the Heavens, 1615) by Manuel Dias, which describe Galileo’s invention of the telescope and the observations he reported; the Yuanjing shuo 遠鏡說 (Explanation of the Telescope, 1626) by Adam Schall, containing the first account of the Tychonic world system, and the Cetian yueshuo 測天約說 (Brief Explanation of the Measurement of the Heavens, 1628), which further discussed the system; Giacomo Rho’s Celiang quanyi 測量全義 (Full Meaning of Mensuration, 1631), devoted to Tycho’s astronomical instruments; celestial atlases such as the Chidao nanbei liang zongxing tu 赤道南北兩總星圖 (General Star Map of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres Divided by the Equator, 1634); Jean-François Foucquet’s Lifa wenda 曆法問答 (Dialogue on Astronomy, 1712-16), introduced Copernican theory and elliptical orbits (though geocentrism was still official, the issue was more about power struggles within the Society, especially between the French and “Portuguese”over mission tactics); when the Church's formal ban on discussion of heliocentricism ended in 1757, Fr. Michel Benoist (1715-1774) quickly produced an accurate account of the Copernican theory and added it to the text legends of his revised world map, the Kunyu quantu 坤輿全圖 of 1761.
Jesuit importation of European scientific techniques not only contributed to the revision of Chinese methods, but it also stimulated Chinese scholars to look to their own scientific tradition, and to tackle the difficult task of reconstructing ancient mathematical works and scientific apparatus described in the historical record. New interest in Han and Song era technology in particular resulted in reconstructions of armillaries, sighting tubes, clocks, clepsydras, transmissions, and automata of various types. Su Hong’s astronomical clock, ca. 1088, represented at this exhibit in a beautiful replica of reduced size, is particularly interesting. The works of Guo Shoujing, a Yuan dynasty astronomer, mathematician, and engineer were reexamined. Guo was also a hydrographer, in charge of irrigation and watercourse regulation, but also developed a new calendar and designed astronomical instruments, a benefit from contact with Islamic scholars from Persia.
Some of China’s greatest scientists and astronomers worked with the Jesuits of this period, though most were not employed at Court but studied independently.Ye Xianggao 葉向高 (1559–1627), and Wang Zheng 王徵 (1576– 1630), who, like most of the observatory assistants, became Christians, were renowned as mathematicians. Astronomers Xue Fengzuo 薛鳳祚 (1600-1680), who studied with Nicolas Smogulecki in the Jiangnan region, introduced the Western horoscope in the Tianbu zhenyuan 天步真原 (True Source of the Pacing of the Heavens, 1646). In the Lixue huitong 曆學會通 (Integrated Calendrical Studies, 1670), Xue introduced applied spherical geometry and logarithms applied to the computation of ephemeredes.
Wang Xishan 王錫闡 (1628-1682), drew on the Tychonic schema to construct his own cosmological model (while pointing out contradictions in the Jesuits’ writings) in the Wuxing xingdu jie 五星行度解 (Explanation of the Five Planets’ Angular Motions, 1673), a physical rather than merely geometrical account of planetary motion, proposing forces of attraction similar to magnetism.
Mei Wending 梅文鼎 (1633-1721), by far the most famous mathematician and astronomer of the period, who studied both Chinese and Western methods, produced calendrical studies which emphasized accuracy, such as in his Lixue yiwen 曆學疑問 (Doubts on the Calendar, 1704). He also placed European astronomy in a general historical framework that linked it to developments elsewhere.
That certain sciences such as astronomy, calendrical studies, mathematics, and cartography played an important role in the Jesuit model of evangelization is readily apparent. The Jesuits were (nearly) the only missionaries to adopt this strategy, and no other mission in the world used science so extensively and systematically as in China. But here we must note that not everyone agreed with this approach to evangelization and cultural exchange. Schall and Verbiest were not unchallenged, even within the Jesuit mission. Schall was accused of “having accepted a position incompatible with the oath taken by the Jesuits and of compromising with Chinese superstitions” though Rome eventually sided with Schall since it was he who had secured the Jesuit position in Beijing. Yet despite two centuries of impressive achievements, conditions both within and outside of China changed, and the position of the Jesuits and Western influence in general was gradually reduced.
While a few select Jesuits held distinguished positions at the court, gradually their position became less central. While the Kangxi emperor was directly involved with, and even fond of, his Jesuit advisors and tutors, things changed under the Qianlong reign. The Qianlong emperor employed Jesuits as painters, cartographers, and astronomers at court, but they were more and more isolated and consumed with the many official tasks assigned them by the emperor. Much more problematic was the fact that the Qianlong emperor was indifferent or even hostile towards Christianity itself, and in the wide countryside, where most Jesuit and other missionaries lived and worked, there were many injunctions and prohibitions against the faith. Thus, while at court the Jesuits were obliged to keep producing, their co-religionists elsewhere suffered varying degrees of repression. Furthermore, the disastrous result of what is called the Chinese Rites Controversy, which in effect branded Confucianism and its rituals as incompatible with Christianity, doomed the mission to the literati class that Ricci had so thoughtfully accommodated. The last straw was the suppression of the Society of Jesus by Pope Clement XIV in 1773. Although the Chinese emperor was not obliged to follow this directive, as the Jesuits in China died or went underground, their numbers dwindled. Their libraries, churches, and institutions passed to other religious orders. It would be forty-one years until, on August 14, 1814, Pope Pius VII permitted the restoration of the Society of Jesus, and it would take years more before the Jesuits could return to China. When they did, in the mid 19th century, the balance of power in the world had changed. The end of the Enlightenment and the coming of the Industrial Revolution, the Age of Imperialism, the era of unequal treaties, and the arrival of missionaries from northern Europe, Great Britain, and the United States posed great challenges for China, and the struggle of the late Qing bureaucracy to deal with these new challenges profoundly affected Chinese-Western relations.
What about the Chinese view? One can see that, insofar as Western learning versus Chinese learning issue is concerned, Chinese scholars faced and accepted the foreign origins of these theories, and assumed the unity of the human mind and the universality of principles spoken of previously. But even when first introduced in the late Ming dynasty, many Chinese scholars asserted that all the mathematics and astronomy taught by the Jesuits had sources in ancient Chinese wisdom (Xixue Zhongyuan 西學中源), assertions that were encouraged by Kangxi and scientists such as Mei Wending. By the late 18th century Chinese opinion was that the Jesuits had done nothing original but only retrieved the knowledge of the ancient sages. These opinions, which seem at first look unfair, provided legitimization of Western learning, in effect sinicizing imported techniques as had been done in the past. This rediscovery of the Chinese scientific tradition gradually undermined the lesson that China had absorbed knowledge from other cultures. Many scholars produced works with the idea that ancient Chinese inventiveness not only prefigured later European modifications, but actually that European science was in fact based on Chinese discoveries. The Qianlong Emperor himself says as much in his letters, believing that Western methods merely reflected refinement of earlier Chinese techniques.
Nonetheless, by the end of the early Jesuit presence in China, Western mathematics and astronomy had become part of the shared culture of scholars such as Jiang Yong 江永 and Dai Zhen 戴震. In Ruan Yuan’s 阮元 Chouren zhuan 疇人傳 (or Biographies of Mathematicians and Astronomers, 1799), the Jesuits are named along with Euclid, Archimedes, Copernicus, and Tycho Brahe. Western learning had been absorbed into Chinese history, and the learning went both ways. Europeans learned new histories, new philosophies, new cultures, new “spices” so to speak. Sometimes its hard to tell a source. For example, the Chinese music you heard playing as you entered the auditorium this evening was written by Qian Deming. Who was Qian Deming? He was the French Jesuit Joseph-Marie Amiot, who composed it in Beijing in 1780. When he died in 1793, he was one of the last of his order in China of the old mission.
I called this paper The Mechanics of Heaven because of the double meaning of the term “mechanics.” In one sense it implies the mechanical, physical workings of things, of nature, or of the universe. In another sense it describes “a mechanic or mechanics," persons who use, repair, or create tools and mechanical devices. Here it’s used as a reference to the Jesuits and their Chinese associates who may be regarded as “mechanics," in the sense that they built these instruments to study “Heaven” in both its physical (astronomical) and spiritual forms. These techniques were tools for the understanding and confirmation of an underlying universal design. A similarly dual meaning suffuses the term Tianxue 天學 or Celestial Studies, which may be translated as the study of astronomy/astrology (“the heavens,” what nowadays would be called in Chinese tianwenxue 天文學). But during the late Ming dynasty the term Tianxue also became a euphemistic reference for Christianity (“Heaven Studies”). In the long history of cultural exchange between China and the West, astronomy was probably the most important area of connection, an area which stimulated many Chinese scientists and scholars to both study new Western methods and to re-examine their own scientific legacy. At the same time this connection provided Europeans with their first accurate accounts of contemporary Chinese civilization, history, and geography
A piece of the legacy of this 200-year-long contact can be seen in the Dragon Skies exhibit. Like the Jesuits in Beijing, Tycho was careful to raise his work above mere worldly concerns. In a passage that might have been uttered by a Confucian, Tycho links nobility with astronomy itself. He wrote in the Mechanica that: “the person who cultivates divine Astronomy ought not to be influenced by ignorant judgments, but rather look upon them from his elevated position, considering the cultivation of his studies the most precious of all things, and remaining indifferent to the coarseness of others. And when statesmen or others bother him too much, then he should leave with his possessions.
When you visit the Beijing Observatory today, it's like stepping back in time, until you notice that there are wide boulevards filled with traffic and large hotels across the street. Then it can seem as though everything has changed, except for the stars themselves. (Top)
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