Gézhì cǎo 格致草
A Draft of the Investigation of Things and Extension of Knowledge by 熊明遇 (撰)
About the work
The Gézhì cǎo 格致草 (“Draft on the Investigation of Things and Extension of Knowledge”) is the principal late-Míng synthesis of Western (Jesuit-imported) Aristotelian-Ptolemaic natural philosophy with classical Chinese géwù / gézhì doctrine, composed by 熊明遇 Xióng Míngyù (1579–1649) in the late 1620s — early 1640s and first printed in 1644 (the last year of the Míng dynasty proper). The catalog extent field “1628–1644” records the composition dates of the work, not a juan count, and these have been taken into the notBefore / notAfter of the frontmatter (with notAfter extended to 1648, the last plausible date of authorial revision before Xióng’s death in 1649).
Abstract
Xióng Míngyù befriended several Jesuit missionaries in Beijing and the Nánjīng region in the 1610s–1620s, including Niccolò Longobardo 龍華民, Sambiasi 畢方濟, Schreck (Terrenz) 鄧玉函 and others. The Gézhì cǎo is the systematic upshot of his interactions: it presents Western cosmology — the Aristotelian four-elements, the Ptolemaic-Tychonic sphere-system as it was taught by the Jesuits before they shifted to the Riccian-Verbiest models, the geography of the spherical earth and its climatic zones, the theory of meteors, comets and atmospheric phenomena, the doctrine of human physiology and the senses — alongside, and frequently in synthesis with, the SòngMíng lǐxué 理學 and qì-cosmological tradition. Xióng’s strategy is not to substitute the Western for the Chinese but to argue that the Western data refine, illustrate and confirm what the Classics had already implied.
The work is divided thematically: (a) cosmological frame (tàijí, qì, the four elements); (b) the heavens (the sphere-system, the celestial motions, the Sun, Moon and planets, eclipses); (c) the earth (sphericity, climatic zones, antipodes, the ocean tides); (d) meteorological / sublunary phenomena (winds, rain, halos, comets); (e) human physiology and the senses. The 1644 edition has illustrations adapted from Jesuit translations and from Chinese tradition.
Modern scholarship (notably Han Qi 韓琦, Standaert, Peterson, Catherine Jami) treats the Gézhì cǎo as the single most important Chinese late-Míng work in the East-West scientific dialogue, more synoptic than Xú Guāngqǐ’s individual translations and more systematically integrated with Confucian thought than Wàng Zhēng’s mechanical translations. The work was reprinted in the early Qīng with substantial editorial commentary by Xióng’s son Xióng Rénlín 熊人霖, who appended his own Dìwěi 地緯 (a geographical companion).
The catalog identifier KXDLJ0031265 corresponds to the modern reprint in the Zhōngguó kēxué jìshù diǎnjí tōnghuì.
Translations and research
- Peterson, Willard J. 1973. “Western Natural Philosophy Published in Late Ming China.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117: 295–322. — the foundational English-language treatment of the Gé-zhì cǎo in its Sino-Jesuit context.
- Peterson, Willard J. 1976. “From Interest to Indifference: Fang I-chih and Western Learning.” Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i 3.5: 60–80. — places Xióng among the next generation including Fāng Yǐzhì 方以智.
- Standaert, Nicolas (ed.). 2001. Handbook of Christianity in China, Volume One: 635–1800. Leiden: Brill. — chapters on Jesuit-Chinese natural philosophy use the Gé-zhì cǎo as a principal source.
- Han Qi 韓琦 1999. “Astronomy, Chinese and Western: The Influence of Xu Guangqi’s Views in the Early and Mid-Qing Period.” Statecraft and Intellectual Renewal in Late Ming China, ed. C.A. Peterson et al. — situates Xióng in the longer history.
- 馮錦榮 Féng Jǐnróng. 1997. “Mingmo Xiong Mingyu Gezhi cao chuhan” 明末熊明遇格致草初探. Ziran kexueshi yanjiu 16: 295–306.
Other points of interest
The Gézhì cǎo is the locus classicus for the late-Míng Chinese encounter with the idea of a spherical, rotating earth. Xióng accepts the sphericity (he was the first major Chinese scholar to do so openly in print) but resists the heliocentric implications that would only become available with Verbiest’s 1670s teaching. The intellectual ancestry to the Qīng “xīxué zhōngyuán 西學中源” thesis (Western learning has Chinese origins) is direct: that thesis is in nuce already in Xióng’s strategy of demonstrating Confucian anticipation.
Links
- Successor: Dìwěi 地緯 (Xióng Rénlín 熊人霖); Fāng Yǐzhì Wùlǐ xiǎoshí 物理小識.
- Jesuit interlocutors: Niccolò Longobardo 龍華民, Sambiasi 畢方濟, Schreck/Terrenz 鄧玉函.
- Person: 熊明遇 (CBDB 64213).
- Wikipedia (zh): https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/熊明遇