Xuánjī yíshù 璇璣遺述
Bequeathed Discourses on the Jade-Mechanism by 揭暄 (撰)
About the work
The Xuánjī yíshù is the principal cosmological-astronomical work in nine juǎn by 揭暄 Jiē Xuān (1613–1695), a Míng-loyalist yímín 遺民 (“leftover-subject”) who refused to serve the Qīng and produced this synthesis in retirement. The title Xuánjī 璇璣 alludes to the Shàngshū·Shùn diǎn phrase Xuánjī yùhéng 璇璣玉衡 — the canonical name for the armillary sphere, here used metonymically for the heavens and their workings; yíshù 遺述 (“bequeathed discourses”) gestures at the yímín status of the author.
Abstract
Composition window: Jiē’s retirement years, c. 1675 to his death in 1695. The work is one of the most striking late-17th-century Chinese works of natural philosophy precisely because Jiē developed his positions largely outside the Jesuit-Beijing axis. Jiē had heard of, but not directly studied with, the Jesuit missionaries; his information about Western astronomy came indirectly through Fāng Yǐzhì 方以智 and Fāng Zhōngtōng 方中通 (who had absorbed Schall and was disseminating his views in Wàngjí). Jiē accepts the sphericity of the earth and the geo-heliocentric Tychonic planetary scheme as observational positions, but goes further in proposing a xuánfēng 旋風 (“whirling-wind”, “vortex”) theory of celestial motion: each celestial body is carried along in a great vortex of qì, the vortices nested concentrically and the inner ones rotating faster (the gōngzhuǎn 公轉 / zìzhuǎn 自轉 distinction).
The work treats: (a) the cosmological framework of qì and the vortex; (b) the structure of the heavens — tàixū 太虛, the jiǔtiān 九天 stratification, the sphere of the fixed stars; (c) solar, lunar and planetary motion under the vortex theory; (d) eclipses, comets and meteors; (e) the fēnyě 分野 system reconsidered in light of the spherical earth; (f) tides as effect of the moon-vortex; (g) the relation between Chinese and Western astronomical observation; (h) the relation between observational science and Confucian cosmology; (i) a closing summary of corrections to received doctrine.
The work was preserved in the Sìkù wèishōu shū jíkān (the Sìkù quánshū compilers excluded it on political grounds related to its yímín author) and is reprinted in the Zhōngguó kēxué jìshù diǎnjí tōnghuì (refid KX03-07-025). It was rediscovered for modern scholarship by Joseph Needham in the 1950s.
Translations and research
- Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. III, Cambridge: CUP, 1959, 222–227, 252–253. — Needham’s important first Western discussion; cautiously compares Jiē’s vortex theory to Descartes’s tourbillons.
- Shi Yunli 石雲里. 1995. “Jiē Xuān Xuán-jī yí-shù-zhōng de yǔ-zhòu lùn yánjiū” 揭暄《璇璣遺述》中的宇宙論研究. Ziran kexueshi yanjiu 14: 222–230.
- Shi Yunli 石雲里 1996. Zhōngguó tiānwénxué shǐ wén-jí 中國天文學史文集 vol. 7 — the standard modern Chinese-language study of Jiē’s natural philosophy.
- Chu Pingyi 祝平一 (ed.). 2003. Jí kē-xué yǔ rén-wén — Kē-xué shǐ yánjiū 集科學與人文 — Tribute to Shi Yunli on Jiē Xuān research.
- Peterson, Willard J. 1976. “From Interest to Indifference: Fang I-chih and Western Learning.” Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i 3.5: 60–80. — sets out the Fāng-circle context.
Other points of interest
The Xuánjī yíshù is one of the clearest cases in pre-modern Chinese science of an independent (or near-independent) reception of a Western position — Jiē’s vortex theory is at the very least a convergent theoretical move with the Cartesian tourbillon tradition, although it was developed without direct knowledge of Descartes. Modern historians of cross-cultural science (Needham, Sivin, Shi Yunli) use Jiē as a test-case for the conditions under which non-trivial scientific positions can be reached on parallel tracks across cultural boundaries.
Links
- Person: 揭暄 (1613–1695).
- Intellectual neighbours: Fāng Yǐzhì 方以智; Fāng Zhōngtōng 方中通; Shùdù yǎn 數度衍.
- Related cosmological synthesis: KR3fa019 Gézhì cǎo (Xióng Míngyù).
- Wikipedia (zh): https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/揭暄