The Transmission of Western Science Into China 1840-1900.

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1

The transmission of Western science into China 1840-1900

by David Frank Aston Wright

Ph.D.thesis 1995

School of Oriental and African Studies,London University

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2 Abstract

This thesis examines the process,practice and issues surrounding the transmission of Western science into China 1840-1900. It opens with a discussion of the previous (Jesuit) transmission of Western science,and the nature of the Chinese paradigms which the Jesuits tried to displace.

The nineteenth-century Western chemical paradigms which were to be transmitted are then considered,together with the rapidly changing nature of the subject and the consequent problems for the translators and their readers.

The context of the transmission in China is discussed, especially the nature of the kaozheng

[evidential research] scholarly community in the Jiangnan region of China which,I hope to show,played an important role in the reception of science.

The special problems of translation from Western languages into Chinese are then dealt with,including the transliteration of terms and the creation of new characters. Parallels are drawn with the methods of the Buddhist translators and of the early nineteenth-century Chinese geographers.

There follow studies of the translation of chemical terminology,of a selection of important science textbooks,and of two Western agents of transmission,John Fryer and Calvin Mateer.

The lives of Chinese scientists Li Shanlan ^ # M , X u Shou^

®P,Xu Jianyin M ^ and Hua Hengfang W f&r 5? are studied,followed by a chapter on the new institutions which they and the Westerners created. The remarkably rich popular science literature such as Gezhi Huibian is then analysed,and conclusions drawn about the nature of

popular interest in science in this period.

3

The intellectual impact of Western science in the last decade of the century is considered,especially the effects on the thinking of Tan Sitong and Kang Youwei

Finally,general conclusions are elaborated and the significance of the transmission is assessed.

4 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Elizabeth Frankland-Moore and the Sino-British Fellowship Trust; Berkshire County Council; Mr J.M.Hawe,Ms J.Traies and the Governors of Easthampstead Park School,Bracknell for their encouragement and support during the five years of research leading to this thesis.

I am also grateful to the librarians of the East Asian Library and the Bancroft Library,University of California,Berkeley; the University of Birmingham; the British Library(Bloomsbury) and the British Library(Oriental Collection); the Bodleian Library,Oxford;

the Church Missionary Society; Cambridge University Library; the University of Nebraska; the Presbyterian Historical Society,Philadelphia; the Royal Chemical Society,the Royal Society; the School of Oriental and African Studies,London University; the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine,London; and Yale Divinity Library.

It is a pleasure to be able to thank the following individuals who have given me information,advice and encouragement: Dr Nigel Allan,Bridie Andrews,Charles Aylmer,Sarah Childerstone,Dr Nicola Di Cosmo,Professor B.Elman,Kazuko Forrester,Dr Brian Gee,Andrew Grout,Dr Bonnie Hardwicke,Catherine Lamb,Liu Binghui,Liu Wuyin,Dr M . L o e w e , J o h n M o f f e t t ,L i n d a L .P a r k e r ,M i s s C.L.Penney,Professor Nathan Sivin,Martha L.Smalley,Dr G.Tiedemann,Togo Tsukahara,Helen Wang(Curator of Far Eastern Coins,British Museum),Dr Frances Wood,and Nicholas Wright. None of them bears any responsibility for any mistakes I may have made despite their help.

I shall always remember the generous help and hospitality I received in California from Jane and Christopher Lamb;

and the guidance of the Fryer scholar Dr F.Dagenais,who,as

5 well as sharing his detailed knowledge of Fryer's life and work,also showed me Mountain View Cemetery,the place to which John Fryer was finally translated.

I owe special debts of gratitude to Professor T .Barrett,who first allowed me to make this late start in the field of historical research; to Richard King,Richard Wang and especially to Wing-Commander R.F.Sloss,who in 1976-77 gave me the opportunity for full-time study of the language of transmission; and to Liu Bingchen for teaching me to read Chinese handwriting. To my supervisor,Dr Christopher Cullen,without whose support and help it would never have been finished,I owe thanks not only for the many hours of stimulating conversation and encouragement,which allowed me eventually to make the final conversion of the material I had gathered into something resembling a thesis,but also for his careful reading of previous drafts.

I alone am responsible for any errors and omissions which remain.

Finally,I would like to express my gratitude to my parents; and to my wife Mai and my children Tom,Emma and Adam,for their forbearance of my long preoccupation with nineteenth-century China,when I could have been giving my time to them.

David Wright

Bracknell May 1995

6 Contents

Chapter 1 The scope and argument of the thesis

1.0 Western science and its varieties 1.1 Aspects of the Western scientific

paradigm

1.2 The intellectual matrix of early nineteenth-century China

1.3 The political context of transmission 1.4 The foreign agents of the

transmission of Western science

1.5 Missionaries and the transmission process

1.6 The translation of texts 1.7 The Chinese scientists

1.8 The institutions and journals promoting Western science

1.9 The Chinese origins of Western science and the attempts at a synthesis 1.10 The general framework

1.11 Sources of evidence

1.12 Other works on the nineteenth- century transmission of Western science into China

1.13 Conclusion

Chapter 2 The Chinese science paradigms and the earlier transmissions of science to China

2.0 Chinese alchemy before the Jesuits

2.1 The Jesuit introduction of Western chemical science to China

7

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

2.2 The existing Chinese paradigms 2.3 Science and the Macartney

Mission

2.4 Conclusion

The Western chemical paradigms 1840-1900

3.0 Introduction

3.1 Science and industry 3.2 The science of chemistry 3.3 Conclusion

The transmission of Western science into China 1840-1900

4.0 Introduction

4.1 The precedent of the transmission of Buddhism

4.2 The desire for Western military technology

4.3 The kaozheng movement in Jiangnan 4.4 The periodization of the

transmission of Western science into China 1840-1900

4.5 Conclusion

On translation

5.0 On translation

5.1 What is translation?

5.2 The organisation of translations 5.3 Methods of translation

5.4 The translation of scientific t^xts into Chinese

5.5 Conclusion

Chapter 6 The translation of Western chemical nomenclature and concepts into Chinese

6.0 Introduction

6.1 The need for a new Chinese nomenclature

6.2 The translation of the names of the chemical elements

6.3 The naming of inorganic compounds 6.4 The naming of organic compounds 6.5 The alchemical influence on nomenclature

6.6 The concept of a chemical element 6.7 The concept of particles

6.8 The persistence of the Chinese paradigm

6.9 Conclusion

Chapter 7 Science textbooks in China 1850-1900 7.0 Introduction

7.1 'Auxiliary of virtue'

7.2 Natural theology and the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China

7.3 God the Creator and Designer 7.4 Bowu tongshu

7.5 Bowu xinbian 1 .6 Gewu rumen

7.7 Huaxue chujie and Huaxue jianyuan 1 .8 Huaxue zhinan and Huaxue shanyuan 1 .9 Gewu tanyuan

7.10 Conclusion

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Two foreign agents of transmission: John Fryer and Calvin Mateer

8.0 Introduction 8.1 John Fryer 8.2 Calvin Mateer 8.3 Conclusion The Chinese scientists

9.0 Introduction 9.1 Li Shanlan

9.2 Xu Shou and Xu Jianyin 9.3 Hua Hengfang

9.4 Conclusion

Science in the new institutions

10. 0 Introduction

10. 1 The modern government schools 10.2 The Shanghai Polytechnic

10. 3 The missionary schools 10.4 Conclusion

Science journalism

11.0 Introduction n . i Liuhe Congtan 11.2 Jiaohui Xinbao 11.3 Wanguo Gongbao

11.4 Zhong-Xi Wenjian Lu 11.5 Gezhi Huibian

11. 6 Gezhi Xinbao

11.7 Journals of the Hundred Days Movement

11.8 Conclusion

The intellectual impact of Western science in China 12.0 Introduction

12.1 The Chinese origin of Western science

10 12.2 Western science in Christian tracts 12.3 Attempts at a synthesis of Chinese philosophy with Western science

12.4 Conclusion

Chapter 13 Conclusions: The translation of Western science into China 1840-1900

13.0 Introduction

13.1 Models of transmission

13.2 The translation of people and technology

13.3 The translation of texts

13.4 The translation of institutions 13.5 The inoculation of science into philosophical discourse

13.6 Translation into politics and religion:the suasive uses of science 13.7 Comparisons with Japan and India

13.8 The sinicising of Western science:importing new paradigms into an ancient culture

Articles included with this thesis

David Wright,'Tan Sitong and the ether reconsidered' in BSOAS lvii(1994),551-575

David Wright,'Careers in Western science in nineteenth- century China: Xu Shou and Xu Jianyin' in JRAS 5,1(1995),49-90

List of figures

Figure 1. The Greek Four Element theory,as illustrated in Matteo Ricci's Qiankun tiyi

Figure 2. A diagram illustrating the connections between language,the phenomenal world and the concepts of Chinese natural philosophy

Figure 3. The steamship Nemesis

Figure 4. A drawing of a steamship by Ding Gongzhen in Yanpao tushuo

Figure 5. Ding Gongzhen's drawing of a foreign gun showing the use of a sight

Figure 6. The Jinling Arsenal

Figure 7. A railway engine,drawn by Ding Gongzhen

Figure 8. The opening of the Wusong to Shanghai railway Figure 9. The region of equivalence between two utterances in LI and L2

Figure 10. The semantic space between two utterances in LI and L2

Figure 11. The relationship of 'book' to shu • Figure 12. The relationship of 'vanadium' to fan

Figure 13. The triadic relationship of graph to morpheme to phoneme in the Chinese language

Figure 14. A genealogy of the modern Chinese nomenclature of the chemical elements

Figure 15. The front cover of Bowu tongshu(1851) Figure 16. The dancing figures in Bowu tongshu(1851)

Figure 17. Electricity being used to treat paralysis of the leg in Bowu tongshu(1851)

Figure 18. An induction coil in Bowu tongshu{1851)

Figure 19. A disc engraved with Manchu characters(to be used for telegraphy) in Bowu tongshu(1851)

Figure 20. The front cover of Bowu xinbian(1855 edition).

Figure 21. Chemical experiments illustrated in Bowu xinbian(1855).

Figure 22. The front cover of Gewu rumen(1868 edition) Figure 23. Illustrations of chemical experiments in Gewu rumen(18 68).

12 Figure 24. Illustrations from Huaxue chujie(1870).

Figure 25. Diagram of a still in Huaxue zhinan(1873) .

Figure 26. A porcupine and a kangaroo, from Gewu tanyuan(1876).

Figure 27. A portrait of John Fryer

Figure 28. A portrait of Calvin Wilson Mateer.

Figure 29. A portrait of Li Shanlan

Figure 30. The front cover of Zhiwuxue [Botany](1853),with the calligraphy of Li Shanlan

Figure 31. A portrait of Xu Shou Figure 32. A portrait of Xu Jianyin

Figure 33. A diagram of shell trajectories,as shown in Zhongxue [Mechanics](1859)

Figure 34. A portrait of William Alexander Parsons Martin Figure 35. A proposed 'Crystal Palace' design for the Shanghai Polytechnic

Figure 36. A portrait of Rev.Zou Liwen,the collaborator of Calvin Mateer on several mathematics and science textbooks Figure 37. Science apparatus used by Dr William Wilson in Suiding Fu,Sichuan around 1903.

Figure 38. The front cover of Wanguo Gongbao(19th August,1876)

Figure 39. A portrait of Young J.Allen

Figure 40. The back cover of Gezhi Huibian (September 1876) Figure 41. The front cover of Zhixin mianbingfa(1896)

Acknowledgements of permission to reproduce these illustrations are given beneath each figure. I have endeavoured to trace the copyright- owners of all figures, and apologise to those whom I have been unable to contact.

13 List: of tables

Table 1. The Chinese translations used for the chemical elements 1850-1900

Table 2. The explanations of the characters used for the chemical elements in Huaxue zhinan

Table 3. A comparison of terms used in early modern chemical texts

Table 4.The naming of inorganic compounds in early modern chemistry texts

Table 5. The naming of organic compounds in early modern Chinese sources

Table 6. The terms for 'element' in various translated Chinese sources

Table 7. The terms for 'particle' and 'atom' in early modern chemistry texts

Table 8. Needle positions for indicating the component strokes of Chinese characters,as proposed in Bowu tongshu.

Table 9. A comparison of the Huaxue chujie and Huaxue jianyuan translations of David Wells' Principles and applications of chemistry

Table 10. The time-lag between certain Western science source-texts and their Chinese translations

Table 11. The numbers of students studying science,mathematics and medicine at the Beijing Tongwenguan Table 12. Missionary schools teaching Western science around 1895

Table 13. Science textbooks used in missionary schools around 1895

Table 14. The percentage of articles on various subject- areas in Gezhi Huibian 1876-1892.

Table 15. The circulations of some late Qing periodicals

Chapter 1. The scope and argument of the thesis 14

Chapter 1. The scope and argument of the thesis 1

This thesis examines the processes and results of the transmission of nineteenth-century Western science into China during the period 1840-1900. One of the aims will be to show the complexity of this process,which involved the Western science of the period,the motives of the Western agents of transmission,the actual process of transmission, the Chinese matrix into which Western science was transmitted,and the responses which Western science evoked

in the Chinese themselves.

1.0 Western science and its varieties

The transmission of Western science to China during the nineteenth century has been given little scholarly attention,and the little it has received has been from a general historical and sinological standpoint rather than as an aspect of the history of science.2 The assumption has generally been that transmission occurred through translated science textbooks,with Chinese people reading and understanding(or misunderstanding) them: a slow,painful process,but not in itself problematic.

The reality turns out to be more complex and more interesting. The complexity of the transmission process derives partly from the multivalency of the component elements : 'Western science' was not a single entity,but a collection of i d e a s ,p r o c e s s e s ,tech n i q u e s and institutions,sharing only a 'family resemblance' of disciplined,cumulative inquiry into the natural world.

Within this 'science',the individual disciplines were

1 I have found useful on the general issues of transmission:

R.G.A.Dolby,'The transmission of science' in HS 15(1977),1-45;

Patrick Petitjean,Catherine Jami and Anne Marie Moulin (eds.)Science and empires(Dordrecht:Kluwer Academic Publishers,1992).

2 For instance James Reardon-Anderson,The science of change:

chemistry in China 1840-1949(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,1991).

Chapter 1. The scope and argument of the thesis 15 actually at quite different stages of development,and were progressing at quite different rates during the period in question.

Some of the theoretical concepts employed in nineteenth-century Western science (such as the ether) had at least something in common with traditional Chinese thought,whilst other notions (such as current electricity,or the atomic theory) had no Chinese counterpart. The interaction between the traditional Chinese concepts and the Western models was relatively slight (outside the realm of medicine3) , but, where it occurred, it is revealing of the unexpected ways in which the same ideas can be developed in different cultural contexts,and of how within the process of transmission the object of transmission was subtly altered by the recipient culture.

Chemistry was in many respects at the leading edge of Western science during the nineteenth century. Following the clarification of the nature of combustion and of the nature of chemical elements towards the end of the eighteenth century through the work of Antoine Lavoisier(1743-1794),Joseph Priestley(1733-1804), Joseph Black(1728-1799) , Carl Scheele(1742-1786) , Humphry Davy (1778- 1840),and others,there was rapid progress in the inorganic and organic fields of chemistry,with spectacular growth in the numbers of new compounds synthesised,some of which found applications in the new industries centred around the manufacture of textiles. William Whewell,writing of the Great Exhibition in 1851,contrasted the products of mining with those of the new science-based industries:

3 This will be a proviso which will be frequently made in the course of this discussion. Chinese medicine and Western medicine have followed parallel courses of development,and although modern Chinese medicine has been influenced by the Western paradigms it has not been absorbed by them.

Chapter 1. The scope and argument of the thesis 16 In the former class [Mining and Mineral Products] art existed before science; men could shape,and melt,and purify,and combine the metals for their practical purposes, before they knew anything of the chemistry of metals; before they knew that to purify them was to expel oxygen or sulphur; that combination may be definite or indefinite. But in the second class[Chemical Processes and Products] science has not only overtaken art,but is the whole foundation,the entire creator of the art. Here art is the daughter of science. The great chemical manufactories which have sprung up at Liverpool, at Newcastle, at Glasgow, owe their existence to a profound and scientific knowledge of chemistry. These arts could never have existed if there had not been a science of chemistry; and that,an exact and philosophical science.4

These new chemical industries were proof that science was able to generate completely new technologies. One result of the rapid growth of chemical science,pure and applied,was a need for new systems of nomenclature which would reflect deepening theoretical understanding . In transmitting the complex of ideas called 'chemistry',some of which had been clarified,with others remaining in a state of confusion, it was inevitable that the results of transmission would themselves be in some disarray.

1.1 Aspects of the Western scientific paradigm

In Chapter 3 I shall describe those aspects of mid­

nineteenth century chemistry which were particularly

4 William Whewell,'The general bearing of the Great Exhibition on the progress of art and science' in Lectures on the results of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (London: David Bogue,1852),1-34 pp.28-29

Chapter 1. The scope and argument of the thesis 17 problematic,particularly the ideas of atomic and equivalent weights and the notations in use for representing chemical

formulae.

I shall also show in Chapter 6 that some of the modern criticisms of the Chinese chemical translations are due to a misunderstanding of the state of contemporary Western chemistry,and that they can only be understood in terms of the persistence of the use of dualistic and equivalent formulae in the source-texts chosen by the translators.

1.2 The intellectual matrix of early nineteenth-century China

Within the Chinese tradition there had been a number of brilliant individual scholars who had turned their attention to aspects of natural science,but there was no field of knowledge which was co-extensive with 'science' as understood in the West.5 China had of course its own intellectual traditions which were themselves distinctive a n d v a r i o u s , a n d n o t s u s c e p t i b l e to a simplistic,anhistorical summary of 'Chinese thought',but nevertheless I risk a brief account of the chief ideas of Chinese natural philosophy in Chapter 2, in order to explain how attempts were made either to refute them or to

incorporate them within the Western paradigm.

By the early nineteenth century,the influence of the early Jesuit missionaries in stimulating interest in native Chinese mathematics and astronomy had waned. This was however a time of great intellectual change within China(quite apart from the so-called 'responses' to the West),and some of these changes proved favourable towards the reception of natural science. In particular,the kaozheng ^ H[evidential research] movement in late Qing

5 Nathan Sivin,'Why the Scientific Revolution did not take place in China — or didn't it?' in C S (1982,5),45-66 p.48

Chapter 1. The scope and argument of the thesis 18 China in preparing the ground for the early modern scientists such as Xu Shou f&i? (1818-1884) ,and the revival of Buddhism,another foreign implant,played an important role in the late Qing eclecticism of Kang Youwei ^

(1858-1927) and Tan Sitong If Is) (1865-1898) .

1.3 The political context of transmission

The political context of the transmission was a country large areas of which were in rebellion for much of the period,whilst at the same time its eastern coastal regions and northern borders were being increasingly threatened by foreign aggression. In Chapter 4,1 have described the shifts in the political circumstances within China,and how they affected the nature and rate of the process of transmission: the decades following the First Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion(the 1840s and 1860s) were times of relative openness to Western techniques,yet the 1850s,1870s and 1880s saw a resurgence of conservative opposition,with the final decade of the century seeing a dramatic rise of interest in the ideas as well as the techniques of science in the aftermath of the defeat by Japan in 1894-95.

1.4 The foreign agents of the transmission of Western science

The foreigners who brought Western science to the attention of the Chinese did so for many reasons, but whatever their personal motives they were agents of a process of cultural invasion which lasted throughout the nineteenth century and which has continued to the present day. The political and economic motives of the West for opening China's doors to Western trade have been extensively studied. The primary missionary motive was quite plain: the conversion of 'China's millions' to Christianity. Yet these factors do not in themselves explain why Westerners,including missionaries,should have thought science worthy of transmission. The China market did not depend on the Chinese understanding how goods were

Chapter 1. The scope and argument of the thesis 19 being manufactured in Lancashire; nor could souls be saved by revealing the true nature of combustion. Yet from the earliest political,economic and missionary contacts with China,Western science played a central role in the Westerners' view of themselves as possessors of a higher civilisation,which in part validated their invasion of a culture which had in previous centuries been seen by many European intellectuals as superior to their own.

1,5 Missionaries and the transmission process

Many of the early Western translators and compilers of science textbooks were Christian missionaries or ex­

missionaries. Like the Jesuits two centuries earlier,many of these men hoped that the wonders of Western science would convince the Chinese of the validity of the Christian message,but a more sanguine view of the connection began to appear towards the end of the century,reflecting the sharpening of the already ambivalent relationship of science and Christian doctrine in Europe and the United States.

In contrasting the lives and work of the 'secular missionaries'6 John Fryer[Fulanya ff HH 2#]7(1839- 1928),translator and journalist and the Presbyterian missionary educator Calvin Mateer[Dikaowen h'k^'Sc'] (1836-

1908) in Chapter 8,1 have studied the manner in which these two Westerners attempted to influence the Chinese in favour of science,and how their differing circumstances and personalities formed their work.

6 This term was used in North China Herald(2 6th December,1872),548-549.

7 There being no general rule about the romanisation of the transliterated names of foreigners in Chinese,I have transcribed them all as single terms,thus Fulanya rather than Fu Lanya or Fu Lan Ya.

Chapter 1. The scope and argument of the thesis 2 0 1.6 The translation of texts

In Chapter 5 the general problems of scientific translation into Chinese are discussed in some detail,followed in Chapter 6 by consideration of chemical nomenclature and chemical theory,and in Chapter 7 by an examination of some of the textbooks themselves, including a comparison of two of the most influential chemical works

(Huaxue jianyuan and Huaxue chujie 'Ik^OTti) ,both of which derived from the same source-text.

The assembly of lists of titles of translated books can easily give the misleading impression that transmission via translation was a quantifiable diffusion-like process,with each volume completed representing gradually accumulating knowledge in the minds of the recipient culture,its very quantifiability being an attractively objective historical datum. It is thus easy to imply that,because textbooks were produced,transmission actually took place,but the (somewhat scant) evidence of what actually occurred seems to suggest that such a presumption needs to be viewed with some caution: users of the textbooks,even when they were well- versed in the ideas, sometimes seem to have found them indigestible - like 'chewing wax'. The content of the books was also sometimes of questionable value: the rapid changes in nineteenth-century science meant that some books were already at least a decade out of date when they were first translated,and as I show in Chapter 7,the lag between new ideas arriving and their transmission tended to increase rather than decrease during the later years of the century.8

8 The Periodic Table of the elements for instance was not mentioned in Chinese texts until 1900,31 years after its discovery by Mendeleev; Darwin's evolutionary ideas were given their first extended treatment in Chinese in 1898,nearly forty years after the publication of The origin of species.

Chapter 1. The scope and argument of the thesis 21 1 .7 The Chinese scientists

T h e C h i n e s e s c h o l a r s w h o , s o m e w h a t eccentrically,devoted themselves to the cultivation of 'Western studies'[Xixue 0 after 1840 were,in the main, talented men who had failed to advance via the orthodox route to success through the literary examinations. In Chapter 9,1 have studied the lives of Li Shanlan (1811-1882) ,Xu Shou t&iP,his son Xu Jianyin

■>&

1^(1845-1901) ,and their colleague Hua Hengfang H$r^r(l833- 1902). These men had,as far as can be discovered, no background in the Chinese-paradigm sciences such as traditional Chinese medicine,alchemy,or fengshuiffl.

7fc[geomancy or 'siting']. They seem to have viewed themselves not as innovators but as revivers of a moribund Chinese tradition through the agency of the foreign sciences. These men played a vital role as 'bilinguals',in understanding both the Chinese and Western paradigms well enough to be able to create adequate translations of Western terminology which served to introduce science,at a popular level at least,to the next generation.

1.8 The institutions and journals propagating natural science

The brilliant individual Chinese scholars who made their own studies of science were not able to propagate the richness of its content. It was the new schools - government,independent and missionary-run - which sprang up from the 1860s which played a key role in this aspect of the transmission process. In Chapter 10 I have studied some of these institutions,such as the Beijing Tongwenguan,the Shanghai Polytechnic and Dengzhou College to show how their successes and failures charted the problematic development of modern education in a society still largely indifferent to the concerns of science.

The institutional developments show great variety of purpose and calibre. The government schools(Tongwenguans)

Chapter 1. The scope and argument of the thesis 2 2 played an important role in giving science respectability in the eyes of the literati, but the missionary schools also made important contributions to widening the public awareness of and interest in Western science. The development of these was not easy, and led to much disappointment amongst the enthusiasts for science,who turned to popular journalism as a means of reaching a wider audience.

Chapter 11 is devoted to the journals which carried scientific material - a surprisingly large number - with Gezhi Huibian II [ The Chinese Scientific and Industrial Magazine] being given particular attention,although there were several other journals and newspapers which regularly carried science articles, such as Jiaohui Xinbao ##r

$$,Wanguo Gongbao [The Chinese Globe Magazine] and, in the last years of the century,the earliest Chinese-run science journal Gezhi Xinbao Science News]. These journals,and in particular their readers' letters,are a rich source of information about the transmission and reception of Western science in China.

1.9 The Chinese origins of Western science and the attempts at a synthesis

An important current of thought,sustained right through the nineteenth century,was the theory that Western science was actually Chinese in origin. The proponents of this theory came to see Mo Zi H 1? (ca.479-ca. 381 B.C.)as the most likely Chinese source of scientific ideas,but they also pointed to such figures as the late Tang alchemist Dugu Tao?§l and the Song Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi^

^(1130-1200). The ancient Chinese theories of wuxing Efr,gi ia,the hexagrams of the Zhouyi and so on were also seen as examples of scientific thought. This may have been a conservative,anti-foreign reaction to Western science,but was sometimes an attempt by the liberal-minded to make it

Chapter 1. The scope and argument of the thesis 2 3 easier for Chinese conservatives to accept Western ideas by demonstrating that the Western concepts were not essentially foreign,but had their roots in the China of high antiquity.

It seemed to follow that,if Western science were really Chinese,a new synthesis between Western and Chinese ideas could be created. This synthesis received largely unintentional encouragement through the use of texts such as Tiandao suyuan 'Seeking the origin through the Way of Heaven',usually known as Evidences of Christianity] (1867) by W.A.P. Martin and Gewu tanyuan

['Seeking the origin through the investigation of things',usually known as Natural theology](1876) by Alexander Williamson,both direct descendants of William Paley's attempt to show how the phenomena of Nature accorded with Christianity. The first signs of science being taken seriously by intellectuals outside the government schools was,as I attempt to show in Chapter 12,a direct result of the reading of missionary works with a natural-theological message. The reform group including Kang Youwei,Liang Qichao $=^18(1873-1929) ,Tang Caichang

(1867-1900) and Tan Sitong all read translations of Western science textbooks,and were all to different degrees impressed by the power of the new ideas,and led Tan Sitong to his unparalleled synthesis of Western science,Buddhist and Confucian ideas in Renxue

1.10 The general framework

In arriving at the model which I have in the end found most fruitful for understanding these complex issues,I have relied upon the work of Joseph Needham,Nathan Sivin,Ho Peng Yoke and Shigeru Nakayama in providing a conspectus of the achievements of traditional Chinese science,and an appreciation of the matrix into which Western science was transmitted.

Chapter 1. The scope and argument of the thesis 24 In understanding the change involved during the process of transmission, the work of Thomas Kuhn, especially his notion of scientific paradigms as developed in The structure of scientific revolutions and modified in 'Second thoughts on paradigms',has been of great importance. The issue of 'incommensurability' of new and old theories seems quite apposite when evaluating the task of translation into a culture which has an existing set of paradigms.9 The translation of Western science into Chinese is inevitably to some degree filtered through the already-existing 'matrix' of language used in Chinese for talking about natural phenomena. Daiwie Fu's10 notion of 'bilinguals' interpreting the new paradigm has also been helpful in clarifying the problem of how men like Xu Shou came to understand,accept and then transmit Western science so effectively.

I have also found the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein on the role of language-games and their application to the process of translation stimulating,as has the work of Mi Gyung Kim on the 'layers of language' in nineteenth- century chemistry.

Finally,the debt I owe to the work of Benjamin Elman on the kaozheng movement in the Jiangnan region will be obvious especially in Chapter 4 and 9.

1.11 Sources of evidence

I have drawn upon a wide variety of sources directly concerned with the science transmission,both Chinese and

9 Thomas Kuhn,The structure of scientific revolutions 2nd edition(Chicago:University of Chicago Press,1970),200-204

10 Daiwie Fu,'Problem domain,taxonomy and comparativity in histories of science - with a case study in the history of

"optics" ' in Cheng-hung Lin and Daiwie Fu(eds.)Philosophy and conceptual history of science in Taiwan (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic publishers,1993),123-147

Chapter I. The scope and argument of the thesis 25 Western. Of prime importance have been the translated science texts themselves,especially Bowu tongshu t#

• [Chinese almanac] (1851)11 ,Bowu xinbian t# $5 #r fcii[A new account of natural philosophy] (1855) n ,Gewu rumen

[An introduction to the investigation of things] (1868) l3,Huaxue chujie 4b ^ ffl Plt[First steps in chemistry] (1870) and Huaxue jianyuan

4b^HmJfK[The

[Seeking the origin through the investigation of things](1875)16 with their original Western source- texts,where these were known and accessible.

The Chinese journals of the period containing some articles on popular science,such as Wanguo Gongbao

[The Chinese Globe Magazine],Zhong-Xi Wenjian Lu 4^ 0 M M

£s£[The Peking Magazine] ,Gezhi Xinbao [Science news]

and above all Gezhi Huibian ['The Chinese Scientific Magazine'; later,'The Chinese Scientific and Industrial Magazine'],whilst English-language newspapers such as North China Herald,The Celestial Empire,and contemporary English and French journals including the Chinese Repository,Chinese

Recorder,T'oung Pao and the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society provide scattered but indispensable pieces of relevant data.

I have also studied unpublished writings and letters

11 Section 7.4

12 Section 7.5

13 Section 7.6

14 Section 7.7

15 Section 7.8

16 Section 7.9

Chapter 1. The scope and argument of the thesis 2 6 of Calvin Mateer held by the Presbyterian Historical Society and the Yale Divinity Library; and letters and writings of John Fryer held by the East Asian Library and the Bancroft Library in the University of California,Berkeley17 and the University of Birmingham.

Biographies of the Chinese scientists and translators were consulted in Zhao Erxun M M H ( e d . ) Qingshigao

Draft history of the Qing dynasty],Min Erchang M i (ed,)Beizhuanji bu supplement to the Collection of Epitaphs], Yang Mo tl+i (comp.) Xi-Jin sizhe shishi huicun

collection of facts about the four philosophers of Wuxi and Jinkui],together with the indispensable compilation by Yang Gen ^18, Xu Shou he Zhongguo jindai huaxueshi #*^fa4'IIii5Jft>fk¥£[Xu Shou and the history of modern Chinese chemistry].

Contemporary sources which,though not dealing directly with science,contain scattered references to it,and throw fascinating light on the attitudes of the official class to science,and to the movements of some of the personalities involved in the transmission,include the diaries of Wang Tao 1828-1897) , Zeng Guofan 1811-1872) ,Xue FuchengP

$1/^(1838-1894) and Yung Wing[Rong Hong] ^ (1828-1912) . Of especial interest is the account of the embassy to the West of Liu Xihong §*!l ^ SI,who,as an enemy of Westernisation,can be relied on to give a more jaundiced view of scientific developments than the more enthusiastic

iy_

modernisers such as Guo Songtao IP i®»j®( 1818-1891) .

For official memorials on Self-Strengthening projects,such as ship-building and languages schools,I have referred to the collected works of Zeng Guofan,Li Hongzhang

^^^(1823-1901) , Zhang Zhidong 38;£P( 1837-1909) ,Ding BaozhenT

17 During a field trip to the USA during Easter,1993.

Chapter 1. The scope and argument of the thesis 27 W (1820-1886) and the collections Chuanzheng zouyi huibianffla

collection of memorials on shipbuilding] and Yangwu yundong S Sfr [ The 'Foreign Matters' Movement],as well as articles by Thomas L.Kennedy,Quan Hansheng and Liu Kwang-ching.

In the Hundred Days' Reform period,the writings of Kang Youwei,Liang Qichao,Tan Sitong and Tang Caichang,together with the collection Wuxu bianfa /£/£§§&[Materials on the Hundred Days' Reform period],and translations such as Zhixin mianbingfa *ll* & ^ ^[Method for avoiding illness [through] control of the mind] provide the basis for Chapter 12.

I .12 Other works on the nineteenth-century transmission of Western science to China

Despite the existence of a considerable number of authoritative monographs and articles in English,Chinese and Japanese,touching on various personalities and institutions involved in,and various aspects of,the transmission18, there has been to my knowledge only one full-length book on the subject, James Reardon-Anderson's The study of change: chemistry in China 1840-1949,which in its early chapters covers some of the same ground as this thesis,and was published about a year after I began the present work. I discovered its approach to be rather different from my own. Reardon-Anderson views the actual transmission of chemistry to China as essentially unproblematic - from the Western end of things at least - ,saying little about the confused state of Western

18 The writings of A.A.Bennett,Knight Biggerstaff,Chan Sin- wai,Gideon Chen,Paul A.Cohen,John K.Fairbank,Charlotte Furth,Keizo Hashimoto,Hsiao Kung-chuan,Thomas L .Kennedy,Luke Kwong,Li San-po,Joseph Needham,Richard Shek,and Nathan Sivin in English; and those of Pan Jixing ilpl,Quan Hansheng £?M#,Wang Bing 3E$c,Wang Shuhuai :Efaf ,Wang Yangzong ,Yang Gen Wftk and Zhang Zigao ra in Chinese.

Chapter 1. The scope and argument of the thesis 28 chemistry during much of the century,and tends to blame the Chinese themselves for misunderstanding what they were told. He also in my view understates both the degree of Chinese practical involvement in the transmission process,regarding it as 'almost exclusively a literary affair'19,and - in my view - misinterprets the Chinese intellectuals' eclectic applications of science as a 'failure to understand science at all'.20 The present study goes into much greater detail on the precise nature of the transmission, its problematics, the textbooks compiled,and in particular stresses the complex and ambiguous nature of the process at both its Chinese and Western poles.

1.13 Conclusion: the translation of Western science

The present study does not attempt to be a complete account of this vast subject,but rather sets out to make a preliminary survey of the terrain - some parts of which other scholars have already explored - from a vantage-point more sceptical than hitherto. On the level of the history of ideas, it seeks to show that what might be thought of as a rather dull period in the history of Chinese science has a great deal to tell us both about the Chinese and Western paradigms and their mutual interaction during the process of transmission,the process which in the end I have elected to call 'translation'. It is to the pre-history of this great translation we now turn.

19 James Reardon-Anderson,The study of change,15 20 ibid. ,16

Chapter 2. The earlier transmissions and the Chinese paradigm 29

Chapter 2. : The pre-nineteenth-century transmission of Western science to China and the existing Chinese paradigms

In this chapter I shall firstly consider the Jesuits' attempt to transmit Western chemical knowledge,and then describe the nature of the chief concepts within the Chinese paradigm which they attempted to overthrow. Finally I briefly describe the scientific aspects of the Macartney mission to China in 1792-94,which seemed at the time to confirm Chinese disinterest in Western science.

2.0 Chinese alchemy before the Jesuits21

The Chinese alchemists developed a complex and subtle view of the transformations of matter. Although by the mid­

nineteenth century this tradition was dying,it was an important aspect of the Chinese background to the acceptance of modern chemistry.

21 For background on Chinese alchemy,see Obed.S.Johnson,A study of Chinese alchemy (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1928) ; Arthur Waley,'Notes on Chinese Alchemy' in BSOAS 6(1930),1-24; Homer H.Dubs,'The beginnings of alchemy' in ISIS 38(1947),62-86; Yuan Hanqing H $8 W , Zhongguo huaxueshi lunwenji 4* 19 4k ¥ ^ ik. ^ [A collection of essays on the history of chemistry in China] (Beij ing: Sanlian shudian ,1956) ; Joseph Needham and Ho Ping-yu,'The laboratory equipment of the early medieval Chinese alchemist' in Ambix 7,2(June,1959),57-115; Joseph Needham,'Theories of categories in early medieval Chinese alchemy' in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 22(1959),173-210; Nathan Sivin,Chinese alchemy: preliminary studies(Cambridge,Mass.:Harvard University Press,1968); Ge Hong

^7

£1,1976); Lu Gwei-djen,'The Inner Elixir(nei tan):Chinese physiological alchemy' in Mikul^iSs Teich and Robert Young(eds.)Changing perspectives in the history of science(London:Heinemann,1973),68-84; Joseph Needham,SCC Vol.5 P t .2(Cambridge:Cambridge University P r e s s ,1974);Joseph Needham,SCC Vol.5 Pt. 3 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,1976); and Ho Peng Yoke,Tuku T'ao's Tan-fane chien-yuan:a 10th century Chinese alchemical source-book(Hongkong:Centre of Asian Studies,1980).

Chapter 2. The earlier transmissions and the Chinese paradigm 30

They developed many chemical techniques such as sublimation, distillation,amalgamation, filtration, solution in water and acids22 and a wide range of chemical apparatus23,to the extent that few of the methods (with the important exception of electrolytic techniques)described in the first translated chemistry texts would have been entirely alien to Sun Simiao J§ (A.D.581-682)

or Dugu Tao 24

An impressive range of chemical substances were familiar to them,and their description and classification probably reached as high a level of sophistication as was possible before a proper understanding of the nature of chemical compounds was in place,and was certainly no more arbitrary and unsystematic than contemporary European nomenclature. 25

2.1 The Jesuit introduction of Western chemical science to China26

22 Yuan Hanqing, Zhongguo huaxueshi lunwenji, 208ff.

23 Joseph Needham and Ho Ping-yu,The laboratory equipment of the early medieval Chinese alchemist.

24 An alchemist who probably lived in the late Tang dynasty.

See Ho Peng Yoke Tugu T'ao's Tan-fang chien-yuan.

25 Joseph Needham, SCC Vol. 5 Part 3,154ff

26 Sources consulted on the Jesuit transmission of Western science include: Henri Bernard,Matteo Ricci's scientific contribution to China(Beiping:Henri Vetch,1935); Henri Bernard,'Notes on the introduction of the Natural Sciences into the Chinese Empire' in Yenching Journal of Social Studies 3(1941),220-241; Pasquale M.D'Elia,Galileo in China:relations through the Roman College between Galileo and the Jesuit scientist-missionaries (1610-1640) (Cambridge,Mass.:Harvard University Press,1960); George H.C.Wong,'China's opposition to Western Science during late Ming and early Ch'ing' in ISIS 54,1(1963),29-49; Nathan Sivin,'On "China's opposition to Western Science during late Ming and early Ch'ing' in ISIS 56 (1965),201- 2 05; Nathan Sivin,'Copernicus in China' in Colloquia Copernicana

Chapter 2. The earlier transmissions and the Chinese paradigm 31

The mathematical and astronomical aspects of the Jesuit transmission are not considered here,but there is evidence that although they did encourage something of a renaissance in Chinese mathematics and mathematical astronomy27, in chemistry they were able to add little to existing knowledge, and this in part accounts for the relative indifference of the Chinese.

The Jesuits were at first regarded by some Chinese as alchemists: Qu Rukui ^ fa ^ ,one of Ricci's collaborators,originally joined him hoping for instruction in alchemy28, and Chinese alchemists came to Ricci with examples of strange or unusual minerals29. Nearly four centuries later,the missionary Karl Gutzlaff(1803-1851) was to find similarly arcane arts attributed to the English.30

II (Warsaw,1973),63-122; Nathan Sivin,'Biography of Wang Hsi- shan' in DSB,159-168.

27 See A.Hummel,ECCP for biographies of Xu Guangqi

(1562-1633)(ibid.,316-319) and Mei Wending IS ^ i (1633- 1721) (ibid.,570-571); also Nathan Sivin 'Biography of Wang Hsi- shan' (1628-1682).

28 Henri Bernard,Matteo Ricci's scientific contribution to China,44

29 ibid., A3

30 According to Karl Gutzlaff:

They were still desirous to know more information about dollars,and requested me to teach them the art of making them of tin or lead; for many of them believe that the English are able,by certain processes,to change these metals into silver. As they considered me an adept in every art,except divinity,they were much disappointed when I told them,that I neither understood the secret,nor believed there was any mortal who did. This statement they discredited,and maintained that the English,as they had many great ships and splendid factories in Canton,and had no means of obtaining riches except by this art,must of necessity be able to change the inferior metals into gold.

This same strange notion is believed in Siam; and I have been earnestly importuned by individuals to teach them this

Chapter 2. The earlier transmissions and the Chinese paradigm 32

In 1584,two years after his first arrival in China,Matteo Ricci [Limadou ^ ] (1552-1610) expressed admiration(albeit in rather condescending terms) for Chinese scientific accomplishments:

In their sciences the Chinese are very learned: in medicine,moral physics,mathematics and finally all the

liberal or mechanical arts. It is admirable that a nation,which never had any relations with Europe should have reached by its own means almost the same results as we with the collaboration of the whole universe.31

Thirteen years later,after some success but many disappointments in his attempts to impress the Chinese with the advanced state of Western science,he was,Kurtz-like,to come to a more gloomy conclusion:

The Chinese do not possess any sciences: one may say,only mathematics are cultivated and the little they know of that is without foundation,they borrowed it from the Saracens; only the king's mathematicians teach the science to their sons. They just manage to predict eclipses, and even in that make many mistakes.32

It was in mathematics and astronomy that the most famous and significant transmissions were made,but these lie outside the scope of this thesis. Here I shall only

valuable art; silver ore has been sent to me also with the request,that I would extract the silver and turn it into dollars.(Karl Gutzlaff,'Journal' in CRP l,4(August

1832),129)

31 Henri Bernard,Matteo Ricci's scientific contribution to China,3 9

32 ibid., 52

Chapter 2, The earlier transmissions and the Chinese paradigm 33

consider an unsuccessful attempt to introduce the European Four Element theory of chemistry.

In his tract 'Si yuanxing lun' IQ

71

Ricci began by arguing that the wuxing Eft (especially Metal and Wood)were not pure elements,and that the ancient wuxing Eft were never intended to be 'elemental'(in the Greek sense of the term: in Ricci's time the modern conception of the chemical elements had not yet been developed):

I venture to suggest that in China the theory of the Five Elements was different in antiquity and modern times. The so-called elements (xing ft)33 are whence Myriad Phenomena arise,and hence,being 'elements' are actually 'Primal Elements' (yuan xing Ttft ): they are extremely pure,properly are not mixed together,and do not include one another. Whilst Water,Fire and Earth34 may be [properly] called elements, it is hard to understand how Metal and Wood can [also] be regarded as Primal Elements. [For] if you observe the formation of the Myriad Things,most do not involve Metal or

33 I translate xing ft as 'element' here because it is clearly what Ricci intended by the term. Sinologists generally prefer to use the expression 'phase'. See Section 2.2 below.

34 Three of the Five Phases.

Chapter 2. The earlier transmissions and the Chinese paradigm 34

Wood: humankind,insects,birds and beasts

do not involve Metal and Wood as constituent elements (da xing 'M'il) . Who does not know that Metal and Wood are really mixtures of Water, Earth and Fire,and,being mixtures,cannot be regarded as Primal Elements? Mixtures such as grass,stones,etc. might be classified as 'elements',but then there would not be just five elements. Why should Metal and Wood be singled out? I have read that [Emperor] Shun $ of TangJU exploited material things and [Emperor] Yu ^ the Great set out his plan by arranging these [five] along with grain to make the Six Treasuries (liu fu ) ,but these were only said to be [materials] essential to the life of the people; it was not that Water,Fire,Metal,Wood and Earth were the primary material elements and the origin of the Myriad Things. 35

Ricci then moved on to criticise the supposed Mutual Production (xiang sheng relationship between the wuxingH fj, which Dong Zhongshu

(?179-?104 B.C.) had characterised as that of father and son36. Ricci uses an argument similar to that deployed centuries earlier by the great sceptic Wang Chong

(A.D. 27-?100) in Lunheng fir [Weighing the arguments] 37,by showing first that the wuxing E ff must have been interdependent,and could therefore not have come into existence sequentially; and then how the father-child analogy led to internal inconsistency:

35 Matteo Ricci,'Si yuanxing lun' in Siku quanshu £ 9 ^ ^ '5j [A complete library of the Four Treasuries],787.761a

36 Joseph Needham,SCC Vol 2,249,quoting Dong Zhongshu.

37 Joseph Needham,sec Vol.2,265-266. Wang Chong's argument is that the animals associated with the wu xing Efr do not prey upon one another in accordance with the mutual destruction order.