After the Mongol Empire fell, did China really turn away from math and physics?
Upvote:6
TL;DR
According to Roger Hart [1], this view is widely held but wrong. He cites, among (many) others, Needham who speaks of a decay and Mikami who considers Ming scholars to be degenerate. The alleged reason is not a decree, but societal and technical characteristics of the society. This view is slow to revert, because almost no one studies Ming mathematics, because it is already known to be uninteresting.
He thinks that the Progress vs decline characterization of Yuan and Ming mathematics is anahronistic, and prevents us to understand the texts in their original context. Sepcifically, very interesting maths are overlooked in Yuan and Ming texts because of this.
Long explanation
In the 4th chapter of his book, Imagined Civilizations: China, the West, and Their First Encounter (John Hopkins, 2013, ISBN: 9781421406060), Roger Hart says that this “decline” fits with a traditional (Qing, then western) description of the Ming dynasty as a period of moral and intellectual decline. There have been works in various fields (e.g. economics) showing this view was wrong, but apparently very few in science until very recently.
On mathematics, he says this view was “fairly unanimous”, a characterization he justifies by citing many scholars: Ulrich Librecht, Li and Du, Mei, Qian Baocong, Qin Jushao, Liu Diun, Nathan Sivin, Jean-Claude Martzloff, Catherine Jami, Needham, and Mikami.
According to this view, (which Roger Hart does not share):
Crucial mathematical techniques (like root extraction, algebraic techniques based on counting rods) wer lost
Crucial treaties (Among them The nine chapters (九章算術), The Ten Mathematical Classics 算經十書) where then lost or forgotten
No great works was accomplished, or actually no work at all except on some subjects (commercial maths with the abacus, maths for music)
The needed creativity was limited by the Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy and civil service examinations, leading scholars to have only a superfical knowledge of mathematics
Science were disdained by the followers of the philosopher Wang Yangming
There was a lack of problem with heuristic signifiance, maybe because of the power of the abacus (largely enough for most uses, too limited for new techniques)
Sivin in [2] sees the abacus efficiency as helping the merchants, but too limited for the scholars, and holding back mathematics in the process. (What he sees as a) “hiatus [in mathematics developpent] may have been [according to Sivin] the price paid for by the abacus”
However, Roger Hart says that this view is not based on a study of Ming mathematics, and can’t be, since there are very few study of Ming mathematics, and the existing one are overlooked. And, of course, there are few study, because Ming mathematics is already known not to be worthy of study.
He does not think speaking of a “decline” is useful to understand what happens historically, and that many of the above view is implicitly due to an anachronistic analysis of Chinese texts, trying to see them as steps towards modern mathematics. He cites a Yuan dynasty work (Li Ye’s Sea Mirror of Circle Measurements) celebrated for his exposure of polynomial equations, and shows they are not so important in this text, especially given the Nine Chapters. However, this text rises other interesting questions (on the geometrical nature of the methods involved, Pythagorean triples, exhaustivity of the method). He also analyses two Ming dynasty books, (Cheng Dawei’s Comprehensive Source of Mathematical Methods and Zhu Zaiyu’s Records of Music), showing a certain vitality of Ming mathematics. The first hinting at a high interest in mathematics in the Ming society predating the translations of Western mathematics, and the second showing that even elements considered as cause of the “decline” (a highly conservative society, the abacus) could inspire original mathematical works (equal temperament scale precise to the 25th digit).
Bibliography
[1] Roger Hart, Imagined Civilizations: China, the West, and Their First Encounter (John Hopkins, 2013, ISBN: 9781421406060)
[2] “Science and Medicine in Chinese History,” in Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization, ed. Paul S. Ropp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) NAthan Sivin’s citation
More post
- 📝 Why did Native Americans die from European diseases while Europeans didn't catch serious diseases from the New World?
- 📝 Was German ever an official language in the USSR?
- 📝 What was the American policy on colonisation and why?
- 📝 Why didn't the Japanese develop air defenses after the bombing of Tokyo?
- 📝 Why did LBJ, a staunch segregationist, champion and sign the 1964 Civil Rights Bill?
- 📝 When was the last time someone was condemned to slavery as a punishment in the United States?
- 📝 Did the Babylonians know the Pythagorean Theorem before Pythagoras formulated it?
- 📝 What exactly do eyewitness testimonies say about Hitler's behavior during the Munich Putsch?
- 📝 What courses would have been required to get a B.A. in America in the 1930s?
- 📝 Why were some German and Japanese cities bombed more than others during WW2? Is there a scientific consensus?
- 📝 Why did Ancient Pueblo peoples build their homes in cliffs?
- 📝 What is the earliest historical record of Hungarian words?
- 📝 Did barracks exist in the middle ages?
- 📝 What distinguishes the mesolithic period from neolithic and paleolithic?
- 📝 What was the largest strike, by % of a country's population, in history?
- 📝 WWII - Russian victory over Germany
- 📝 The Overwhelming Success of Greeks
- 📝 Madness in the early modern era (pre-enlightenment, Habsburg monarchy)
- 📝 What were the business models of real estate development in ancient Rome?
- 📝 In ancient Rome, could free-born Romans become slaves?
- 📝 If the Iraq War was because of their oil, has the US achieved their war aims
- 📝 Did the 1918 flu pandemic affect travel within USA, and in what ways?
- 📝 What other ships were with USS Saratoga when it was hit by a torpedo on 1942 Jan 11?
- 📝 Is it true that Spartan soldiers fought naked?
- 📝 Why did the communist party lose in Telangana in India's first general elections?
- 📝 Why didn't the Ottomans besiege Malta after 1565?
- 📝 Can world systems theory apply to empires?
- 📝 Did IRA bombings in Great Britain lead to Hibernophobia?
- 📝 Can anyone identify these swords with carved ivory grip and narrow guard
- 📝 Why were the Marines so badly outnumbered at the critical point at Guadalcanal?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 After the Mongol Empire fell, did China really turn away from math and physics?
- 📝 Why did Black and Asian immigrants from the Empire not come to Britain in substantial numbers until after WW2?
- 📝 Why did Japan not withdraw from China as its pacific front was crumbling and the threat of US invasion imminent?
- 📝 How did the First French Empire and allies differ from the other European monarchies at that time?
- 📝 Why did the Mongol Empire disintegrate so rapidly after its peak?
- 📝 How did the countries devolved from USSR turn from communism to democracy or other ideology peacefully after the collapse?
- 📝 Did people from the cities of Uruk, Ur and Sumer have knowledge/recollection of how old their cities were (say, recollection after 2000 BCE)?
- 📝 Did Albert Einstein really receive this rejection letter from the University of Bern?
- 📝 Where did the “vikings wear helmets with horn” stereotype come from and why?
- 📝 Why did Canada, Australia and New Zealand separate from the UK?
- 📝 Did the US and Soviet navies really come close to blows in the Indian Ocean in 1971?
- 📝 Were bookshops 'common' in the late 19th century, and how did they differ from modern ones?
- 📝 Apart from the Inuit, and candlefish on the northwest coast, did pre-Columbian America have lamps or candles?
- 📝 Which state capital did the Apollo 11 command module NOT visit after it returned from the moon?
- 📝 Why and how were east Brandenburg, Pomerania and Silesia taken away from Germany after WW2?
- 📝 How Did the Mongol Empire Get So Big?
- 📝 Why did Germany decide not to restore the Hohenzollern dynasty to the throne of a German Empire after the defeat of Hitler in World War Two?
- 📝 How did the conquering Mongols and Manchus of China end up becoming part of China?
- 📝 How and why did Polish rule over the Ukraine "downwardly deviate" from Lithuanian rule?
- 📝 How much tax revenue did the British Empire receive from its colonies in a given year?
- 📝 Why were fragments of the Mongol empire named after colors?
- 📝 Did the Founding Fathers of the USA really make a distinction between a Republic and a Democracy (and despised the latter)?
- 📝 Did Spain and the Republic of China (Kuomintang) have diplomatic relations between 1931 and 1939? Were they friendly or unfriendly?
- 📝 Why did the Sassanid and the Eastern Roman Empire fail to make a lasting peace?
- 📝 How did the British Army unit size and structure in WWI change from 1915 to 1918?
- 📝 Why did antique guns and swords from the Franco-Prussian War make part of the demilitarization program to which Germany was subjected?
- 📝 Did the Persian Empire really finance both sides of the Peloponnesian war?
- 📝 How did agricultural productivity change in Italy with the fall of the Roman Empire and through the early Middle Ages?
- 📝 Why did the Russians lose to the Turks in 1711 after defeating them in 1700 and the Swedes in 1709?
- 📝 Why did Icelandic begin to diverge from the Continental north Germanic languages specifically between 1050 and 1350?