CHANGING LITERATI ATTITUDES TOWARD NEW LEARNING IN ASTRONOMY AND MATHEMATICS IN EARLY QING

CHANGING LITERATI ATTITUDES TOWARD NEW LEARNING IN ASTRONOMY AND MATHEMATICS IN EARLY QING Author(s): Willard Peterson Reviewed work(s): Source: Monumenta Serica, Vol. 50 (2002), pp. 375-390 Published by: Monumenta Serica Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40727505 . Accessed: 20/12/2012 17:24 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Monumenta Serica Institute is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Monumenta Serica. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded on Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:24:08 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Monumenta Serica % ^ 50(2002): 375-390 &♦ CHANGING LITERATI ATTITUDES TOWARD NEW LEARNING IN ASTRONOMY AND MATHEMATICS IN EARLY QING* Willard Peterson §tig£ In the 1670s, Gu Yanwu |gj£iëc (1613-1682), who was already establishing himself as the premier scholar of evidential research in his generation, a reputa- tion that would be sustained even to the present day, recorded some verbal com- ments purportedly made by Li Lu $JÜ of Jingle f§*^| in Shanxi. According to Gu Yanwu, Li was familiar with what Gu specifically named as "Learning from the Western Ocean" (xiyang zhi xue ]5#;¿íp). Gu was quoting Li's explanation of what the adherents of Western learning said about lunar eclipses: The moon originates no light of its own. Its shining light is borrowed from the sun's brilliance. At the time in the month of the full moon, it is in a straight line with the earth and the sun. The moon sees the earth and does not see the sun. This is when it has no [reflected] light.1 This is a straightforward, if overly simplified, explanation for a non-specialist. An objection was raised to Mr. Li. Someone said, (and I am inclined to infer that it was not Gu Yanwu himself), That is not so. Once at the time of a lunar eclipse, it ought to have been after sun- set, but the sun still had not sunk and the moon coming out from [the plane of] the earth was already eclipsing. In the east, the moon was beginning to ascend. In the west, the sun was not set. As we saw both of them, one may not say that the earth actually was interposed between the sun and the moon. How can they [i.e., the men from the Western Ocean] say [that an eclipse occurs because the moon] sees that earth but does not see the sun?2 Paper presented at the conference „Europe and China, III," Berlin, 1998. A somewhat different version of this essay appears in Chou Chih-ping JUR^f - Willard J. Peterson (eds.), Guo shi fuhai kaixin lu HÍ #ÄIBSfÄ (Taibei: Linking 2002). 1 Gu Yanwu, "Yue shi ^1=t,w in: Ri zhi lu ji shi, 30.4-5. Also in Yuan chao ben Ri zhi lu, 30. 856-7. According to Zhang Mu, Gu Tinglin nianpu, 3.5b-21b, Gu was in Jingle several times after 1671, and he probably met Li Lu there. Zhang Mu speculated that when Gu gave away his concubine in 1677, it was to Li Lu (3.21b). Gu also corresponded with Wang Xishan iEUM from Jingle in 1673. 2 Ibid. This content downloaded on Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:24:08 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 376 WILLARD PETERSON This is an appeal to perceptual experience against an obviously non-intuitive theo- retical explanation. Li Lu was tactful in his response, as reported by Gu Yanwu. Li did not deny the claim that someone had seen an eclipsing moon before the sun had set. Li said, "What you saw was not the moon. It was the reflection of the moon. The moon actually had not come out from the earth. How do we test this?" Li gave the example of a coin that is hidden inside an empty cup while its reflection can be seen on the surface if the cup is filled with water. In the case cited by his interlocutor, Li argued, when the sun is about to set, the air in the eastern sky is moist and reflects the moon's image, just as the surface of the wa- ter reflects the image of the coin in the bottom of the cup, but we should not mis- takenly take the reflection to be the moon itself. Similar examples are seeing on the surface of water the refracted, displaced image of a fish that is under the wa- ter, or a boat-pole looking as if it were bent where it enters the water. Li con- cluded, "As these are so, then how can one doubt [a lunar eclipse is caused by the sun's light to] the moon being cut off by the earth."3 Gu recorded no further comment. Li's argument on behalf of the Western theory, we should notice, is in- tended to refute a claim based on the test of personal experience (yan 1&) with a counter-claim based on experience (or at least a thought experiment) rather than on textual evidence, as is characteristic throughout Gu Yanwu's famous book. In Gu's entry on solar eclipses, he drew on contemporary experience to sup- plement historical textual evidence. He did not give even a minimum physical ex- planation such as he reported for lunar eclipses. Gu cited the comment of the des- picable Liu Xiang gijfèj of the Han dynasty on the frequency of solar eclipses. During the 242 years (722-481 B.C.E.) covered by the Chunqiu {Spring and Au- tumn Annals), thirty-six solar eclipses are recorded, but, said Liu Xiang, in the twenty years following the Jianshi jftfê reign (32-29 B.C.E), there were eight, or an average of one every two years and six months. Left unstated, of course, was the implication that all of those eclipses were foreshadowing the fall of the Han dynasty and its replacement by Wang Mang 3i#, Liu Xiang's patron. Gu Yanwu pointed out that from antiquity to the present, generally solar eclipses were rarely observed, and the differences among them were more a matter of ap- pearances - total, partial, frequency, and so on. Gu continued, "From what was observed in the Chongzhen reign (1628-1644), there were eight eclipses in twenty-seven years." Gu drew a parallel. This is generally comparable to the [end of the] Han, and exceeded it in frequency [i.e., two in one year and three in two years; Gu presumably did not mean the av- erage was higher]. This being so, then as for saying that solar eclipses are deter- minate in their numbers and unrelated to human affairs, isn't that merely being mired in the techniques of mathematicians (chou ren BUA) and not being aware 3 Ibid. This content downloaded on Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:24:08 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LITERATI ATTITUDES TOWARD NEW LEARNING IN EARLY QING 377 that they are following in the tracks of the theories of deviant officials (xie chen Gu Yanwu was not doubting the idea that solar eclipses were determinate in their numbers (yiding zhi shu - %3lW) and therefore predictable. It was the other part he was doubting. He brought out his point by quoting the Zuo zhuan (Zuo Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals), which recorded a solar eclipse in the 21st year of Duke Zhao 0S^.5 The Duke asked if the eclipse was felicitous or troubling, and his attendant officer claimed that an eclipse occurring at the time of the solstices or equinoxes was not calamitous; only those in other months were. Gu Yanwu said that was wrong, and explained: "The positions of the sun and the moon in the sky are always determinate in their numbers. Nevertheless," Gu continued, "celestial figures are seen on high and human affairs respond down below." This is the point Gu wanted to save. For centuries there had been officials, as in the Zuo zhuan example, who reassured their rulers and did not use manifestations in the sky as the occasion to correct them. They would say such things as the eclipse is insignificant and is not leading to a major catastrophe, only flood or drought. Gu, of course, had the fall of a dynasty in mind, and he concluded, "For this reason, equinoxes and solstices are irrelevant to the baleful sign that is a solar eclipse."6 Gu overrode the mathematicians' theory of determinate and therefore predict- able numbers for eclipses to sustain two political points. First, that a spate of so- lar eclipses was observed in the years before the fall of the Han and the fall of the Ming dynasties, and second, that maintaining a theory that eclipses are simply a matter of numerically determinate cycles and positions puts one in league with "deviant officials," implicitly including the recently denounced Johann Adam Schall von Bell (1592-1666). Gu Yanwu refused to relegate the import of solar eclipses to the merely mathematical; even if there is no physical connection be- tween phenomena in the sky and events on earth (and Gu did not explicitly main- tain there is), history shows, he implied, that there is a political connection. One of the later commentators (probably Lu Longqi ßEÜ^ [1630-1693]) cited for this passage in Gu's book wrote that, In Western learning they absolutely do not speak of verification by predictions (zhan y an ¿JJBO- Their theory regards solar and lunar eclipses and movements of the five planets all as constant paths and constant degrees. How can what is so evi- denced be used for questions of felicitous or troubling?, [they ask]. This is proxi- mate to [Zhu Xi's claims for constant, universal, a priori] coherence.7 4 Gu Yanwu, "Ri shi Biff," in: Ri zhi lu ji shi, 30. 3-4, which I follow, rather than the uncor- rected Yuan chao ben, pp. 855-856. 5 The eclipse occurred on 3 June 520 B.C.E. See James Legge (trans.), Chinese Classics, vol. 5, pp. 685-686. 6 "Ri shi," 30.4. 7 Note by Lu, added to "Ri shi," 30.4. This content downloaded on Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:24:08 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 378 WILLARD PETERSON But, the commentator went on, even if the seven celestial bodies have such con- stancy, they are constituents in a complex of qi fã in motion, along with dynastic states and ordinary people. The latter must be affected. And we know astrolo- gers' predictions for ordinary people can be subtly verified, so how much more must this be the case for such a major matter as the mandate for a dynasty?, he asked, in rhetorical support of Gu Yanwu's position. Besides, he added, it may be that the purveyors of Western learning merely were being cautious in not speaking of astrology.8 Leaving aside the issue of whether the comment reflects the public's being unaware that missionaries serving at the Qing court dealt in as- trological as well as astronomical and calendrical predictions, we can see that Gu Yanwu himself was challenging the disconnection between celestial occurrences and human affairs without requiring belief in the prognostications of astrology based on a strong correlative theory.9 What Gu Yanwu was intending may be clearer if we go back to the entry on lunar eclipses and examine Gu's own comment. "A solar eclipse is the moon con- cealing the sun [from the earth]. A lunar eclipse is the earth concealing the moon [from the sun] . This is the theory in the astronomy from the Western Ocean (jc/- yang tianwen W^^SO- We already had this formulation from before [the West- erners'] methods entered China."10 To make his point, Gu cited a jotting by Lu Shen &$$. (1477-1544), an official and prolific writer. Lu noted, I have heard that those in the Western regions [presumably refering to Islamic lands rather than Christendom] who calculate solar and lunar eclipses say that the sun and moon are the same size as the earth, and if the body of the earth exactly conceals the sun on its circuit, then the moon is eclipsed.11 This does not seem to be much of a precedent for knowledge of the accurate method of eclipse prediction published by Jesuit missionaries in Gu Yanwu's life- time. Gu cited a more detailed explanation of eclipses by Wan Shi Hit of Nan- cheng if $c. The ecliptic is evenly divided, so for each place, at exactly 182 and 1/2 degrees, the opposite place on the path must be concealed [from the sun's light] by the earth. If the moon is full and in its movement precisely crosses the ecliptic, it is 8 Ibid. 9 See my discussion of the turn away from intellectual commitment to effective correlative think- ing in my review of John B. Henderson, The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology (New York 1984), in: HJAS 46 (1986) 1, esp. p. 664. The editors of the Ming shi in the intro- duction to the "Wu xing zhi" ÏÎtS treatise take a stance which is similar to Gu Yanwu's on the residual political importance of celestial events; there may be mutual influence between heaven and humans which are a function of tonglei |WJ||(, but the evidence is not sufficient to include them. Ming shi, 28.425. 10 "Yue shi," 30.4. 11 "Yue shi," See Lu Shen, Jintaiji wen, xia , 2b-3a. This content downloaded on Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:24:08 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LITERATI ATTITUDES TOWARD NEW LEARNING IN EARLY QING 379 exactly in opposition to the sun, and thus the earth conceals the sun's light and the moon is eclipsed.12 This is a neat explanation, the clearest Gu cited. Gu's own further comment is telling. "This theory also did not begin in more recent times." To support his point, Gu Yanwu quoted Zhang Heng ^R^j of the Han dynasty. On the path of the sun, when the sun's light is not paired [with the moon], it is be- ing shaded by the earth. This [position on the sun's path] is called the dark hollow (an xu BjJE) in the stars. When the moon passes where the stars are weak, it is eclipsed.13 Gu Yanwu went on to speculate that there had been a now lost detailed theory in- volving the concept of the "dark hollow" in the sky. Gu's three examples, read singly or together, seem to be weak foundations for supporting his claim that "We already had this formulation [about eclipses] from before [the Westerners'] methods entered China." No one would argue that Gu Yanwu had the fullest and most accurate under- standing of eclipses in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. But neither would anyone want to argue that he was a neglible scholar who was casual about what he included as the notes which became his most famous book, Ri zhi lu (Re- cord of Knowledge Gained Day by Day). He did not aim to be comprehensive. He could have omitted the two entries on solar and lunar eclipses and his readers would not have noticed. So it is worth asking, what was his intention? What is the noteworthy information he was conveying in these two entries? He has noth- ing to add for any of his contemporaries who wanted a detailed explanation of phenomena such as eclipses or other aspects of astronomy and its associated mathematical techniques. That was available from other books and teachers. With his gathering prestige, Gu Yanwu was promoting two ideas: (1) the ap- parent certainty of calculated numbers miss what is important in our historical re- cord of the phenomenal world, and (2) the textual tradition is more important than the new knowledge recently brought by Westerners and patronized by the emperor. Here, and in all of Gu's writing, the implicit claim is that "important" is a function of relevance to ongoing cultural processes and values. Gu Yanwu's comments evoke what I would call the issue of universality. In Zhu Xi's Learning of the Way, the concept of // Bl (coherence) was by explicit definition universal in the sense of being unitary in its extension throughout the phenomenal world. Li is always li through all time and space. Coherence is uni- tary however and wherever it is manifested, even if it is most readily accessible to us in the Four Books, the foundation of Zhu Xi's prescription for learning. Al- though Zhu Xi made every effort to subordinate "numbers" (shu), as he con- strued them, to his concept of li, others pressed the claim, even as it is today, that mathematics is universally so. The sum of 3 and 4, or the value of the ratio of a 12 "Yue shi," 30.4. I have not identified Wan Shi. 13 "Yue shi, " 30.4-5. This content downloaded on Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:24:08 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 380 WILLARD PETERSON circle's circumference to half its diameter, or the sum of the interior angles of a plane triangle are universally so and do not vary according to local practice at any particular time, even though how they are articulated may. A third expression of universality is the claim that we are all under one sky, or, to put it in more cur- rent terms, that we all live in a singular universe which since its inception has al- ways been comprised of the same general physical processes. This third claim carries the implication that we all are able to have shared experiential knowledge (e.g., we all can observe the same lunar eclipse, given the physical opportunity, although at different angles and different local times). Gu did not directly attempt to refute any of these three expressions of claims with presumptions of universality. Others had argued against Zhu Xi's concept of li (as coherence) as somehow existing externally to our minds, whether we com- prehend it or not, by interpreting H as patterns or principles which humans im- pute to phenomena.14 Gu implicitly stood against universal li (coherence) by stressing history - changes over time in the records of his cultural tradition. Gu Yanwu's famous dictum was, "[As distinguished from what he called Chan, or Zen, inspired learning, true] learning based on principles is learning based on our classics" (li xue, jing xue ye S^M^tó)15 This shifts li away from being the universal coherence that is to be discerned everywhere, whether in a blade of grass, or in the processes to be observed in the sky, or in texts inherited from sages of antiquity, or in our own pure minds. Gu's stance is a dissent as well both from the claims for mathematics (numbers which are determinate, yiding zhi shu, and the techniques of the mathematicians, chou reti) and from the claim that the cosmos, or more to the point, all the various parts of the inhabited Earth, are homogenous. (To illustrate what is at stake here, I suggest we think analogically not about "laws" of physics but about whether human "rights" are universal in the application.) Gu's dictum implies that the cultural tradition stemming from the classics has greater import than the new methods (xin fa §j y£) presented by Westerners' learning related to astronomy and mathematics. Gu's attitude marks a subtle shift from previous generations' views of the essential importance of "universais." To be sure, in late Ming attitudes somewhat similar to Gu Yanwu's about the "universality" of mathematics and astronomy were expressed. Xu Guangqi and Li Zhizao in their prefaces stressed precedents in the Chinese tradition for the new learning from the West.16 In the 1640s, Fang Kongzhao ^?Lfô (1591-1655) wrote the Chongzhen li shu yue ^ ^^fH^ (Precis on Books on the Chongzhen 14 For example, see Wang Tingxiang (1474-1544), "Da Xue Juncai lun xing shu" i?|?S"3£IE 14#, in: Wang Tingxiang ji, 28.517-520. 15 Gu Yanwu, Gu Tinglin shi wenji, "Yu Shi Yushan" J^SÊALlj, 3.62. Gu stressed that the term // xue was a Song invention, so his claim was that if we are to use the term // xue, we should understand that in the past what was called // xue was jing xue, classical learning, and that what in his day was called li xue was in fact Chan learning. 16 Peter Engelfriet, Euclid in China, pp. 289-297. This content downloaded on Thu, 20 Dec 2012 17:24:08 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Condi