East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (EASTM - Universität Tübingen)
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‘The Observations We Made in the Indies and in China’: The Shaping of the Jesuits’ Knowledge of China by Other Parts of the Non-Western World
Full text linkThe Jesuits’ experience in China is usually analysed within the framework of Sino-Western relations. However, Jesuits’ writings often evoked their experience in and knowledge about China in association with other parts of the non-European world, including India, South-East Asia, the Middle East, Africa and America. Based on a prosopographical analysis of China Jesuits’ biographical data, we first demonstrate that the encounter with other non-European regions was an integral part of the China Jesuits’ itineraries; for they all travelled through intermediate areas on their way to China, and some also did so on their way back to Europe. Secondly, relying mainly on examples drawn from French Jesuits’ scholarship between the 1680s and the 1750s, we demonstrate how encounters with other non-European regions and the overseas interests of their home country shaped the Jesuits’ scientific agenda as well as the way they understood things Chinese. Lastly, we illustrate how Jesuits keenly studied historical and contemporaneous accounts in Chinese and Manchu on the neighbouring regions of the Qing empire. We argue that the body of knowledge produced by the China Jesuits should be studied in a spatial framework that goes beyond the China-Europe dichotomy since it was, on one hand, filtered by the Jesuits’ knowledge about other non-European regions and, on the other hand, concerned with a geographical area larger than the territory of China under the Ming and even the Qing dynasty. We also argue that, in the eighteenth century in particular, the China Jesuits’ scholarship was configured by the spatial dynamics shaping the Society of Jesus, Bourbon France and Qing China; thereby, we contribute to a better understanding of both the French Jesuit and Qing networks, and the interconnections between them
Christopher Cullen, The Foundations of Celestial Reckoning: Three Ancient Chinese Astronomical Systems
Full text linkLiping Bu, Darwin H. Stapleton, and Ka-Che Yip, Science, Public Health and the State in Modern Asia
Full text linkHacking the Yak: The Chinese Effort to Improve a Tibetan Animal in the Early Twentieth Century
Full text linkThis article considers the roles of yak bodies in relations between Han Chinese and Khampa Tibetan communities during the early twentieth century. It argues that bovine bodies were sites of Han-Tibetan interaction wherein culture, biology, and locality were intertwined. I chronicle the earliest large-scale engagement of the Chinese state with yak pastoralism in the context of its efforts to consolidate control over the eastern Tibetan region of Kham. Yak husbandry is traditionally an enterprise of Tibetans and other Himalayan ethnic groups, but the yak was targeted for ‘improvement’ by Han Chinese modernizers beginning in the 1930s. An effort to decouple the yak from its Tibetan cultural context at the Taining Experimental Zone saw mixed results. Livestock scientists there made modest gains in productivity, yet they did so by approximating to a high degree the nomadic mode of production from which they were attempting to extract the yak
Obituary – Tsun Ko (1917-2017)
No full textProfessor Tsun Ko (Ke Jun 柯俊, 1917-2017) was a great specialist of metal physics and the history of metallurgy in China. Besides his outstanding academic contributions, he was also instrumental in the setting up of research institions in China and at an international level. He was the founding Vice-President of the International Society of the History of East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine (ISHEASTM)
The Substitution of Materia Medica in Tibetan Medicine: An Inquiry into Traditional Tibetan Treatises
Full text linkThe substitution of materia medica in Tibetan medicine was an important issue in the past, and still is today. This article offers a brief survey of references found in Tibetan written sources, and discusses the only three Tibetan treatises that deal exclusively with the subject. It explores the underlying modes of substitution, and provides insights into the criteria that are used to determine suitable substitutes. Ultimately it demonstrates that seven criteria—taste, healing potential, type, substance, name, shape, and smell—are used to determine an appropriate substitute for rare or expensive materia medica in the Tibetan medical tradition
