The DFG granted Prof. Hans Ulrich Vogel, History and Society of China, Department of Chinese Studies (Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, Faculty of Humanities), Tübingen University, a one-year extension of the above-mentioned project. The DFG support has started in summer 2018 and thus will continue until October 2022.
Project Description
The immediate cause for starting this project was the sensational rediscovery in 2015 of the Kunyu gezhi 坤輿格致 (Investigations of the Earth’s Interior; 5 chap., 244 pp., 1640; hereafter KYGZ), a Chinese mining treatise based largely on Georgius Agricola’s (1494-1555) De re metallica (1556). This partial translation, initiated by the Chinese official Li Tianjing 李天經 (1579-1659) and carried out by the Jesuit missionary Johann Adam Schall von Bell (Tang Ruowang 湯若望; 1592-1666), was lost for more than 350 years. Involving one of the most significant protagonists and polymaths of the German Renaissance and the most influential China-bound German Jesuit missionary, this text is of extraordinary importance not only for the history of East-West relations, but also for German cultural history.
In addition, and for comparative reasons, we are investigating another important and largely neglected text, the Taixi shuifa 泰西水法 (Hydromethods of the Great West; 6 chap., 208 pp., preface 1612; hereafter TXSF). The TXSF, mainly composed by the Italian Jesuit missionary Sabatino de Ursis (Xiong Sanba 熊三拔; 1575-1620), contains a systematic discourse on both theoretical and practical aspects of water and water management as well as forays into the medical field. Topically this technological manual differs from the KYGZ by embedding the presented new techniques in a traditional everyday setting, while at the same time it shares commonalities with the KYGZ in the domains of water drainage and natural philosophy.
The targets of this project are systematic, comprehensive as well as paradigmatic. It comprises studies of (甲) the Western books transferred to China, (乙) their selective translation by the Jesuits and their Chinese collaborators, (丙) the terminological and conceptual strategies and choices adopted during such efforts, (丁) the reception and perception of the texts on the Chinese side as well as (戊) the political, social, economic, cultural and ideological backgrounds and intentions of the different historical actors. The final aim of these case studies is (己) to deal with issues of intercivilisational encounters, especially (庚) in the field of useful and reliable knowledge, during (辛) the early period of globalisation, and (壬) to carry out comparisons based on the macro-sociological theory of the “Four Ways of Worldmaking” (power, wealth, meaning, knowledge), thus (癸) arriving at novel conclusions with regard to relevant convergences and divergences between China and Europe as well as the occurrence of the Great Divergence.
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