Organizer: Yuan-ling Chao, Middle Tennessee State University Chair: Nathan Sivin, University of Pennsylvania Discussant: Joe Dauben, City University of New York
Science in early modern China was, the received historiography asserts, in decline: the state orthodoxy inculcated through civil service examinations suppressed interest in science; Confucians scorned the practical and scientific; only the stimulus of the Jesuit introduction of Western Science resulted in a belated but ultimately abortive revival of Chinese science.
The three papers in this panel challenge this historiography by combining analyses of systematically neglected historical documents with theoretical perspectives from the cultural studies of science. Elman argues that an imperially-sanctioned scholarly reorientation incorporated "natural studies" into Confucian "broad learning"; the power of the state projected through the civil examinations was not merely repressive but also productive in enforcing competence among elite literati in astronomy, music, and mathematics. Chao shows that classical texts served as a crucial cultural resource for the literati who increasingly entered the field of medicine: by invoking the authority of classical texts over medicine they sought to legitimate their own medical practices over those of artisanal practitioners. Hart shows that Western Studies was adopted by elite literati with little knowledge of contemporary Chinese sciences; their extravagant claims of its superiority, novelty, and practical efficacy were made in religious propaganda for the Jesuits and memorials fashioning themselves as statesmen with unique solutions to late-Ming crises.
This panel will benefit from discussions by Bray and Dauben. Bray has done much work on Chinese science as well as Chinese medicine and Dauben's knowledge on the history of mathematics and his research into Chinese mathematics places him in a unique position to comment on specific as well as broader issues. Under the chairmanship of Sivin, whose scholarship and dedication to the study of Chinese science and medicine is well known, it is hoped that this panel will provide an exciting forum for discussion on the cultural histories of science and medicine in China.
The Role of Natural Sciences in Ming Civil Examination Policy Questions
Benjamin Elman, University of California, Los Angeles
One of the most common generalizations scholars make concerning the role of science in late imperial China (1400-1900) is that studies of astronomy and mathematics were in steady decline there until the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth century. This long-standing perspective has been challenged by recent studies that indicate that calendar reform was an important concern among Ming Confucians before the arrival of the Jesuits in China. Moreover, Nathan Sivin has demonstrated that the Jesuits consciously manipulated their knowledge of early modern European astronomy to suit their religious objectives in Ming China, thus mitigating their success among late Ming Confucians in transmitting the European sciences to late imperial China.
Views that Ming Confucians, unlike their Sung and Yuan predecessors, were participants in a senescent civilization whose elite participants were trapped in a civilian cum "amateur" ideal of the literatus that tempered interest in the natural world have typically appealed for corroboration to the infamous Confucian civil examination system instituted by the state for selection of officials during the late empire. However, careful scrutiny of the Ming dynasty civil examination records that survive in archives and libraries in China, Taiwan, and Japan reveal that the examinations themselves tested the candidates' knowledge of astronomy, the calendar, and other aspects of the natural world that we call the "Chinese sciences" today. Such unexpected findings suggest that our earlier assessments of late imperial intellectual life need to be revised to take into account the newly found evidence that tempers-but does not replace-our image of the civil examinations as resolutely tied to the cultural hegemony of imperial Confucianism.
In the Ming dynasty, then, although the perennial relationship between classical and historical studies remained the most important consideration among orthodox Confucians, the rise in status of the "natural studies" as part of the "broad learning" required of an official had also received imperial support.
If candidates for the provincial examinations during the Ming dynasty had to expect the possibility that one or more of their policy questions might deal with astronomy or the calendar, then during any cycle of triennial provincial examinations over 50,000 and perhaps as many as 100,000 candidates had to be prepared throughout the seventeen provinces to handle such questions. The counter-intuitive finding that such questions rarely appeared on civil examinations during the Ch'ing dynasty, means that candidates no longer had to prepare for such questions. This puzzling result will be evaluated in light of early Ming and early Ch'ing imperial policies toward the civil examinations
Knowledge and Experience in Traditional Chinese Medicine: The Question of Sanshi
Yuan-ling Chao, Middle Tennessee State University
Medical practitioners, yi, were never considered quite the Confucian gentleman in traditional China. They were classified as artisans (gong) by the imperial government and their biographies were placed under the fangji or yishu categories. Yet at the same time, they were regarded differently from other artisans in that physicians were expected to be embodiments of the virtues of the ideal Confucian. Physicians in traditional China were not a homogeneous group, but consisted of people with widely differing healing practices. At the top were the ruyi (Confucian physicians) whose numbers seemingly increased dramatically in late imperial China, especially in the Jiangnan region.
There is an inherent tension embodied within the term ruyi. Were they Confucians or were they artisans? How did the physicians in late imperial China establish their positions and legitimacy? This tension regarding the importance of technical skills and Confucian values manifested itself more clearly in the debates which permeated medical discourse among physicians in late imperial China.
This paper will examine one of the discussions during that period involving a passage in Liji Quli which states that "one does not take the medicine of a physician who does not come from [the] three generations" (yibusanshi bufuqiyao). In popular interpretation it was generally taken to mean that one does not take the prescription of a physician who did not come from a family of physicians of at least three generations. Many other scholars and physicians, however, have taken exception to this interpretation and argued that it referred instead to the three traditional medical classics attributed to legendary ancient sages, referring to the Huangdi Zhenjing, the Shennong Bencao, and the Sunu Maijue. They represented the three major traditions on acupuncture, the study of the pulse, and on material medica. Therefore the meaning was that one should not trust a physician who was not a true Confucian and who had not studied the classical texts. Through an emphasis on classical medical knowledge instead of experience, they were attempting also to extend the authority of Confucian values and ethics over medicine and medical practice.
This discussion, one of many that went on during late imperial China, reflected a tension among the different groups of physicians, and a competition for legitimacy, as well as elite attitude towards technical knowledge.
Proof, Propaganda, and Patronage: The Dissemination of Western Studies in
17th-Century China
Roger P. Hart, University of California, Berkeley
The apparent inevitability of the triumph of Western science over the declining Chinese tradition in the seventeenth century has seemed to render historical analysis of the scientific content of this emblematic conflict of cultures superfluous. The received historiography has instead focused on the distorting social interests and psychologistic causes (e.g., pride, conservatism, and xenophobia) purported to explain Chinese opposition to the Jesuits; the adoption of Jesuit doctrines, which has been asymmetrically naturalized as resulting from the assumed validity of Western science, has thus seemed not to require further historical explanation.
This paper offers a historical, sociological and cultural analysis of Jesuit science in China contextualized as strategies of proof, propaganda and patronage. Extant Ming mathematical treatises demonstrate that the dissemination of Western Studies and the Jesuit recruitment of converts cannot be explained by anachronistic claims of Western scientific superiority; Western Studies-a hierarchy of knowledge ranging from Euclidean geometry to Aristotelian cosmology and ultimately Christian theology-was adopted and propagated by elite converts with little knowledge of the Chinese sciences. In the converts' propaganda, Jesuit scientific proofs provided a rhetoric for displaying their conversion to the higher theological truths which had been stripped by Ricci of their revelatory content; acceptance of the truths of Western science, by providing an exemplar for supplanting "doubt" with "clarity," was represented as part of the process of accepting demonstrations of Christian truths. More importantly, Western Studies provided these elite converts with novel proposals for their memorials to the Ming court; the misrecognition of Jesuit teachings as scientific allowed the ambiguous loyalty of the Chinese converts to the Jesuits to be explained as loyalty to the Ming Dynasty. Ultimately, I will argue, it was the patronage strategies of the Jesuits and their converts that legitimated Western Studies.
My conclusion will offer historical explanations for the claims of the Jesuits and their converts (PLD), claims that have been uncritically adopted as conclusions in recent historiography. The claims of a decline in Chinese mathematics revitalized only by Jesuit translations was not an evaluation of the Chinese "tradition," but instead an elaboration of Ricci's theory asserting that the meaning of the Chinese classics had been lost and recovered only in Christian doctrines. Similarly, claims of the radical newness of the West, of problems in translation, and of the superiority of Western Studies are themselves artifacts of the proselytization strategies of the Jesuits and their converts.