Letters of a Peking Jesuit

Letters of a Peking Jesuit PDF

Author: Ferdinand Verbiest

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 962

ISBN-13: 9789082090987

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Together with Verbiest?s printed works, this correspondence is the most direct witness of his rich life and activities (1623-1688). It covers the 43 years between his first application for the Indies (1645) and his farewell to the Kangxi Emperor (28.01.1688). Side by side with the copies of his astronomical drawings and eclipse maps, inventoried in 'F. Verbiest and the Chinese Heaven' (2003), these letters reveal a wide-ranging network of contacts, within China and with Europe. The topics are as many and various as the 55 correspondents are different, spanning the whole spectrum from the Jesuits in Moscow to Pedro II in Lisbon, from the Franciscans in Shandong to Pope Innocentius XI and the Cardinals of CPF in Rome. The topics are related to his successive positions in the Jesuit hierarchy in China, his work as an engineer and ?astronomer? for the Court and his international diplomatic interventions, with the Jesuit mission in China as the central argument. This edition of 134 letters from and to Verbiest replaces that of Henri Bosmans (1938). It is a critical revision of the formerly known 80 items, with a restitution of the original Chinese transcriptions, all extended with 54 new items, mostly from the Ajuda archives (Lisbon), the latter putting especially the Chinese scene in the focus. Two major documents are added (dated 1661 and 1681), which reflect his talents as a polemic writer; also in various other letters he unfolds scriptorial talents, combined to a sharp sense of observation.

China on Paper

China on Paper PDF

Author: Marcia Reed

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1606060686

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Published to accompany the exhibition held at the Getty Research Institute, Nov. 6, 2007 to Feb. 10, 2008.

Europe and China

Europe and China PDF

Author: Luis Saraiva

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9814390445

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Missionaries, and in particular the Portuguese Assistancy of the Society of Jesus, played a fundamental role in the dissemination of Western scientific knowledge in East Asia. They also brought to Europe a deeper knowledge of Asian countries. This volume brings together a series of essays analyzing important new data on this significant scientific and cultural exchange, including several in-depth discussions of new sources relevant to Jesuit scientific activities at the Chinese Emperor''s Court. It includes major contributions examining various case studies that range from the work of some individual missionaries (Karel Slav cek, Guillaume Bonjour) in Beijing during the reigns of Kangxi and Yongzheng to the cultural exchange between a Korean envoy and the Beijing Jesuits during the early 18th century. Focusing in particular on the relationship between science and the arts, this volume also features articles pertaining to the historical contributions made by Tomis Pereira and Jean-Joseph-Marie Amiot, to the exchange of musical knowledge between China and Europe.

The Making of European Music in the Long Eighteenth Century

The Making of European Music in the Long Eighteenth Century PDF

Author: D R M Irving

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0197632181

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In this book, author D. R. M. Irving traces the emergence of such large-scale categories as "European music" and "Western music," showing how they originate from self-fashioning in contexts of intercultural comparison outside the European continent rather than the resolution of national aesthetic differences within it. Taken as a whole, this study demonstrates how reductive labels for the musics of a continent or a hemisphere often imply homogeneity and essentialism, and how a renewed critique of primary sources can help dismantle historiographical constructs that arose within narratives of musical pasts involving Europe.

Qing Encounters

Qing Encounters PDF

Author: Petra ten-Doesschate Chu

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 2015-10-01

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1606064576

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Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges between China and the West examines how the contact between China and Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries transformed the arts on both sides of the East-West divide. The essays in the volume reveal the extent to which images, artifacts, and natural specimens were traded and copied, and how these materials inflected both cultures’ visions of novelty and pleasure, battle and power, and ways of seeing and representing. Artists and craftspeople on both continents borrowed and adapted forms, techniques, and modes of representation, producing deliberate, meaningful, and complex new creations. By considering this reciprocity from both Eastern and Western perspectives, Qing Encounters offers a new and nuanced understanding of this critical period.

Astronomy and Calendars – The Other Chinese Mathematics

Astronomy and Calendars – The Other Chinese Mathematics PDF

Author: Jean-Claude Martzloff

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-09-01

Total Pages: 485

ISBN-13: 3662497182

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Presented from the viewpoint of the history of mathematics, this book explores both epistemological aspects of Chinese traditional mathematical astronomy and lunisolar calendrical calculations. The following issues are addressed: (1) connections with non-Chinese cultural areas; (2) the possibility or impossibility of using mathematics to predict astronomical phenomena, a question that was constantly raised by the Chinese from antiquity through medieval times; (3) the modes of representation of numbers, and in particular the zero, found in the context of Chinese calendrical calculations; and (4) a detailed analysis of lunisolar calendrical calculations. Fully worked-out examples and comparisons between the results of calculations and the content of Chinese historical calendars from various periods are provided. Traditional Chinese calendrical and mathematical astronomy consists of permanently reformed mathematical procedures designed to predict, but not explain, phenomena pertaining to astronomy and related areas. Yet, despite appearances, models of the mathematical techniques hidden behind this voluminous corpus reveal that they depend on a limited number of clear-cut mathematical structures. Although only a small fraction of these techniques have been fully studied, what is known surprisingly broadens our knowledge of the history of Chinese mathematics. Sinologists interested in the history of Chinese science, and anyone interested in the history of Chinese mathematics, the Chinese calendar, and the history of Chinese mathematical astronomy from its origin (104 BC) to its European reform (AD 1644) will find this book very useful. The present English language edition is a fully revised and updated version of the French original. Even though this is a research monograph in sinology, no particular sinological background is required, although a basic understanding of ‘concrete mathematics’ is needed. From the reviews of the French edition: This is a demanding, rigorous book to read ... worth the concentrated study it requires. The rewards are not only in the details but in the general overview that ...[it] provides. Joseph Dauben, EASTM, 2011 ...first Work in a Western language to turn to for anyone interested in the details of Chinese calendrical computations. Benno Van Dalen, ISIS, 2011 Martzloff’s careful scholarship and his overall look at the calendar beyond astronomical calculations, ..., make this book a most valuable contributions to a field of increasing interest. U. D’Ambrosio, Mathematical Reviews, 2013

The Emperor's New Mathematics

The Emperor's New Mathematics PDF

Author: Catherine Jami

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 0199601402

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Jami explores how the emperor Kangxi solidified the Qing dynasty in 17th-century China through the appropriation of the 'Western learning', and especially the mathematics, of Jesuit missionaries. This text details not only the history of mathematical ideas, but also their political and cultural impact.