Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This issue features three research articles examining various aspects of science and technology in Late Imperial China.In "From Practice to Writing," Chuan-hui Mau explores how Chinese wild silk production techniques-practiced since Antiquity-came to be documented and circulated in written form by scholar-officials from the seventeenth century onward.Through close analysis of these textual records, the article compellingly reconstructs the technical details involved in wild silk production.It also traces the dynamic process through which this knowledge circulated across regions, was elaborated by successive authors, and evolved into increasingly sophisticated forms.At the center of this process of accumulation and refinement were the scholar-officials themselves.By examining how local literati and officials, motivated by the economic benefits that wild silk production could bring to their regions, worked to disseminate this knowledge, and how imperial policies aimed to promote local technologies across the empire, the article vividly illustrates the vibrant culture of technical engagement among the scholar-officials in Late Imperial China.Richard A. Pegg's "Syncretic Spatial Consideration" analyzes a highly unusual Chinese maritime chart, likely produced in the early nineteenth century.Titled "Chart from the Ocean [Perspective] of the Fixed Appearance of Star Allocation," the chart is visually organized around a circle centered on a sailing junk, divided into twelve pie-like segments.Each segment contains, from the outer edge, one of the twelve earthly stems, star diagrams, names of port cities in the South China Sea, and related geographical information.The use of the term "star allocation" in the title signals an engagement with traditional Chinese cosmology, particularly the longstanding belief in correspondences between heaven and earth.Yet Pegg highlights the conceptual novelty of the East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (2025) 1-2
Author: Jongtae LIM
Institution: Seoul National University
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4411322452