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Author: Christopher Cullen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317327209
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 447
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Book Description
The Foundations of Celestial Reckoning gives the reader direct access to the foundational documents of the tradition of calculation created by astronomers of the early Chinese empire between the late second century BCE and the third century CE. The paradigm they established was to shape East Asian thought and practice in the field of mathematical astronomy for centuries to come. It was in many ways radically different from better known traditions of astronomy in other parts of the ancient world. This book includes full English translations of the first three systems of mathematical astronomy adopted for use by imperial astronomical officials, together with introductory material explaining the origin and nature of each system, and a general introduction to the work as a whole. The translations, which are accompanied by the original Chinese text, give a consistent rendering of all technical terms, and include detailed explanatory notes. The text in which the second of the three systems is found also includes a unique collection of documents compiled around 178 CE by two experts in the field, one of whom was the author of the third system translated in this book. Using material transcribed from government archives of the two preceding centuries, these scholars carefully document and review controversies and large-scale official debates on astronomical matters up to their own time. Nothing equivalent in detail and clarity has survived from any other ancient culture. The availability of the totality of this material in English opens new perspectives to all historians of pre-modern astronomy.
Author: Christopher Cullen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317327209
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 447
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Foundations of Celestial Reckoning gives the reader direct access to the foundational documents of the tradition of calculation created by astronomers of the early Chinese empire between the late second century BCE and the third century CE. The paradigm they established was to shape East Asian thought and practice in the field of mathematical astronomy for centuries to come. It was in many ways radically different from better known traditions of astronomy in other parts of the ancient world. This book includes full English translations of the first three systems of mathematical astronomy adopted for use by imperial astronomical officials, together with introductory material explaining the origin and nature of each system, and a general introduction to the work as a whole. The translations, which are accompanied by the original Chinese text, give a consistent rendering of all technical terms, and include detailed explanatory notes. The text in which the second of the three systems is found also includes a unique collection of documents compiled around 178 CE by two experts in the field, one of whom was the author of the third system translated in this book. Using material transcribed from government archives of the two preceding centuries, these scholars carefully document and review controversies and large-scale official debates on astronomical matters up to their own time. Nothing equivalent in detail and clarity has survived from any other ancient culture. The availability of the totality of this material in English opens new perspectives to all historians of pre-modern astronomy.
Author: Christopher Cullen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198733119
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441
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Book Description
This book is a history of the development of mathematical astronomy in China, from the late third century BCE, to the early 3rd century CE - a period often referred to as 'early imperial China'. It narrates the changes in ways of understanding the movements of the heavens and the heavenly bodies that took place during those four and a half centuries, and tells the stories of the institutions and individuals involved in those changes. It gives clear explanations of technical practice in observation, instrumentation, and calculation, and the steady accumulation of data over many years - but it centres on the activity of the individual human beings who observed the heavens, recorded what they saw, and made calculations to analyse and eventually make predictions about the motions of the celestial bodies. It is these individuals, their observations, their calculations, and the words they left to us that provide the narrative thread that runs through this work. Throughout the book, the author gives clear translations of original material that allow the reader direct access to what the people in this book said about themselves and what they tried to do.
Author: Alan C. Bowen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004400567
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 783
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Book Description
In Hellenistic Astronomy: The Science in Its Contexts, renowned scholars address questions about what the ancient science of the heavens was and the numerous contexts in which it was pursued.
Author: Hong Yuan
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1532058292
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 829
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Book Description
The Sinitic Civilization A Factual History through the Lens of Archaeology, Bronzeware, Astronomy, Divination, Calendar and the Annals The book covered the time span of history of the Sinitic civilization from antiquity, to the 3rd millennium B.C. to A.D. 85. A comprehensive review of history related to the Sinitic cosmological, astronomical, astrological, historical, divinatory, and geographical developments was given. All ancient Chinese calendars had been examined, with the ancient thearchs’ dates examined from the perspective how they were forged or made up. The book provides the indisputable evidence regarding the fingerprint of the forger for the 3rd century A.D. book Shangshu (remotely ancient history), and close to 50 fingerprints of the forger of the contemporary version of The Bamboo Annals. Using the watershed line of Qin Emperor Shihuangdi’s book burning of 213 B.C., the book rectified what was the original history before the book burning, filtered out what was forged after the book burning, sorted out the sophistry and fables that were rampant just prior to the book burning, and validated the history against the records in the oracle bones, bronzeware, and bamboo slips. The book covers 95-98% and more of the contents in the two ancient history annals of The Spring Autumn Annals and The Bamboo Annals. There are dedicated chapters devoted to interpreting Qu Yuan’s poem Asking Heaven (Tian Wen), the mythical book The Legends of Mountains & Seas (Shan Hai Jing), geography book Lord Yu’s Tributes (Yu Gong), and Zhou King Muwang’s Travelogue (Mu-tian-zi Zhuan). The book has appendices of two calendars: the first anterior quarter remainder calendar (247 B.C.-104 B.C./247 B.C.-85 A.D.) of the Qin Empire, as well as a conversion table of the sexagenary years of the virtual Yin-li (Shang dynasty) quarter remainder calendar versus the Gregorian calendar, that covers the years 2698 B.C. to 2018 A.D. Book I stops about the midpoint of the 242 years covered in Confucius’ abridged book The Spring & Autumn Annals (722-481 B.C.). Book II stops at Han Emperor Zhangdi (Liu Da, reign A.D. 76-88; actual reign Aug of A.D. 75-Feb of A.D. 88), with the A.D. 85 adoption of the Sifen-li posterior quarter remainder calendar premised on reverting to the sexagenary years of the virtual Yin-li (Shang dynasty) quarter remainder calendar, a calendar disconnected from the Jupiter’s chronogram, that was purportedly invented by the Confucians on basis of Confucius’ identifying the ‘qi-lin’ divine giraffe animal and wrapping up the masterpiece The Spring & Autumn Annals two years prior to death.
Author: Alexander Jones
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108682626
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
This volume in the highly respected Cambridge History of Science series is devoted to the history of science, medicine and mathematics of the Old World in antiquity. Organized by topic and culture, its essays by distinguished scholars offer the most comprehensive and up-to-date history of ancient science currently available. Together, they reveal the diversity of goals, contexts, and accomplishments in the study of nature in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, and India. Intended to provide a balanced and inclusive treatment of the ancient world, contributors consider scientific, medical and mathematical learning in the cultures associated with the ancient world.
Author: Hermann Hunger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135168681X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326
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Book Description
MUL.APIN, written sometime before the 8th century BC, was the most widely copied astronomical text in ancient Mesopotamia: a compendium including information such as star lists, descriptions of planetary phases, mathematical schemes for the length of day and night, a discussion of the luni-solar calendar and rules for intercalation, and a short collection of celestial omens. This book contains an introductory essay, followed by a new edition of the text and a facing-page transliteration and English translation. Finally, the book contains a new and detailed commentary on the text. This is a fascinating study, and an important resource for anyone interested in the history of astronomy.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1154
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Book Description
Author: Alessandra Petrocchi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351022245
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 443
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Book Description
The Gaṇitatilaka and its Commentary: Two Medieval Sanskrit Mathematical Texts presents the first English annotated translation and analysis of the Gaṇitatilaka by Śrīpati and its Sanskrit commentary by the Jaina monk Siṃhatilakasūri (13th century CE). Siṃhatilakasūri’s commentary upon the Gaṇitatilaka is a key text for the study of Sanskrit mathematical jargon and a precious source of information on mathematical practices of medieval India; this is, in fact, the first known Sanskrit mathematical commentary written by a Jaina monk, about whom we have substantial information, to survive to the present day. In presenting the first annotated translation of these two Sanskrit mathematical texts, this volume focusses on language in mathematics and puts forward a novel, fresh approach to Sanskrit mathematical literature which favours linguistic, literary features and textual data. This key resource makes these important texts available in English for the first time for students of Sanskrit, ancient and medieval mathematics, South Asian history, and philology.
Author: Anuj Misra
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429015062
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
This book provides, for the very first time, a critical edition and an English translation (accompanied by critical notes and technical analyses) of the chapter on spheres (golādhyāya) from Nityānanda’s Sarvasiddhāntarāja, a Sanskrit astronomical text written in seventeenth-century Mughal India. Readers will learn how terrestrial and celestial phenomena were understood by early modern Sanskrit astronomers using spherical geometry. The technical discussions in this book, supported by the critically edited Sanskrit text and geometric diagrams, offer an opportunity for historians of the astral sciences to understand developments in astronomy in seventeenth-century Mughal India from a more nuanced perspective. These are supplemented through explorations of modernity, mathematics, and mythology and how they thrived within Sanskrit astronomical discourse at the courts of the Mughal emperors. This book will be of interest to historians and philosophers of science, in particular those interested in the history of non-Western astral sciences. The book will be a valuable resource for scholars studying the general history of Sanskrit astronomy in the Indian subcontinent as well as those interested in the technical aspects of Sanskrit and Indo-Persian astronomy in Mughal India.
Author: Mark Csikszentmihalyi
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438485441
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 341
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Book Description
While cultural literacy in early China was grounded in learning the Classics, basic competence in official life was generally predicated on acquiring several forms of technical knowledge. Recent archaeological finds have brought renewed attention to the use of technical manuals and mantic techniques within a huge range of discrete contexts, pushing historians to move beyond the generalities offered by past scholarship. To explore these uses, Technical Arts in the Han Histories delves deeply into the rarely studied "Treatises" and "Tables" compiled for the first two standard histories, the Shiji (Historical Records) and Hanshu (History of Han), important supplements to the better-known biographical chapters, and models for the inclusion of technical subjects in the twenty-three later "Standard Histories" of imperial China. Indeed, for a great many aspects of life in early imperial society, they constitute our best primary sources for understanding complex realities and perceptions. The essays in this volume seek to explain how different social groups thought of, disseminated, and withheld technical knowledge relating to the body, body politic, and cosmos, in the process of detailing the preoccupations of successive courts from Qin through Eastern Han in administering the localities, the frontier zones, and their numerous subjects (at the time, roughly one-quarter of the world's population).
