Abstract
Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) was one of the first Europeans to give an informed and detailed appraisal of feng shui belief and practice in China. Ricci died in 1610 in Beijing where his grave is still maintained and respected. The centrality of science for the Jesuit Chinese mission has been recognized from the outset. Astronomy in China was a serious enterprise but was conducted largely for furthering Imperial (State) interests and for practical ends such as having a usable season-aligned calendar which itself was an indicator or manifestation of Imperial competence and virtue. Ricci’s mathematical, trigonometrical, astronomical, isoperimetric, cartographic, and chronological knowledge was taken up in a purely utilitarian way by the Chinese court and mandarins. The fraud, hucksterism, deceit, and exploitation of people’s credulity that Ricci observed have remained a constant in the feng shui tradition down to the contemporary internet age. Ricci’s life and writings provide fertile material for cross-disciplinary study. Teachers and students of geography, history, religion, philosophy, and science can all collaborate in selecting threads of the rich Ricci tapestry and appropriately investigating them.
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Notes
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The more prominent being Adam Schall von Bell, Manuel Dias, Johannes Schrick, and Ferdinand Verbiest. The latter reconstructed the Peking Observatory in 1673 replacing ancient Chinese instruments with European ones. On Jesuit scientific research, teaching, and practice in China, see d’Elia (1960), Spence (1980, Chap. 1), and Udías (1994, 2015, Chap. 4).
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On Ricci’s astounding memory, see Spence (1984).
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On Li Shan-Lan, see Wang (1996).
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There has been some debate about how much Trigault inserted himself into the 1615 Latin edition. But it seems that with some exceptions, it is a faithful translation of Ricci’s original Italian text (Rule 1972, pp. 122–24). Gallagher rendered Ricci’s given name as ‘Matthew’; in this book the Italian ‘Matteo’ will be used.
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The examination system is discussed in Chap. 8.
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On Ricci’s scientific contribution to China, see Bernard (1935).
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Ricci argued with other missionaries and with the Vatican over how much of Confucian ritual concerning ancestors, burial, etc. and metaphysical beliefs could be maintained by converts to Catholicism. He wanted to maximize retention. Against Ricci’s advice, the Vatican ultimately said that converts had to leave their cultural rituals and language about the ‘Lord of Heaven’ at the church door.
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There is disagreement about the title’s translation. Needham renders it New Elucidation of the Heavenly Bodies; Alexeϊ Volkov says that this omits the title’s all-important allusion to the I Ching with Ge denoting the hexagram ‘Alteration’. So, the title should be New Writing on the Image of the Alteration (Volkov 1996a, p. 39). The latter is more reflective of the Daoist philosophical/theological commitments of Zhao and of the inextricable interlinking of ‘science’ with astrology, philosophy, and religion in the Chinese tradition. The science/non-science demarcation is even more problematic in the Chinese tradition than it is in the West.
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Galileo was condemned not so much for actually teaching the Copernican theory, but teaching that it was true. Among countless sources, see Finocchiaro (1989).
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There was strong opposition to Jesuit science by Confucian traditionalists. This is elaborated in Wong (1963).
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Consistent with then current practice, all his ‘heretical’ library was eventually consigned to the courtyard flames. A blot on the reputation of the Catholic Church in China.
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Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians (6:12) ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world …’. For elaboration and literature on this subject, see Matthews (2015a, pp. 361–63).
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Exorcism and belief in devil possession have continued to the present day in the Roman Catholic Church. In 2015 the Vatican hosted an Exorcism Convention. The Vatican’s official exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, who has conducted 70,000 exorcisms, claimed that many paedophilia cases were the direct work of devils who had taken possession of the offending priests (Amorth 2010).
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The issue of what is ‘corrupt’ and what is not, what is authentic development, and what is misguided, deviationist, and heretical is something that all belief systems and ideologies face. The more so, of course, for party-based political movements and religions founded upon putative divine revelation. Communism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity have all, famously and tragically, ruptured over this very issue of what is authentic and inauthentic development of a tradition.
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Matthews, M.R. (2019). Matteo Ricci: A Sixteenth-Century Appraisal of Feng Shui. In: Feng Shui: Teaching About Science and Pseudoscience. Science: Philosophy, History and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18822-1_6
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