Abstract
I have chosen the title of my essay intentionally to imitate that of Charles Gillispie’s classic paper, “The Natural History of Industry.” From that short paper, I, like many other historians of science in my generation, learned to think critically about the relation of science and technology, and about the real nature of written materials on techniques and trades, those in the famous Encyclopédie for example. Much of what Gillispie said in showing “natural historical” aspects of many French technical writings of eighteenth century applies to the subject of the present essay, the Tiangong kaiwu 天工開物 (Heaven’s Work in Opening Things, published in 1637), a famous seventeenth-century Chinese book of production techniques, written by Song Yingxing 宋應星 (1587–1666, ca.), whom Joseph Needham has called “Diderot of China.” In this essay, I will reexamine Song Yingxing’s attitude to the production techniques and his motivation for writing the book, and call attention to another aspect of the book that has not been noted so far: “natural theology of industry.”
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- 1.
Gillispie (1957).
- 2.
The two major studies on the Tiangong kaiwu are: Yabuuchi (1954a); Pan Jixing (1989). In addition, Pan Jixing has written an extensive biography of Song Yingxing: Pan (1990). There have been translations of the Tiangong kaiwu into English, modern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean: Sun and Sun (1966); Zhong Guangyan (1978); Yabuuchi (1969); Ch’oe (1997). For various editions and reprints of the Tiangong kaiwu, see Pan (1989, pp. 131–171). Needham’s reference to Song Yingxing appears in Needham (1954, p. 13).
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Yabuuchi (1954b, p. 2).
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Pan (1989, pp. 21, 92). Pan Jixing went as far as saying that at the time there was no book on technology even in the West that could be compared to the Tiangong kaiwu in depth and breadth of coverage: Pan (1989, pp. 98–100). He also saw some characteristics of modern science in the book, using such expressions as “experimental science,” “mathematization,” “critical spirit,” and “enlightenment thought”: Pan (1989, pp. 76–78).
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Yabuuchi (1954b, pp. 15–16); Pan (1989, p. 16). Peter Golas has also pointed out such aspects as “stress on concrete accomplishments whether as an official or in a private capacity,” “willingness to accept the legitimacy of profit-taking by merchants,” and “interest in scientific and technological learning that had practical application,” as well as more immediate motivations for “reputation” and “income”: Golas (2007, p. 574).
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- 7.
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Pan (1989, p. 69).
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Pan (1989, p. 73).
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Peter Golas, for example, has sided with this line of interpretation by emphasizing the importance of “the idea that technology involved human beings employing their skills to make useful the resources provided by nature.” See Golas (2007, p. 585).
- 11.
Craig Clunas has translated the title as “Heaven’s Craft in the Creation of Things”, but has not elaborated on it: Clunas (2004, p. 166).
- 12.
For example, Francesca Bray has spoken of “a general interest among the leisured class of the period in how everyday objects were made.” Bray et al. (2007, p. 30).
- 13.
Dagmar Schäfer has seen “a very Confucian idea of presenting an all-encompassing world-view” in Song Yingxing’s original plan. See Schäfer (2005, p. 53).
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Of course, it is also possible that he did not include them because there had already been many writings on them. Pan Jixing has suggested that the contents of Song Yingxing’s other essays, “Tan tian” 談天 (Discourse of Heaven) and “Lun qi” 論氣 (Discussions on Qi), correspond to those of these two chapters: Pan (1990, pp. 266, 273).
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Yabuuchi Kiyoshi saw an emphasis on the importance of agriculture in this: Yabuuchi (1954b, p. 5). Indeed, a large part of the content of the Tiangong kaiwu is devoted to agricultural topics: not only the topics like grains and clothes, but chapters on dyeing, sugar, etc. contain discussion of agricultural problems.
- 16.
The printers of the second edition (published between 1650s and 1680s) seem to have seen this aspect of the book, as can be seen in the content of the advertising sentences on the title page. See Schäfer (2005, p. 42). Peter Golas has given an excellent, if somewhat too modernized, list of the items described in the Tiangong kaiwu.
The topics Song regularly discussed about any given technology included raw materials, areas of production, the technical processes involved, essential operations, equipment used, consumption of raw and processed materials, consumption of energy, products and rate of production, special characteristics of the products and their uses. (Golas, 2007, p. 585.)
- 17.
Song Yingxing divided the Tiangong kaiwu into three parts and 18 chapters, using the same character juan 卷 to refer to both the “parts” and the “chapters.” In my citation, I put the numbers for the parts (I, II, III) and the chapters (1–18), followed by the page numbers of the original edition (1637), reprinted as volume 1115 of the Xuxiu Siku quanshu 續修四庫全書 series (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe 古籍出版社, 1995–1999). “III.15.31b”, for example, refers to Part III, Chapter 15, p. 31b.
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Contents like these made Pan Jixing state that Song Yingxing was dealing with the “quantitative relations.” See Pan (1989, p. 77).
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Dagmar Schäfer has noted that Song Yingxing’s stance on craft was based on theoretical reflections, not on practical experiences: Schäfer (2005, p. 55).
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Gillispie (1957). In fact, in the Tiangong kaiwu we frequently find the expression, “bowu” 博物 (literally, “broad [study of] things”), which is used in modern Chinese in translating “natural history.” For example, in the preface Song Yingxing spoke of “the intelligent ‘bowuzhe 博物者’ (‘those who broadly [study] things’).” He ended Chapter 1 on the grains by saying: “How can a ‘bowuzhe 博物者’ neglect them?” (I.1.22a). See also III.16.46b.
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Pan Jixing has noted that some items in the book are based on the examination of the actual practice. See Pan (1989, p. 20).
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On the other hand, Christopher Cullen has mentioned the possibility that Song Yingxing actually made measurements: Cullen (1990, p. 312).
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On the scholars of “evidential studies,” see Elman (1984).
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Pan (1989, pp. 80, 103, 186).
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The expression, zaohua, usually referred to the subtle, marvelous, mysterious aspect of some natural phenomena. But sometimes the word had a meaning quite close to that of “Creator.” See Kim (2000, p. 101).
- 30.
This was what the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European writers on technical arts did. See, e.g., Rossi (1970, Chap. 1.) Song Yingxing’s contemporary Wang Zheng 王徵 (1571–1644) also showed a similar tendency in the Yuanxi qiqi tushuo luzui 遠西奇器圖說錄最 (Selected Records of the Diagrams and Explanations of the Strange Machines from the Far West). See Kim (2010).
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Pan Jixing has identified many such citations: Pan (1989, pp. 175–183).
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Here Song Yingxing is referring to Zhinü 織女, a mythological female figure associated with the weaving, recorded as “Heaven’s Grandchild” in the astronomical treatise (Tian’guan shu 天官書) of the Record of Grand Historian (Shiji).
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This aspect must have been what made Pan Jixing conclude that the notion that man cannot depend completely on the natural world, but has to do something himself, was “the leading idea” of the Tiangong kaiwu: Pan (1989, p. 70). This idea can be traced back to the above mentioned phrase from the Book of Documents, “It is the heaven’s work; man substitutes it.”
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In this Song Yingxing was following the tradition of the “Commentary on the Appended Words” (Xici zhuan 繫辭傳, ch. B2) of the Book of Changes, which attributed the origins of key institutions and techniques to the ancient sages.
- 35.
Christopher Cullen has noted that Song Yingxing “certainly had some contact with Jesuit teaching.” Cullen (1990, p. 316, n. 73). Xu Guangtai 徐光台 (Hsu Kuang-t’ai) has suggested a possible connection between Song Yingxing and Xiong Mingyu 熊明遇 (1579–1649), an influential scholar with a favorable attitude to Catholicism: Xu (2007, pp. 378–379). It is also highly likely that Song Yingxing read Matteo Ricci’s (1552–1610) True Meanings of Heavenly Lord (Tianzhu shiyi 天主實義), which was widely circulated among the Chinese scholars of late Ming, and which contained many remarks of natural theological character. Ricci said, for example: “Considering Heavenly Lord’s producing this heaven and earth and these myriad things, there is not a single thing that He did not create for man’s use.” Zhu (2001, p. 69).
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(Collection of Matteo Ricci’s Writings and Translations in Chinese). Hong Kong: 香港城市大學出版社.Author information
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Kim, Y.S. (2011). “Natural Theology of Industry” in Seventeenth-Century China?: Ideas About the Role of Heaven in Production Techniques in Song Yingxing’s Heaven’s Work in Opening Things (Tiangong kaiwu). In: Buchwald, J. (eds) A Master of Science History. Archimedes, vol 30. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2627-7_12
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