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The Characteristics of Ancient China’s Astronomy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

Xi Zezong
Xi Zezong*
Affiliation:
Institute for History of Natural Science Academia Sinica, Beijing, China

Extract

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What are the characteristics of ancient China’s astronomy? Many scholars have discussed the problem. In 1939 Herbert Chatley summed up fifteen points. Joseph Needham(1959) in his great work Science and civilisation in China concentrated it into seven points.

  1. 1 the elaboration of a polar and equatorial system strikingly different from that of the Hellenistic peoples;

  2. 2 the early conception of an infinite universe, with the stars as bodies floating in empty space;

  3. 3 the development of quantitative positional astronomy and star catalogues two centuries before any other civilisation of which comparable works have come down to us;

  4. 4 the use in these catalogues of equatorial coordinates, and a faithfulness to them extending over two millennia;

  5. 5 the elaboration, in steadily increasing complexity, of astronomical instruments, culminating in the 13th century invention of the equatorial mounting, as an ‘adapted torquetum’ or ‘dissected’ armillary sphere;

  6. 6 the invention of the clock drive for that forerunner of the telescope, the sighting tube, and a number of ingenious mechanical devices ancillary to astronomical instruments;

  7. 7 the maintenance, for longer continuous periods than any other civilisation, of accurate records of celestial phenomena, such as eclipses, comets, Sunspots, etc.

Type
Ancient Astronomy and its Characteristics
Information
International Astronomical Union Colloquium , Volume 91: History of Oriental Astronomy , 1987 , pp. 33 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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