[PEN-L:1396] Re: Enlightenment Insight, part two

[Brad De Long <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Re:
>
>Janet Abu-Lughod, "Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D.
>1250-1350", pp 323-324:
>
>In the past, before western scholars had sufficient information about
>China's achievements in science and technology, it was commonly argued that
>Europe's eventual triumph in the world arena was the result of her unique
>scientific and technological inventiveness. and, conversely, that
>Orientals, although perhaps "clever,". had never been able to sustain a
>scientific revolution. The voluminous investigations of Needham have more
>than corrected this error. We now have much fuller documentation on Chinese
>contributions to medicine and physiology, physics, and mathematics, as well
>as their more practical applications in technology.
>
>According to Sivin, Needham did not go far enough; he stopped short of
>admitting that, by Sung times, China had had a true scientific
>"revolution," a position strongly argued by Chinese scholars. Whether or
>not the term "scientific revolution" is justified, there can be no doubt
>that in late medieval times the level of Chinese technical competence far
>exceeded the Middle East, which, in turn, had outstripped Europe for many
>centuries. Space permits only a few examples here: paper and printing, iron
>and weaponry (including guns, cannons, and bombs), shipbuilding and
>navigational techniques, as well as two primary manufactured exports, silk
>and porcelain.
>

I found this passage from David Landes's _Revolution in Time_ to be an
interesting take on these issues:

>From David S. Landes, Revolution in Time (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1983).

In the year 1086 of our era, the boy emperor of China, or more probably his
ministers, ordered an examination of the astronomical devices inherited
from previous reigns and the construction of an astronomical clock that
should surpass anytht had been built before. He chose for this task a
certain Su Sung, an experienced diplomat and administrator with scientific
interests. Su Sung gathered a team of officials, technicians, and
craftsmen, naming as designer and superintendent of construction a certain
Han Kung-lien, then "a minor official in the Ministry of Personnel." (In
china there was no horological profession, and talent was to be found in
unexpected places.) Two years later a working wooden model was finished;
two years more, and the metal parts of the great clock were cast in bronze;
four more years (1094) and the "explanatory monograph" was ready for
presentation to the emperor, and presumably the clock with it.

Su Sung's clock... was one of the marvels of the age. It was designed to
reproduce the movements of the "three luminaries"--sun, moon, and
(selected) stars--which were crucial to Chinese calendrical calculation and
astrological divination. It did this by means of an observational armillary
sphere--that is, an assemblage of rings representing the paths of these
bodies as they presented themselves to an observer on earth--and a
demonstrational celestial globe, each rotating on a polar axis and
appropriately inclined to the horizon.... The whole mechanism, which must
have weighed tons and occupied a tower about forty feet high, was powered
by a water wheel designed to turn intermittently at a stable rate....

....Why did science originate in Europe and not in China, which seemed so
much readier for it? The question is the more pertinent because horology is
only one of several areas in which the technology of medieval China was
ahead of that of Europe: it was China, after all, that gave us paper,
gunpowder, movable type, porcelain, and other important and ingenious
topics. Recall in this regard the wonderment of Marco Polo, who was no
country bumpkin but a citizen of Europe's greatest trading city....

.... On balance... there seems every reason to believe that the Su Sung
clock could perform well on a day-to-day basis--certainly far better than
the early mechanical clocks that made their appearance in Europe almost two
hundred years later. How it did over longer periods, we do not know.... The
model of the Su Sung clock nonw standing in the Time Museum in Rockford has
not kept a stable rate, partly for mechanical reasons, partly perhaps as a
result of temperature problems.

It is probably this difference between short run and long that accounts for
the contradictory reports that have come down to us. The Chinese boasted of
their peak performances, yet also commemorated their failures. The records
seem to show that none of their great clocks kept good time over a long
period; indeed, none of them lasted. The annalists report these
disappointments in matter-of-fact declarative prose--reflecting perhaps the
Chinese temperament and good annalistic manners, but also the functional
reality.

Given the calendrical-astrological objectives of these clockwork astraria,
an accurate rate was desirable but not necessary... What does it matter if
the timing of the winter solstice is off by an hour, several hours, or even
a day? A great deal in principle; indeed, the very legitimacy of the
emperor rested on the harmony of his decisions and actions with the
patterns of the cosmos. In practice, though, there was room for error, so
long as it was not patent. If the astronomers found an anomaly, the
armillary sphere could be adjusted and the calendar corrected. The
important thing was the appearance of knowledge, duly certified to the
ruler by the court astronomers and proclaimed by him to the people.

The criterion, in other words, was political rather than scientific. The
astronomers understood that only too well: we are told that in the tenth
century the representatives of the two imperial observatories, which were
supposed to arrive at results independently and check them against each
other, used to compare and reconcile their data in advance. They did not
even bother to use their instruments to make observations, but rather
copied out the positions from the tables of ephemerides. "Everyone knew
about it, yet no one thought it strange."

One hundred years later this collusion was still taking place. When the new
astronomer-imperial learned of , he had some of the astronomers exposed and
punished, but to no avail: "The deceptions continued as before."
Su Sung himself ran into this problem in the course of his diplomatic
career. He was charged with an embassy to the Liao kingdom in the north....
His task was to bring a gift to the Liao emperor, whose birhday chanced to
fall on the winter solstice. But the Chinese calendar had the winter
solstice a day early, so that when Su Sung brought his gift to the Liao
court, the officials were at first unwilling to accpet it. This is the
story as the Chinese memorialist Yeh Meng-te (c. 1130) tells it:

	As the barbarians had no restrictions on
	astronomical and calendrical study, their
	experts in these subjects were generally
	better, and in fact their calendar was
	correct.... Of course Su Sung was unable
	to accept it, but he calmly engaged in
	wide-ranging discussion on calendrical
	science, quoting many authorities, which
	puzzled the barbarians who all listened
	with surprise and appreciation. Finally
	he said that after all the discrepancy
	was a small matter, for a difference of
	only a quarter of an hour would make a
	difference of one day if the solstice
	occurred around midnight.... The barbarians
	had no answer to this, so he was allowed
	to carry out his mission. But when he
	returned home he reported to the Emperor
	Shen Tsung, who was very pleased at his
	success and at once asked which of the
	calendars was right. Su Sung told him the
	truth, with the result that the officials
	of the astronomical bureau were all punished
	and fined.

Consider now the implications of the Yeh Meng-te account. "The barbarians,"
he writes, "had no restrictions on astronomical and calendrical study";
hence, "their experts in these subjects were generally better" than the
Chinese--this, mind you, without the help of wonder clocks. In China the
calendar was a perquisite of sovereignty, like the right to mint coins.
Knowledge of the right time and season was power, for it was this knowledge
that governed both the acts of everyday life and decisions of state. Each
emperor inaugurated his reign with the promulgation of this calendar, often
different from the one that had preceded it. His court astronomers were the
only persons who were permitted in principle to use timekeeping and
astronomical instruments or to engage in astronomical study. His time was
China's time.

In effect, this was a reserved and secret domain. There was no marketplace
of ideas, no diffusion or exchange of knowledge, no continuing and growing
pool of skills or information--hence a very uneven transmission of
knowledge from one generation to the next.... Under the circumstances we
can understand the repeated lapse of knowledge over long periods, so that
each great clockmaker had to search in old records for the forgotten
secrets of earlier reigns.... These were not stupid people--they just did
not make astronomical clocks very often....

One last comment about the annalist's account of Su Sung's mission; he
writes that Su Sung... "clamly engaged in wide-ranging discussions on
calendrical science, quoting many authorities, which puzzled the
barbarians..."... Now it is hard to say... what exactly puzzled the
so-called barbarians, but one thing that may have puzzled them was the
recourse to authority rather than to evidence. Reference to authority may
have been decisive in the monopolistic astronomy of China; it was no doubt
less effective in a competitive, emulatory context; and it must surely have
inhibited curiosity, originality, and observation.
It also promoted the corruption of science by factional politics. A
memorial by court official Wang Fu written only a generation after Su Sung,
at a time when Su Sung's clock was presumably still working, treats the
subject of astronomical water clocks without any mention of Su Sung.
[Joseph] Needham suggests that partisanship is the explanation: "Su Sung's
clockwork was associated with the Confucian Conservatives--Wang Fu was one
of the Taoistic Reformers." When these came to power in 1094, a "committee
of investigation" was established to scrutinize the court's astronomical
instruments, and the very existence of Su Sung's clock was placed in
jeopardy.

Is that the way to run an observatory?

Is that the way to treat a clock?