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The Crafting of the 10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth-Century China

Online ISBN:
9780226735856
Print ISBN:
9780226735849
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Book

The Crafting of the 10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth-Century China

Published online:
21 March 2013
Published in print:
15 May 2011
Online ISBN:
9780226735856
Print ISBN:
9780226735849
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Abstract

The last decades of the Ming dynasty, though plagued by chaos and destruction, saw a significant increase in publications that examined advances in knowledge and technology. Among the numerous guides and reference books that appeared during this period was a series of texts by Song Yingxing (1587–1666?), a minor local official living in southern China. His Tiangong kaiwu, the longest and most prominent of these works, documents the extraction and processing of raw materials and the manufacture of goods essential to everyday life, from yeast and wine to paper and ink to boats, carts, and firearms. This book probes this text and the legacy of its author to examine the development of scientific thinking in China, the purpose of technical writing, and its role in and effects on Chinese history. The author chronicles the factors that motivated Song to transform practical knowledge into written culture. She then examines how Song gained, assessed, and ultimately presented knowledge, and in doing so articulates this era's approaches to rationality, truth, and belief in the study of nature and culture alike. The book places Song's efforts in conjunction with the work of other Chinese philosophers and writers, before, during, and after his time, and argues that these writings demonstrate collectively a uniquely Chinese way of authorizing technology as a legitimate field of scholarly concern and philosophical knowledge.

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