Description
Book SynopsisScience and Confucian Statecraft in East Asia explores science and technology as practiced in the governments of premodern China and Korea. Contrary to the stereotypical image of East Asian bureaucracy as a generally negative force having hindered free enquiries and scientific progress, this volume offers a more nuanced picture of how science and technology was deployed in the service of state governance in East Asia. Presenting richly documented cases of the major state-sponsored sciences, astronomy, medicine, gunpowder production, and hydraulics, this book illustrates how rulers’ and scholar-officials’ concern for efficient and legitimate governance shaped production, circulation, and application of natural knowledge and useful techniques. Contributors include: Francesca Bray, Christopher Cullen, Asaf Goldschmidt, Cho-ying Li, Jongtae Lim, Peter Lorge, Joong-Yang Moon, Kwon soo Park, Dongwon Shin, Pierre-Étienne Will
Table of ContentsContents Figures and Tables Notes on Contributors 1 Introduction: Science and Confucian Statecraft in East Asia Francesca Bray Part 1: Making State Sciences Work 2 Confucian Statecraft and the Production of Saltpeter and Sulfur in Song Dynasty China Peter Lorge 3 Song Government and Medicine – the Case of the Imperial Pharmacy Asaf Goldschmidt 4 Forensic Science and the Late Imperial Chinese State Pierre-Étienne Will 5 Calendar Publishing and Local Science in Chosŏn Korea Park Kwon Soo Part 2: State, Science, and Legitimacy 6 “As a Sage-king Reemerges, All Water Returns to Its Proper Path”: Xia Yuanji’s Water Management and the Legitimisation of the Yongle Reign Cho-ying Li 7 Measuring the Rainfall in an East Asian State Bureaucracy: the Use of Rain-Measuring Utensils in Late Eighteenth-Century Korea Lim Jongtae林宗台 8 Measures against Epidemics in Late Eighteenth-Century Korea: Reformation or Restoration? Shin Dongwon 9 Delivering Whose Seasons? Non-state Knowledge of the Heavens in Early Imperial China, and Its Official Appropriation Christopher Cullen 10 From Local Calendar (hyangnyŏk) to Eastern Calendar (tongnyŏk): the Aspiration for an Independent Calendar of the Kingdom in Late Chosŏn Korea Moon Joong-Yang Index
