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한국과학사학회지, 제34권 제2호 (2012), 287-357

[KJHS Forum] Tracing Practices Purloined by the “Three Pillars”

by Roger HART
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초록 Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), Li Zhizao (1565–1630), and Yang Tingyun (1557–1627) — together known as the “Three Pillars” of Catholicism in late Ming China — promoted the Western mathematics brought to China by the Jesuits as superior to contemporary Chinese mathematics. Xu, the most prominent among them, in a preface for their purported “translation” of a European mathematical treatise, denounced Chinese mathematics as “tattered sandals” to be “discarded,” because Western mathematics was, he claimed, in every way superior. I argue that they did not themselves believe these claims, for they purloined what is arguably the most difficult mathematics in their “translation”—fangcheng, or what we would now call linear algebra—from the very Chinese mathematical treatises Xu execrated. I trace the mathematical practices behind these fangcheng problems, reconstructing these practices as solved on two-dimensional counting boards. I show how adepts were able to compute solutions to difficult problems involving n conditions in n unknowns with only counting rods and an understanding of simple two-dimensional patterns. I present evidence that specialized fangcheng problems with solutions so arcane that they can serve as “fingerprints” circulated across the Eurasian continent, and can be found in Italian texts from the thirteenth century. The advent of the Jesuits in China was thus hardly the “first encounter” of China and the West. Instead, world history of science must trace the global circulation of scientific practices.
주요어 world history of science, history of linear algebra, history of Chinese mathematics, fangcheng, Xu Guangqi, Matteo Ricci, Fibonacci

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Roger HART, "Tracing Practices Purloined by the “Three Pillars”", The Korean Journal for the History of Science 34-2 (2012), 287-357.


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List of Articles
분류 제목
제34권 제2호 [KJHS Forum] Editor's Introduction file
Roger HART
2012 197-204
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Don BAKER
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제34권 제2호 [KJHS Forum] How Did a Confucian Scholar in Late Joseon Korea Study Mthematics? HWANG Yunseok 黃胤錫 (1729-1791) and the Mathematicians of Late Eighteenth-Century Seoul file
KOO Mhan-ock
2012 257-286
제34권 제2호 [KJHS Forum] Tracing Practices Purloined by the “Three Pillars” file
Roger HART
2012 287-357
제34권 제2호 [Book Review] SEO Yu-gu, [Imwon gyeongje ji – Joseon’s Most Voluminous Encyclopedia for Practical Use file
SHIN Dongwon
2012 259-367
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