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[Book Review] Moon, Joong-Yang 문중양, Joeson hugi gwahak sasangsa: Seogu ujuron-gwa Joseon cheonjigwan-ui mannam 조선 후기 과학 사상사: 서구 우주론과 조선 천지관의 만남. Paju: Deulnyeok, 2016. 432 pp.
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Moon, Joong-Yang 문중양, Joeson hugi
gwahak sasangsa: Seogu ujuron-gwa Joseon cheonjigwan-ui mannam 조선 후기 과학 사상사: 서구 우주론과 조선 천지관의 만남(The
Reconstruction of Science in Late Joseon Korea: Hybridizing Western Science and
Korean Science). Paju: Deulnyeok, 2016. 432 pp.
JEONG Myung-Hyun The
meeting of non-Western cultures with Western science is a challenging topic for
historians of science, especially for those who deal with cases of
modernization forced upon indigenous cultures from outside—usually by Western
imperial powers. Historians of Korean science share this challenge and have
produced massive works on Korea’s reception of Western science, particularly in
the late Joseon period, when Western science was first introduced into Korea.
Many of those historians adopted a teleological view, asking only how successfully the stagnated Korean
science was modernized by accepting the advanced Western science. However,
younger generations of historians of science have recently criticized this
teleological view. By investigating the historical context, these revisionist
historians highlight indigenous intellectuals’ efforts to incorporate foreign science
into the existing frame of knowledge in Korea. Joong-Yang Moon’s The Reconstruction of Science in the Late
Joseon Korea is a synthesis of this revisionist approach. The main focus of this
book is highlighting Joseon intellectuals’ agency in their reception of foreign
knowledge. According to the author, Joseon intellectuals neither rejected nor
ignored Western science simply because it had a foreign origin; neither did
they passively accept it. Rather, the Joseon intellectuals scrupulously
compared Western science with their traditional, neo-Confucian natural
knowledge, creating a synthesis between them. Western science did not have a
Copernican impact on the Confucian view of nature in Korea, but this does not
mean that Western science made little impact on Joseon intellectuals’ worldview.
Rather, by incorporating Western science into the traditional system of knowledge,
Joseon intellectuals constructed a new knowledge of nature that differed from
the classical knowledge of nature. Moon first criticizes the
conventional view in the history of science in the Joseon period. According to
this view, Joseon’s science and technology peaked in the fifteenth century,
particularly under King Sejong’s reign, and this golden age was followed by a
long period of stagnation and decline, which lasted until the late nineteenth
century, when Western science began to be introduced in earnest into Korea.
Moon argues that such a historical perspective is an illusion caused by
researchers who only focused on the development of mathematical science while neglecting
other fields of natural studies. In order to substantiate his point, Moon examines
the development of Joseon scholars’ metaphysical pursuit of nature and
universe, which was in fact the dominant trend during the Joseon period. In
contrast to the conventional understanding, he argues that the Koreans’
understanding of neo-Confucian cosmology during the reign of King Sejong remained
at an immature level. Even Yi I (1536-1584), a sixteenth-century scholar who is
now considered one of the founders of Joseon’s neo-Confucianism, showed little
hint of the profound and creative understanding of nature. Moon argues that Joseon’s
science and technology showed gradual development starting in the King Sejong period.
Seo Gyeongdeok (1489-1546), a Confucian scholar who was active in the period
before Yi I, signaled the gradual development in the metaphysical view of
nature. Almost a century later, Jang Hyeon-gwang (1554-1636) not only fully
understood the neo-Confucian cosmology, but also entertained his own new ideas
of an infinite universe and the existence of other universes. Moon claims that
scientific knowledge in Korea gradually and continuously developed starting in
the King Sejong era, which provided a strong intellectual foundation upon which
the late Joseon Confucian scholars could actively accommodate the new Western
knowledge. This neo-Confucian
background was, according to the author, also a crucial factor that made the
Korean response to Western science different from that of the Chinese. This
book thus aims to illuminate the unique Korean way of transforming Western
knowledge and the reconstruction of natural knowledge. To this end, Moon
compares Joseon’s case with that of contemporary China. The introduction of Western
science into China was dominated by the Ming and Qing governments, and the Jesuit
missionaries played major roles in this process as well. By collaborating with the
government and the Jesuits, Chinese intellectuals forged their own
understanding of nature, which was different from Western science. The promulgation
of the Shixian li astronomical system
is a case in point. In this process, Western astronomy was dissolved into a
part of the traditional Chinese astronomical system; as such, it was only used
to create an advanced treatise in the tradition of Chinese calendrical
astronomy. In China, the Chinese and Western sciences were integrated with the
former at the center. In contrast with the Chinese
case, the major carrier of Western knowledge in the Joseon society was not the
Jesuits, but rather books, which resulted in major differences. Without any face-to-face
communication, understanding Western knowledge was challenging for the Koreans.
Consequently, despite the Joseon government’s eager support, Joseon
astronomers’ full mastery of the Shixian
li took more than 50 years. The lack of collaboration
between intellectuals and the government is another feature of Joseon’s
incorporation of Western science. In contrast to the positive attitude of the
Korean government toward Western science, the majority of Korean intellectuals were
relatively indifferent to it, and only a few showed serious interest in it.
These few, but passionate scholars contributed to the introduction of Western
science, especially Western astronomy, into Joseon society. For example, Yi Ik
(1681-1763), a Confucian scholar in the mid-eighteenth century, accepted the
idea of a round earth as a truth. In the late eighteenth century, Hong Daeyong (1731-1783)
argued for the diurnal rotation of the earth and the theory of an infinite
universe, while Seo Hosu (1736-1799) perfectly digested the Western astronomy
and mathematics. In the mid-nineteenth century, Choe Han-gi (1803-1877)
accepted the Copernican system while studying and reinterpreting Newton’s law
of gravity. The Koreans’ “bookish”
encounter with Western science made more rooms for their own creative
understanding of Western science. In “translating” Western science without
appropriate translators (the Jesuit missionaries), a small number of eager
Joseon intellectuals relied heavily on their indigenous metaphysical view of
nature. In China, Jesuit missionaries put the Aristotelian theory of the four
elements and the Euclidean geometry as the founding principle for interpreting Western
science, hoping that this way of understanding of nature would lead the Chinese
people to Christianity. However, such hopes were not realized with the Korean
intellectuals because their principles for understanding Western science were
from neo-Confucian metaphysics—the learning of images and numbers (sangsu hak) and the cosmology of qi, which originated from the
neo-Confucian schools of the Song dynasty in China. Kim Seok-mun (1658-1735), an
early supporter of the idea of the earth’s rotation, and Seo Myeong-eung
(1716-1787), who proved the idea of a round earth using Yijing diagrams, were the representative figures of the learning of
images and numbers. Hong Daeyong and Choe Han-gi tried to explain natural
phenomena using the qi circulation
mechanism. The author thus claims that Joseon intellectuals attempted to
understand nature in a completely different way than Western science or science
in China. These Joseon intellectuals, who passionately studied Western science,
never gave up the neo-Confucian way of understanding nature. On the contrary,
they deepened their existing understanding of nature by incorporating the new Western
science into the existing frame. In sum, by describing the
Joseon historical context, which was different from China, and by emphasizing the
Joseon intellectuals’ unique assimilation of Western science into the traditional
metaphysical view of nature, Moon suggests an alternative to the teleological
view of the history of science. Joseon intellectuals’ understanding of Western
science cannot be viewed as a misunderstanding or an immature view. It has its
own historical uniqueness.
The author successfully
creates a whole picture of late Joseon interaction with Western science, from
various scattered studies, based on his coherent perspective. In order to
achieve such a synthetic view, the author examines the formation and
advancement of Korean science prior to its encounter with Western science. He also
takes a closer look at the contemporary situation in Qing China, Joseon’s most
important neighboring country. As a result, the author clearly demonstrates how
Korean science changed after its encounter with Western science as well as the
nature of the change. It is my belief that this book, the fruit of the author’s
hard and long efforts, will provide an exemplary case for understanding not
only the Korean case, but also the issue of accommodation of Western science in
other countries.
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