Members’ Publications

Astronomy

• David W Pankenier, “On the Reliability of Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) Solar Eclipse Records,” Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 15.3 (2012), 200-212.
• David W Pankenier, Astrology and Cosmology in Early China: Conforming Earth to Heaven (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2013).
• David W Pankenier, “China’s Shang Dynasty Oracle-Bones,” in Clive Ruggles (ed.), Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy (Heidelberg: Springer, 2014).
• David W Pankenier, “Astronomy and City Planning in China,” in Clive Ruggles (ed.), Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy (Heidelberg: Springer, 2014).
• David W Pankenier, “Huainanzi, ‘Heavenly Patterns’ and Shiji, ‘Treatise on the Heavenly Offices’: What’s the difference?” in Sarah A. Queen and Michael Puett (eds.), The Huainanzi and Textual Production in Early China (Leiden: Brill, 2014).

Mathematics

• YING, Jia-Ming, “A Survey of Geometrical Diagrams in Korean Mathematical Texts from the 17th to the 19th Century.”  Historia Scientiarum  July, 2013. In this paper, geometrical diagrams in Korean mathematical texts from the 17th to the 19th century are collected, analyzed, and compared with those in certain Chinese sources. Several groups of commonly drawn diagrams are represented. Two special features – using the color black to show the “void” or the redundant parts in a diagram and using parallel lines to represent “depth” – are discussed. From the diagrams and special features, it can be seen that diagrams in Korean texts are typically used in three ways: to show manipulations of instruments in the process of problem solving, to explain procedures or algebraic identities, and simply to represent two- or three-dimensional geometrical objects. The last way is different from the ways in which most diagrams are used in Chinese texts.

Medicine

• TJ Hinrichs, “Ishi ni kimareta shohōsen” (Formularies Inscribed on Stone). In Bunka toshi: Ningbo (Cultural Cities:  Ningbo), 203-214.  Ed., Hayasaka Toshihiro, Supervising editor, Kojima Tsuyoshi. (Tō Ajia kaiiki ni kogidasu (Rowing out into the East Asian Seas, 2).  Tokyo:  Tokyo University Press, 2013.
• TJ Hinrichs, “Sekkoku to mokuhan: Chihou fūzoku ni tai suru huhen teki iryō to gishiki” (Stone Inscriptions and Wood Blocks: Posing Ecumenical Medicine and Ritual Against Local Customs). Trans., Yoshida Mayumi. In Ishibumi to chihōshi no aakaibuzu wo saguru (Explorations of Stelae and Gazetteer Archives), 53-79. Ed., Sue Takashi. Tokyo: Kyūko shoten, 2012.
• Hinrichs, TJ, and Linda Barnes, eds. Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History. Cambridge: Belknap Press ofHarvard University Press, 2013. A recent synthesis of work on the history and anthropology of medicine and healing in China that brings together contributions from fifty-eight leading scholars from around the world.  The book is arranged into eight chronologically-ordered chapters with two final chapters on globalization, and includes additional short pieces on thematically specific topics inserted into each chapter, and nearly 100 illustrations. Woven through each chapter is 1) attention to the wide array of healing (not only strictly “medical”) modalities, along with major changes in these practices and in the relationships among them.  Such practices include varieties of literate medicine, ritual healing, and ecstatic healing; 2) social relations among healers (as teachers and students, as competitors, as collaborators), and between healers and patients; 3) material culture and the parts it plays in the development of healing praxis, whether by shaping, enabling, and/or constraining it; and 4) the dimension of geography, including regional consciousness and difference, and connections (flows of knowledge and materials) with other parts of the world.  Includes citations, bibliography, and partial glossary in index.

Physics

• SHI, Yunli, “A Slice of Mechanistic Science in the Court Emperor Kangxi: Another Jesuit Work Introducing the Thermometer to China (康熙宫廷里的一缕机械论科学之光: 在华耶稣会士介绍温度计的另一著作).” Science & Culture Review (科学文化评论), 2013-01. In 1669, Ferdinand Verbiest constructed an air-thermometer and contributed it to the Emperor of the Qing dynasty. In 1671, he published the Illustrated Explanation of the Test of Qi, a succinct introduction to the structure, use and underlying principle of the instrument. In the Jesuit archives preserved in the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, however, we can find another manuscript on thermometer entitled An Explanation of the Table of Cold and Heat for the Test of Qi. Besides the air-thermometer, it introduces the structure and working principle of the liquid-thermometer invented after 1657 and explicitly points out the pitfalls of the air-thermometer. More importantly, the manuscript also introduces systematically the doctrines of pneumatic statics established in Galileo and Boyle’s times on the basis of the mechanistic philosophy, and thus presents a theoretical discussion of the instrument with a completely new physics. This is entirely different from Verbiest’s appealing to the concept of “nature’s horror of vacuum” in Aristotelian physics for his explanation.