A global enlightenment : Western progress and Chinese science /  Alexander Statman.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- The death of Voltaire's Confucius -- The ex-Jesuit mission in China -- The origins of esotericism -- The yin-yang theory of animal magnetism -- The invention of Eastern wisdom.

"A Global Enlightenment is a book about the idea of Western progress, told through a series of conversations about Chinese science. Its protagonists - an ex-Jesuit missionary, a French statesman, a Manchu prince, Chinese literati, European savants, and other figures of the late Enlightenment world - exchanged ideas across cultures. In telling their stories here, Alexander Statman shows how Chinese science shaped a signature legacy of the European Enlightenment: the idea of Western progress. By focusing on the orphans of the Enlightenment, those who sought to vindicate ancient wisdom as others left it behind, Statman reveals that ideas about the uniqueness of the West - and the mystery, inscrutability, or otherness of the East - did not follow from the Enlightenment idea of progress but had to be invented. The orphans of the Enlightenment believed that the knowledge of the past and the East still had value for modern Europe, and their efforts to recover and explain it, in turn, uncover an unknown story of European engagement with Chinese science. In contrast to the common view, that over the course of the Enlightenment non-Western ideas were banished from European thought, Statman found that the opposite is true. Toward the end of the Enlightenment, Europeans only grew more interested in Chinese science, and this has had lasting effects, from the eighteenth century to today"-- Provided by publisher.

Local access dig.pdf. [Statman-Global enlightenment.pdf]

Abstract: After the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, the French missionary Joseph-Marie Amiot, last of the great Jesuit scholars of China, befriended the Manchu prince Hongwu 弘旿, court artist and cousin of the Qianlong emperor. Hongwu became the most enthusiastic local patron of the ex-Jesuits still living in Beijing, helping them with research and providing them with information. Together, Amiot and Hongwu discussed new developments in natural philosophy, from electrical medicine to gas balloons. They conducted experiments in the Jesuit’s quarters at the North Church and in the prince’s nearby mansion, drawing from European and Chinese traditions alike to explain them. In the end, they concluded that their investigations were socially and politically dangerous, so they decided to keep them secret. It has generally seemed that the missionaries who remained in Beijing toward the end of the eighteenth century had few local encounters and failed to communicate contemporary natural philosophy; the story of the friendship between Hongwu and Amiot is a notable exception, revealing that cross-cultural exchange remained possible.

Local access dig. pdf. [Statman-Forgotten friendship.pdf]