"'Strong Liquid' from the Western Ocean: Introduction, Manufacture, and Applications of Nitric Acid in Ming-Qing China (1620s-1780s)"/ Cao Jin 曹晉

https://www.sciengine.com/CAHST/doi/10.3724/SP.J.1461.2024.02049

This article belongs to volume 8, issue 2 of the Chinese Annals of History of Science and Technology, 2024

Local access dig.pdf [Cao-"Strong Liquid" from the Western Ocean.pdf]

Abstract:

Nitric acid or qiangshui 强水 (“strong liquid,” from lat. aqua fortis) was introduced to China multiple times by European missionaries during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Xu Guangqi 徐光啟 (1562–1633) was the first Chinese to record related knowledge from his communication with Johann Schreck (1576–1630). Johann Adam Schall von Bell (1591–1666), Joachim Bouvet (1656–1730), and Matteo Ripa (1682–1746) independently described the substance to the Chinese in their writings, explaining production methods together with different applications such as separating and assaying of gold and silver, etching of iron or copperplates, and manufacturing of thermometers. This paper focuses on newly discovered Chinese materials, mainly from the Investigations of the Earth’s Interior (Kunyu gezhi 坤輿格致, 1640) by Schall von Bell and his Chinese collaborators, but also from the Record of Essentials of Inception and Completion (Kaicheng jiyao 開成紀要) by Xu Guangqi. It analyzes different aspects of knowledge transmission processes including the identification of useful knowledge, the purpose of transmission, the sources of European knowledge, and the applied methods of translation and explanation. From these analyses we can better understand the reasons of their failure or success.

“From Material Discontinuity to Continuity Between Heavens and Earth: Overturning European Jesuit Teachings in the Huan You Quan (1628)”/ Thierry Meynard 梅謙立

https://www.sciengine.com/CAHST/doi/10.3724/SP.J.1461.2024.02071

This article belongs to volume 8, issue 2 of the Chinese Annals of History of Science and Technology, 2024

Local access dig.pdf [Meynard-From Material Discontinuity to Continuity Between Heavens and Earth.pdf]

Abstract:

Following Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas considered sublunar matter and supralunar matter to be substantially different, composed of two distinct species. The Coimbra Jesuit commentary on De coelo, published in 1593, supported the Aristotelian position, a position upheld by Jesuit philosophers and astronomers even into the midseventeenth century. However, the latest astronomical discoveries suggested otherwise, suggesting that supralunar matter is also subject to change and therefore belongs to the same species as sublunar matter, forming a material continuum. In a sharp contrast to this conservative Jesuit position in Europe, the Portuguese Jesuit Francisco Furtado and the Christian literatus Li Zhizao in the Huan you quan (1628) argued for the uniformity of matter across the sublunar and supralunar spheres. The paper investigates the argumentation of the Huan you quan and advances three reasons for this significant shift.