“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.