Nongsugak, an observatory built by Hong Daeyong in the yard of
his residence, provides a rare exa... more Nongsugak, an observatory built by Hong Daeyong in the yard of his residence, provides a rare example in the history of astronomy in pre-modern Korea of a Confucian scholar engaging in a systematic program of astronomical observation outside the government bureaucracy. This paper examines Hong’s program of astronomy and its place in his broader pursuit of literati learning. Particular emphasis is placed on the ways in which Hong intertwined two kinds of endeavor: first, the material practice of building instruments and the observatory, and second, the socio-literary practice of exchanging letters, poems, and essays about his observatory with his fellow literati. This illustrates how he culturally legitimized a new concept of a literati mathematician, an emerging figure in mid-eighteenth- century Korea. It also shows how Hong’s scholarly program and the role of astronomy within it evolved in the 1760s and 70s to increasingly emphasize the importance of calculation and observation as essential means of reforming the metaphysically oriented Confucian scholarship of the time.
East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 55 2023 3-49, 2023
This article examines how historical narratives on Western Learning in the late Chosŏn period eme... more This article examines how historical narratives on Western Learning in the late Chosŏn period emerged and evolved under the influence of nationalist historiography in late twentieth-century Korea. Despite virtual unanimity among historians about the nationalist understanding of Western Learning as a trend paving the way for Korea's modernization, the role historians have attributed to it, especially in relation to the Practical Learning (sirhak 實學) school, known as the intellectual alternative to Neo-Confucianism, varied greatly. Especially important in shaping the narrative on Western Learning was the rise of ideological "internalism" in the 1960s, which prioritized internal dynamism over external stimuli as the main source of modernity in late Chosŏn Practical Learning. This dominant historiographical orientation of the period assigned historians of Western Learning the difficult task of relegating Western Learning, obviously an element external to Chosŏn society, to a secondary but still significant role in preparing for Korea's transition to modernity.
This article examines recent development in the history of science in pre-
modern Korea. The main... more This article examines recent development in the history of science in pre- modern Korea. The main focus will be on examining the process of how the researchers’ interest has changed from that in evaluating the degrees of ‘mo- dernity’ in premodern Korean science to the issue of scientific relationship between China and Korea in the premodern period. While examining the debates on those two issues, this paper proposes several shortcomings that were found in the ways of how researchers formulated their main arguments and that blocked the possibilities for a more fruitful interaction between researchers of different opinions. Those shortcomings include historians’ confusion between actors’ categories and their own ones, and their naive application of such simplistic binaries as “modern/premodern” and “progres- sive/conservative” to historical actors’ ideas and practices.
"Honil kangni yŏktae kukto chi to," a famous Korean world map, has been generally understood as a... more "Honil kangni yŏktae kukto chi to," a famous Korean world map, has been generally understood as a product of a royal project, aiming at legitimizing the royal power of the newly established Chosŏn dynasty. Based upon the rhetorical analysis on Kwon Kŭn's postscript to the world map, this paper suggests a different understanding of the political context surrounding this map. Kwon Kŭn, in fact, presented this world map, not as a product of royal project, but as that of the State Council; Kwon, in his postscript, praised the intellectual and political capacity of the State Councillors, without any mention of the king T'aejong. This might reflect the politico-cultural environment, peculiar to the early years of the Chosŏn dynasty, in which the State Councilors claimed to be the main agents of the political and cultural enterprises of the dynasty-agents who were independent of, or even rivalling, the thrones.
This paper examines the generally negative view concerning the late Joseon sirhak scholarship, ta... more This paper examines the generally negative view concerning the late Joseon sirhak scholarship, taken by the three leading historians of science in the second half of the twentieth century. They view that the sirhak scholars failed to assimilate foreign(Western) science on their own terms taking into account Korea’s national needs(Jeon Sangwoon), that their grasp of Western science was far lower than that of contemporary Chinese and Japanese (Park Seongrae), and that their view of nature was still within the scope of traditional Neo-Confucian thought(Kim Yung Sik).These evaluations, seen from today’s perspective, were directed at not so much Late Joseon sirhak scholars themselves as contemporary intellectual historians who lacked viable historiographical schemes to deal with the late Joeon sirhak scholarship. Their criticism could thus be viewed as a call for a more sophisticated approach toward the sirhak that help us better understand the complex relationship between such historiographical concepts as the West, China (the Middle Kingdom), and modernity.
고 전상운 전 회장(1932-2018) 추모 특집
Lessons from the Constructed Past: Jeon Sang-woon's Nationalist His... more 고 전상운 전 회장(1932-2018) 추모 특집
Lessons from the Constructed Past: Jeon Sang-woon's Nationalist Historiography of Science in 1960s Korea를 한국어로 수정하여 출판
과학사학회지(Korean Journal for the History of Science) 21-1, 1999
This paper discusses the way in which Yi Hang-No, one of the leading conservative Confucian schol... more This paper discusses the way in which Yi Hang-No, one of the leading conservative Confucian scholars in the mid-19th century Korea, dealt with the intellectual challenges thrown by Western science and technology.
Depending on fragmented and secondhand knowledge on Western science, he criticized it by mobilizing the rich traditional resources, at the kernel of which lay the neo-Confucian metaphysics and natural philosophy. In his scheme, Western science, though he admitted it was impressively exact, considered as humble and subversive entity representing the category xingqi, whereas the neo-Confucian metaphysical learning was linked to more noble category daoli. For example, facing the attack of the concept of spherical earth to the traditional belief on China as the center of the earth, Yi criticized it as a superficial view inclined to the xingqi aspects of: the world. On the contrary, he argued, through the eye of daoli, one could see the profound and qualitative distinctions in the world.
In Yi’s view on Western science, we can find his sharp insights into the unauspicious omens of the destructiveness of modern science. However, his way of dealing foreign learning was essentially the same as those of the 'orientalists' in the 'West' of that time: The construction of the "Western science' in order to control it.
한국과학사학회지(Korean Journal for the History of Science) 17-2, 1995
The Science Movement in the 1930s originated from the endeavors of Kim Yong- gwan and his col... more The Science Movement in the 1930s originated from the endeavors of Kim Yong- gwan and his colleagues of the Society of Invention (SI), the goal of which was technological independence of the nation. They planned some projects to cultivate the research activities of Korean inventors under the support of the nationalistic elite.
However, the aim of SI was too narrow to induce the active participation of the nationalistic elite, whose major concern was the rational rearrangement of the whole fields of the nation. Most of them paid more attention to the enlightening power of science and the need of the popularization of science than to the cultivation of professional reasearches. The leaders of SI accepted their doctrine of cultural scienitization actively, and in 1934, the Science Movement launched a full-scale start under the flag of the scientization of society and the popularization of science.
There were other fundamental differences, however, between the positions of Kim and the nationalistic elite. For the latter, the advancement of science meant merely the introduction of the Western science. At the basis of these positions lay the logic of the neutrality and universality of Western science and the naive expectation that the mere importation of science would guarantee the national modernization. In comparison, Kim’s position was to cultivate the specific kinds of science which would contribute to the industrial independence of the nation, that is, the invention of the necessities of life. Most of the participants were, however, nationalistic elite captured by the doctrine of universality of the Western science, which eventually dominated the movement.
In this article I examine how Yi Ik, a prominent sirhak scholar in the 18th century, responded to... more In this article I examine how Yi Ik, a prominent sirhak scholar in the 18th century, responded to the impact of Western science. I focus on one of his articles, “On Field-allocation”[bunya] in the Fragmented Essays of Master Seongho [seongho saseol], because Yi Ik here articulated his approach both to Western science and the traditional world view. Contrary to the accepted image of Yi Ik as an iconoclastic critic of the traditional worldview and as a pioneer of modern Korean thought, I draw a rather conservative picture of him; Yi Ik never discarded the traditional belief in the astrological correspondence between heaven and earth, nor did he negate the central position of Chinese civilization in the world. He was, of course, aware that these conventional beliefs had many flaws that conflicted with the astronomical and geographical knowledge of Jesuit missionaries he highly evaluated. Yi IK tried to find a middle ground in which these conflicts could be successfully resolved. He incorporated several elements from Western science, especially the concept of a round earth, into the traditional astrological system, giving the latter a more reasonable theoretical foundation. In Yi Ik's work, Western science did not provide an alternative to the traditional belief but a useful resource to rationalize them.
In this article I investigate how Chinese scholars in the seventeenth century understood Western ... more In this article I investigate how Chinese scholars in the seventeenth century understood Western science of Jesuit missionaries, and how various ways of understanding the foreign science evolved into the chauvinistic theory of “Chinese origin of Western science” in the early eighteenth century. I discern two prominent approaches in the early seventeenth century, those of Li Zhizao and Xiong Mingyu. Li Zhizao, who emphasized the similarity between Western science and Chinese ancient tradition, suggested philological research on Chinese classical texts to reveal the perfect wisdom of ancient China. On the contrary, Xiong Mingyu, who highlighted the difference of the two, launched synthesis of Western science and Neo-Confucian metaphysics. Mei Wending and other scholars of the early Qing dynasty endorsed Li Zhizao's philology, giving it chauvinistic bents, and made a grand narrative, in which they argued that Western science had originated from the knowledge of ancient Chinese sages.
Tokimasa Takeda and Bill M. Mak eds., East West Encounter in the Science of Heaven and Earth (Kyoto: Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University,, 2019
When the Bureau of Astronomy of the Choson dynasty reported to the king about the impending astro... more When the Bureau of Astronomy of the Choson dynasty reported to the king about the impending astronomical reform in 1653, the proposed rationale appeared quite scientific: to reform the astronomical system so as to recalibrate it to the heavens. But the Bureau never intended to invent a new system through its own investigation of heavenly phenomena. Choson's astronomical reform in 1653 was simply an adoption of the Shixian li system of the Qing dynasty. Moreover, to the Choson government, this measure was an imperative that arose from its tributary relationship with the Qing. On what basis, then, did the Bureau and other actors at court justify the reform as their own scientific project? This paper examines the changing discourses of the Choson actors in relation to astronomical reform in the mid-seventeenth century. It will pay special attention to the way in which those actors used two conceptual devices-the "heavenly phenomena" and the "imperial calendar"- to formulate arguments about calendrical astronomy. This case will shed light on how the Choson actors as consumers of Chinese astronomy forged a sense of scientific agency in the midst of affairs that they could not control.
The doctrine of a cubic-shaped earth, first suggested by a young Seoin-Noron scholar Sin Yu o... more The doctrine of a cubic-shaped earth, first suggested by a young Seoin-Noron scholar Sin Yu of the Hoseo School in about 1705, tells about the existence of 'other' worlds on the earth, including even an antipodal land in which people stood upside down. This strange doctrine, influenced by the Western concept of a round earth, attracted many enthusiastic followers among the colleagues in a strongly conservative academic school of Gweon Sangha, the alleged successor of Song Siyeol. Subsequently Sin Yu's doctrine became a grave issue of the school and remained as such for several decades even after his premature death in 1706.
This article examines how this seemingly ‘unorthodox’ doctrine, conflicting with both the commonsensical world view of a flat earth and the Zhu Xi's cosmological doctrine, was able to attract serious scholars of the Zhu Xi scholarship. Two points will be suggested. First, Sin Yu and his followers successfully circumvented the criticisms of colleagues based on the commonsensical world view and Zhu Xi orthodoxy — by suggesting many absurdities of the so called commonsensical flat earth cosmology, and at the same time by reinterpreting relevant passages of classical texts, including Zhu Xi's, to make them tally with Sin's doctrine. This impressive rhetorical feat, however, does not exhaust the charm of the doctrine. The second point of this article identifies the more profound source of its charm in its link to a Daoxue doctrine about the natures of human beings and plants-animals. Most proponents of Sin's doctrine believed that humans and animals shared the ethical nature—the manifestation of the universal Principle. I argue that in the mind of Sin Yu's followers the doctrine of a cubic-shaped earth was, implicitly but closely, associated with the doctrine of the equality of human and animal natures. These two doctrines, I will suggest further, shared a deeply rooted aspiration among those Korean literati for a cosmic communication: an aspiration inspired by the cosmic voyages of Matteo Ricci from the antipodal land to this world—a world of bloody factional strifes in which no one could easily find an exit but a catastrophic ending.
This paper examines the cultural encounter between a Korean envoy and the Jesuits in China, as do... more This paper examines the cultural encounter between a Korean envoy and the Jesuits in China, as documented in the former’s Beijing travelogue. Yi Kiji, a literati member of the Korean tributary mission to the Qing court in 1720, established a favorable relationship with several Jesuits. Yi’s travelogue provides us a rare opportunity to glimpse an instance of the Korean encounters with European culture in the late Choson period. However, this paper attempts to examine Yi Kiji’s experience with the Jesuits not as a direct exposure to the West, but as something highly mediated by specific socio-literary constraints, namely, the Korean tributary travel to Beijing along with one of its literary outcomes, the genre of Beijing travelogues. Two points will be suggested. First, the mode of Yi’s travel and the nature of the "contact zone" crucially shaped Yi Kiji’s experience with Westerners and his description of the episode. Second, the way Yi portrayed this episode contributes to the broader rhetorical aim of his entire travelogue, reshaping the cultural identity of Korean Confucian literati in the wake of the unexpected prosperity of the "barbarian" Manchu empire that he witnessed during his travel.
Nongsugak, an observatory built by Hong Daeyong in the yard of
his residence, provides a rare exa... more Nongsugak, an observatory built by Hong Daeyong in the yard of his residence, provides a rare example in the history of astronomy in pre-modern Korea of a Confucian scholar engaging in a systematic program of astronomical observation outside the government bureaucracy. This paper examines Hong’s program of astronomy and its place in his broader pursuit of literati learning. Particular emphasis is placed on the ways in which Hong intertwined two kinds of endeavor: first, the material practice of building instruments and the observatory, and second, the socio-literary practice of exchanging letters, poems, and essays about his observatory with his fellow literati. This illustrates how he culturally legitimized a new concept of a literati mathematician, an emerging figure in mid-eighteenth- century Korea. It also shows how Hong’s scholarly program and the role of astronomy within it evolved in the 1760s and 70s to increasingly emphasize the importance of calculation and observation as essential means of reforming the metaphysically oriented Confucian scholarship of the time.
East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 55 2023 3-49, 2023
This article examines how historical narratives on Western Learning in the late Chosŏn period eme... more This article examines how historical narratives on Western Learning in the late Chosŏn period emerged and evolved under the influence of nationalist historiography in late twentieth-century Korea. Despite virtual unanimity among historians about the nationalist understanding of Western Learning as a trend paving the way for Korea's modernization, the role historians have attributed to it, especially in relation to the Practical Learning (sirhak 實學) school, known as the intellectual alternative to Neo-Confucianism, varied greatly. Especially important in shaping the narrative on Western Learning was the rise of ideological "internalism" in the 1960s, which prioritized internal dynamism over external stimuli as the main source of modernity in late Chosŏn Practical Learning. This dominant historiographical orientation of the period assigned historians of Western Learning the difficult task of relegating Western Learning, obviously an element external to Chosŏn society, to a secondary but still significant role in preparing for Korea's transition to modernity.
This article examines recent development in the history of science in pre-
modern Korea. The main... more This article examines recent development in the history of science in pre- modern Korea. The main focus will be on examining the process of how the researchers’ interest has changed from that in evaluating the degrees of ‘mo- dernity’ in premodern Korean science to the issue of scientific relationship between China and Korea in the premodern period. While examining the debates on those two issues, this paper proposes several shortcomings that were found in the ways of how researchers formulated their main arguments and that blocked the possibilities for a more fruitful interaction between researchers of different opinions. Those shortcomings include historians’ confusion between actors’ categories and their own ones, and their naive application of such simplistic binaries as “modern/premodern” and “progres- sive/conservative” to historical actors’ ideas and practices.
"Honil kangni yŏktae kukto chi to," a famous Korean world map, has been generally understood as a... more "Honil kangni yŏktae kukto chi to," a famous Korean world map, has been generally understood as a product of a royal project, aiming at legitimizing the royal power of the newly established Chosŏn dynasty. Based upon the rhetorical analysis on Kwon Kŭn's postscript to the world map, this paper suggests a different understanding of the political context surrounding this map. Kwon Kŭn, in fact, presented this world map, not as a product of royal project, but as that of the State Council; Kwon, in his postscript, praised the intellectual and political capacity of the State Councillors, without any mention of the king T'aejong. This might reflect the politico-cultural environment, peculiar to the early years of the Chosŏn dynasty, in which the State Councilors claimed to be the main agents of the political and cultural enterprises of the dynasty-agents who were independent of, or even rivalling, the thrones.
This paper examines the generally negative view concerning the late Joseon sirhak scholarship, ta... more This paper examines the generally negative view concerning the late Joseon sirhak scholarship, taken by the three leading historians of science in the second half of the twentieth century. They view that the sirhak scholars failed to assimilate foreign(Western) science on their own terms taking into account Korea’s national needs(Jeon Sangwoon), that their grasp of Western science was far lower than that of contemporary Chinese and Japanese (Park Seongrae), and that their view of nature was still within the scope of traditional Neo-Confucian thought(Kim Yung Sik).These evaluations, seen from today’s perspective, were directed at not so much Late Joseon sirhak scholars themselves as contemporary intellectual historians who lacked viable historiographical schemes to deal with the late Joeon sirhak scholarship. Their criticism could thus be viewed as a call for a more sophisticated approach toward the sirhak that help us better understand the complex relationship between such historiographical concepts as the West, China (the Middle Kingdom), and modernity.
고 전상운 전 회장(1932-2018) 추모 특집
Lessons from the Constructed Past: Jeon Sang-woon's Nationalist His... more 고 전상운 전 회장(1932-2018) 추모 특집
Lessons from the Constructed Past: Jeon Sang-woon's Nationalist Historiography of Science in 1960s Korea를 한국어로 수정하여 출판
과학사학회지(Korean Journal for the History of Science) 21-1, 1999
This paper discusses the way in which Yi Hang-No, one of the leading conservative Confucian schol... more This paper discusses the way in which Yi Hang-No, one of the leading conservative Confucian scholars in the mid-19th century Korea, dealt with the intellectual challenges thrown by Western science and technology.
Depending on fragmented and secondhand knowledge on Western science, he criticized it by mobilizing the rich traditional resources, at the kernel of which lay the neo-Confucian metaphysics and natural philosophy. In his scheme, Western science, though he admitted it was impressively exact, considered as humble and subversive entity representing the category xingqi, whereas the neo-Confucian metaphysical learning was linked to more noble category daoli. For example, facing the attack of the concept of spherical earth to the traditional belief on China as the center of the earth, Yi criticized it as a superficial view inclined to the xingqi aspects of: the world. On the contrary, he argued, through the eye of daoli, one could see the profound and qualitative distinctions in the world.
In Yi’s view on Western science, we can find his sharp insights into the unauspicious omens of the destructiveness of modern science. However, his way of dealing foreign learning was essentially the same as those of the 'orientalists' in the 'West' of that time: The construction of the "Western science' in order to control it.
한국과학사학회지(Korean Journal for the History of Science) 17-2, 1995
The Science Movement in the 1930s originated from the endeavors of Kim Yong- gwan and his col... more The Science Movement in the 1930s originated from the endeavors of Kim Yong- gwan and his colleagues of the Society of Invention (SI), the goal of which was technological independence of the nation. They planned some projects to cultivate the research activities of Korean inventors under the support of the nationalistic elite.
However, the aim of SI was too narrow to induce the active participation of the nationalistic elite, whose major concern was the rational rearrangement of the whole fields of the nation. Most of them paid more attention to the enlightening power of science and the need of the popularization of science than to the cultivation of professional reasearches. The leaders of SI accepted their doctrine of cultural scienitization actively, and in 1934, the Science Movement launched a full-scale start under the flag of the scientization of society and the popularization of science.
There were other fundamental differences, however, between the positions of Kim and the nationalistic elite. For the latter, the advancement of science meant merely the introduction of the Western science. At the basis of these positions lay the logic of the neutrality and universality of Western science and the naive expectation that the mere importation of science would guarantee the national modernization. In comparison, Kim’s position was to cultivate the specific kinds of science which would contribute to the industrial independence of the nation, that is, the invention of the necessities of life. Most of the participants were, however, nationalistic elite captured by the doctrine of universality of the Western science, which eventually dominated the movement.
In this article I examine how Yi Ik, a prominent sirhak scholar in the 18th century, responded to... more In this article I examine how Yi Ik, a prominent sirhak scholar in the 18th century, responded to the impact of Western science. I focus on one of his articles, “On Field-allocation”[bunya] in the Fragmented Essays of Master Seongho [seongho saseol], because Yi Ik here articulated his approach both to Western science and the traditional world view. Contrary to the accepted image of Yi Ik as an iconoclastic critic of the traditional worldview and as a pioneer of modern Korean thought, I draw a rather conservative picture of him; Yi Ik never discarded the traditional belief in the astrological correspondence between heaven and earth, nor did he negate the central position of Chinese civilization in the world. He was, of course, aware that these conventional beliefs had many flaws that conflicted with the astronomical and geographical knowledge of Jesuit missionaries he highly evaluated. Yi IK tried to find a middle ground in which these conflicts could be successfully resolved. He incorporated several elements from Western science, especially the concept of a round earth, into the traditional astrological system, giving the latter a more reasonable theoretical foundation. In Yi Ik's work, Western science did not provide an alternative to the traditional belief but a useful resource to rationalize them.
In this article I investigate how Chinese scholars in the seventeenth century understood Western ... more In this article I investigate how Chinese scholars in the seventeenth century understood Western science of Jesuit missionaries, and how various ways of understanding the foreign science evolved into the chauvinistic theory of “Chinese origin of Western science” in the early eighteenth century. I discern two prominent approaches in the early seventeenth century, those of Li Zhizao and Xiong Mingyu. Li Zhizao, who emphasized the similarity between Western science and Chinese ancient tradition, suggested philological research on Chinese classical texts to reveal the perfect wisdom of ancient China. On the contrary, Xiong Mingyu, who highlighted the difference of the two, launched synthesis of Western science and Neo-Confucian metaphysics. Mei Wending and other scholars of the early Qing dynasty endorsed Li Zhizao's philology, giving it chauvinistic bents, and made a grand narrative, in which they argued that Western science had originated from the knowledge of ancient Chinese sages.
Tokimasa Takeda and Bill M. Mak eds., East West Encounter in the Science of Heaven and Earth (Kyoto: Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University,, 2019
When the Bureau of Astronomy of the Choson dynasty reported to the king about the impending astro... more When the Bureau of Astronomy of the Choson dynasty reported to the king about the impending astronomical reform in 1653, the proposed rationale appeared quite scientific: to reform the astronomical system so as to recalibrate it to the heavens. But the Bureau never intended to invent a new system through its own investigation of heavenly phenomena. Choson's astronomical reform in 1653 was simply an adoption of the Shixian li system of the Qing dynasty. Moreover, to the Choson government, this measure was an imperative that arose from its tributary relationship with the Qing. On what basis, then, did the Bureau and other actors at court justify the reform as their own scientific project? This paper examines the changing discourses of the Choson actors in relation to astronomical reform in the mid-seventeenth century. It will pay special attention to the way in which those actors used two conceptual devices-the "heavenly phenomena" and the "imperial calendar"- to formulate arguments about calendrical astronomy. This case will shed light on how the Choson actors as consumers of Chinese astronomy forged a sense of scientific agency in the midst of affairs that they could not control.
The doctrine of a cubic-shaped earth, first suggested by a young Seoin-Noron scholar Sin Yu o... more The doctrine of a cubic-shaped earth, first suggested by a young Seoin-Noron scholar Sin Yu of the Hoseo School in about 1705, tells about the existence of 'other' worlds on the earth, including even an antipodal land in which people stood upside down. This strange doctrine, influenced by the Western concept of a round earth, attracted many enthusiastic followers among the colleagues in a strongly conservative academic school of Gweon Sangha, the alleged successor of Song Siyeol. Subsequently Sin Yu's doctrine became a grave issue of the school and remained as such for several decades even after his premature death in 1706.
This article examines how this seemingly ‘unorthodox’ doctrine, conflicting with both the commonsensical world view of a flat earth and the Zhu Xi's cosmological doctrine, was able to attract serious scholars of the Zhu Xi scholarship. Two points will be suggested. First, Sin Yu and his followers successfully circumvented the criticisms of colleagues based on the commonsensical world view and Zhu Xi orthodoxy — by suggesting many absurdities of the so called commonsensical flat earth cosmology, and at the same time by reinterpreting relevant passages of classical texts, including Zhu Xi's, to make them tally with Sin's doctrine. This impressive rhetorical feat, however, does not exhaust the charm of the doctrine. The second point of this article identifies the more profound source of its charm in its link to a Daoxue doctrine about the natures of human beings and plants-animals. Most proponents of Sin's doctrine believed that humans and animals shared the ethical nature—the manifestation of the universal Principle. I argue that in the mind of Sin Yu's followers the doctrine of a cubic-shaped earth was, implicitly but closely, associated with the doctrine of the equality of human and animal natures. These two doctrines, I will suggest further, shared a deeply rooted aspiration among those Korean literati for a cosmic communication: an aspiration inspired by the cosmic voyages of Matteo Ricci from the antipodal land to this world—a world of bloody factional strifes in which no one could easily find an exit but a catastrophic ending.
This paper examines the cultural encounter between a Korean envoy and the Jesuits in China, as do... more This paper examines the cultural encounter between a Korean envoy and the Jesuits in China, as documented in the former’s Beijing travelogue. Yi Kiji, a literati member of the Korean tributary mission to the Qing court in 1720, established a favorable relationship with several Jesuits. Yi’s travelogue provides us a rare opportunity to glimpse an instance of the Korean encounters with European culture in the late Choson period. However, this paper attempts to examine Yi Kiji’s experience with the Jesuits not as a direct exposure to the West, but as something highly mediated by specific socio-literary constraints, namely, the Korean tributary travel to Beijing along with one of its literary outcomes, the genre of Beijing travelogues. Two points will be suggested. First, the mode of Yi’s travel and the nature of the "contact zone" crucially shaped Yi Kiji’s experience with Westerners and his description of the episode. Second, the way Yi portrayed this episode contributes to the broader rhetorical aim of his entire travelogue, reshaping the cultural identity of Korean Confucian literati in the wake of the unexpected prosperity of the "barbarian" Manchu empire that he witnessed during his travel.
Published in Korean as 임종태, "한국과학의 정체성을 찾아서": 1960-1970년대 전상운 선생의 한국 과학기술사 서술" <한국과학사학회지> 40(1) (... more Published in Korean as 임종태, "한국과학의 정체성을 찾아서": 1960-1970년대 전상운 선생의 한국 과학기술사 서술" <한국과학사학회지> 40(1) (2018), 159-173.
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his residence, provides a rare example in the history of astronomy in
pre-modern Korea of a Confucian scholar engaging in a systematic program
of astronomical observation outside the government bureaucracy. This paper
examines Hong’s program of astronomy and its place in his broader
pursuit of literati learning. Particular emphasis is placed on the ways in
which Hong intertwined two kinds of endeavor: first, the material practice
of building instruments and the observatory, and second, the socio-literary
practice of exchanging letters, poems, and essays about his observatory
with his fellow literati. This illustrates how he culturally legitimized a new
concept of a literati mathematician, an emerging figure in mid-eighteenth-
century Korea. It also shows how Hong’s scholarly program and the
role of astronomy within it evolved in the 1760s and 70s to increasingly
emphasize the importance of calculation and observation as essential
means of reforming the metaphysically oriented Confucian scholarship of
the time.
modern Korea. The main focus will be on examining the process of how the researchers’ interest has changed from that in evaluating the degrees of ‘mo- dernity’ in premodern Korean science to the issue of scientific relationship between China and Korea in the premodern period. While examining the debates on those two issues, this paper proposes several shortcomings that were found in the ways of how researchers formulated their main arguments and that blocked the possibilities for a more fruitful interaction between researchers of different opinions. Those shortcomings include historians’ confusion between actors’ categories and their own ones, and their naive application of such simplistic binaries as “modern/premodern” and “progres- sive/conservative” to historical actors’ ideas and practices.
Lessons from the Constructed Past: Jeon Sang-woon's Nationalist Historiography of Science in 1960s Korea를 한국어로 수정하여 출판
Depending on fragmented and secondhand knowledge on Western science, he criticized it by mobilizing the rich traditional resources, at the kernel of which lay the neo-Confucian metaphysics and natural philosophy. In his scheme, Western science, though he admitted it was impressively exact, considered as humble and subversive entity representing the category xingqi, whereas the neo-Confucian metaphysical learning was linked to more noble category daoli. For example, facing the attack of the concept of spherical earth to the traditional belief on China as the center of the earth, Yi criticized it as a superficial view inclined to the xingqi aspects of: the world. On the contrary, he argued, through the eye of daoli, one could see the profound and qualitative distinctions in the world.
In Yi’s view on Western science, we can find his sharp insights into the unauspicious omens of the destructiveness of modern science. However, his way of dealing foreign learning was essentially the same as those of the 'orientalists' in the 'West' of that time: The construction of the "Western science' in order to control it.
However, the aim of SI was too narrow to induce the active participation of the nationalistic elite, whose major concern was the rational rearrangement of the whole fields of the nation. Most of them paid more attention to the enlightening power of science and the need of the popularization of science than to the cultivation of professional reasearches. The leaders of SI accepted their doctrine of cultural scienitization actively, and in 1934, the Science Movement launched a full-scale start under the flag of the scientization of society and the popularization of science.
There were other fundamental differences, however, between the positions of Kim and the nationalistic elite. For the latter, the advancement of science meant merely the introduction of the Western science. At the basis of these positions lay the logic of the neutrality and universality of Western science and the naive expectation that the mere importation of science would guarantee the national modernization. In comparison, Kim’s position was to cultivate the specific kinds of science which would contribute to the industrial independence of the nation, that is, the invention of the necessities of life. Most of the participants were, however, nationalistic elite captured by the doctrine of universality of the Western science, which eventually dominated the movement.
This article examines how this seemingly ‘unorthodox’ doctrine, conflicting with both the commonsensical world view of a flat earth and the Zhu Xi's cosmological doctrine, was able to attract serious scholars of the Zhu Xi scholarship. Two points will be suggested. First, Sin Yu and his followers successfully circumvented the criticisms of colleagues based on the commonsensical world view and Zhu Xi orthodoxy — by suggesting many absurdities of the so called commonsensical flat earth cosmology, and at the same time by reinterpreting relevant passages of classical texts, including Zhu Xi's, to make them tally with Sin's doctrine. This impressive rhetorical feat, however, does not exhaust the charm of the doctrine. The second point of this article identifies the more profound source of its charm in its link to a Daoxue doctrine about the natures of human beings and plants-animals. Most proponents of Sin's doctrine believed that humans and animals shared the ethical nature—the manifestation of the universal Principle. I argue that in the mind of Sin Yu's followers the doctrine of a cubic-shaped earth was, implicitly but closely, associated with the doctrine of the equality of human and animal natures. These two doctrines, I will suggest further, shared a deeply rooted aspiration among those Korean literati for a cosmic communication: an aspiration inspired by the cosmic voyages of Matteo Ricci from the antipodal land to this world—a world of bloody factional strifes in which no one could easily find an exit but a catastrophic ending.
his residence, provides a rare example in the history of astronomy in
pre-modern Korea of a Confucian scholar engaging in a systematic program
of astronomical observation outside the government bureaucracy. This paper
examines Hong’s program of astronomy and its place in his broader
pursuit of literati learning. Particular emphasis is placed on the ways in
which Hong intertwined two kinds of endeavor: first, the material practice
of building instruments and the observatory, and second, the socio-literary
practice of exchanging letters, poems, and essays about his observatory
with his fellow literati. This illustrates how he culturally legitimized a new
concept of a literati mathematician, an emerging figure in mid-eighteenth-
century Korea. It also shows how Hong’s scholarly program and the
role of astronomy within it evolved in the 1760s and 70s to increasingly
emphasize the importance of calculation and observation as essential
means of reforming the metaphysically oriented Confucian scholarship of
the time.
modern Korea. The main focus will be on examining the process of how the researchers’ interest has changed from that in evaluating the degrees of ‘mo- dernity’ in premodern Korean science to the issue of scientific relationship between China and Korea in the premodern period. While examining the debates on those two issues, this paper proposes several shortcomings that were found in the ways of how researchers formulated their main arguments and that blocked the possibilities for a more fruitful interaction between researchers of different opinions. Those shortcomings include historians’ confusion between actors’ categories and their own ones, and their naive application of such simplistic binaries as “modern/premodern” and “progres- sive/conservative” to historical actors’ ideas and practices.
Lessons from the Constructed Past: Jeon Sang-woon's Nationalist Historiography of Science in 1960s Korea를 한국어로 수정하여 출판
Depending on fragmented and secondhand knowledge on Western science, he criticized it by mobilizing the rich traditional resources, at the kernel of which lay the neo-Confucian metaphysics and natural philosophy. In his scheme, Western science, though he admitted it was impressively exact, considered as humble and subversive entity representing the category xingqi, whereas the neo-Confucian metaphysical learning was linked to more noble category daoli. For example, facing the attack of the concept of spherical earth to the traditional belief on China as the center of the earth, Yi criticized it as a superficial view inclined to the xingqi aspects of: the world. On the contrary, he argued, through the eye of daoli, one could see the profound and qualitative distinctions in the world.
In Yi’s view on Western science, we can find his sharp insights into the unauspicious omens of the destructiveness of modern science. However, his way of dealing foreign learning was essentially the same as those of the 'orientalists' in the 'West' of that time: The construction of the "Western science' in order to control it.
However, the aim of SI was too narrow to induce the active participation of the nationalistic elite, whose major concern was the rational rearrangement of the whole fields of the nation. Most of them paid more attention to the enlightening power of science and the need of the popularization of science than to the cultivation of professional reasearches. The leaders of SI accepted their doctrine of cultural scienitization actively, and in 1934, the Science Movement launched a full-scale start under the flag of the scientization of society and the popularization of science.
There were other fundamental differences, however, between the positions of Kim and the nationalistic elite. For the latter, the advancement of science meant merely the introduction of the Western science. At the basis of these positions lay the logic of the neutrality and universality of Western science and the naive expectation that the mere importation of science would guarantee the national modernization. In comparison, Kim’s position was to cultivate the specific kinds of science which would contribute to the industrial independence of the nation, that is, the invention of the necessities of life. Most of the participants were, however, nationalistic elite captured by the doctrine of universality of the Western science, which eventually dominated the movement.
This article examines how this seemingly ‘unorthodox’ doctrine, conflicting with both the commonsensical world view of a flat earth and the Zhu Xi's cosmological doctrine, was able to attract serious scholars of the Zhu Xi scholarship. Two points will be suggested. First, Sin Yu and his followers successfully circumvented the criticisms of colleagues based on the commonsensical world view and Zhu Xi orthodoxy — by suggesting many absurdities of the so called commonsensical flat earth cosmology, and at the same time by reinterpreting relevant passages of classical texts, including Zhu Xi's, to make them tally with Sin's doctrine. This impressive rhetorical feat, however, does not exhaust the charm of the doctrine. The second point of this article identifies the more profound source of its charm in its link to a Daoxue doctrine about the natures of human beings and plants-animals. Most proponents of Sin's doctrine believed that humans and animals shared the ethical nature—the manifestation of the universal Principle. I argue that in the mind of Sin Yu's followers the doctrine of a cubic-shaped earth was, implicitly but closely, associated with the doctrine of the equality of human and animal natures. These two doctrines, I will suggest further, shared a deeply rooted aspiration among those Korean literati for a cosmic communication: an aspiration inspired by the cosmic voyages of Matteo Ricci from the antipodal land to this world—a world of bloody factional strifes in which no one could easily find an exit but a catastrophic ending.