By Joseph Needham
After volumes in most cases introductory, Dr Needham now embarks upon his systematic learn of the improvement of the traditional sciences in China. The Sciences of the Earth persist with: geography and cartography, geology, seismology and mineralogy. Dr Needham distinguishes parallel traditions of medical cartography and non secular cosmography in East and West, discussing orbocentric wheel-maps, the origins of the oblong grid process, crusing charts and aid maps, chinese language survey equipment, and the effect of Renaissance cartography at the East. Finally-and the following Dr Needham's paintings has no Western predecessors-there are complete debts of the chinese language contribution to geology and mineralogy.
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Extra resources for Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 3: Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth
Example text
The -4th century). But sometimes such pioneer developments have to be paid for by later fixations. It may be that the domination of the Sung algebraists by the chequerboard notation was. as it were. an arithmetical carry-over. hindering the free flight of symbolism. We may find further illustrations of this principle. Thus the very success of the Han mathematicians in finding a general method of solving numerical equations might explain the later absence of any theory of equations (cf. pp. 126.
I, pp. ). h Cf. the descriptions by de Lacouperie (2; 4, pp. 19, 122, 302, 311, 321, 329, 368); Wang YiiChhiian (I); Schjoth (I). i Column J gives the forms which the visitor to China today will probably find on his restaurant bill. They are known by the name of ma tzu 3 or an ma tzu' (confidential weight numerals), and do not appear in print before the Suan Fa Thung Tsung of + 1593 (see below, p. sI). They were associated with the formerly great commercial city of Suchow in Chiangsu. The curious form for 10,000 has been said to date only from the Thang, but one may see it on Chou knife-money (Ku Chhuan Hui, pt.
5. On the traces of land-mensuration in some technical terms of Chinese mathematics, see Wang Ling (2), vol. I, pp. 132ff. Cf. p . 95 below. i Vol. 2, p. 230, in Table I I. Other relevant words are also dealt with there. J Or at least none has yet been recognised. SAR' 3 • • ~1t:ff§ 5W ~Jm 19. 4 MATHEMATICS it may not be older than the time of Li Ssu (- 3rd century). While the suggestion that the later written form (see diagram) embodies an ancient (pre-Han) graph of an abacus a must certainly be rejected, it may well represent the counting-boardb with its horizontal lines.