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Communication dans un congrès Année : 2023

A tale of seven cities: a new framework for the historiography of Chinese astronomy in the Period of Disunion (220–589)

Résumé

Since the time of Sima Qian (c.145–c.86 B.C.), historiographers have organised the individual people, works, and events comprising the history of astronomy in early imperial China within a framework of political dynasties and policy reforms. In search of alternative structures, I have reconstructed the social networks of those involved with computation and computational astronomy from the Han (206 B.C.–A.D. 220), through the Period of Division (220–589), to the early Tang (618–907), discerning distinct expert communities at rival courts and transmission lines within and between communities, revealing that certain methods and controversies map on to differences of regional tradition (Morgan 2021, ‘Regional Networks in Chinese Mathematics...’). This paper will add to this some initial findings of my project to translate the astronomical procedure texts of the Period of Disunion into Python. Namely, after presenting reconstructions of several additional lineages linking key historical figures through a combination of academic and family ties, this paper will discuss how we can expand this approach—the analysis of relations between people—to include the constituent elements of the procedure texts that they produced and referenced. One such element is procedures (shu 術) as translated into into concrete, reproducible practice in the form of Python functions: most of the text and procedures of the average procedure text is recycled from earlier works, and the modular approach that is most efficient for translating individual texts into automated tools for generating ephemerides allows us to easily map patterns of borrowing at the granular level of individual procedures and sub-procedures. Another element is astronomical constants, which are expressed in sets of mostly interlocking integer-ratio resonance periods resulting in complex numbers unique to each text: using a brute force approach, one can rapidly compare fractional constants to determine whether they were effectively translated from one system of pre-determined denominators to another and, from there, map a second network of intertextual borrowing. As it turns out, these three independently reconstructed networks overlap, revealing how distinct practices and values passed through the hands of distinct expert communities active within the same period, which leads me to the conclusion that the history and sociology of astronomy in medieval China is probably best organised by city.
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Dates et versions

halshs-04196364, version 1 (05-09-2023)

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  • HAL Id : halshs-04196364 , version 1

Citer

Daniel Patrick Morgan. A tale of seven cities: a new framework for the historiography of Chinese astronomy in the Period of Disunion (220–589). 16th International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia, Goethe Universität, Aug 2023, Frankfurt, France. ⟨halshs-04196364⟩
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