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Studies in Ancient Greek and Chinese Cosmology Dirk L. Couprie Historical & Cultural Astronomy Series Editor: Wayne Orchiston Dirk L. Couprie When the Earth Was Flat Studies in Ancient Greek and Chinese Cosmology Historical & Cultural Astronomy Historical & Cultural Astronomy Series Editor: WAYNE ORCHISTON, Adjunct Professor, Astrophysics Group, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia ([email protected]) Editorial Board: JAMES EVANS, University of Puget Sound, USA MILLER GOSS, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, USA JAMES LEQUEUX, Observatoire de Paris, France SIMON MITTON, St. Edmund’s College Cambridge University, UK MARC ROTHENBERG, AAS Historical Astronomy Division Chair, USA VIRGINIA TRIMBLE, University of California Irvine, USA XIAOCHUN SUN, Institute of History of Natural Science, China GUDRUN WOLFSCHMIDT, Institute for History of Science and Technology, Germany More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15156 Dirk L. Couprie When the Earth Was Flat Studies in Ancient Greek and Chinese Cosmology Dirk L. Couprie Department of Philosophy Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, University of West Bohemia Pilsen, Czech Republic Amsterdam, The Netherlands ISSN 2509-310X ISSN 2509-3118 (electronic) Historical & Cultural Astronomy ISBN 978-3-319-97051-6 ISBN 978-3-319-97052-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97052-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951782 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To the memory of my brother Jan (1924–2012), who could calculate in the dozenal system This book was supported by the Czech Grant Agency Project, GACR 15-08890S. Foreword Whether or not there was an actual relationship between early Chinese thought and early Greek thought is difficult to determine. But we can really claim that there is analogical relationship between early Chinese thought and early Greek thought. Even with regard to the concepts of Yin and Yang which have been regarded by most scholars for a long time and up to now as very peculiar Chinese ideas, we can find that there is analogical relationship with the concepts of the hot and the cold and the dry and the wet in early Greek thought.1 Therefore, I strongly believe that, if we systematically and profoundly try to do comparative research into early Chinese thought and early Greek thought, we should meet many surprising discoveries. And this will help us not only to find many comparable thoughts between the two, but also to solve the puzzles which have remained for understanding because of the lost and the lack of documents on either side. Dirk L. Couprie’s new book, When the Earth Was Flat: Studies in Ancient Greek and Chinese Cosmology, is a great attempt in this aspect. In this volume, he continues the research of his earlier work, Heaven and Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology, and makes a detailed and deep study of flat earth cosmology. While in the previous book he paid more attention to how spherical earth cosmology replaced flat earth cosmology and was accepted in early Greek thought, in the new book he devotes much more discussion to the question of how flat earth cosmology has explained all kinds of puzzles of astronomy. It is precisely in this context that he devotes an independent and special part to the study of Chinese flat earth cosmology, called the gai tian system, which was contained in an ancient Chinese work, Zhou Bi Suan Jing. He makes use of his extensive knowledge of ancient astronomy when studying its thoughts related to flat earth cosmology deeply and professionally, so that although I am a Chinese person, I become a layman with respect to him regarding this Chinese ancient work. But, I dare say, it is by his new book that he illustrates how a comparative research between early Chinese thought and early 1See Nie Minli (2016). ix x Foreword Greek thought may provide useful material to remedy the deficiency of literature on both sides. I got acquainted with Dirk Couprie in Thessaloniki, Greece, in July 2014, when I attended the Fourth Conference of International Association for Presocratic Studies. In that conference, Dirk Couprie read his paper, “The Paths of The Celestial Bodies According to Anaximenes,” and my paper was “Yin and Yang, and the Hot and the Cold.” In my paper, I compared the cosmological concepts of the hot and the cold in Pre-Socratics with the concepts of the Yin and Yang in Pre-Qin and paid special attention to the analogies between Lao Tzu and Anaximander. I did not anticipate that this paper would arouse the interest of Dirk Couprie. We had an intense discussion about Anaximenes’s cosmology and ancient Chinese cosmology such as the gai tian system and the hun tian system, the former of which claims the idea of flat earth and the latter the idea of spherical heavens. I felt shy that as a Chinese person, I could not provide him with more knowledge than he already possessed about ancient Chinese cosmology. After that meeting, we met again in February 2016 at the 10th London Ancient Science Conference. At that conference, we talked about Anaximander’s cosmology, especially about the puzzle in this sentence, “a kind of sphere of flame from this was formed round the air surrounding the earth” (Ps.-Plutarch Strom.2;DK 12 A 10). He told me that he intended to publish a book about flat earth cosmology based on the comparative study of early Greek cosmology and early Chinese cosmology. Now, I receive the last draft of his new book, When the Earth Was Flat: Studies in Ancient Greek and Chinese Cosmology, which is just what he promised in 2016. I believe this work will be a new beginning in the comparative studies of ancient Western thought and ancient Chinese thought, which tells us about the similarities and differences between their cosmologies. Dirk Couprie tends to stress the differ- ences. In my opinion, however, to inquire for the similarities will give us even more inspired ideas than to inquire for the differences. Renmin University of China in Beijing, Nie Minli Beijing, China Reference Nie Minli, “Yin and Yang, and the Hot and the Cold,” in Frontiers of Philosophy in China, Volume 11, Number 1, March 2016, pp. 73–87. Spherical Versus Flat Corey McCorkle, Yayoi (2005), Middelheim Park, Antwerp. What do we see here? A sphere, or a disk as flat as the paper on which it is printed? xi xii Spherical Versus Flat Eratosthenes said: The earth is a sphere. The sun is very far away, so that its rays reach the earth parallel to each other. At noon at the summer solstice in Alexan- dria, the angle of the shadow line from the top of the gnomon is seven degrees, but a gnomon in Syene casts no shadow. Therefore, I can calculate that the circumference of the earth is about fifty times the distance between Alexandria and Syene. Anaxagoras could have argued: The earth is flat. At noon at the summer solstice in Alexandria, the shadow is about one-eighth of the length of a gnomon. When I extend the line from the end of the shadow to the top of the gnomon upward, the point where it crosses the perpendicular in Syene is the place where the sun stands. Therefore, I can calculate that the distance of the sun is no more than about eight times the distance between Alexandria and Syene. Aristotle said: during a lunar eclipse, the shape of the shadow of the earth on the moon is always curved. This proves that the earth is a sphere. Anaxagoras could have argued: The earth is flat. The line between the light and the dark parts of the moon during an eclipse is always curved. This proves that an eclipse of the moon cannot be caused by the shadow of the earth. There must be invisible heavenly bodies between us and the moon that cause lunar eclipses. Ptolemy said: The earth must be spherical, because on a flat earth, it would be the same time everywhere, and the heavenly bodies would rise and set for all people at the same time. Chinese astronomers argued: The earth is flat. The celestial bodies orbit in a flat plane parallel to the earth’s surface. The sun shines successively on different parts of the earth, causing the differences in time. Acknowledgements In the field of ancient cosmology, I learned most from Dmitri Panchenko, whose thoughtful and inspiring articles always opened new horizons of interpretation.
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