Science and Technology in Modern China, 1880s-1940s Edited by Jing Tsu and Benjamin A. Elman LEIDEN | BOSTON This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV Contents List of Figures vii Notes on Contributors ix Introduction 1 Jing Tsu and Benjamin A. Elman Toward a History of Modern Science in Republican China 15 Benjamin A. Elman Historiography of Science and Technology in China The First Phase 39 Iwo Amelung Disciplining the National Essence Liu Shipei and the Reinvention of Ancient China’s Intellectual History 67 Joachim Kurtz Science in Translation Yan Fu’s Role 93 Shen Guowei Chinese Scripts, Codes, and Typewriting Machines 115 Jing Tsu Semiotic Sovereignty The 1871 Chinese Telegraph Code in Historical Perspective 153 Thomas S. Mullaney Proofreading Science Editing and Experimentation in Manuals by a 1930s Industrialist 185 Eugenia Lean The Controversy over Spontaneous Generation in Republican China Science, Authority, and the Public 209 Fa-ti Fan Bridging East and West through Physics William Band at Yenching University 245 Danian Hu Periodical Space Language and the Creation of Scientific Community in Republican China 269 Grace Shen This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV vi Contents Operatic Escapes Performing Madness in Neuropsychiatric Beijing 297 Hugh Shapiro Index 327 Contents Notes on Contributors ix Introduction 1 Jing Tsu and Benjamin A. Elman Introduction 1 Toward a History of Modern Science in Republican China 15 Benjamin A. Elman 15 Historiography of Science and Technology in China 39 The First Phase 39 Iwo Amelung 39 Disciplining the National Essence 67 Liu Shipei and the Reinvention of Ancient China’s Intellectual History 67 Joachim Kurtz 67 Science in Translation 93 Yan Fu’s Role 93 Shen Guowei 93 Chinese Scripts, Codes, and Typewriting Machines 115 Jing Tsu 115 Semiotic Sovereignty 153 The 1871 Chinese Telegraph Code in Historical Perspective 153 Thomas S. Mullaney 153 Proofreading Science 185 Editing and Experimentation in Manuals by a 1930s Industrialist 185 Eugenia Lean 185 The Controversy over Spontaneous Generation in Republican China 209 Science, Authority, and the Public 209 Fa-ti Fan 209 Bridging East and West through Physics 245 William Band at Yenching University 245 Danian Hu 245 Periodical Space 269 Language and the Creation of Scientific Community in Republican China 269 Grace Shen 269 Operatic Escapes 297 Performing Madness in Neuropsychiatric Beijing 297 Hugh Shapiro 297 Index 327 This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV Toward a History of Modern Science in Republican China Benjamin A. Elman Abstract Despite the recent increase in the number of teachers of the history of science and medicine, historians of “Chinese science” until recently have spent much of their time researching issues in premodern natural studies and, usually, trying to explain why modern science, technology, and medicine arrived so late in China. The “Needham Question”—Why did a divided Europe, and not imperial China, develop modern sci- ence first?—until recently remained preeminent. This question was paralleled by scholarly efforts in other fields to explain why China did not develop capitalism or democracy before Europe. We are entering a new era that explores modern science in contemporary China in more active, rather than simply receptive, terms. Increasingly, we are able to address modern science in China from a comparative point of view and include it in the story of global science. The earlier lack of studies of modern science in China was not due to the burden of historiography alone, however. Historians used the potential sources for modern Chinese science, when available, to focus on indi- vidual Chinese scientists or representative scientific institutions in the Republic of China (1911–) and the People’s Republic of China (1949–), rather than exploring the larger problems of how science has been practiced in the modern context of national- ism, state-building, and socialism. The Historiography of Modern Science in China Most Western accounts have described how British imperial expansion during the eighteenth century collided with a Sinocentric Qing state unsympathetic to scientific knowledge. But this view should be amended. We should not read the Qianlong emperor’s (r. 1736–1795) famous 1793 letter to George III gainsay- ing Western gadgets as the statement of a Manchu dynasty out of touch with reality. The emperor did not categorically reject Western technology. His court simply contested the originality of the astronomical instruments—a replica of the solar system, for example—that the Macartney mission brought to China. Qianlong, on the other hand, showed great interest in the model warship equipped with cannon that Macartney presented. Unaware of the industrial revolution to come in Europe, the emperor had widely employed European Jesuits as astronomers, architects, and cannon-makers, who advised him against accepting the English demands. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004268784_003 This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV 16 Elman Once the Qing calendar functioned properly with Jesuit help, the emperor was not inclined to think Macartney’s planetarium so fabulous. Later emperors who faced irresistible English military firepower in the aftermath of the Opium War (1839–1842) were dealing with a different set of technological circum- stances. Chinese had incorporated algebra and geometry and made natural studies a part of classical studies in the eighteenth century, but the continued development of science and technology in Europe required Chinese to depend on the modern sciences introduced by Protestant missionaries in the new his- torical conditions of the post-Napoleonic age. In light of the important place mathematics and astronomy occupied in Qing dynasty evidential studies (kaozheng xue 考證學), it is remarkable how quickly—not overnight to be sure—the Chinese people adapted to the needs of science and technology, again under the umbrella of the “investigation of things and extension of knowledge” (gewu zhizhi 格物致知). With the intro- duction of the differential and integral calculus in the mid-nineteenth century, for which the Chinese could not find an ancient, native precedent, Li Shanlan (1811–1882) and other Chinese mathematicians admitted that although the “four unknowns” notation (siyuan shu 四元術) was perhaps superior to Jesuit algebra, the Chinese had never developed anything resembling the calculus. Moreover, after the Opium War, the most influential Chinese mathe- maticians no longer were devoted exclusively to the revival of ancient Chinese mathematics. They merged European and Chinese mathematics into a new synthesis. Even after the Opium War, missionary inroads in China remained limited. Protestant missions principally funded the new translations, newspapers, and schools that introduced modern science in the 1850s. The massive Taiping con- flagration from 1850 to 1864 was led by anti-Manchu and anti-gentry discon- tents who took advantage of a demographic catastrophe when the total population reached about 450 million. It left a swath of destruction in South China that significantly changed the tenor of things, once the peasant rebel- lion was quelled using new Western armaments. From the 1860s on, the impe- tus for science and technology shifted from the Protestants to the reforming Qing state and its new Western-oriented policies and institutions.1 Dr. Benjamin Hobson (1816–1873) was among the key pioneers in the late 1840s and early 1850s. After moving to Hong Kong, Hobson, an English medical missionary, pioneered a series of medical and science translations coauthored with Chinese for his premedical classes in Guangzhou. Hobson prepared the Treatise of Natural Philosophy (Bowu xinbian 博物新編, 1851), associating 1 Biggerstaff 1961. This is a digital offprint for restricted use only | © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV Toward A History Of Modern Science In Republican China 17 science with the Chinese tradition of “broad learning about things” (bowu 博 物). The missionary community preferred calling science “the investigation of things and extension of knowledge” in their scientific translations for the Inkstone Press (Mohai shuguan 墨海書館).2 Research on Western Anatomy and Traditional Chinese Medicine Hobson also produced a series of other works to educate his students. His Summary of Astronomy (1849) and the Treatise on Physiology (1851) were also designed for his medical students. The Treatise on Physiology presented mod- ern anatomy. The missionaries believed that medicine was at a low ebb in China. Yet while Hobson was translating Western medical works into classical Chinese, the heat factor tradition, which dealt with fever-inducing illnesses and had emerged in the seventeenth century, was growing increasingly promi- nent in South China, where the missionaries were often assigned. Regional tra- ditions dealing with southern infectious diseases and northern cold damage disorders continued to evolve in the nineteenth century. In the process, heat factor illnesses became a new category. The mid-nineteenth century emer- gence of a medical tradition stressing heat factor therapies coincided with the introduction of Western medicine in the treaty ports, particularly Guangzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai.3 Chinese accepted anatomy when they could assimilate it within their focus on conduits of qi 氣 in the body. Moreover, Song physicians