Tiangong Wu Kai

Tiangong Wu Kai

Wu Kai in the Heavenly Palace was first published on 1637 (the tenth year of Chongzhen in Ming Dynasty). It is a comprehensive scientific and technological work in ancient China. Others call it an encyclopedic work. The writer is Song, a scientist in Ming Dynasty. Foreign scholars call it "China17th century craft encyclopedia". In the book, the author emphasizes that human beings should live in harmony with nature and human resources should cooperate with natural forces.

During his tenure as Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Fenyi County, Jiangxi Province, Song compiled the techniques he usually inspected in agriculture and handicrafts into a book, which was published in Chongzhen for ten years with the support of his good friend Tu Shaozhuo.

Stylistic rules and layout

Wu Kai in the Heavenly Palace records various technologies in ancient China before the middle of Ming Dynasty. The book is divided into three parts, 18 volumes. It is accompanied by 12 1 illustration, which depicts the names, shapes and processes of 130 kinds of production technologies and tools.

The first part:

Neri: Cultivation Techniques of Grain Crops

Naifu: the source and processing method of clothing raw materials

Smearing: Dyeing method of vegetable dyes

Essence: grain processing

Salt making: Introduce the production method of salt.

Love: the method of planting sugar cane, making sugar and keeping bees.

Medium length:

Yan Tao: Making bricks, tiles and ceramics.

Smelting: Casting of metal objects

Ship: the structure, manufacture and use of ships and vehicles.

Hammer forging: Iron and bronze are made by hammer forging.

Calcined stone: the production technology of non-metallic minerals such as lime and coal.

Paste: Extraction method of vegetable oil.

Immobilization: a method of papermaking

Next article:

Hardware: mining and smelting of metals.

Jia Bing: How to make weapons.

Danqing: Production of Ink and Pigment

Tillering: the method of brewing wine

Pearl jade: the source of jewelry and jade

evaluate

Heavenly Creations is the world's first comprehensive work on agriculture and handicraft production, which is called "technical encyclopedia" by European scholars. It systematically summarizes the ancient technology in China and constitutes a complete scientific and technological system. Summarized the rich agricultural experience and fully reflected the scientific and technological achievements. Many of the production techniques described in the book have been used to modern times.

Wu Kai in Tiangong has been translated into many languages, but it has been lost in China for a long time because of the literary inquisition in Qing Dynasty. I came back from Japan in the1920s. Later, the first engraving was found in Ningbo, Zhejiang.

Song Ying Xing

Song (1587- 166 1) was born in Pailou Village, Songbu Town, Fengxin County. Scientists in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. In the 43rd year of Wanli (AD 16 15), the senior high school entrance examination was held. However, the next five attempts to go to Beijing failed. After five treks, he learned a lot. He said, "In Wan Li, you can't smell anything." . He found a lot of production knowledge in the fields and workshops. He despises "dude" and "home of literati" who "know their taste but forget their roots". During his tenure as Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Fenyi County, Jiangxi Province (1654 ~ 1638), he wrote "Tiangong Wu Kai". Describing this situation in the preface, he said, "What a pity! Want to buy strange research, but want to attract colleagues by asking for money. Business is a little fake and true, but I lack the Chen Si Museum. " (I don't have the money to verify, and I don't have the space to discuss the authenticity with people), so I have to "cook the lamp (prepare grass)" and write a book day and night, but "a great scholar, abandon his desk, this book has nothing to do with the progress of fame." In the seventh year of Chongzhen (AD 1634), he served as an instructor in Fenyi County, Jiangxi Province. During this period, he summarized and sorted out his long-term accumulated knowledge of production technology, and compiled a book "Tiangong Wu Kai", which was published in the tenth year of Chongzhen (A.D. 1637). Later, he served as the magistrate of Tingzhou (now Changting County, Fujian Province) and Bozhou (now Bo County, Anhui Province), and died in the Shunzhi period of the Qing Dynasty (around 166 1 year). Song Yisheng emphasized practical learning and opposed the attitude of literati who despised production. He expressed deep sympathy for the working people and was deeply dissatisfied with the government's oppression of the people.

In addition to Heavenly Creations, Song also wrote Ten Words, Return to the Original Sound, Essays and Original Consumption, most of which have been lost. In recent years, four lost versions of Song's works have been found in Jiangxi: Ye Yiben, Lun Qiben, Ben and Si Ben. Ye Yi is a work on current affairs, which exposes and criticizes the corruption in politics, economy, military affairs, ideology and culture in the late Ming Dynasty, and puts forward some reform ideas. Compassion poems include ten beautiful poems and forty-two pity poems, which reflect the author's feelings of cynicism and love for the people. On Qi and Talking about Heaven are both works about natural science. Judging from the titles of these two articles, they are probably some chapters in Ten Languages.

The title of Heavenly Creations is taken from the words "Heavenly Creations in Their Place" and "Nature Makes Things Work" in the Book of Changes, and the author says it is "Building a man to create foreign objects skillfully" (hardware volume). According to the meaning of "valuing five grains over precious stones", the book is divided into Naili (grain), Naifu (textile), Zhang Shi (printing and dyeing), Jing (grain processing), salt making (salt making), Gan (sugar) and paste (preface).

The book "Heavenly Creations" describes in detail the types, origins, production technologies and equipment of various crops and industrial raw materials, as well as some production organization experiences, with a large number of exact data and 123 illustrations. The book is divided into three volumes, and is subdivided into eighteen volumes. The first volume records the planting and processing methods of grain, beans and hemp, the spinning and dyeing techniques of silk cotton and ramie, and the production process of salt and sugar. The contents of the book include the production of bricks and ceramics, the construction of vehicles and boats, the casting and forging of metals, the mining and firing of coal, lime, sulfur and alum, and the methods of oil extraction and paper making. The second volume describes the mining and smelting of metal minerals, the manufacture of weapons, the production of pigments and koji, and the collection and processing of jade beads.

His works have precious historical and scientific value. For example, in Hardware, Song was the first scientist in the world to discuss zinc and copper-zinc alloy (brass) scientifically. He clearly pointed out that zinc is a new metal and recorded its smelting method for the first time. This is one of the important achievements in the history of ancient metal smelting in China. China has long been the only country in the world that can smelt zinc on a large scale. The method of extracting brass with zinc instead of zinc compound (calamine) in Song Dynasty is the earliest record of obtaining brass by direct melting of copper and zinc in human history.

In particular, Song paid attention to discovering essence from common phenomena and made some achievements in natural science theory.

First of all, in biology, he recorded the case of farmers cultivating new varieties of rice and barley in Wu Kai of Tiangong, studied the influence of soil, climate and cultivation methods on the variety change of crops, and noticed the variation caused by the hybridization of different varieties of silkworm moths, indicating that the variety characteristics of animals and plants can be changed through human efforts, and obtained the scientific view that "soil veins change at any time, and species are divided by water and soil".

In physics, the newly discovered book Qi and Qi Sound is an outstanding chapter in acoustics. Through the concrete analysis of various acoustics, Song studied the law of sound generation and propagation, and put forward the concept that sound is air waves.