ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Chinese Cosmologies in a Scaphe Sundial: New Instruments of Visualization in the Mongol-Yuan Dynasty

• In Event: Visualization and Material Cultures of the Heavens across Eurasia

English Abstract

This paper examines the emergence of new visual and material instruments in China the late thirteenth century. Under the Mongol rule and Eurasian Impacts, this period saw a major transformation of the Chinese observatory and its apparatus. A number of Western-style instruments, such as the scaphe sundial, the terrestrial globe, and the astrolabe, appeared for the first time. Muslim experts were directly involved in creating some of the new instruments. More significantly, their Chinese peers were able to draw inspirations from these objects and appropriate them for visualizing indigenous cosmologies as well as the new geography of the Mongol empire, without necessarily engaging the underlying theoretical content written in unfamiliar languages. Special focus will be on a scaphe sundial (fu yi “cauldron instrument” or yang yi “upward-facing instrument”) attributed to Chinese astronomer and engineer Guo Shoujing (1231-1316). This paper will shed new light on the role of visual objects in cross-cultural knowledge exchanges.

Author

• Jinsong Guo, Peking University