Twice Made in China: Renaissance Meteorology in the Late Ming and Early Qing

• In Event: The Jesuits in Asia: Encounters between Eastern and Western Science

Abstract

An anonymous late Ming manual for the prognostication of weather stood out as a striking anomaly for its genre. Besides the typical offering of various meteorological signs and corresponding “judgments,” it provided an elaborate illustration explaining the mechanisms for the formation of various phenomena in the sky, ranging from meteors, asteroids, and comets to rain, thunder, and lightning; furthermore, its explanations drew on unmistakably Aristotelian concepts. The circulation of Aristotelian meteorology within this ancient Chinese divinatory art testifies to the consequential nature of the early modern Jesuit mission in China. It also highlights the irony that while the missionaries vehemently denounced Chinese practices of divination, the models of rational thought they propagated sometimes served to boost those very practices. This paper probes into the phenomenon by examining the meteorological works by two Jesuits, Sabatino de Ursis and Alfonso Vagnoni, and some Chinese scholars who positively engaged their works, especially Fang Yizhi, Jie Xuan, and You Yi. I argue that the Jesuits did not simply transmit but reinvented Renaissance meteorology by uniting Aristotelian theoretical meteorology with the practical art of weather forecast, which remained largely divided in contemporary Europe. Their efforts to show the explanatory and predictive power of a good theory inspired these Chinese scholars to create one of their own, partially through borrowing from Aristotle, but it was one that aimed to not only predict the weather but also divine the future.

Author

• Qiong Zhang, Wake Forest University