You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The reports of a conference of 11 scholars who began the task of examing together primary sources that might shed som elight on exactly how and in what fomrs mathematical problems, concepts, and techniques may have been transmitted between various civilizations, from antiquity down to the European Renaissance following more or less the legendary silk routes between China and Western Europe.
Coping with the Future: Theories and Practices of Divination in East Asia offers insights into various techniques of divination, their evolution, and their assessment. The contributions cover the period from the earliest documents on East Asian mantic arts to their appearance in the present time. The volume reflects the pervasive manifestations of divination in literature, religious and political life, and their relevance for society and individuals. Special emphasis is placed on cross-cultural influences and attempts to find theoretical foundations for divinatory practices. This edited volume is an initiative to study the phenomena of divination across East Asian cultures and beyond. It is also one of the first attempts to theorize divinatory practices through East Asian traditions.
How do Documents Become Sources? Perspectives from Asia and Science Florence Bretelle-Establet From Documents to Sources in Historiography The present volume develops a specific type of critical analysis of the written documents that have become historians’ sources. For reasons that will be explained later, the history of science in Asia has been taken as a framework. However, the issue addressed is general in scope. It emerged from reflections on a problem that may seem common to historians: why, among the huge mass of written documents available to historians, some have been well studied while others have been dismissed or ignored? The question of historical sources and their (unequal) use in historiography is not new. Which documents have been used and favored as historical sources by historians has been a key historiographical issue that has occupied a large space in the historical production of the last four decades, in France at least.
In imperial China, the Yijing (Book of Changes) was not just read as a Confucian classic for moral cultivation, but also put into practice to solve problems of everyday life. To explain why the Yijing was so widely used in China, this volume examines its multiple textual layers, its divinatory practices, its medical uses, and its role in Chinese modernity. Together, the ten chapters demonstrate that the Yijing is indeed a living text used by both the educated elite and the populace to alleviate their fear and anxiety. Contributors are: Andrea Bréard, Chang Chia-Feng, Constance A. Cook, Stéphane Feuillas, Tze-ki Hon, Liao Hsien-huei, William Matthews, Tao Yingna, Xing Wang, and Zhao Lu.
None
This volume is about the lasting impact of new (Western) notions on the 19th and early 20th century Chinese language; their invention, spread and standardization. Topics examined range from preconceptions about the capacity of the Chinese language to accommodate foreign ideas, the formation of specific nomenclatures and the roles of individual translators, to Chinese and European attempts at coming to terms with each other s grammar. A valuable reference work for all those interested in the historical semantics of modern China.
This is a book on the relationship between mathematics and religious beliefs. This book shows that, throughout scientific history, mathematics has been used to make sense of the 'big' questions of life, and that religious beliefs sometimes drove mathematicians to do mathematics to help them make sense of the world
This is the first comprehensive book that presents the manifold aspects of divination and prognostication in traditional and modern China, from the early period of oracle bones to present-day fortune-tellers. It introduces what is out there in the field of Chinese divination and prognostication, and how we can further explore it especially through different disciplines. Eminent specialists outline the classifications of divination, recently excavated texts, the relationship between practitioners and clients, the place of the “occult” arts in cosmology, literature and religion, and the bureaucratic system. Contributors are: Constance Cook, Richard J. Smith, Marc Kalinowski, Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Lü Lingfeng, Liao Hsien-huei, Philip Clart, Fabrizio Pregadio, Esther-Maria Guggenmos, Andrew Schonebaum, and Stéphanie Homola.
Intended for juniors and seniors majoring in mathematics, as well as anyone pursuing independent study, this book traces the historical development of four different mathematical concepts by presenting readers with the original sources. Each chapter showcases a masterpiece of mathematical achievement, anchored to a sequence of selected primary sources. The authors examine the interplay between the discrete and continuous, with a focus on sums of powers. They then delineate the development of algorithms by Newton, Simpson and Smale. Next they explore our modern understanding of curvature, and finally they look at the properties of prime numbers. The book includes exercises, numerous photographs, and an annotated bibliography.
"Among the biggest challenges facing leaders of the newly established People's Republic of China (PRC) was how much they did not know. In 1949, at the end of a long sequence of wars, the government of one of the largest states in the world committed to fundamentally re-engineering its society and economy via socialist planning while having almost no hard, reliable statistical data about their own country. This book is a history of attempts made to resolve this "crisis in counting." Drawing on a wealth of official, institutional, and private sources culled from China, India, and the United States, the author explores the choices made and the effects they engendered through a series of vivid e...