Su Song

Su Song was a renowned , , , , , , , , and , , antiquarian, and of the Song Dynasty .

Su Song was the engineer of a clock tower in medieval Kaifeng, which employed the use of an early escapement mechanism. The escapement mechanism of Su's clock tower had previously been invented by Buddhist monk Yi Xing and government official Liang Lingzan in 725 AD to operate a water-powered armillary sphere, although Su's armillary sphere was the first to be provided with a mechanical clock drive. The clock tower had 133 different clock jacks to indicate and . Su Song's treatise about the clock tower, ''Xinyi Xiangfayao'' , has survived since its written form in 1092 and official printed publication in 1094. The book has been analyzed by many historians, such as Joseph Needham. However, the clock itself was dismantled by the invading Jurchen army in AD 1127, and although attempts were made to reassemble the clock tower, it was never successfully reinstated. Although the ''Xinyi Xiangfayao'' was his best known treatise, the polymath had other works compiled as well. He completed a large celestial atlas of several star maps, several maps, as well as a treatise on pharmacology. The latter discussed related subjects on mineralogy, zoology, botany, and metallurgy.

Although later European Jesuit travelers to China such as Matteo Ricci and Nicolas Trigault would briefly mention Chinese clocks with wheel drives in their writing, early European visitors to China mistakenly believed that the Chinese had never advanced beyond the stage of the clepsydra clock, incense clock, and sundial. Although not as prominent as in the Song period, contemporary Chinese texts of the Ming Dynasty describe a relatively unbroken history of designs of mechanical clocks in China from the 13^th to the 16^th centuries. that in Su's youth, he mastered the and rose to the top of the examination list for writing the best essay on general principles and structure of the Chinese calendar. He also was an antiquarian and . After serving in the Ministry of Personnel, he became a in 1086. Eventually, Su rose to the post of Vice President of the Secretariat. Among many honorable positions and titles conferred upon him, Su Song was also one of the 'Deputy Tutors of the Heir Apparent'. At court, he chose to distance himself from the political rivalries of the Conservatives, led by Prime Minister Sima Guang , and the Reformists, led by Prime Minister Wang Anshi ; although many of his associates were of the Conservative faction. sharing ideas about calendrical science, as the Liao state had created its own calendar in 994 AD. In an embarrassing event, Su Song admitted to the emperor that the calendar of the Khitan people was in fact a bit more accurate than their own, resulting in the fining and punishment of officials in the Bureau of Astronomy and Calendar. Su was supposed to travel north to Liao and arrive promptly for a birthday celebration and feast on a day which coincided with the winter solstice of the Song calendar, but was actually a day behind the Liao calendar. Historian Liu Heping states that Emperor Zhezong of Song sponsored Su Song's clocktower in 1086 in order to compete with the Liao for "scientific and national superiority." In 1081, the court instructed Su Song to compile into a book the diplomatic history of Song-Liao relations, an elaborate task that, once complete, filled 200 volumes. With his extensive knowledge of cartography, Su Song was able to settle a heated border dispute between the Song and Liao dynasties.

Astronomy

Su Song also created a celestial atlas as well , which had the hour circles between the xiu forming the , with stars marked in quasi-orthomorphic cylindrical projection on each side of the equator, and thus was in accordance to their north polar distances. This cylindrical projection was similar to Mercator projection, the latter innovated by Gerard Mercator in 1569. This is so because Su Song's fourth star map places the position of the pole star halfway between Tian shu and the current Polaris; this was the more accurate calculation that Shen Kuo had made when he observed the pole star over a period of three months with his width-improved sighting tube.

Pharmacology, botany, zoology, and mineralogy

In the year 1070 Su Song and a team of scholars compiled and edited the ''Bencao Tujing'' , which was a groundbreaking treatise on pharmaceutical botany, zoology, and mineralogy. In compiling information for pharmaceutical knowledge, Su Song worked with such notable scholars as Zhang Yuxi, Lin Yi, Zhang Dong, and many others. This treatise documented a wide range of pharmaceutical practices, including the use of ephedrine as a drug. It includes valuable information on metallurgy and the steel and iron industries during 11^th century China. He created a systematic approach to listing various different minerals and their use in medicinal concoctions, such as all the variously known forms of mica that could be used to cure ills through digestion. He wrote of the subconchoidal fracture of native cinnabar, signs of ore beds, and provided description on crystal form. Similar to the ore channels formed by circulation of ground water written of by the later scientist Georgius Agricola, Su Song made similar statements concerning copper carbonate, as did the earlier ''Rihua Bencao'' of 970 with copper sulphate. According to Edward H. Schafer, Su accurately described the translucent quality of fine realgar, its origin from pods found in rocky river gorges, it's matrix being pitted with holes and having a deep red, almost purple color, and that the mineral varied in sizes ranging from the size of a pea to a walnut. Citing evidence from an ancient work by Zheng Xuan , Su believed that physicians of the ancient Zhou Dynasty used realgar as a remedy for ulcers. As believed in Su's day, the "five poisons" used by Zhou era physicians for this purpose were thought to be cinnabar, realgar, chalcanthite, alum, and magnetite. For example, he noted that the freshwater crab species ''Eriocher sinensis'' could be found in the Huai River running through Anhui, in waterways near the capital city, as well as reservoirs and marshes of Hebei.

Horology and mechanical engineering

Su Song compiled one of the greatest Chinese horological treatises of the Middle Ages, surrounding himself with an entourage of notable engineers and astronomers to assist in various projects. ''Xinyi Xiangfayao'' , written in 1092, was the final product of his life's achievements in horology and clockwork. Fortunately, this book of Su's that was handed down included 47 different illustrations of great detail of the mechanical workings for his clocktower.

Su Song's greatest project was the 40-foot-tall water-powered astronomical clocktower constructed in Kaifeng, the wooden pilot model completed in 1088, the bronze components cast by 1090, while the wholly finished work was completed by 1094 during the reign of Emperor Zhezong of Song. The emperor had previously commissioned Han Gonglian, Acting Secretary of the Ministry of Personnel, to head the project, but the leadership position was instead handed down to Su Song. The emperor ordered in 1086 for Su to reconstruct the ''hun yi'', or "armillary clock", for a new clock-tower in the capital city. Su worked with the aid of Han Gong-lian, who applied his extensive knowledge of mathematics to the construction of the clock-tower. A small-scale wooden model was first crafted by Su Song, testing its intricate parts before applying it to an actual full-scale clock tower. In the end, the clock-tower had many impressive features, such as the water-powered, rotating armillary sphere crowning the top-level and weighing some 10 to 20 tons, a sophisticated use of oblique gears and an escapement mechanism, as well as an exterior facade of a fanciful Chinese pagoda. Upon its completion, the tower was called the ''Shui Yun Yi Xiang Tai'', or "Tower for the Water-Powered Sphere and Globe". Joseph Needham writes:




Years after Su's death, the capital city of Kaifeng was besieged and captured in 1127 by the Jurchens of the Manchurian-based . Yet the mechanical legacy of Su Song did not end with his work. In about 1150, the writer Xue Jixuan noted that there were four types of clocks in his day, the basic waterclock, the incense clock, the sundial, and the clock with 'revolving and snapping springs' . The rulers of the continuing Yuan Dynasty had a vested interest in the advancement of mechanical clockworks. The astronomer Guo Shoujing helped restore the Beijing Ancient Observatory beginning in 1276, where he crafted a water-powered armillary sphere and clock with clock jacks being fully implemented and sounding the hours. Complex gearing for uniquely Chinese clockworks were continued in the Ming Dynasty , with new designs driven by the power of falling sand instead of water to provide motive power to the wheel drive, and some Ming clocks perhaps featured reduction gearing rather than the earlier escapement of Su Song. The earliest such design of a sand-clock was made by Zhan Xiyuan around 1370, which featured not only the scoop wheel of Su Song' device, but also a new addition of a over which a pointer circulated, much like new European clocks of the same period.

Su Song's escapement mechanism

Su Song's escapement is similar and reminiscent of the anchor escapement found in European clockworks of the 17^th century. In Su Song's waterwheel linkwork device the action of the escapement's arrest and release are achieved by gravity exerted periodically as the continuous flow of liquid would fill containers of limited size.

In his writing, Su Song accredited the predecessor of his working clock to the hydraulic-powered armillary sphere of Zhang Heng , an earlier Chinese scientist. However, Su Song stated in his writing that after Zhang's death, no one was able to replicate his device, much like his own.

The mechanical clockworks for Su Song's astronomical tower featured a great driving-wheel that was 11 feet in diameter, carrying 36 scoops on its circumference, into each of which water would pour at uniform rate from the 'constant-level tank' . The main driving shaft of iron, with its cylindrical necks supported on iron crescent-shaped bearings, ended in a pinion which engages with a gear-wheel at the lower end of the main vertical transmission-shaft.

Joseph Needham gives a general description of the clock-tower itself:






That was figure Fig. 650, while Fig. 656 displays the upper and lower norias with their tanks and the manual wheel for operating them.

Fig. 657 displays a rather miniature and scaled-down pic for the basics of the escapement mechanism in an illustration , with Needham's caption here in this quote: "The 'celestial balance' or escapement mechanism of Su Sung's clockwork ,". The latter figure carefully labels:

*a right upper lock
*upper link
*left upper lock
*axle or pivot
*long chain
*upper counterweight
*sump
*checking fork of the lower balancing lever
*coupling tongue
*main counterweight.

The endless chain drive

The world's oldest illustrated depiction of an endless power-transmitting chain drive is from Su Song's horological treatise. as seen in Needham's Fig. 410 and Fig. 652. Although the ancient Philo of Byzantium featured a sort of endless belt for his magazine , which did not transmit continuous power, These gears having 600 teeth would thus ensure the division the day into basic unit measurements of 2 minutes and 24 seconds. Zhang's armillary sphere has often been compared to the 13^th century monarch Alfonso X of Castile in Islamic-era Spain. The chief difference was that Alfonso's instrument featured an arrangement for making measurements of the azimuth and altitude, which was present in the Arabic tradition, while Su Song's armillary sphere was duly graduated. For the drawing of Su's armillary sphere, the listing of components are:

*The Outer Nest
**meridian circle
**horizon circle
**outer equator circle

*The Middle Nest This appealed to emperor, who featured artwork representing the clocktower on vehicles of major imperial processions, as illustrated in the ''Illustration of the Imperial Grand Carriage Procession'' of 1053.

The later Ming Dynasty/Qing Dynasty scholar Qian Zeng held an old volume of Su's work, which he faithfully reproduced in a newly-printed edition. He took special care in avoiding any rewording or inconsistencies with the original text as well.

In the realm of modern research, the deceased British biochemist and historian of Chinese science Joseph Needham has done extensive research and analysis of Su Song's texts and various achievements in his ''Science and Civilization in China'' book series. Joseph Needham had also related many detailed passages from Su's contemporary medieval Chinese sources on the life of Su and his achievements known in his day. In 1956, John Christiansen reconstructed a model of Su Song's clocktower in a famous drawing, which garnered attention in the West towards 11^th century Chinese engineering. A miniature model of Su Song's clock was reconstructed by John Cambridge and is now on display at the at South Kensington, London.

Shen Dao

Shen Dao was an itinerant Chinese philosopher from who also served at the Jixia academy in . His own original 42 essays have been lost, and only 7 are still extant, and he is known largely through short references and the writings of others, notably Han Fei and Zhuang Zi.

The most noteworthy aspect of Shen Dao's philosophy is the fact that it represented a synthesis of and thought. While these two schools may seem quite opposed to each other in some regards, they both share a view of nature as a fundamentally amoral force, and by extension, reality as an arena without set moral imperative – a stance that differentiates both schools from Confucianism.

In Confucianism, power is legitimized through superior moral character and wisdom. According to Shen Dao, authority arises and is sustained due to the nature of actual circumstances, rather than in accordance with an abstract set of moral values. Things simply flow based on the natural course of The Way , and do not arrange themselves so as to conform to an ethical system. Through this idea, it is possible to see a bridge between the mystical simplicity of Taoism and the cynical realism of Legalism.

Shen Buhai

Shen Buhai was a bureaucrat who was the of under Marquis Zhao of Han from 351 BC to 337 BC. Shen was born in the State of ; he was likely to have been a minor official for the State of Zheng. After Han conquered Zheng in 375 BC, he rose up in the ranks of the Han officialdom. He was an innovator of administrative bureaucracy and was often linked with the . He is credited with writing the ''Shenzi''. Shen Buhai successfully reformed the bureaucracy in the State of Han; his reforms would later be copied by other states. He died of natural causes while in office.

Philosophy

Shen was chiefly concerned with government administration through the use of bureaucracy. His system required a strong ruler at the center. Shen Buhai believed that the ideal ruler should remain distant from his officials, keeping his innermost thoughts secret and maintaining an independence of thought. According to Shen, the ruler needed to be the loneliest person in the world.

To Shen Buhai, the greatest threat to a ruler's power came from within. He believed that threats from powerful, independent ministers to usurp power were more dangerous than threats from external forces. Shen championed the concept of ''Shu'' . Shen advocated for maintaining checks against the power of officials, and in equality among the officials.

He touted the primacy of finding the right person for the job . He evaluated officials based on skill, achievement and seniority. He also encouraged routine assessments of officials.

Shen Buhai promulgated his own concept of wu wei, which caused some scholars to link him with Taoism. In Shen's case, he believed that rulers maximized power by exercising power as little as possible. He also encouraged rulers to limit their scope, leaving the details of administration to capable ministers. Some modern scholars argued that Shen's legalism was more a blend of Taoism and than just purely the conceptual ''Shu'' school of Legalism.

Historiography

Shen Buhai was criticized by both Confucians and Legalists. Unlike the Confucians, he never mentioned virtue; unlike the Shang Yang wing of the Legalists, he never mentioned Fa . The Confucian Xun Zi strongly criticized Shen Buhai's emphasis on secrecy and lack of trust in ministers. The legalist Han Fei criticized Shen for paying too much attention to methodology at the expense of laws.

Although Shen Buhai was later linked inseparably with the Legalists, it was Hanfei who merged the ideas of Shen Buhai with those of Shang Yang. In 141 BC, under the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, Shen Buhai's name was listed with other legalist thinkers whose ideas were officially banned from the government; from that point on, scholarship on the ideas of Shen Buhai went into a steep decline.

Shenzi

Shen Buhai was known for his cryptic writing style. He was credited with writing a now extinct two chapter text, the ''Shenzi'' . During the Han Dynasty, the compilation was organized into two outer chapters, and six inner chapters, but the admeasurement might be different as time goes by. The last mention of this work occurred in 1616, some scholars believe his work did not survived. During the Qing Dynasty, three major attempts were made to reconstruct the contents of this work. The only traces of this work remain in surviving texts which quote from the ''Shenzi'' in ''Qunshu Zhiyao'', compiled in 631, and ''Yilin'', compiled around 786.

Shang Yang

Shang Yang was an important statesman of in the Warring States Period of ancient China. With the support of Duke Xiao of Qin, Shang enacted numerous reforms in the state of Qin that changed Qin from a peripheral, backwards state into a militarily powerful and strongly centralized state, changing the administration by emphasizing meritocracy and devolving power from the nobility.

Reforms

Before Shang's arrival in 361 BC, Qin was a backwards state. The vast majority of his reforms were taken from policies instituted elsewhere, such as from Wu Qi of Chu; however, Shang's reforms were more thorough and extreme than those of other states. Under Shang's tenure, Qin quickly caught up with and surpassed the reforms of other states.

After Duke Xiao of Qin, posthumously Qin Xiaogong, ascended to the Qin throne, Shang left his lowly position in to become the chief adviser in Qin, at Duke Xiao's behest. There his changes to the state's legal system propelled the Qin to prosperity. His policies built the foundation that enabled Qin to conquer all of China, uniting the country for the first time and ushering in the Qin dynasty.

He is credited by Han Feizi with the creation of two theories;
#''Ding Fa''
#''Yi Min''

Legalist approach

Shang believed in the rule of law and considered loyalty to the state to be above that of the family.

Shang introduced two sets of changes to the Qin state. The first, in 356 BC, were as follows:
#Li Kui's ''Book of Law'' was implemented, with the important addition of a rule providing punishment equal to that of the perpetrator for those aware of a crime but failing to inform the government; codified reforms into enforceable laws.
#Stripped the nobility of land right and assigned land to soldiers based upon military success. The army was also separated into twenty military ranks, based upon battlefield success.
#As manpower was short in Qin, Shang encouraged the cultivation of unsettled lands and wastelands, and favoured agriculture over commerce
#Shang burnt books in an effort to curb the philosophy's influence.

Shang introduced his second set of changes in 350 BC, which included a new, standardised system of land allocation and reforms to taxation.

Domestic policies

Shang introduced land reforms, privatized land, rewarded farmers who exceeded harvest quotas, enslaved farmers who failed to meet quotas, and used enslaved citizens as rewards for those who met government policies.

As manpower was short in Qin relative to the other states at the time, Shang enacted policies to increase its manpower. As Qin peasants were recruited into the military, he encouraged active immigration of peasants from other states into Qin as a replacement workforce; this policy simultaneously increased the manpower of Qin and weakened the manpower of Qin's rivals. Shang made laws forcing citizens to marry at a young age and passed tax laws to encourage raising multiple children. He also enacted policies to free convicts who worked in opening wastelands for agriculture.

Shang abolished primogeniture and created a double tax on households that had more than one son living in the household, to break up large clans into nuclear families.

Shang moved the capital to reduce the influence of nobles on the administration.

Diplomatic intrigue

During Shang's tenure, the state of Wei was a highly powerful neighboring state. During a battle during the 340 BC invasion of Wei, Shang feigned interest in a peace treaty, met with the commander of the Wei army and captured him. Without their leader, the Wei army easily lost to the army of Qin and lost territory.

Shang Yang's death

Deeply despised by the Qin nobility, Shang could not survive Qin Xiaogong's death. The next ruler, , ordered the execution of Shang and his family, on grounds of rebellion; Shang had previously humiliated the new Duke "by causing him to be punished for an offense as though he were an ordinary citizen." Shang went into hiding and tried to stay at a hotel. Ironically, the hotel owner refused because it was against Shang's laws to admit a guest without proper identification. Shang is said to have been executed by being fastened to four chariots and pulled apart. Despite his death, King Huiwen kept the reforms enacted by Shang.

Confucian scholars were highly opposed to Shang's legalist approach.

Further reading

*Li Yu-ning, ''ShangYang's Reforms'' .

Sengzhao

Sengzhao or Seng-Chao , from Jingzhao, was a and the first disciple of Kumārajīva. He helped translate Indian treatises and also wrote his own. These form the only source of study for early Chinese Mādhyamika Buddhism. He is mentioned in the ''Memoirs of Eminent Monks.''

Sengzhao criticized earlier Chinese Buddhist schools for believing in being or non-being. He concluded that all dharmas are empty.

He was also influenced by the Laozi and Zhuangzi.

Contribution

He composed a series of text, named Zhao Lun,

Qin Hui (historian)

Qin Hui is a Chinese historian and public intellectual. He holds the position of Professor of History, Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing.

Biography

His primary field is economic history, but since 1992 he has emerged as a prominent public intellectual, taking a stand on a range of issues, often in conflict with the official doctrines of the Chinese government.

In terms of political ideology, Qin Hui defends a left-liberal position. He favors privatization under strict conditions of democratic openness. However he opposes market fundamentalism in its Chinese forms, and seeks to introduce institutions of social democracy, including some aspects of the welfare state. He strongly defends liberty as a political value, and often allies with other Chinese intellectuals labeled "liberal." . He has engaged in polemics with the Chinese New Left, particularly its more populist and nationalist forms. He has for example signed petitions protesting chauvinistic responses to the 9.11 attacks in New York.

His major contribution as a public intellectual has been to initiate wide debates on social justice. Having himself been sent down to work as a peasant in a poor mountainous region of Southwest China in the Cultural Revolution, he has identified China's peasantry as suffering from grave lack of social justice up to the present day. At the same time, his historical research has shown strong tendencies of the peasantry to enhance their citizen status whenever possible .

A skilled writer able to provide incisive arguments and encapsulations of complex issues, Qin Hui has introduced a host of influential themes to the Chinese-speaking world, and in the so-called "Sinosphere" , collections of his works can be found on literally scores of websites. An important case in point is his doctrine of "issues versus isms" .

Qin has drawn on the work of Chayanov, Eric Wolf and other writers on agrarian society to attack cultural essentialism in studies of the Chinese peasantry, which often takes the form of portraying the peasantry as permanently imbued with Confucianism and the collectivist ethics of the feudal patriarchal lineage. Qin has been concerned to show that history rather culture provides a solid explanatory framework for the empirical phenomena.

Qin's formal research has largely been concerned with China's agrarian history in the broad. Contrary to the received Maoist view which emphasized peasant wars as expressions of class struggle, Qin concludes that the most significant fault-line in the countryside was not between peasant and landlord, but between peasant and official. This has obvious consequences for interpreting contemporary rural China.

Qin Hui is married with one daughter. His wife, Jin Yan (金燕） is an eminent scholar of Eastern European and Russian affairs in her own right, often collaborating with Qin under the nom-de-plume Su Wen .

Philip Zhai

Philip Zhai also known as Zhai Zhenming is a philosopher who writes in both and .

Zhai is the author of ''Get Real: A Philosophical Adventure in Virtual Reality'' , in which he argues that the logical extreme of virtual reality is equivalent to actual reality. Zhai also writes about cyberspace in light of its connection to virtual reality. The other book that he's written in English is ''The Radical Choice and Moral Theory'' .

Zhai began to write philosophy in Chinese in 2000, when he took a professorship in philosophy at Zhongshan University, China. When Richard Rorty visited China in July 2004, Zhai confronted Rorty's neo-pragmatism with his own reciprocal transcendentalism.