Shen Kuo (Chinese: zh 沈括, pinyin: Shěn Kuò), Shen K' uo or Shen Kua (Hangzhou, 1031 - Zhenjiang, 1095) were a Scientifique Polymathe Chinese and a Fonctionnaire of the government of the Dynastie Song (960 - 1279).
Excellent in many fields of studies, it was Géologue, Astronome, Mathématicien, Cartographe, Météorologue, Agronome, Ethnographe, Zoologiste, Botaniste, a Engineer in Hydraulique, Pharmacologue, a Auteur encyclopedist and a Poète but also Diplomate, Général, academic Chancelier, Minister for Finance and Inspecteur. He was the person in charge of the Office of Astronomy in short Song, like assistant of the Minister for imperial Hospitality. With short, its political allegiance was with the faction reformist known under the name of “Groupe of new policies”, directed by the Wang Anshi (王安石; 1021-1086).
In its Mengxi Bitan (夢溪筆談) of 1088, Shen was the first to describe the Compas with magnetic needle which will be used for navigation whereas in Europe, that will be described for the first time by Alexander Neckam in 1187. Shen also discovered the concept of the “Vrai North” in terms of magnetic variation towards the North pole. It was the decisive step in the History to make the more useful compass for navigation, and is a concept which remained still unknown in Europe for the four following centuries.
Parallel to his/her colleague Wei Pu (衛朴), Shen charted with precision the orbital ways of the the Moon and others Planet S, in five years an intensive project which will compete later with the work of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601). Within the framework of its work in astronomy, Shen Kuo made models improved of the Sphère armillaire, Gnomon, Télescope and invented the Clepsydre. Shen Kuo, as a geologist, worked out a theory on the formation of the ground, or the Géomorphologie, while being based on the presence of marine fossils on the ground, its knowledge of the erosion of the ground and the deposits of Limon. He also proposed a theory of the progressive Climate change, after having observed old Bambou S petrified which was preserved in a place dry and underground and whose Scandinavian habitat did not allow the growth of the bamboo. He was the first literary character in China with speaking about the use of the Cale dries to repair the boats out of water, and also wrote the effectiveness of the relatively new invention of the lock to weight. Although Alhazen is the first to describe the Darkroom, Shen Kuo was the first in China to do it, several decades later. Shen Kuo wrote about the typographical impression invented much by pi Cheng (畢昇; 990-1051), and because of its writings the heritage of pi Cheng and of the modern comprehension of the first typographical characters was transmitted to the following generations.
Shen Kuo wrote several other books in addition to Mengxi Bitan , even if most of its other writings did not survive. Certain poems of Shen were preserved in posthumous writings. Although many of its efforts were put on the technology matters and scientists, it was also interested in the Divination and the Surnaturel. He also wrote comments on old texts taoists and confucéens.
Biography
Childhood
Shen Kuo was born in 1031 in Qiantang, current the Hangzhou. His/her father Shen Zhou (zh 沈周; 978-1052) made party of the minor nobility and sat at official stations at the provincial level. His/her mother had a family with a statute similar to Suzhou, her name of young girl being Xu (zh 許).
Kuo received its first education of his/her mother, which was a current practice in China during this period. The family fixed itself finally at Xiamen. Shen Zhou also was used several years for the court of the city, which was the equivalent of the supreme Federal court. Towards 1054, Shen started to be used for governmental, minor and local stations. However, its capacities natural to plan, organize and conceive appeared very early. An example of that is its design and the supervision of the hydraulic drainage of a system of Digue, which converted marshes into a hundred thousands of Hectare S (400 km ²) of arable lands.
With the service of the imperial government
In 1063, to 35 years, it passed successfully the imperial Examen necessary to enter to the service of the government, a military commander, a director of work Hydraulique S and the first chancellor of the Académie Hanlin. In 1072, Shen was designated as the person in charge of the “Office of astronomy” jointly with the work of his/her colleague Wei Pu (zh 衛朴). With its competences and its aptitudes for the economic questions and financial, Shen was appointed Commissaire of finances at the central Court. Shen Kuo also received the honorary title of “Vicomte of the State Fondateur” by the Empereur Shenzong of Song (zh 神宗; about 1067-1085) which relied great on Shen Kuo. Shen Kuo had a precedent with Wang Anshi since it was Wang which had composed the funerary epitaph of the father of Shen. Shen Kuo impressed Wang Anshi with its competences and its capacities as an administrator and government official. In 1072, Shen was sent to supervise the program of Wang concerning the construction of deposits of Limon in the Canal of Bian, located outside the capital. By using an original technique, Shen successful successfully the dredging of the channel and showed the formidable value of the vase collected like Engrais, the creation of monopolies on the production and the distribution of Salpêtre and Soufre in 1076 in order to make sure that the provisioning of Gunpowder do not fall between the hands from the enemies, and the installation of an aggressive military policy with respect to the Western rivals in China of the North of the Dynasty of Xia and the Liao dynasty. A few years after the military forces of the Song dynasty had made territorial profits against Xia Western, in 1080, Shen Kuo was named as a military officer in the defense of Yanzhou (nowadays Yan' year in the province of Shaanxi). During the autumn 1081, Shen defended the territory of the Song Dynasty successfully by capturing several strengthened cities of Xia Western. The Empereur Shenzong of Song rewarded Shen with many titles for its merit in these engagements. In the sixteen months of the military countryside of Shen, it received 273 letters of the emperor.Indeed, after the death of his last wife, Shen Kuo fell into a deep depression and even tried to commit suicide while jumping in the Yangzi Jiang to drown. Although this suicide attempt failed, he will die one year later, withdrawn in his field and patient, until his death in 1095. He proposed versions improved of the Sphère armillaire, Gnomon and Clepsydre as well as many evolutions.
The scientific writings of Shen Kuo received many praises of sinologists like Joseph Needham and Nathan Sivin. Its work often was compared with that of another brilliance Polymathe Chinese Su Song (1020-1101). Shen Kuo was also compared with many Western intellectuals like Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz and Mikhaïl Lomonossov.
Cartography
The largest atlas of Shen included twenty-three charts of China and the close areas, charts which were drawn uniformly on a 1 scale:: 900000. Shen estimated that, although the trees were increasingly rare because of deforestation for the needs for the local industry of the Fer, “the Pétrole was produced continuously within the Earth”. It had a great concern for the details and philological exactitude in the identification, the use and the culture of the various types of medicinal plants, as for the months when the plants were to be collected and their precise ripening so that they can be used with the fine therapeutic ones. He also wrote on the common Horticulture and plants, their times of plantation and Fertilization. Moreover, Shen Kuo describes the phenomenon of Insecte S Prédateur S natural which assured control the population of harmful insects which had the potential to make devastations on the cultures agricultural of China.
Medicine
Shen also has had like interest the human Anatomie, by dissipating the theory according to which the throat contained three channels, writing, “When the liquids and the solids are mixed together, how is made that in the Bouche, they sort themselves in two ways? ”. Shen supported that the Larynx be the beginning of a system which distributed vital “IQ” of the Air in all the body and the esophagus was a simple tube bringing the food to the stomach. Continuing the reasoning of Shen and correcting the results of the Dissection gangsters carried out in 1045, a Chinese report/ratio dating from the beginning of the 12th century confirmed the presence of two channels to the throat and not three. Moreover, a judge of the Song dynasty and an expert in what one one will call well later Legal medicine, Song Ci (宋慈; 1186-1249), allowed to promote the use of the autopsy like means of solving the cases of Homicide S, such as it is written in Xǐyuān Jílù (“Collected Cases off Rectified Injustice”).
Hydraulics and civil architecture and naval
The writings of Shen Kuo are the only source dating the first use of the Cale dries in China. Shen Kuo wrote that during the reign of Xi Ning (1068-1077), the civil servant Huang Huaixin conceived a plan for the repair of the boats, length 60 m, the palate which were old one century. Primarily, Huang Huaixin designed the first Chinese dry hold to suspend boats out of water. He wrote that this new type of lock saved the annual work of five hundred men, reduced the costs annual and allowed to increase the limit of size of the lodged boats of 21 ton S with 113 tons. Yu Hao in particular conceived famous a Pagoda of wood which burned in 1044 and which has replaced in 1049 by a pagoda of Brique S of the same height, called the “Pagoda of iron”.
Mathematics and optics
In the vast domain of the Mathematical , Shen Kuo controlled many practical mathematical problems, including many complex formulas for the Géométrie, the Infinitesimal calculus and the problems of Trigonométrie. He wrote abundantly on what he had learned while working for the Treasury from the State, including mathematical problems posed by the calculation of the real estate taxes, of the estimates of the needs, the monetary questions, the Métrologie. Shen, once, calculated cuts it Terrain necessary for a battle in formation for its use in the military Stratégie. It also calculated longest possible military Campagne, calculated on the limits and the transport capacities, with the Soldat S carrying their own food and that of other soldiers.Shen Kuo tested with the Sténopé and of the Miroir S like the Chinese mohists had made at fourth century BC. Although the scientist Musulman Alhazen (965-1039) was the first to try out with the Darkroom, Shen Kuo was the first to apply geometrical and quantitative attributes to the darkroom, several decades after the death of Alhazen.
Shen wrote on Yi Xing (一行; 672-717), a buddhist monk, who applied a mechanism of exhaust to a hydraulic Sphère armillaire. Moreover, by using the mathematical permutations, Shen the calculation of Yi Xing of the possible positions describes on a Jeu of go. Shen calculated the full number of this with to five lines and twenty-five parts of the play, which gave: 847288609443 possibilities, However, some of its more impressive work in the field of mathematics was in the field of the Astronomie.
Magnetic needle compass
Since the time of the engineer and inventive My Jun (馬鈞; towards 200-265), the Chinese used a mechanical apparatus known under the name of pointing “Chariot pointing the South” in order to move on ground (and possibly at sea, like the song Song Shu refers). This device was particularly clever, because it used a Différentiel. In 1044, celebrates it Wujing Zongyao (武經總要; “Collection of the most important military techniques”) reported than the objects in the shape of fish head makes starting from an iron sheet, magnetized by Thermorémanence (i.e. which produces a weak magnetic force if it is heated), and placed in bowl filled with water surrounded by a box with marked directions were used to indicate the south following the example carriage pointing the South.However, it is only starting from Shen Kuo that the first magnetic compasses will be used for navigation. In its writings, Shen Kuo did one of the first historical references to the magnetic needle compass, the concept of “Vrai North” and its use for navigation at sea. Shen Kuo affirmed “magnetic needles are always moved slightly in the East instead of pointing full South”.
In any case, the writings of Shen Kuo on the magnetic compass proved very useful to include/understand the use of the compass for sea transport in China. In Europe, such a concept will appear only one century afterwards via Alexander Neckam.
Theory on geology
In the ancient Greece, Aristote (384 before J. - C. - 322 before J. - C.) written in its Meteorology the way whose Ground has the potential to change physically, including its conviction that all the rivers and the seas existing at one time did not exist in the past where they was and in the future where they would be drained. The Greek writer Xénophane de Colophon (570 before J. - C. - 480 before J. - C.) wrote that the Fossile S sailors found with ground are the proof that massive periodic floods existed in the past, but without to have ever written on the formation of the seaside. With dimensions Moslem, the Persian scholar Al-Biruni (973-1048) emitted the assumption that the India was formerly covered by the Indian Ocean, while observing the rock formations with the mouth of the rivers.
It was Shen Kuo which formulated an assumption on the formation process of the Earth and its continents (Géomorphologie) while being based on several observations as proof. That included/understood its observation of marine fossils in a geological layer of a mountain to hundreds of kilometers of the ocean. He deduced that the ground was reorganized and formed by the erosion of the mountain, the rise and the deposits of Vase, after having observed strange natural erosions in the mountains Taihang and Yandang close to Wenzhou. He put forth the assumption that with the flood of Limon, the grounds of the continent were to be formed on a very long space of time. By visiting the Taihang mountain in 1074, Shen Kuo noticed on a cliff the Strate S of shells of the class of the Bivalvia and rocks of ovoid form on a horizontal level. Zheng Boshun, the magistrate of Jincheng, also examined the creature and foot-note the presence of marks of scale S as on those seen on other marine animals. Towards 1080, Shen Kuo foot-note that a landslide on a bank of a large river close to Yanzhou (current the Yan' year) had revealed a space open to several tens of meters under the ground once the ploughed up bank. The historian Joseph Needham compared the lucky find of Shen with that of the Scottish scientist Roderick Murchison (1792-1871) which became geologist following the providential observation of a landslide.
Astronomy
August 1st He discovered the astronomical concept of “Vrai North”, and supported that the Sun and the the Moon were spherical, and not dishes, starting from the solar observations of eclipses and lunar eclipses. He reformed the Chinese Calendrier starting from precise astronomical observations over several months.
Personal thoughts and philosophy
August 1stMengxi Bitan
See also: Mengxi Bitan
August 1st
Other writings
August 1st
The legend Shen Kuo
August 1st Its tomb, located in the area of Yuhang, in Hangzhou, was restored by the Chinese government in September 2001.
External bonds
- Chapter of book of Nathan Sivin on Shen Kuo
- Shen Kua At JOC/EFR
- Shen Kuo, a mathematician, engineer, physicist, and astronomer
- Shen Kuo and Chinaculture.org
- Shen Kuo' S " Bamboo Shoots"
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