Page 341 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

such as nautics; in the interrelated fields of
botany, pharmacology, and medicine; in mathe-
matical fields such as algebra, decimal metrics,
and calendrics; in mechanics; in physics; in
alchemy and early chemistry; and even in seis-
mology. Although Western advances in these
fields were rapid after about 1500, before that
date China was more often than not in the van-
guard, as Needham has pointed out: "One has
to remember of course the earlier situation, per-
taining in the [European] Middle Ages, when
nearly every science and every technique, from
cartography to chemical explosives, was much
more developed in China than in the West." 9

The Voyages of Admiral Zheng He
between 1405 and 1433
The voyages of the early Ming fleet under
Admiral Zheng He (1371-1433) are so spectacu-
lar that they tend to deflect attention from the
larger contours of earlier Chinese maritime
activity. We are not sure why Zheng's govern-

fig. 3. Su Song (1020-1101). Star Map Showing Fourteen of the Lunar Mansions. Printed in 1094. ment-sponsored expeditions were undertaken in
One of five star maps from Su's Xin Yi-xiang Fa-yao (New Description of an Armillary Clock); the first place, and their abrupt termination
facsimile reprint from Congshu Jicheng, vol. 1302 (Shanghai, 1937). despite brilliant successes is even more puz-
zling, especially when viewed from a European
perspective. These enigmas, added to the scale
cialists, and other scientists with their cousins' ceptual and technical break-through, what of Zheng He's seven voyages, have in recent
court at Dadu (present-day Beijing). When Joseph Needham has called "the cardinal inven- years attracted considerable attention, but they
Marco Polo was in China, during the reign of tion which marked the transition from medieval cannot begin to be solved without knowledge of
Khubilai Khan (r. 1260-1294), the court astron- to modern instruments/' anticipating by several their Chinese historical context.
omer was Guo Shoujing (1231-1316), one of the centuries the parallel conceptual advances in Chinese seafaring did not emerge full-blown
outstanding scientists in all Chinese history. He instrument design later achieved in post- with Admiral Zheng He in the early fifteenth
7
participated in the intellectual exchanges. Guo Newtonian Europe. What Needham calls "an century. It had a long prior history. A few
took a new and quite advanced Persian armillary exact fifteenth-century recasting" of Guo Chinese traders traveling in Chinese ships had
sphere, a version that had undergone technical Shoujing's instrument, made about 1437 for use gone as far as the Straits of Malacca by the
8
refinements in Muslim Spain in the twelfth in the Ming astronomical bureau, still exists, as fourth century, and others reached India and
century and was brought to China by a Persian do also some of the original thirteenth-century beyond by the fifth. Chinese goods, however,
delegation about 1276, and adapted it to his instruments. were mostly transshipped from the ports of
needs at the Astronomy Bureau. His adaptation, In short, China's practical needs for reliable Southeast Asia and India, and that traffic was
the equatorial armillary sphere, was a vast con- astronomy, going back to earliest historical for many centuries largely in the hands of Arab
times, led the court to emphasize astronomical seamen. It was Arabs who linked the Middle
study and to realize that new knowledge might Eastern and Mediterranean worlds with the
be gained through borrowing as well as through Chinese source of luxury craft products. Silks
independent investigation. During the half mil- and porcelains in particular drew their mer-
lennium from 1000 to 1500, science in China chants to China. From the eighth century Arab
was at a high point of creativity and inventive and Persian merchant communities in the ports
applications that extended from basic sciences of southeast China grew large and wealthy. But
such as mathematics to supporting technologies some Chinese merchants, at the same time,
such as precision bronze casting for making gradually extended their regular voyages west-
instruments, and to such practical applications ward to the Persian Gulf and the coast of Africa.
as the refinement of the calendar, the produc- Important elements of ship construction, navi-
tion of maps and charts, navigation techniques gational techniques, and detailed information
utilizing astronomy, design and use of the com- about ports and trade items were shared within
fig. 4. Guo Shoujing's Armillary Sphere (jian-yi, pass based on the science of magnetism, and both the Arab/Persian and the Chinese seafar-
"simplified instrument") of 1276, in an exact copy many other related branches of knowledge. ing populations. Maritime technology made its
made for the Ming Astronomical Bureau in 1437. Astronomy offers but one example of that over- greatest strides from about the year 1000
Cast in bronze, it measures roughly 12' x 18'; the
largest of the rings is 6' in diameter. Photograph all flowering of China's scientific knowledge. onward, contributing significantly to Chinese
courtesy Thatcher Dean, Seattle. One could easily cite parallel examples in fields seafarers' competitive edge in the world of the
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