Dissertation Research: Science and Popular Culture in Traditional China

中国笔下的科学多元化，是世界科学史上一个尚未探索的大课题。这个问题不是传统科学的单一叙述，而是一个新的框架，承认在前现代的中国中，多种理解自然的模式并存。其中大多数在20世纪初的现代化和国家建设中幸存下来。本论文的研究项目将考察《中国》中科学的多元性，分析十七世纪到二十世纪初科学与大众文化的关系。这篇博士论文的方法从属于对精英知识传统的调查，到目前为止，精英知识传统一直主导着中国科学史学。玛格丽特·雅各布和拉里·斯图尔特等历史学家研究了18世纪通过科学普及带来的欧洲文化变革；现在是研究中国同行的时候了。这项研究将为西方科学史学家熟悉的主题增加新的视角，如科学家的职业化和科学与民族国家之间的关系，避免单向度的方法。科学与大众文化之间的关系不仅为理解传统中国中科学的多元性提供了一个关键框架，也为展示其演变与欧洲技术企业的不同之处提供了一个关键框架。这将使人们有可能避免传统上夸大少数改革派科学家和传统医生对中国文化的有限影响。对自然的通俗理解与精英知识分子传统交织在一起，渗透到中国社会的方方面面，从朝廷到农民村庄。尽管中国的风俗习惯和语言千差万别，但大家对神、鬼、灵作为人与宇宙之间的中间人的理解是一致的。精神世界影响了科学和医学的实践，并通过国家祭祀和地方仪式组织了手工艺生产。自然界是创造和应用理性理解模式的社会互动的舞台。这项研究将考察这些人类关系的多样性和灵活性，以及他们在手工艺生产和治疗领域对自然世界的基本概念。到目前为止的研究表明，对学术话语、地方和超地方社区关系的关注，以及国家对流行宗教习俗的挪用或压制，将揭示中国人实际实践的科学、技术和医学。该提案要求在12个月内使用12,000美元，用于前往中国和台湾的档案馆。

The plurality of science in China is a large unexplored topic in the world history of science. Rather than a single narrative of traditional science, the issue calls for a new framework that acknowledges that many modes for understanding nature coexisted in pre-modern China. Most of these survived modernization and nation-building in the early twentieth century. This dissertation research project will examine the plurality of science in China, analyzing the relationship between science and popular culture from the seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries. The approach of this doctoral dissertation subordinates the investigation of elite intellectual traditions that has so far dominated the historiography of Chinese science. Historians such as Margaret Jacob and Larry Stewart have examined the transformation of European culture through the popularization of science in the eighteenth century; it is time to study Chinese counterparts. This study will add new perspectives to themes familiar to historians of western science such as the professionalization of scientists and the relationship between science and the nation-state, avoiding the one-dimensional approach. The relationship between science and popular culture offers a key framework not only for understanding the plurality of science in traditional China, but for showing in what ways its evolution differed from that of the European technical enterprise. That will make it possible to avoid conventionally exaggerating the very limited impact of small groups of reformist scientists and traditional doctors on Chinese culture. Popular understandings of nature, intermixed with elite intellectual traditions, pervaded every aspect of Chinese society from the imperial court to the peasant village. Despite the great diversity of customs and language within China, everyone shared an understanding of gods, ghosts, and spirits as intermediaries between man and the cosmos. The spiritual world affected the practice of science and medicine and, through state sacrifices and local rituals, organized craft production. The natural world served as a stage for social interactions that created and applied modes for rational understanding. This study will examine the diversity and flexibility of these human relations, and their underlying conceptions of the natural world, in the areas of craft production and healing. Studies so far indicate that attention to scholarly discourse, local and supra-local community relations, and state appropriation or suppression of popular religious practices will cast light on science, technology, and medicine as Chinese actually practiced them. This proposal requests $12,000 to be used over twelve months for travel to the archives in China and Taiwan.