The 16th century saw the rise of heliocentrism in the West, an astronomical revolution that led to the development of empiricism and the mathematical sciences and shook up established metaphysics. China embraced Western science but developed its own theories, seeking to reconcile them with its own intellectual traditions. From the 17th century onward, Chinese scholars recognized the superiority of Western astronomy but continued to attempt to connect it to Chinese classics.
In the first half of the 16th century, heliocentrism was proposed in the West as an alternative to geocentrism. The reforms in astronomy that began at this point went beyond mere scientific changes to transform metaphysics through the spread of empiricism and the development of mathematical sciences. As Western cosmology spread, reactions to Western science varied in the East, especially in China. Chinese scholars did not simply adopt Western cosmology, but actively sought to reconcile it with their own ideas. This process was accompanied by a heightened interest in their own intellectual heritage, which led to an effort to recognize the superiority of Western science while reaffirming the superiority of Chinese tradition.
Inheriting the mathematical tradition of simplifying complex problems, Nicolaus Copernicus sought to find a simple way to describe the motions of celestial bodies. He tried to create simple models that would make complex astronomical calculations more intuitive, but he was not concerned with the metaphysical issues that might arise in the process. The ancients Aristotle and Ptolemy described a fixed, unmoving Earth at the center of the universe, around which the Moon, Sun, and other planets revolve. In contrast, Nicolaus Copernicus proposed a model of the universe in which the sun was fixed at the center of the universe and the planets, including the earth, revolved around it. According to his theory, the farther a planet is from the sun, the longer its period of revolution, and this simple principle was enough to explain complex celestial motions. Copernicus was able to describe the visible motions of the planets with far fewer circles than Ptolemy, which was recognized as a virtue of simplicity in the scientific community at the time. However, many intellectuals and religious leaders who adhered to Aristotle’s metaphysics found it difficult to accept Nicolaus Copernicus’s theory, which they saw as reducing humans, who bore the image of God, from the center of the universe to the inhabitants of a small planet.
By the late 16th century, Tycho Brahe, while acknowledging the astronomical merits of Nicolaus Copernicus, sought to avoid conflict with Aristotle’s metaphysics. He proposed a model with the Earth at the center of the universe, the Moon, Sun, and stars revolving around the Earth, and the outer planets revolving around the Sun. This compromise can be seen as an attempt to accept the innovative ideas of Nicolaus Copernicus, on the one hand, while maintaining traditional metaphysical views. Johannes Kepler, however, was attracted to Neoplatonism, a metaphysics that believed in the numerical order of the universe, and adopted Nicolaus Copernicus’s astronomy, which sought simplicity by placing the sun at the center of the universe. He was also an empiricist who used Tycho Brahe’s precise astronomical observations to establish the laws of motion of the planets around the sun. These laws provided new evidence of the simplicity of the universe and made Aristotle’s metaphysical views untenable.
In the late 17th century, Isaac Newton succeeded in mechanically justifying the heliocentric theory. He successfully deduced Johannes Kepler’s laws of planetary motion from the hypothesis of universal gravitation. According to Isaac Newton’s theory, universal gravitation is the force of attraction between two bodies, the magnitude of which is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their distance. For example, if we assume that the celestial bodies, including the Earth, are homogeneously dense or spherically symmetrical spheres, then the universal gravitational force acting on any external point of mass can be described by all the volume components that make up that body. We can also prove here that the Sun, which is much larger than the Earth, and the Earth have the same universal gravitational pull on each other. Isaac Newton applied this principle to prove the existence of the universal gravitational force by means of actual measurements of the moon’s orbit and the falling motion of an apple. In doing so, Isaac Newton was able to explain the order and motion of the universe in terms of mathematical principles, and was recognized as the culmination of the Scientific Revolution.
Western science began to enter China in earnest in the late 16th century. When the Qing Dynasty officially adopted the Chongzhen calendar in 1644, which improved the calendar by adopting Western astronomical models and calculations, the status of Western science crystallized in China. The Chongzhen calendar, which improved its accuracy by adopting the astronomical theories of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler in turn, became closely linked to the daily lives of Chinese people. However, Chinese intellectuals viewed Western science, no matter how efficient, as a disturbing force if it was not properly combined with China’s intellectual heritage. Against this backdrop, scholars fascinated by Western science made various attempts to solve the problem by combining Western science with Chinese traditions.
In the 17th century, two leading scholars, Kuma Mingyue and Fang Yiqi, were critical of the cosmology recorded in ancient Chinese texts, but they also proposed original theories that reinterpreted Western science based on the principles of teleology. They respected the achievements of Western science, but rather than simply accepting them, they sought to reconcile them with traditional Chinese thought. For example, their claim that Mercury and Venus revolve around the sun was influenced by Tycho Brahe, but they also questioned Western astronomical theories about the size of the sun. They also proposed original optical theories linking qi and light, and sought to integrate traditional Chinese natural philosophy with Western science.
By the late 17th century, 梅文鼎 and 王錫闡, influenced by Western science, sought to understand the principles of the universe through empirical reasoning and mathematical calculations. While recognizing the superiority of Western science, they argued that its core principles were already inherent in Chinese classics. They worked to reinterpret ancient texts to support their theory of the Chinese origins of Western science. 梅文鼎 emphasized the superiority of Chinese science by linking the Western theory that the earth is round to ancient texts. In doing so, Chinese scholars influenced by Western science sought to interpret and develop it within the Chinese intellectual tradition, rather than simply accepting it.
The “梅文鼎” position, which centered Chinese astronomy around Western astronomy, was adopted as the official Chinese position by the early 18th century. This position was reflected in the Four Books of Knowledge, a compendium of China’s intellectual achievements throughout history. The compilers of this compendium organized a large number of astronomical texts from ancient times to the present day, showing a tendency to reinterpret the cosmology of ancient texts and connect them to modern science. This trend continued until the middle of the 19th century, when the dissemination and reception of Western science, combined with Chinese intellectual traditions, led to the development of a new intellectual movement.
