Asia

This Chinese lion is know as a Shi, or an imperial guardian lion. It was a symbol of protection and often placed in front of tombs, palaces, temples, and important homes

This book recounts the establishment of the Jesuit mission in China in the late 1500s led by Matteo Ricci. When Ricci predicted a solar eclipse in 1592 with greater accuracy than the astronomers of the Chinese court, Emperor Wan-li invited Ricci to Beijing.

Confucius lived in the early 5th century BCE, roughly contemporary with the Pythagoreans and Presocratic natural philosophers. Confucius taught: “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself,” an early version of the Golden Rule.

This work by Macrobius (5th century) illustrates the wealth of ancient and early medieval literary sources relevant to cosmology. Macrobius here comments upon a classic story of Cicero which described a vision given to the Roman general Scipio.

A Chinese celestial atlas and chronological tables, reproduced in Williams’ own hand, appear in this record of 372 comet sightings from 611 B.C.E. to 1640 C.E.

Back in Rome, Kircher collected all the information he could gather from Jesuits in China, publishing this massive encyclopedia on China, Tibet, India, Korea and Japan. It contains two notable early maps, numerous portraits, and an introduction to Sanskrit and Chinese characters.

In one of Kircher’s images is of Matteo Ricci is pictured on the left, along with Xu Guangki (??? 1562-1633) on the right.

Yin and yang, a recurring motif in traditional Chinese thought, express the idea of the interconnectedness of opposites. Phenomena which appear as dualities to us, such as darkness and light, or high and low tides, will turn out to be interdependent and profoundly related.

Le Comte, a French Jesuit sent in 1687 by Louis XIV to work in the Kangxi court, depicted the Beijing observatory at the end of Schall’s life.

Photographs of the Beijing observatory show what remained of the astronomical instruments in 1897.

This work, written by a Kyoto physician, represents Asian astronomy in the generation following Adam Schall. Baba countered superstitious interpretations of solar eclipses, and used magnetic theory rather than yin and yang to explain the tides. Baba adopted the Tychonic model of cosmology.

Abraham bar Hiyya, also known as Savasorda, was a 12th century Jewish mathematician and astronomer in Barcelona. In this beautiful introduction to astronomy, bar Hiyya’s text appears in Hebrew alongside a Latin translation.

Du Halde lived in China for nearly 30 years. This work recounts the story of Candida Xu, who collaborated with the Jesuit astronomers as had her grandfather, Xu Guangki. For a foldout map of China, du Halde drew upon the Kangxi atlases of 1717 and 1721.

Du Halde lived in China for nearly 30 years. This work recounts the story of Candida Xu, who collaborated with the Jesuit astronomers as had her grandfather, Xu Guangki. For a foldout map of China, du Halde drew upon the Kangxi atlases of 1717 and 1721.

Galileo’s mechanics demonstrated that projectiles follow a parabolic path. This is true whether the projectile is a cannonball, an arrow or a football. This set of four Japanese Samurai manuscripts, drawn on rice paper in the mid 1800’s, was copied by hand from mid-16th-century sources.