| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,300,000)
Fiscal Year 1996: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 1995: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000)
Fiscal Year 1994: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
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| Research Abstract |
The present project has dealt with an hitherto unknown manuscript which throws new light on the introduction of Kepler's laws into China. We found the manuscript at the Vatican Library in 1985 and discovered the much longer version at the British Library in 1994. Studying both, we were able to reconstruct the complete work, J.-F.Foucquet's Lifa wenda (Dialogue on Astronomy).
A long letter written by Foucquet in 1716, kept at the Jesuit Archive in Rome, gives an account of the circumstances under which he worked on the Lifa wenda between 1712 and 1716. At the time, the Lixiang kaocheng was being compiled by Chinese scholars. However dissensions among Jesuits prevented the former from having any direct impact on the latter.
In the Lifa wenda, we find plenty of information concerning recent developments of obervational astronomy in Europe. The global cosmology adopted is that of Tycho Brahe : in this Foucquet followed both Riccioli, the Jesuit astronomer, and Cassini, who worked at the French Royal Academy of Sciences. However, the heliocentric model is mentioned and used several times in the work--fifty years before the French Jesuit Michel Benoist formally introduced it in his Kunyu quantu.
The introduction of Kepler's first two laws is certainly a remarkable feature of the Lifa wenda : They are applied only planetary motions, circular orbits being retained for solar and lunar motions. At the same time, Foucquet relies on La Hire's observations, translating his tables, despite the fact that they contradicted Kepler's theories. Foucquet's approach to astronomy, giving more importance to the accuracy of numerical results than to theoretical issues, is essentailly empirical.
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