Christopher Cullen
Biographic Data
| ID | 3662407 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher Cullen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher |
| FAMILY NAME | Cullen |
| SIGNATURE | CULLEN C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cancer Research UK |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1369-5529 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Geneva Sphere: An Astronomical Model from Seventeenth-Century Japan
An object has come to light which appears to be a clockwork driven model of the cosmos made in seventeenth-century Japan. The contemporary textual sources describing such devices are discussed, and the origins of the model's technical features are identified. These include what appear to be Japanese appropriations of technologies brought to Japan by Jesuit missionaries in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Comparisons are made w…
Heavenly Numbers
This book is a history of the development of mathematical astronomy in China, from the late third century BCE, to the early third century CE—a period often referred to as ‘early imperial China’. It narrates the changes in ways of understanding the movements of the heavens and the heavenly bodies that took place during those four and a half centuries, and tells the stories of the institutions and individuals involved in those changes. It gives cle…
The age of debates
In this chapter, we look at a further aspect of the story revealed by the documents collected by Cai Yong and Liu Hong: the records of debates on technical matters during the first and second centuries CE, debates which were often held in the presence of large audiences of officials. We look at the issues that were raised in such debates, and at the varieties of evidence and arguments that the participants attempted to use to support their positi…
The astronomical empire
This chapter begins by sketching the historical and cultural foundations of the role played by astronomy in the self-presentation of the early imperial Chinese state, principally through its claim to have the right to structure the time of its subjects by issuing a luni-solar calendar. This claim was presented as fulfilling a need on the part of the population; we discuss how far this claim was an accurate perception of the power relations involv…
Epilogue
By the end of the Han, specialists in the analysis and prediction of the motions of the heavenly bodies had established ways of working which were, in their essentials, to be continued and developed without radical discontinuity for the rest of the imperial age. The stability of these methods was underpinned by their incorporation into the ideology of imperial legitimacy, which claimed that the emperor had not simply the right, but the duty, to ‘…
Li in everyday life: Dates and calendars
In the preceding chapter we noted the importance of the role of specialists in astronomical systems, li 曆 , as part of the machinery of the Chinese imperial state, and sketched the kind of mathematical and astronomical structures that they used in their work, as well as reviewing the historical sources through which modern historians can study that work. In this chapter we examine more closely the structures and forms of li as they were presented…
Understanding the Planets in Ancient China: Prediction and Divination in the Wu xing zhan
The untitled and anonymous text known by modern scholars under the name Wu xing zhan 'Prognostics of the Five Stars [sc. 'planets']', datable to before 168 bce, is the earliest known surviving Chinese document to give a substantive account of the apparent motions of the five visible planets, and to discuss the significance of those motions. The text includes tabulated predictions of the motions of three planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Venus) from 246 b…
Translating Ancient Chinese Calendars
exception 2 . The days are now past when Needham's omission made it diffi cult for the non- sinologue reader to gain a basic understanding of the methods used in China over the centuries to calculate the motions of the sun, moon and planets. A large amount of scholarship in western languages has been published in recent decades in both monograph and periodical form, and although no single student is likely to fithat any one of these publications …
Taoism (Daoism) and ‘Chinese Purple’: A note on some historical issues
Essay review
Medieval Chinese Medicine: The Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts
The way and the word. Science and medicine in early China and Greece
Early Chinese Work in Natural Science: A Re-Examination of the Physics of Motion, Acoustics, Astronomy, and Scientific Thoughts. Chen Cheng-Yih
Patients and Healers in Late Imperial China: Evidence from the Jinpingmei
Time, Science, and Society in China and the West . J. T. Fraser , N. Lawrence , F. C. Haber
The science/technology interface in seventeenth-century China: Song Yingxing on qi and the wu xing
This paper is a contribution to the study of the relations between science and technology in seventeenth-century China. I hope that its unusual perspective may help to illuminate the problem of how these two areas of human activity relate to each other in a more general context. Outside the small group of interested scholars the relations between science and technology are not seen as problematical. In the popular stereotype, scientists are trie …
On the term hsüan chi and the flanged trilobate Jade discs
For many years after its publication in 1912 Berthold Laufer's book Jade: a study in Chinese archaeologh and religion remained a standard reference work for Western scholars. In his third chapter Laufer discusses certain three-lobed jade discs (pl. I); he is in general agreement with the theories of the late-nineteenth-century Chinese scholar Wu Ta-ch'eng , who named the discs hsüan chi and suggested that they were originally intended to be used …
Some Further Points on The Shih
The ancient Chinese diviner's instrument known as a shih was an adjustable cosmic model. A similar object, the ‘lodge dial’, was probably a simple analogue computer for use in calendrical astronomy. Such instruments were forerunners of the armiliary sphere in China. It is possible that the phrase hsüan chi yu heng in the 5th/4th century B.C. Yao tien is a reference to some instrument related to the shih
Joseph Needham on Chinese Astronomy
Journal Article JOSEPH NEEDHAM ON CHINESE ASTRONOMY Get access Christopher Cullen Christopher Cullen Clare HallCambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 87, Issue 1, May 1980, Pages 39–53, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/87.1.39 Published: 01 May 1980
A Chinese Eratosthenes of the Flat Earth: A Study of a Fragment of Cosmology in Huai Nan Tzu
This paper attempts to deal with a short passage found at the end of the third chapter of the Huai Nan tzu book, a compendium of learning assembled in about 120 B.c. under the patronage of the prince Liu An I first became interested in it after reading the tantalizing reference in Needham (SCC, III, 224). (It occurs to me that the preceding sentence or some variant of it is likely to occur in learned journals with a high frequency for the next 50…
Joseph Needham on Chinese Astronomy
Journal Article JOSEPH NEEDHAM ON CHINESE ASTRONOMY Get access Christopher Cullen Christopher Cullen Clare HallCambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 87, Issue 1, May 1980, Pages 39–53, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/87.1.39 Published: 01 May 1980
Understanding the Planets in Ancient China: Prediction and Divination in the Wu xing zhan
The untitled and anonymous text known by modern scholars under the name Wu xing zhan 'Prognostics of the Five Stars [sc. 'planets']', datable to before 168 bce, is the earliest known surviving Chinese document to give a substantive account of the apparent motions of the five visible planets, and to discuss the significance of those motions. The text includes tabulated predictions of the motions of three planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Venus) from 246 b…
Patients and Healers in Late Imperial China: Evidence from the Jinpingmei
The science/technology interface in seventeenth-century China: Song Yingxing on qi and the wu xing
This paper is a contribution to the study of the relations between science and technology in seventeenth-century China. I hope that its unusual perspective may help to illuminate the problem of how these two areas of human activity relate to each other in a more general context. Outside the small group of interested scholars the relations between science and technology are not seen as problematical. In the popular stereotype, scientists are trie …
A Chinese Eratosthenes of the Flat Earth: A Study of a Fragment of Cosmology in Huai Nan Tzu
This paper attempts to deal with a short passage found at the end of the third chapter of the Huai Nan tzu book, a compendium of learning assembled in about 120 B.c. under the patronage of the prince Liu An I first became interested in it after reading the tantalizing reference in Needham (SCC, III, 224). (It occurs to me that the preceding sentence or some variant of it is likely to occur in learned journals with a high frequency for the next 50…
A Chinese Eratosthenes of the Flat Earth: A Study of a Fragment of Cosmology in Huai Nan Tzu
This paper attempts to deal with a short passage found at the end of the third chapter of the Huai Nan tzu book, a compendium of learning assembled in about 120 B.c. under the patronage of the prince Liu An I first became interested in it after reading the tantalizing reference in Needham (SCC, III, 224). (It occurs to me that the preceding sentence or some variant of it is likely to occur in learned journals with a high frequency for the next 50…
Joseph Needham on Chinese Astronomy
Journal Article JOSEPH NEEDHAM ON CHINESE ASTRONOMY Get access Christopher Cullen Christopher Cullen Clare HallCambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Past & Present, Volume 87, Issue 1, May 1980, Pages 39–53, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/87.1.39 Published: 01 May 1980
Some Further Points on The Shih
The ancient Chinese diviner's instrument known as a shih was an adjustable cosmic model. A similar object, the ‘lodge dial’, was probably a simple analogue computer for use in calendrical astronomy. Such instruments were forerunners of the armiliary sphere in China. It is possible that the phrase hsüan chi yu heng in the 5th/4th century B.C. Yao tien is a reference to some instrument related to the shih
On the term hsüan chi and the flanged trilobate Jade discs
For many years after its publication in 1912 Berthold Laufer's book Jade: a study in Chinese archaeologh and religion remained a standard reference work for Western scholars. In his third chapter Laufer discusses certain three-lobed jade discs (pl. I); he is in general agreement with the theories of the late-nineteenth-century Chinese scholar Wu Ta-ch'eng , who named the discs hsüan chi and suggested that they were originally intended to be used …
Time, Science, and Society in China and the West . J. T. Fraser , N. Lawrence , F. C. Haber
The science/technology interface in seventeenth-century China: Song Yingxing on qi and the wu xing
This paper is a contribution to the study of the relations between science and technology in seventeenth-century China. I hope that its unusual perspective may help to illuminate the problem of how these two areas of human activity relate to each other in a more general context. Outside the small group of interested scholars the relations between science and technology are not seen as problematical. In the popular stereotype, scientists are trie …
Patients and Healers in Late Imperial China: Evidence from the Jinpingmei
Early Chinese Work in Natural Science: A Re-Examination of the Physics of Motion, Acoustics, Astronomy, and Scientific Thoughts. Chen Cheng-Yih
Medieval Chinese Medicine: The Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts
The way and the word. Science and medicine in early China and Greece
Essay review
Taoism (Daoism) and ‘Chinese Purple’: A note on some historical issues
Translating Ancient Chinese Calendars
exception 2 . The days are now past when Needham's omission made it diffi cult for the non- sinologue reader to gain a basic understanding of the methods used in China over the centuries to calculate the motions of the sun, moon and planets. A large amount of scholarship in western languages has been published in recent decades in both monograph and periodical form, and although no single student is likely to fithat any one of these publications …
Understanding the Planets in Ancient China: Prediction and Divination in the Wu xing zhan
The untitled and anonymous text known by modern scholars under the name Wu xing zhan 'Prognostics of the Five Stars [sc. 'planets']', datable to before 168 bce, is the earliest known surviving Chinese document to give a substantive account of the apparent motions of the five visible planets, and to discuss the significance of those motions. The text includes tabulated predictions of the motions of three planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Venus) from 246 b…
Heavenly Numbers
This book is a history of the development of mathematical astronomy in China, from the late third century BCE, to the early third century CE—a period often referred to as ‘early imperial China’. It narrates the changes in ways of understanding the movements of the heavens and the heavenly bodies that took place during those four and a half centuries, and tells the stories of the institutions and individuals involved in those changes. It gives cle…
The age of debates
In this chapter, we look at a further aspect of the story revealed by the documents collected by Cai Yong and Liu Hong: the records of debates on technical matters during the first and second centuries CE, debates which were often held in the presence of large audiences of officials. We look at the issues that were raised in such debates, and at the varieties of evidence and arguments that the participants attempted to use to support their positi…
The astronomical empire
This chapter begins by sketching the historical and cultural foundations of the role played by astronomy in the self-presentation of the early imperial Chinese state, principally through its claim to have the right to structure the time of its subjects by issuing a luni-solar calendar. This claim was presented as fulfilling a need on the part of the population; we discuss how far this claim was an accurate perception of the power relations involv…
Epilogue
By the end of the Han, specialists in the analysis and prediction of the motions of the heavenly bodies had established ways of working which were, in their essentials, to be continued and developed without radical discontinuity for the rest of the imperial age. The stability of these methods was underpinned by their incorporation into the ideology of imperial legitimacy, which claimed that the emperor had not simply the right, but the duty, to ‘…
Li in everyday life: Dates and calendars
In the preceding chapter we noted the importance of the role of specialists in astronomical systems, li 曆 , as part of the machinery of the Chinese imperial state, and sketched the kind of mathematical and astronomical structures that they used in their work, as well as reviewing the historical sources through which modern historians can study that work. In this chapter we examine more closely the structures and forms of li as they were presented…
The Geneva Sphere: An Astronomical Model from Seventeenth-Century Japan
An object has come to light which appears to be a clockwork driven model of the cosmos made in seventeenth-century Japan. The contemporary textual sources describing such devices are discussed, and the origins of the model's technical features are identified. These include what appear to be Japanese appropriations of technologies brought to Japan by Jesuit missionaries in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Comparisons are made w…
History (16 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Ancient history (9 works) · China (8 works) · Archaeology (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Astronomy (5 works) · Classics (5 works)