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International audience ; This article offers a social and geographical network analysis of all attested works, authors, and practitioners in the mathematical sciences in China over the period of disunion and reunification from 311 to 618 CE. Inspired by Karine Chemla's (2009) efforts to distinguish "different mathematical cultures" within the extant corpus of suan 筭/算 procedure texts, the goal is to explore a viable framework within which to break down the history of Chinese mathematics along different, pluralistic lines. What I find is that this period is home to distinct regional networks working in isolation from one another, and that situating authors within these networks helps explain continuities and discontinuities in their technical writing. This is evidence of plurality, but one that is incommensurable with Chemla's "mathematical cultures," so I offer it as an alternative means to the same historiographical ends. In examining what our historical subjects said and did about this plurality of traditions, however, we realize that it was as aberrant to them as the political disunion of which it was a product—something to rectified by "unification" ( tongyi 統一), "integration" ( tong 通), and, where necessary, force.

International audience ; This article offers a social and geographical network analysis of all attested works, authors, and practitioners in the mathematical sciences in China over the period of disunion and reunification from 311 to 618 CE. Inspired by Karine Chemla's (2009) efforts to distinguish "different mathematical cultures" within the extant corpus of suan 筭/算 procedure texts, the goal is to explore a viable framework within which to break down the history of Chinese mathematics along different, pluralistic lines. What I find is that this period is home to distinct regional networks working in isolation from one another, and that situating authors within these networks helps explain continuities and discontinuities in their technical writing. This is evidence of plurality, but one that is incommensurable with Chemla's "mathematical cultures," so I offer it as an alternative means to the same historiographical ends. In examining what our historical subjects said and did about this plurality of traditions, however, we realize that it was as aberrant to them as the political disunion of which it was a product—something to rectified by "unification" ( tongyi 統一), "integration" ( tong 通), and, where necessary, force.

International audience ; This article offers a social and geographical network analysis of all attested works, authors, and practitioners in the mathematical sciences in China over the period of disunion and reunification from 311 to 618 CE. Inspired by Karine Chemla's (2009) efforts to distinguish "different mathematical cultures" within the extant corpus of suan 筭/算 procedure texts, the goal is to explore a viable framework within which to break down the history of Chinese mathematics along different, pluralistic lines. What I find is that this period is home to distinct regional networks working in isolation from one another, and that situating authors within these networks helps explain continuities and discontinuities in their technical writing. This is evidence of plurality, but one that is incommensurable with Chemla's "mathematical cultures," so I offer it as an alternative means to the same historiographical ends. In examining what our historical subjects said and did about this plurality of traditions, however, we realize that it was as aberrant to them as the political disunion of which it was a product—something to rectified by "unification" ( tongyi 統一), "integration" ( tong 通), and, where necessary, force.

International audience ; This article offers a social and geographical network analysis of all attested works, authors, and practitioners in the mathematical sciences in China over the period of disunion and reunification from 311 to 618 CE. Inspired by Karine Chemla's (2009) efforts to distinguish "different mathematical cultures" within the extant corpus of suan 筭/算 procedure texts, the goal is to explore a viable framework within which to break down the history of Chinese mathematics along different, pluralistic lines. What I find is that this period is home to distinct regional networks working in isolation from one another, and that situating authors within these networks helps explain continuities and discontinuities in their technical writing. This is evidence of plurality, but one that is incommensurable with Chemla's "mathematical cultures," so I offer it as an alternative means to the same historiographical ends. In examining what our historical subjects said and did about this plurality of traditions, however, we realize that it was as aberrant to them as the political disunion of which it was a product—something to rectified by "unification" ( tongyi 統一), "integration" ( tong 通), and, where necessary, force.

International audience ; This article offers a social and geographical network analysis of all attested works, authors, and practitioners in the mathematical sciences in China over the period of disunion and reunification from 311 to 618 CE. Inspired by Karine Chemla's (2009) efforts to distinguish "different mathematical cultures" within the extant corpus of suan 筭/算 procedure texts, the goal is to explore a viable framework within which to break down the history of Chinese mathematics along different, pluralistic lines. What I find is that this period is home to distinct regional networks working in isolation from one another, and that situating authors within these networks helps explain continuities and discontinuities in their technical writing. This is evidence of plurality, but one that is incommensurable with Chemla's "mathematical cultures," so I offer it as an alternative means to the same historiographical ends. In examining what our historical subjects said and did about this plurality of traditions, however, we realize that it was as aberrant to them as the political disunion of which it was a product—something to rectified by "unification" ( tongyi 統一), "integration" ( tong 通), and, where necessary, force.

International audience ; From at least the time of Sima Qian 司馬遷 ( c .145– c .86 BCE), Chinese sources consistently divided the astral sciences into tianwen 天文 'heavenly patterns' and li 曆 'calculation'. In short, the former is devoted to interpreting 'anomalies' ( yi 異), the latter to modelling 'regularities' ( chang 常), and though no one in his day could predict them with any accuracy, Astronomer Royal Sima Qian makes a forceful argument that solar eclipses are nevertheless perfectly 'regular' and, thus, not to be read as omens ( zhan 占). Seven centuries later, when experts were able to calculate their exact time, place, 'starting corner' and magnitude with relative ease, we then hear Astronomer Royal Li Chunfeng 李淳風 (602–670) argue the opposite: that, regardless the protestations of sceptics, eclipses are nevertheless 'catastrophes' ( zai 災) linked to political dysfunction. In this talk I will discuss Li Chunfeng's curious position, presented in the omen compendium Yisi zhan 乙巳占, then turn to his other works and activities in tianwen omenology to explore how he may have put theory into practice. With an idea of what he personally did about solar eclipses, I will then take a broader look at the practice of their interpretation to his day to hypothesise about what was at stake in declassifying them as 'anomalies'.

International audience ; From at least the time of Sima Qian 司馬遷 ( c .145– c .86 BCE), Chinese sources consistently divided the astral sciences into tianwen 天文 'heavenly patterns' and li 曆 'calculation'. In short, the former is devoted to interpreting 'anomalies' ( yi 異), the latter to modelling 'regularities' ( chang 常), and though no one in his day could predict them with any accuracy, Astronomer Royal Sima Qian makes a forceful argument that solar eclipses are nevertheless perfectly 'regular' and, thus, not to be read as omens ( zhan 占). Seven centuries later, when experts were able to calculate their exact time, place, 'starting corner' and magnitude with relative ease, we then hear Astronomer Royal Li Chunfeng 李淳風 (602–670) argue the opposite: that, regardless the protestations of sceptics, eclipses are nevertheless 'catastrophes' ( zai 災) linked to political dysfunction. In this talk I will discuss Li Chunfeng's curious position, presented in the omen compendium Yisi zhan 乙巳占, then turn to his other works and activities in tianwen omenology to explore how he may have put theory into practice. With an idea of what he personally did about solar eclipses, I will then take a broader look at the practice of their interpretation to his day to hypothesise about what was at stake in declassifying them as 'anomalies'.

Article submitted to Historia scientiarum , accepted, revised, then rejected without possibility of appeal; currently promised to a future edited volume. ; The history of cosmology in China is something of a dead topic, our interest in "cosmology" having shifted in recent years to divination, political prophecy, and the metaphysics of correlative thought. This paper attempts to reopen the topic to examine how it was closed. What we know about the history of cosmology in first-millennium China derives from three sources: Shen Yue and Li Chunfeng's respective "heavenly patterns" monographs (5th & 7th cent.) and Gautama Siddhārtha's Kaiyuan zhanjing (729), all of which present that history as a contest of "three schools, one winner" that was settled by the second century. Evidencing a greater plurality of "schools," I examine how and why each author perpetuated this single reductionist narrative, focusing in particular on the question of why the latter—an Indian-origin expert—is silent on Indian-origin ideas. If the history of "heaven's form" cosmology is a dead topic, I argue, it is the medieval historian who wanted it so, albeit to end a debate that was very much still alive in his day. As to why the modern historian is content to let it lie, I suggest that it is for much the same reason.

Article submitted to Historia scientiarum , accepted, revised, then rejected without possibility of appeal; currently promised to a future edited volume. ; The history of cosmology in China is something of a dead topic, our interest in "cosmology" having shifted in recent years to divination, political prophecy, and the metaphysics of correlative thought. This paper attempts to reopen the topic to examine how it was closed. What we know about the history of cosmology in first-millennium China derives from three sources: Shen Yue and Li Chunfeng's respective "heavenly patterns" monographs (5th & 7th cent.) and Gautama Siddhārtha's Kaiyuan zhanjing (729), all of which present that history as a contest of "three schools, one winner" that was settled by the second century. Evidencing a greater plurality of "schools," I examine how and why each author perpetuated this single reductionist narrative, focusing in particular on the question of why the latter—an Indian-origin expert—is silent on Indian-origin ideas. If the history of "heaven's form" cosmology is a dead topic, I argue, it is the medieval historian who wanted it so, albeit to end a debate that was very much still alive in his day. As to why the modern historian is content to let it lie, I suggest that it is for much the same reason.

International audience ; This talk examines the case of the public shaming of Assistant Director to the Astronomical Bureau Han Yi 韓翊 upon the debate stage at the Cao-Wei court in 226 CE. In short, Han Yi makes it through rounds of testing, deliberation, and recommandation with his solution to the limits of the late Liu Hong's 劉洪 (fl. 167–206) Supernal Icon li ( Qianxiang li 乾象曆), but, on the day of the debate, one of Liu Hong's disciples shows him up with better eclipse predictions from a different version of his master's astronomical system. To place the event in context, I offer an overview of what we understand about the transmission of technical knowledge in this manuscript culture, of the suspicion harboured towards the written word by contemporary experts, of the transmission history of the Supernal Icon li across the war-torn political divides of the Three Kingdoms (220–280), and of the reception of these events in the later histories of Shen Yue 沈約 (441–513) and Li Chunfeng 李淳風 (602–670).

Article submitted to Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences International audience This paper examines a 226 ce debate on li 曆 mathematical astronomy at the Cao-Wei (226–265) court as a case study in the role of orality and person-to-person exchange in the transmission of astronomical knowledge in early imperial China. The li - and mathematics-related manuscripts to have come down to us from the early imperial period often suffer from textual corruption, the form that this corruption takes being rooted in a culture of manuscript transmission by visual copying. Where numbers are involved, such corruption can significantly affect a text's readability, reliability, and utility, and it is hardly a surprise, I argue, that actors speak of learning li by any way but reading. In 226 ce, two men showed up to a debate with different versions of Liu Hong's 劉洪 (fl. 167–206 ce) Supernal Icon li ( Qianxiang li 乾象曆), the one—the assistant director of the astronomical bureau—trying to best it, and the other—Liu Hong's disciple—trying to defend it. Reconstructing the tortuous route by which Liu Hong's astronomy made it into each man's hands via a transmission network spanning the Three Kingdoms, I argue that this debacle, and its conclusion, are to be expected from the mode of oral and written transmission particular to astronomy in this age.

International audience ; This talk examines the case of the public shaming of Assistant Director to the Astronomical Bureau Han Yi 韓翊 upon the debate stage at the Cao-Wei court in 226 CE. In short, Han Yi makes it through rounds of testing, deliberation, and recommandation with his solution to the limits of the late Liu Hong's 劉洪 (fl. 167–206) Supernal Icon li ( Qianxiang li 乾象曆), but, on the day of the debate, one of Liu Hong's disciples shows him up with better eclipse predictions from a different version of his master's astronomical system. To place the event in context, I offer an overview of what we understand about the transmission of technical knowledge in this manuscript culture, of the suspicion harboured towards the written word by contemporary experts, of the transmission history of the Supernal Icon li across the war-torn political divides of the Three Kingdoms (220–280), and of the reception of these events in the later histories of Shen Yue 沈約 (441–513) and Li Chunfeng 李淳風 (602–670).