Who's Shen Kuo?

Shen Kuo (103 1- 1095), a native of Qiantang (now Hangzhou), Zhejiang Province in the Northern Song Dynasty, was an official in various places, and in his later years he went into exile in Meng Xi Park in Runzhou (now Zhenjiang, Jiangsu). Here, he completed the masterpiece Meng Qian Bi Tan handed down from generation to generation. According to the current classification of disciplines, Shen Kuo has made outstanding contributions in many disciplines, such as mathematics, physics, astronomy and geography. Only from more than 200 records about natural science in Mengqian Bitan, choose the most important one. As far as knowledge is concerned, in the history of science and technology in China, no one is better than Shen Kuo, so Dr. Needham called Shen Kuo "the most outstanding figure in the whole history of science in China".

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However, there are different voices. For example, a researcher named Yu published an article in Wen Wei Po in 2004, pointing out that "Meng Qian Bi Tan can only be said to be a dialectical note novel in terms of literary classification, and there is neither a system of scientific works nor Shen Kuo's conscious consciousness of writing scientific works; Although the book contains a lot of scientific and technological historical materials, it is just a joke. "

The implication is that whether Meng Xi Bi Tan Can is called a "scientific work" is questioned. In fact, it is debatable whether Shen Kuo can be called a scientist according to this line of thinking. At least before the 20th century, Shen Kuo was not a scientist in all the literature.

concave lens

In Meng Qian Bi Tan, Shen Kuo clearly pointed out that the point where sunlight converges is the focus, and described the focus as the imaging principle of concave mirror's "light converges into a hemp-sized point", and recorded the data with a focal length of one or two inches for the first time. Today, a model of concave mirror is on display in Meng Xi Park.

compass

Shen Kuo introduced four methods of supporting and hanging the compass by experiments: one is to make the magnetic needle float on the water, which is called the water method; The second is to put the magnetic needle on the nail, which is called nail fixation; The third one is placed on the edge of the bowl; The fourth is the silk hanging method, that is, the magnetic needle is hung in a windless place with cocoon silk. After analyzing these hanging methods, Shen Kuo thinks that silk hanging method is the most accurate. The picture shows the compass model of water floating.

Wedding instrument model

The armillary sphere is the main instrument used by ancient astronomers in China to observe the coordinates of celestial bodies and the angular distance between two celestial bodies. It is a spherical celestial observatory composed of several rings corresponding to the great circles on the celestial sphere (such as equator and ecliptic). Shen Kuo improved the armillary sphere in "On the armillary sphere": firstly, the original moon ring was cancelled, and the structure of the armillary sphere was simplified; The second is to reform the peephole of the armillary sphere.

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Looking at all the historical facts, we find that, as Mr. Yu said, Shen Kuo didn't have the consciousness of writing "scientific works" when he wrote "Talks with Meng Xi".

Since he was a teenager, Shen Kuo has shown a studious and thoughtful nature, and has a strong interest in nature and engineering issues. However, it is inevitable to be influenced by the mainstream atmosphere of that era. At the age of 365,438+0 (65,438+0063), he entered the Jinshi examination and began a long journey as an official. In the first seventeen years, Shen Kuo worked in the "ministries" of the central government, such as editing and proofreading in Zhao Wenguan, and was promoted by the supervisor of Tiansi. He has performed very well in these positions, and it is because of these jobs that he has practical knowledge in astronomy and river regulation engineering.

He also sent a special envoy to Liao, and his solid geographical knowledge played an important role in the border negotiations between the two countries. His outstanding performance in the Ministry as a "imperial official" made Emperor Zongshen make a wrong judgment: he made Shen Kuo a valuable ambassador and appointed him as the commander-in-chief of the former enemy in Yan 'an. I didn't expect this appointment to ruin Shen Kuo's political future. This well-read "deputy minister" has no ability to confront and appease one side. 1882, in the battle between Yongle City and Xixia under his command, Song Jun was defeated, losing more than 25,000 people, and Yongle City fell into the enemy. For this reason, he was dismissed from his post for investigation and sent to Suizhou, Hubei Province, where he served as the ambassador of Yong Lian (equivalent to the treatment of deputy division level) and did not give up during his "residential surveillance". He spent almost all his energy and more than six years compiling the map of counties in the world, which was recognized as a great geographical contribution by later generations as mentioned above.

As far as he is concerned, he doesn't want to make any contribution to geography, but tries to win the favor of the new emperor Song Zhezong and get a chance to return to officialdom. This move has indeed achieved some results. The imperial court not only awarded him 100 silk, but also relaxed his "control" and allowed him to choose his own place of residence. Song Zhezong may really take advantage of Shen Kuo's thoughts, which is also a signal that Shen Kuo can choose its own place of residence. Unexpectedly, as soon as this signal was sent out, it was fiercely opposed by a group of officials. The doctor Liang Tao and others wrote a letter, recalling the sin of Yongle City's defeat in Shen Kuo, and opposing the relaxation of control over Shen Kuo. Zhezong had to take it back for a period of time, and the next year he wrote a letter to let Shen Kuo live in another state, but he never used it again. At this point, Shen Kuo was completely desperate. He once lived in Xiuzhou (now Jiujiang, Jiangxi) at the foot of Lushan Mountain. He once claimed to spend his life in Lushan Mountain. But for some reason, when the emperor allowed him to choose his residence freely, he chose Runzhou (now Zhenjiang) and built Meng Xi Park there, where he lived for 8 years and died. Although the scenery in Zhenjiang is also good, it is still inferior to the world-famous scenery of Kuanglu. I guess it may be that when he lived in Xiuzhou, the local officials were too strict with him, which left him with a very unpleasant experience. When he arrived in Runzhou, he changed his interpersonal environment and his mood became better. According to himself, the reason why he lived in Runzhou was that he bought a small garden there at the suggestion of a traveling Taoist. When he arrived there, it was actually the same as the place he had dreamed of many times before, so he named it Meng Xi Park. If this statement is true, it means that he chose Runzhou under the guidance of a fortune teller. As for whether the landscape was really seen in his dream, I think it is doubtful. I prefer to understand the name he gave to his residence from the meaning that he thinks he can only "dream trip" in this garden in the future.

As he lives in Meng Xi Park and has nothing to do, recalling his life stories and experiences has become his only spiritual life. He dare not talk about politics directly, but only write down those interesting street legends or personal experiences, as well as natural phenomena and engineering problems he is interested in. This was later called Meng Qian's masterpiece. In fact, the content of Meng Qian Bi Tan is very complicated, a bit like the current newspaper abstract, involving all aspects, and most of the articles are lively and interesting. So since it came out, it has been widely circulated. In the Southern Song Dynasty, Zhou Wei, the magistrate of Yangzhou, supplemented the funds for running state schools with the income from printing and selling Meng Qian Bi Tan, which shows that it was a profitable bestseller at that time. Until the 20th century, people read it as a novel gossip. As far as Shen Kuo's writing motivation is concerned, he really didn't expect people today to regard it as a scientific masterpiece.

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It is true that character is fate. Shen Kuo's down-to-earth and academic achievements in officialdom can almost be explained by his personality. He is studious and likes to study all kinds of novel things and use his head. Therefore, as a technical official in charge of river regulation and astronomy, he has made outstanding achievements, and he can also bear the mission of diplomatic negotiators by virtue of his geographical knowledge. However, he lacks practical military and political decision-making ability, and it is inevitable that he will fail as the "top leader" of border military and political affairs. In political activities, his personality defect is obvious, which is "lack of political mind" in the current words. He and Wang Anshi are family friends, and Shen Kuo's father's epitaph was written by Wang Anshi. When Wang Anshi was in power, Shen Kuo was a supporter of his political reform, so he was regarded as the backbone of the "new party" by those who opposed the political reform. Later, from the standpoint of the "old party", he opposed Liang Tao and others' reactivation of Shen Kuo by Zhezong. However, after Wang Anshi resigned for the first time, Shen Kuo wrote against some of Wang Anshi's decrees, which led Wang Anshi to call Shen Kuo a "villain" after his comeback. In this way, Shen Kuo became a "new and old" both sides can't get benefits. His relationship with Su Shi is not good either. I guess it's because of some kind of "scholars despise each other" mentality. Maybe he thinks Su Shi's poems and paintings are nothing. In short, for some reason, he participated in the Wutai Poetry Case that persecuted Su Shi, and Luo Zhi's criticism and attack on Su Shi made a large number of fans of Su Shi feel ill about Shen Kuo's political character.

However, his greatest advantage is that he is eager to learn and has no narrow vision of knowledge. He didn't despise craftsmen and sailors who worked at the bottom of society like the mainstream literati at that time. Therefore, he recorded the movable type printing invented by Buyi Bi Sheng and the compass used by sailors for navigation. Two of China's "Four Great Inventions" are famous for Shen Kuo's records. He not only recorded the oil used by ordinary people in Yan 'an, but also made his own experiments, which made Mo Ding get the oil. In this respect, he is at least an experimental scientist. Unlike Su Shi and Zhu, he has an amazing interest in mathematics, so he has made outstanding contributions to mathematics. In all fairness, Shen Kuo is much better than Su Shi and Zhu in terms of his profound knowledge and contribution to people's actual material life, but his fame in the cultural history of China is not as great as these two, which only shows how lacking China's ancient scientific tradition is. He turned his head to academic writing only after the frustration of officialdom, which also shows that the social status of purely academic people at that time was far worse than that of officials, and this tradition has continued to this day.

Meng Xi park main entrance

The main entrance is facing an alley, the door is very narrow and the brick structure is very simple.

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Shen Kuo is not only an expert in the history of science who has recorded many other people's scientific activities, but also a mathematician, astronomer and engineering expert who has personally conducted scientific research.

Secondly, as far as the use of materials accumulated by empirical science by modern rational science is concerned, Shen Kuo's works are of high documentary value, and he is also recognized as a senior scholar by modern scientists all over the world. In fact, from the contribution of experimental science, Shen Kuo is not much better than Francis, the originator of British experimental science. Bacon is poor.

For China culture with a very thin scientific tradition, Shen Kuo is a rare outstanding figure, and we should cherish this precious cultural heritage.

Shen Kuo's scientific contribution.

According to the current classification of disciplines, Shen Kuo has made outstanding contributions in many disciplines, and its main contents are as follows:

In terms of quantity

1 creates a gap product (high-order hierarchical summation method).

2. Creating circle technology (contribution to sphericity).

These two contributions predate western mathematics by more than 600 years.

In physics,

1 year The earliest clear record of the compass appeared in Shen Kuo's Talk about Meng Xi. He not only experimentally studied four installation methods of compass, but also discovered the existence of magnetic declination. He was the first scholar in the world who discovered the existence of magnetic declination, more than 400 years earlier than Columbus in Europe.

For the first time in history, Shen Kuo explained the principle that concave mirror took fire from the sun according to the imaging of objects. He made this invention according to the combination of pinhole imaging principle recorded in China during the Warring States Period and Yang Xiang's principle of taking fire recorded in the Western Han Dynasty. It was 400 years after Shen Kuo did the concave mirror fire test, and Abecon of the United States did the same test.

The phenomenon of acoustic vibration was discovered by Europeans until17th century.

Chemical aspects

1 It is the first time to record the copper smelting method "bile leaching copper" used in Lead Mountain County, Jiangxi Province, that is, the metallurgical method of smelting copper with copper sulfate solution.

The crystallization and purification methods of pool salt were recorded.

astronomy

1 astronomical instruments such as armillary sphere and leak detector are improved to make them more accurate.

2. Revise the calendar and put forward a more advanced twelve-gas calendar.

The phenomenon of atmospheric refraction was discovered.

Geology and paleontology

1 Shen Kuo first named oil. Oil was discovered in China as early as 1800 years ago in the Han Dynasty, but its name is uncertain, including "stone liquid", "stone paint" and "naphtha". Shen Kuo recorded the discovery and utilization of oil in Yan 'an area, and this name continues to this day.

2 Inference on the Causes of Land-sea Change Shen Kuo inferred the land-sea change from the fossil point of view for the first time in the world based on snail fossils and the gravel layer sedimentary belt of Taihang Mountain fault.

Shen Kuo's conclusion is that the North China Plain is formed by alluvial sediment from the Yellow River and other rivers, which is the earliest scientific explanation for the origin of the North China Plain, more than 600 years earlier than the same view of the British geologist Heden.

Shen Kuo explained the remains of ancient creatures as fossils for the first time, more than Italian scholars? Finch's same explanation was more than 400 years ago.

According to the bamboo shoot fossils he found in Yanzhou, Shen Kuo inferred that there had been great climate change in ancient times, which was concerned by the famous meteorologist Zhu Kezhen.

engineering

1 movable type printing invented by Bi Sheng was first recorded in Shen Kuo.

Various ancient steelmaking technologies are recorded.

Geographical aspect

1 when Shen Kuo was in charge of dredging the bian river, he pioneered the leveling method of layered weir construction in the world, which was more than 600 years earlier than the Russian topographic survey of the don river in 1696.

Invented a three-dimensional map. The three-dimensional map made by Shen Kuo in the form of wood carving is more than 700 years earlier than that of the West.

Using large-scale and high-precision mapping methods, the best national map at that time-the map of the world's States and counties was drawn.

The above content only comes from Meng Qian Bitan's more than 200 records about natural science, and the most important one is selected. As far as knowledge is concerned, in the history of science and technology in China, no one is better than Shen Kuo, so Dr. Needham called Shen Kuo "the most outstanding figure in the whole history of science in China".

Disclaimer: This article is excerpted from The Leisure Reading World (20 10) and Shen Kuo in Lonely Meng Qian's Dialect.

This article was originally written by Leisure Reading magazine.

Please indicate the source, and no infringement is allowed.

Editor: wooden map

The picture of the article comes from Leisure Reading magazine.

The content of the article comes from teacher Li Xun.

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