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“European Science in China” or “Western Learning”? Representations of Cross-Cultural Transmission, 1600–1800*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Catherine Jami
Catherine Jami
Affiliation:
CNRS and Université de Paris
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Abstract

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The circulation of science across cultural boundaries involves the construction of various representations by the various actors, who each account for their involvement in the process. The historiography of the transmission of European science to China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has long been dominated by one particular narrative: that of the Jesuit missionaries who were the main go-betweens for these two centuries. This fact has contributed to shaping Western images of China's history and science up to the present day.

To retrieve the multifaceted history of this transmission, more than one discourse needs to be taken into account. Even within the Society of Jesus, representations changed with the evolution of patronage of the mission, and the concomitant building up of state-sponsored science in Europe. Chinese sources yield different pictures, accounting for the reception of Western learning — rather than “European science” — in terms of integration rather than of conversion, and legitimizing it first by the Jesuits' status as scholars, then by the idea that Western learning was of Chinese origin. This shift corresponded to the imperial appropriation of this learning.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1999 , pp. 413 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

Footnotes

*

I am most grateful to Sonja Brentjes, thanks to whom this paper was written. I am also indebted to Steve Simmonite for correcting the English.

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