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Civilizational Canons · LC9

Sciences

Counting rods for reckoning, seismoscopes for watching the earth: how the classical East explored the natural world through calculation, instruments, observation and reasoning.

6works

4dynasties

6authors

Sciences explores classical Chinese writing on the natural world, observation, and practical knowledge. From Qu Yuan's Questions to Heaven, Liu Zongyuan's Heaven Answered, and Xunzi's Discourse on Nature to Li Shizhen's preface to the Compendium of Materia Medica, these works show inquiry through observation, reasoning, and accumulated experience.

Masterpieces

4 works

Zhou

1 works

1046–221 BCE

Investigating Things to Extend KnowledgeZengzi (traditionally attributed) · IdiomsProbing the principles of things to attain true knowledge; the first step of Confucian self-cultivation.

Tang

1 works

618–907

Heaven Answered · ExcerptLiu Zongyuan · Chu ElegiesAnswer: The vastness of the primal beginning is something told by fabulists. Its great spirit, dim and tangled, how can it be put into words? Darkness and light, faint and minute, came and went in ceaseless profusion; through murky transformations only the primal qi endured, so what was there that 'brought it about'?

Song

3 works

960–1279

Ming

1 works

1368–1644

Compendium of Materia MedicaLi Shizhen · NotebooksBroad yet not cluttered, detailed yet to the point, thoroughly examined to the end: it looks straight into the depths of the sea.