Customer Reviews

Heavenly Clockwork: The Great Astronomical Clocks of Medieval China (Antiquarian Horological Society Monograph)

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book review _Heavenly clockwork_
HEAVENLY CLOCKWORK the great astronomical clocks of medieval china
by Joseph needham

I read the book because of a statement made in a online discussion group: "the chinese emperor suppressed the knowledge of clockmaking."
This did not fit into my understanding, as i have seen very old water clock diagrams on the walls of bell and drum towers in China, in particular, the drum and bell towers in Beijing had a very complete set of sketches of massive water clocks. Although i could not read the legends i understood that the purpose of the drum and bell towers throughout China was to keep time in a very public way.

Now choosing this particular book was not an accident, i have wanted to get into the massive corpus of Needham's work on China, and this was an opportunity to have a minor need driven learning curve. I was not at all disappointed in the book. It is literally an excellent example of how to do science, how to investigate a historical question, how to marshall facts and prove a difficult point.

But the book is not for the faint of heart, or the mildly interested in horology, it is complete, tedious and not a Sunday afternoon light reading. Nor should it be, it is just as the author intended it, a scientific research book on the origin of clock building in China.

From the introduction: " It is generally allowed that the invention of the mechanical clock was one of the most important turning-points in the history of science and technology. Not only was it the earliest complex device, heralding a whole age of machine-making, but also its regular imitation of the natural motion of the sun and heavens fascinated men and exerted no small influence on their philosophy and theology." The key text which is studied throughout is _New Design for a Mechanised Armillary Sphere and Celestial Globe_ written in 1090AD by Su Sung. The clock was built, a high astronomical clock-tower more than thirty feet high, with sky observation points, moving globes and rings that would be analogous to the same object in the movie "Dark Crystal" with the planets in their various orbits whizzing around the sun.

"To sum up the matter, it is quite clear that one of the reasons why the early Jesuit missionaries were so much welcomed by the Chinese was for their interest in clocks and clock-making, hardly less indeed than for their skill as mathematicians and astronomers. ... In Ricci's time the Jesuit order was capable of attracting for its overseas mssions some of the best minds of Europe. It was a mobilisation of oecumenical idealism something like that which the League or the United Nations have now and then commanded in our own time." pg. 145

It is the 9th chapter: "General History and Transmission of Astronomical Clocks" that i personally found the most fasinating, where Needham takes the details and builds the connections to general thinking and social structures. "Such devices of scientific technology have exercised not a little influnce on the idea that the universe was a great mathematical machine whose workings could be comprehended by exact reasoning. Since astronomy and graphic representation are two of the most ancient of man's arts, it is no wonder that he should want to hold the cosmos in his hand by making a model of it--" pg 179 "This is no accidental feature of mechanical design, but an inherent part of the format of Chinese astronomical theory."pg 180 "The question is also linked closely with the different modes of astronomy in the Hellenistic and Chinese cultures. In the West, a series of happy accidents occurred soon after the arithmetically minded Babylonians had communicated their astronomy to the geometrically strongly-developed Hellenic scientists. These accidents of physical fact and mathematical structure had the effect of directing the best period of genius towards the mathematical analysis of planetary motions rather than to any other part of astronomy." pg 181

I understand that the big question for Needham was why did science develop in the West and not China, given the Chinese invention of all the pieces of what we consider the enabling technology. This book is my first study into the Needham body of writing and i look forward to working through the 12 volume set on Chinese science.

thanks for reading the review, and i hope it inspires you to at least skim the first chapter and chapter 9.

Needham's work is unmatched. Heavenly Clockwork is a scientific research book on the origin of clock building in China with emphasis put on Su Sung's Astronomical Water Clock. Needham, however, does more than give a historical and scientific account of water clocks and astronomical devices in ancient China; he puts China's clockwork into historical perspective, discussing the subject in other regions of the world, including Greece, Egypt, and Korea. For those who are looking for material that looks beyond the Western bias when ancient science and technology are discussed, this is a great book to pick up and enjoy.

Needham investigates a 11th C Chinese clock