A revisionist history of the idea of progress reveals an unknown story about European engagement with Chinese science.
The Enlightenment gave rise not only to new ideas of progress but consequential debates about them. Did distant times and places have anything to teach the here and now? Voltaire could believe that they did; Hegel was convinced that they did not. Early philosophes praised Chinese philosophy as an enduring model of reason. Later philosophes rejected it as stuck in the past. Seeking to vindicate ancient knowledge, a group of French statesmen and savants began a conversation with the last great scholar of the Jesuit mission to China. Together, they drew from Chinese learning to challenge the emerging concept of Western advancement.
A Global Enlightenment traces this overlooked exchange between China and the West to make compelling claims about the history of progress, notions of European exceptionalism, and European engagement with Chinese science. To tell this story, Alexander Statman focuses on a group of thinkers he terms “orphans of the Enlightenment,” intellectuals who embraced many of their contemporaries’ ideals but valued ancient wisdom. They studied astronomical records, gas balloons, electrical machines, yin-yang cosmology, animal magnetism, and Daoist medicine. And their inquiries helped establish a new approach to the global history of science.
Rich with new archival research and fascinating anecdotes, A Global Enlightenment deconstructs two common assumptions about the early to late modern period. Though historians have held that the idea of a mysterious and inscrutable East was inherent in Enlightenment progress theory, Statman argues that it was the orphans of the Enlightenment who put it there: by identifying China as a source of ancient wisdom, they turned it into a foil for scientific development. But while historical consensus supposes that non-Western ideas were banished from European thought over the course of the Enlightenment, Statman finds that Europeans became more interested in Chinese science—as a precursor, then as an antithesis, and finally as an alternative to modernity.
0 有用 爻爻靈 2023-12-05 10:34:47 比利时
学到了一些话术和视角:谁说实验对照组无足轻重?!作为对照组的中国参与了塑造现代西方自我认同全过程(仔细想想好像真的蛮有道理lol
0 有用 在野武将 2023-08-14 12:26:45 加拿大
启蒙运动与中国要写出新意有点难。
0 有用 森木三 2023-08-17 01:26:38 加拿大
b溃 作者已退圈去UCLA美美读JD惹
2 有用 Mia 2023-09-17 08:25:45 美国
这本书非常引人入胜且令人耳目一新, 据我所知,之前尚未有学者认为阴阳学对十八世纪的欧洲产生了如此大的影响
0 有用 爻爻靈 2023-12-05 10:34:47 比利时
学到了一些话术和视角:谁说实验对照组无足轻重?!作为对照组的中国参与了塑造现代西方自我认同全过程(仔细想想好像真的蛮有道理lol
2 有用 Mia 2023-09-17 08:25:45 美国
这本书非常引人入胜且令人耳目一新, 据我所知,之前尚未有学者认为阴阳学对十八世纪的欧洲产生了如此大的影响
0 有用 森木三 2023-08-17 01:26:38 加拿大
b溃 作者已退圈去UCLA美美读JD惹
0 有用 在野武将 2023-08-14 12:26:45 加拿大
启蒙运动与中国要写出新意有点难。