A Study Of The Scientific Status Of Chinese Alchemy
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A Study of Chinese Alchemy
Author | : Obed Simon Johnson |
Publisher | : Martino Publishing |
Total Pages | : 178 |
Release | : 2009-04 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 9781578986828 |
Reprint. Paperback.156p. In China as elsewhere, alchemy is a doctrine aiming to afford an understanding of the principles underlying the formation and functioning of the cosmos. The alchemist overcomes the limits of individuality, and ascends to higher states of being; he becomes, in Chinese terms, a zhenren or Authentic Man. Chinese alchemy went through a complex and not yet entirely understood development along its twenty centuries of documented history. The two main traditions are conventionally known as waidan or "external alchemy" and neidan or "internal alchemy". The bulk of the Chinese alchemical sources is found in the Daozang (Taoist Canon), the largest collection of Taoist texts. The cosmos as we know it is conceived of as the final stage in a series of spontaneous transmutations stemming from original non-existence. This process entails the apparent separation of primeval Unity into the two complementary principles, yin and yang. Their re-union generates the cosmos. When the process is completed, the cosmos is subject to the laws of cosmology. The alchemist's task is to retrace this process backwards. Alchemy, whether "external" or "internal," providessupport to the adept, leading one to the point when, as some texts put it, "Heaven spontaneously reveals its secrets." Its practice must be performed under the close supervision of a master, who provides the "oral instructions" (koujue) necessary to an understanding of the processes that the adept performs with minerals and metals, or undergoes within himself. Modern study of the alchemical literature began in the present century, after the Canon was reprinted and made widely available in 1926. Johnson's work, originally published in 1928, remains one of the full book length treatises in English on the subject.
Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary Studies
Author | : Nathan Sivin |
Publisher | : Cambridge : Harvard University Press |
Total Pages | : 376 |
Release | : 1968 |
Genre | : Body, Mind & Spirit |
ISBN | : |
Science in Traditional China
Author | : Joseph Needham |
Publisher | : Harvard University Press |
Total Pages | : 148 |
Release | : 1981 |
Genre | : Science |
ISBN | : 9780674794399 |
The world's preeminent authority on Chinese science explores the philosophy, social structure, arts, crafts, and even military strategies that form our understanding of Chinese science, making instructive comparisons along the way to similar elements of Indian, Hellenistic, and Arabic cultures. A major portion of the book concentrates on Taoist alchemy that led not only to the invention of gunpowder and firearms, but also, through the search for macrobiotic life-elixirs, to the rise of modern medical chemistry.
Chinese Alchemy
Author | : Fabrizio Pregadio |
Publisher | : Golden Elixir Press |
Total Pages | : 58 |
Release | : 2009 |
Genre | : Alchemy |
ISBN | : |
Chinese Alchemy
Author | : Nathan Sivin |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 365 |
Release | : 1968-01-01 |
Genre | : |
ISBN | : 9780783717241 |
The Study of Chinese Alchemy
Author | : Obed Simon Johnson |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 172 |
Release | : 2013-10 |
Genre | : |
ISBN | : 9781258957582 |
This is a new release of the original 1928 edition.
Theoretical Influences of China on Arabic Alchemy
Author | : Needham, Joseph |
Publisher | : UC Biblioteca Geral 1 |
Total Pages | : 36 |
Release | : 1987 |
Genre | : |
ISBN | : |
Chinese Science; Explorations of an Ancient Tradition
Author | : Shigeru Nakayama |
Publisher | : MIT Press (MA) |
Total Pages | : 384 |
Release | : 1973 |
Genre | : Science |
ISBN | : |
Some readers will be drawn to this survey of traditional Chinese science by the idea that humanity has evolved more than one tradition of natural science that deserves to be taken seriously as a study in itself. Others will wish to explore the possibility that by reconstructing and imaginatively adopting the viewpoint of so different a culture, they might become more critical in judging what aspects of the West's Scientific Revolution grew out of local pressures and prejudices rather than out of the inner necessities of science itself.The volume falls naturally into two complementary parts. The first provides the reader with perspectives on the work of Joseph Needham, whose monumental, multi-volume "Science and Civilisation in China" is so largely responsible for the growing awareness on the part of inquiring people everywhere that the Chinese technical traditions reached a high level, and that the birth of modern science and technology owes a great deal to them. Needham's work has often been cited as the greatest one-man historical compilation of the twentieth century.Needham himself has contributed an opening "Meditation" to "Chinese Science, " in which he recapitulates the motive forces and ideals behind his life's work--of which the historical study of Chinese science is only one aspect. Derek J. de Solla Price then provides biographical material on Needham and gives an account of the genesis and evolution of his "magnum opus." Needham's central concern with the effect of social and economic factors on the rate of scientific and technological change is examined by A. C. Graham. Shigeru Nakayama demonstrates through a study of all of Needham's publications the presence of a connected philosophy of history and of science that Needham evolved as a young biochemist concerned with the organization and development of life.The more numerous essays in the second part of the book extend Needham's work of mapping out the areas of Chinese science, venturing into provinces hitherto "terra incognita." The contributors cover the Chinese world view, astronomy, optics, pharmacology, and medicine.In particular, they discuss the Chinese concept of nature (in an essay written by Mitukuni Yosida); the development, and limiting factors on the development, of Chinese astronomy (Kiyosi Yabuuti); the Mohist optics of ca. 300 B.C. (A. C. Graham and N. Sivin); the use of elixir plants, as described in the pharmaceutical manual of the adept Lu Ch'un-yang (Ho Peng Yoke, Beda Lim, and Francis Morsingh); "Man as a Medicine," the traditional therapy using drugs derived from the human body (William C. Cooper and N. Sivin); and the early history of anesthesia in China and Japan (Saburo Miyasita). The book closes with a critical bibliography citing books and articles in Western languages (N. Sivin).The book is the second in The MIT East Asian Science Series.