English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

The  Taixi shuifa ( Hydromethods of the Great West, 1612 ) , composed jointly by the Italian Jesuit Sabatino de Ursis and the Chinese official Xu Guangqi, is much more than a technical treatise about Western hydraulic pumps. It also contains an extensive theoretical chapter about the “principles of water”  (shuili) , including some questions about snow and the formation of its hexagonal crystals in the atmosphere. This essay takes the idiosyncratic answers given in the  Taixi shuifa  as an example of some of the characteristics of West–East knowledge transfer during the early modern period. Compared to traditional Chinese ideas about these phenomena, the explanations given in the  Taixi shuifa  appear as a creative combination of standard Renaissance knowledge with a novel quest for experimental verification and first attempts at a mathematization of nature that are not found in subsequent Jesuit works on this topic. However, despite an initially lively response on part of the learned audience during the Ming–Qing transition, the innovative approach of the  Taixi shuifa  did not eventually lead to decisive changes in traditional Chinese perceptions, and thus foreshadows the growing divergences in scientific developments between China and the West .

The Explanations of Snow in the Taixi shuifa 泰西水法 (Hydromethods of the Great West, 1612) and Their Reception beyond the Ming–Qing Transition