Article
ID: CBB852060209

Mind the Gap: Acoustical Answers to Cosmological Concerns in First-Century b.c.e. China (2021)

unapi
Qi (Chinese philosophy) Acoustics Scientific apparatus and instruments Weather forecasting East Asia, civilization and culture Science and society Cosmology Sound Han dynasty (China, 202 B.C.-220 A.D.) China Fang, Jing

From the mid-third century b.c.e., Chinese experts used the manipulation of sound as a technology to synchronize society with the cosmos. In the Western Han, the polymath Jing Fang 京房 (78–37 b.c.e.) detected an acoustical problem, known in the West as the Pythagorean comma, in the musical system. In the Chinese system, the comma is characterized by a minute but audible discrepancy, a gap between two pitches that should sound identical and that carry the same numerical representation. Jing Fang reduced the comma by designing a model of sixty pitches, superposed onto the calendar. This essay argues that his acoustical endeavors are inseparable from his ultimate goal: to track seasonal change accurately throughout the year and use it in weather prognostications. Sound was the tool he used to measure the yearly flux of qi and interpret what contemporary thinkers had termed the hidden realities and subtle transformations of the cosmos.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB852060209/

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Authors & Contributors
Kohn, Livia
Bernstein, Leslie R.
Chemla, Karine Carole
Chen, Nancy N.
Cullen, Christopher
Guan, Xiao-wu
Journals
Ziran Kexueshi Yanjiu (Studies in the History of Natural Sciences)
East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine
Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity
Historia Scientiarum: International Journal of the History of Science Society of Japan
Journal for the History of Astronomy
Journal of Dialectics of Nature
Publishers
University of Pennsylvania
Columbia University Press
Les Belles Lettres
University of Hawai'i Press
Concepts
East Asia, civilization and culture
Qi (Chinese philosophy)
Cosmology
Scientific apparatus and instruments
Mathematics
Medicine, Chinese traditional
People
Fang, Yizhi
Trahiotis, Constantine
Time Periods
Han dynasty (China, 202 B.C.-220 A.D.)
Ancient
Medieval
19th century
20th century, late
Choson dynasty (Korea, 1392-1910)
Places
China
Korea
Europe
United States
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