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Article ID: CBB852060209

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

Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 112
Issue: 4
Pages: 645-669

DOI: 10.1086/717069

URI: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/717069

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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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