Oriental Astronomy: History of East Asian Mathematical Astronomy Homage to K. Yabuuti and A. Sayili

Abstract

From my point of view, the first professional historians of Chinese mathematics, such as Yoshio Mikami, Li Yen and Ch’ ien Pao-ts’ung, were not really writing the history of science. There was no independent disciplinary tradition of Chinese mathematics comparable to the Western Platonic and Euclidian tradition. Chinese mathematics has always been a handmaiden of science or technology, notably providing tools for calendrical astronomy. Mathematics for its own sake, as a kind of intellectual entertainment, existed only in the post-Seki tradition of Japanese mathematics. These historians did not attempt to reconstruct the Chinese tradition — its aims, ideals, presuppositions, values, and biasses — but rather selected out of its remains only the parts interesting from the modern mathematical point of view.