4000 YEARS OF CHINESE ASTROnomy

Jean-Marc Bonnet-Bidaud

(Belin, 192 pages, 2017)

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The sky is at the very source of Chinese civilization. Astronomy was the central science in the Middle Kingdom, governing the political choices of emperors, giving rise to the creation of the first observatories in the world and to numerous discoveries (such as sunspots, comet trajectories, and star explosions) long unknown in the West. For several thousand years, day after day, month after month, the “Celestial Officers” of the empire observed and noted, with great precision, all the celestial phenomena. Much of this knowledge, preserved in thousands of texts covering periods from the fifth century b.c. until the end of the last Qing dynasty in 1911, remains to be studied, while the discovery of new archaeological sites and objects continue to enrich this heritage.

Based on his extensive research in Chinese archives, astrophysicist Jean-Marc Bonnet-Bidaud presents Chinese cosmological concepts to Western readers. He retraces the means of observation and great variety of astronomical discoveries made in China across four thousand years, beginning with the great ancient dynasties during which the “Mandate of Heaven”—by which a particular individual was to rule the earth on Heaven’s behalf—originated.

Exhaustive yet accessible, this visually enticing, encyclopedic book familiarizes the reader with all the ideas and practices characteristic of Chinese astronomy: the Han dynasty’s cosmological concepts, the Tang’s celestial maps, the Song’s astronomical clocks, the Yuan’s first giant observation instruments that prefigured the instruments of modern astronomy, the Late Ming’s encounter with the Jesuits and European astronomy, and finally the Chinese space program since the 1990s. Bonnet-Bidaud pays particular attention to the Chinese political and intellectual contexts that accompanied, motivated, or guided astronomical research at each stage, as well as comparable achievements carried out at the same time in other parts of the world.

Following the work of Joseph Needham, the eminent English sinologist and historian of science of the last century, Bonnet-Bidaud shows how Chinese astronomers contributed to the development of modern science around the world.

Jean-Marc Bonnet-Bidaud is an astrophysicist at the Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), specializing in high-energy astrophysics and highly condensed stars. He also studies the history of astronomy and is in charge of CEA’s public outreach for astronomy. He has published numerous articles on the history of the universe and the major problems of modern cosmology, as well as work on ancient astronomical conceptions in China and Africa. He authored the first scientific study of the Dunhuang Star Chart, the oldest known stellar map, found in China along the Silk Road and now kept at the British Library.