Imagined Civilizations

2013-08-15

Imagined Civilizations tells the story from the Chinese point of view. Using Chinese primary sources, Roger Hart focuses in particular on Xu, who was in a position of considerable power over Ricci.

Author: Roger Hart

Publisher: JHU Press

ISBN: 9781421407128

Category: Mathematics

Page: 384

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Accounts of the seventeenth-century Jesuit Mission to China have often celebrated it as the great encounter of two civilizations. The Jesuits portrayed themselves as wise men from the West who used mathematics and science in service of their mission. Chinese literati-official Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), who collaborated with the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) to translate Euclid’s Elements into Chinese, reportedly recognized the superiority of Western mathematics and science and converted to Christianity. Most narratives relegate Xu and the Chinese to subsidiary roles as the Jesuits' translators, followers, and converts. Imagined Civilizations tells the story from the Chinese point of view. Using Chinese primary sources, Roger Hart focuses in particular on Xu, who was in a position of considerable power over Ricci. The result is a perspective startlingly different from that found in previous studies. Hart analyzes Chinese mathematical treatises of the period, revealing that Xu and his collaborators could not have believed their declaration of the superiority of Western mathematics. Imagined Civilizations explains how Xu’s West served as a crucial resource. While the Jesuits claimed Xu as a convert, he presented the Jesuits as men from afar who had traveled from the West to China to serve the emperor.

Imagined Futures

2019-08-08

Collum expresses the hope that through the intellectual contact with the East she
describes, a new civilization and a new social order may arise on the ruins of
what we call “Western civilization” (50). An ironic perspective on that civilization, ...

Author: Max Saunders

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

ISBN: 9780198829454

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 448

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This study provides the first substantial history and analysis of the To-Day and To-Morrow series of 110 books, published by Kegan Paul Trench and Trubner (and E. P. Dutton in the USA) from 1923 to 1931, in which writers chose a topic, described its present, and predicted its future. Contributors included J. B. S. Haldane, Bertrand Russell, Vernon Lee, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, Sylvia Pankhurst, Hugh McDiarmid, James Jeans, J. D. Bernal, Winifred Holtby, Andre Maurois, and many others. The study combines a comprehensive account of its interest, history, and range with a discussion of its key concerns, tropes, and influence. The argument focuses on science and technology, not only as the subject of many of the volumes, but also as method--especially through the paradigm of the human sciences--applied to other disciplines; and as a source of metaphors for representing other domains. It also includes chapters on war, technology, cultural studies, and literature and the arts. This book aims to reinstate the series as a vital contribution to the writing of modernity, and to reappraise modernism's relation to the future, establishing a body of progressive writing which moves beyond the discourses of post-Darwinian degeneration and post-war disenchantment, projecting human futures rather than mythic or classical pasts. It also shows how, as a co-ordinated body of futurological writing, the series is also revealing about the nature and practices of modern futurology itself.

Global Orders and Civilizations

2009

... determinants of world politics and conceptualizing international relations in
terms of cultural units and civilizations . Many recent academic and practical
discussions are about inter - civilizational Jonathan Benthall , “ Imagined
Civilizations ?

Author: Sadik Ünay

Publisher: Nova Science Pub Incorporated

ISBN: IND:30000124557202

Category: Business & Economics

Page: 367

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The explosion of new themes and working areas in social sciences in the aftermath of the Cold-War stimulated the 'cultural turn' of the previous decades and strengthened the position of the notion of 'civilisation' as a unit of analysis and locus of academic debate in the fields of history, philosophy, sociology, political science, and international relations. Given the fabricated and standardised nature of recent literature on political, economic and socio-cultural aspects of globalisation, it is crystal clear that historically and philosophically enlightened works written from the perspective of civilisational transformation will provide the much needed sophistication to conventional social science analyses trying to elucidate the organising principles of the global order. This novel collection represents a path-breaking work in the field of global/civilisational studies by constituting an interdisciplinary and theoretically-informed platform on which complex debates on the political, economic, socio-cultural, philosophical and ecological aspects of the global order could be conducted. The editors, Sadýk Ünay and Muzaffer þenel, managed to gather a truly original collection of articles from some of the leading authorities and promising academics on the theme of global orders with special reference to a civilisation transformation covering a wide spectrum in time and space from Antique Greece to the Islamic World, from Europe to the US and from East Asian history to current globalisations. Contributions rooted in the disciplines of history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science and global political economy are craftsmanly combined to give the reader a holistic vision towards the possibility of multiple civilisational experiments and global orders. This book which boldly endeavours to transcend narrow boundaries of conventional academic approaches and Western-centric prejudices in various branches of social sciences will be a must-read for students of globalisation, cultural studies and macro-history.

The Gunpowder Age

2017-08-29

Imagined Civilizations: China, the West, and Their First Encounter. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Hartley, Percival Horton-Smith, and
Harold Richard Aldridge, eds. Johannes de Mirfeld of St. Bartholomew's,
Smithfield: His ...

Author: Tonio Andrade

Publisher: Princeton University Press

ISBN: 9780691178141

Category: History

Page: 448

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The Chinese invented gunpowder and began exploring its military uses as early as the 900s, four centuries before the technology passed to the West. But by the early 1800s, China had fallen so far behind the West in gunpowder warfare that it was easily defeated by Britain in the Opium War of 1839–42. What happened? In The Gunpowder Age, Tonio Andrade offers a compelling new answer, opening a fresh perspective on a key question of world history: why did the countries of western Europe surge to global importance starting in the 1500s while China slipped behind? Historians have long argued that gunpowder weapons helped Europeans establish global hegemony. Yet the inhabitants of what is today China not only invented guns and bombs but also, as Andrade shows, continued to innovate in gunpowder technology through the early 1700s—much longer than previously thought. Why, then, did China become so vulnerable? Andrade argues that one significant reason is that it was out of practice fighting wars, having enjoyed nearly a century of relative peace, since 1760. Indeed, he demonstrates that China—like Europe—was a powerful military innovator, particularly during times of great warfare, such as the violent century starting after the Opium War, when the Chinese once again quickly modernized their forces. Today, China is simply returning to its old position as one of the world's great military powers. By showing that China’s military dynamism was deeper, longer lasting, and more quickly recovered than previously understood, The Gunpowder Age challenges long-standing explanations of the so-called Great Divergence between the West and Asia.

2003

Sometimes this tension between brothers is defined as opposition civilization
versus culture , technology versus ethics , science ... It seems to me that both of
these worlds can be described in terms of the clash of civilizations and imagined
 ...

Author:

Publisher:

ISBN: UOM:39015078188078

Category: Bulgaria

Page:

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The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations

1900

It is easy to imagine the intermediate stages in the transition from this simple
recognition to the final determination to build a compact , high and spacious
elevation , within the reach of all inhabitants of a settlement , on which these
could not ...

Author: Zelia Nuttall

Publisher:

ISBN: HARVARD:32044042364927

Category: Aztec calendar

Page: 602

View: 923

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Dying Planet

2005-09-08

Burroughs depicts this imagined race with a nostalgic respect that anticipates his
treatment of his Apache hero in The ... an awe inspired by the inconceivable
vastness of Martian history and the accomplishments of its imagined civilizations
 ...

Author: Robert Markley

Publisher: Duke University Press Books

ISBN: UOM:39015062570315

Category: Science

Page: 456

View: 170

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For more than a century, Mars has been at the center of debates about humanity’s place in the cosmos. Focusing on perceptions of the red planet in scientific works and science fiction, Dying Planet analyzes the ways Mars has served as a screen onto which humankind has projected both its hopes for the future and its fears of ecological devastation on Earth. Robert Markley draws on planetary astronomy, the history and cultural study of science, science fiction, literary and cultural criticism, ecology, and astrobiology to offer a cross-disciplinary investigation of the cultural and scientific dynamics that have kept Mars on front pages since the 1800s. Markley interweaves chapters on science and science fiction, enabling him to illuminate each arena and to explore the ways their concerns overlap and influence one another. He tracks all the major scientific developments, from observations through primitive telescopes in the seventeenth century to data returned by the rovers that landed on Mars in 2004. Markley describes how major science fiction writers—H. G. Wells, Kim Stanley Robinson, Philip K. Dick, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, and Judith Merril—responded to new theories and new controversies. He also considers representations of Mars in film, on the radio, and in the popular press. In its comprehensive study of both science and science fiction, Dying Planet reveals how changing conceptions of Mars have had crucial consequences for understanding ecology on Earth.

Civilization Progress

1885

Even Space , empty Space , we are to imagine to have feeling , and so make it an
object of adoration as representation of Fatality ! That is to say , having got rid of
Mind in general behind the External World , he is obliged to bring it back ...

Author: John Beattie Crozier

Publisher:

ISBN: NYPL:33433082427380

Category: Civilization

Page: 453

View: 915

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The Dawn of Civilization

1897

They believed that the Nile compaunicated with the Red Sea near Suakin , by
means of the Astaboras , and this was certainly the route which the Egyptians of
old had imagined for their navigators . The supposed communication was
gradually ...

Author: Gaston Maspero

Publisher:

ISBN: IOWA:31858014995124

Category: Assyria

Page: 800

View: 533

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The Works of Orestes A Brownson Civilization

1884

He began in soft and sweet sentiments , which , as he was conscious of no
impure intention , he imagined to be pure , and such as he could safely indulge .
Nay , he imagined'it almost a sin to forego them . Day by day they grew upon him
by ...

Author: Orestes Augustus Brownson

Publisher:

ISBN: MSU:31293012528265

Category: Literature

Page:

View: 182

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A Dictionary of the Arts of Life and Civilization

1833

The trunk forms two Two imaginary lines are imagined to cavities , the upper of
which is termed be drawn across the abdoinen , one of the Thorax or Chest , and
the lower which is supposed to extend from about constitutes the Abdomen , or ...

Author: Richard Phillips

Publisher:

ISBN: BL:A0020345272

Category: Technology

Page: 14

View: 635

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The Theology of Civilization

1899

Imagine a community where a considerable number of people have intelligently
adopted this religion . Let us say that they have Jesus ' guiding ideas , as set forth
in the Beatitudes and the Golden Rule , while they have the modern man's ...

Author: Charles Fletcher Dole

Publisher:

ISBN: STANFORD:36105046757881

Category: Civilization

Page: 256

View: 813

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Civilization

1884

they have done or believed in the secular order , and we must not imagine that ,
in matters lying below the spiritual order , Catholics in all ages and nations have
always been irreproachable , or that the controversialist can to - day conduct ...

Author: Orestes Augustus Brownson

Publisher:

ISBN: PRNC:32101068595758

Category:

Page:

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Civilization Progress

1909

just as if it were a person , and so be able to imagine it as helping man to
ameliorate the universal order . In this way , by rounding off truth with fiction , he
hoped to give that satisfaction and harmony to the mind , which is lost and
destroyed ...

Author: John Beattie Crozier

Publisher:

ISBN: UOM:39015073801345

Category: Civilization

Page: 464

View: 923

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A Survey of Greek Civilization

1897

We might almost imagine that some sour Attic editor had expunged the advice
which Hesiod owes us on the point , and had justified himself with the famous
apophthegm of Pericles ( or rather of Thucydides ) , that “ that woman is best who
is ...

Author: John Pentland Mahaffy

Publisher: London : Macmillan

ISBN: WISC:89096307491

Category: Greece

Page: 337

View: 108

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European Civilization

1859

Gentlemen , it was by the German barbarians that this feeling was introduced into
the civilization of Europe ; it was unknown to the ... Histoire Générale de la
Civilisation en Europe , leçon 2 . ... But how can it be imagined that the snows of ...

Author: Jaime Luciano Balmes

Publisher:

ISBN: NYPL:33433082464912

Category: Europe

Page: 477

View: 145

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History of Civilization The ancient world or Dawn of history

1889

We are not to picture to ourselves a series of great and sudden changes during
this past time , or imagine that natural laws ... The older school of geologists
imagined the change from one geological age to another to be due to some
sudden ...

Author: Emory Adams Allen

Publisher:

ISBN: NYPL:33433061828301

Category: Civilization

Page:

View: 640

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Planetary

2001

AND THEY STILL LAUNCH THEIR PROBES FULL OF ART AND ANTHEMS ,
AIMED AT IMAGINED CIVILIZATIONS IN DISTANT SOLAR SYSTEMS .
ANOTHER NAIL IN THE COFFIN . CIVILIZATIONS WHO WON'T UNDERSTAND
HOW THE ...

Author: Warren Ellis

Publisher: Wildstorm

ISBN: UVA:X030151698

Category: Comics & Graphic Novels

Page: 144

View: 104

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Three people walk the world, seeking to uncover the planet's secret history.

G I Gurdjieff

2008

... are rent asunder in the Tales is by referring to a comparative history of
sometimes creatively imagined civilizations . ... the successes and examples of
the cultures existing from the period of Atlantis to that of the Tikliamishian
civilization .

Author: Michael Pittman

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Pub

ISBN: UOM:39015079345032

Category: Biography & Autobiography

Page: 94

View: 103

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This volume presents a selection of writings based on papers originally presented at the G.I. Gurdjieff: Caucasian Influence in Contemporary Life and Thought conferences or, as they came to be called, the Armenia-Gurdjieff Conferences, which were held in Yerevan, Armenia in the summers from 2004-2007. Gurdjieff was born in Gyumri, Armenia, to an Armenian mother and a Cappadocian-Greek father, and was raised in eastern Asia Minor and the Caucasus. According to his own accounting, he spent his early years traveling in Central Asia, Asia Minor, Egypt, India, and Tibet in search of undiscovered knowledge. Eventually, after 1921, his work led him to Europe where lived, wrote, and taught until his death in 1949. Though not having received great popular attention, he remains an important figure of the twentieth century and his influence continues to grow into the twenty-first century. A growing body of secondary literature connected to the work of Gurdjieff has been produced in fields as disparate as psychology, philosophy, literature, health, ecology, and religion. The conferences and the book aim to provide a forum of exchange about the ideas, influence, and work of Gurdjieff, while making a contribution to the reintroduction of the work of Gurdjieff to Armenia, which had been cut off from his ideas and works during the Soviet period. The articles here reflect a range of work addressing key contributions and ideas of Gurdjieff, from more academic studies of All and Everything, or Beelzebubs Tales to His Grandson, to a discussion of the application of Gurdjieffs ideas and principles in the education of children, to a chapter on the music and of Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann.