School of Oriental and African Studies, Cambridge University Press Bulletin of The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

The Science/Technology Interface in Seventeenth-Century China: Song Yingxing
on "qi" and the "wu xing"

Author(s): Christopher Cullen
Source: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol.
53, No. 2 (1990), pp. 295-318
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of School of Oriental and African
Studies
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THE SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY INTERFACE IN

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CHINA:
SONG YINGXING X IM ON QI A AND THE

WU XING ii '
By CHRISTOPHER CULLEN
1. Introduction
This paper is a contribution to the study of the relations between science and
technology in seventeenth-century China.' I hope that its unusual perspective

may help to illuminate the problem of how these two areas of human activity
relate to each other in a more general context.
Outside the small group of interested scholars the relations between science
and technology are not seen as problematical. In the popular stereotype,

scientists are the people who make discoveries, while technologists simply find
out how to use what they have discovered. This crude view has some support
from historical fact. Over the last hundred years there has undoubtedly been a
steady flow of useful ideas from (for instance) the physicist to the engineer and
from the biochemist to the agronomist.
We must remember, however, that this pattern of relations is quite recent.
For most of human history it is very hard to find an example of any ironfounder, farmer, millwright, weaver or cook who was much helped in his or her
daily concerns as a result of the systematic thought of natural philosophers.

Even after the beginning of the Scientific Revolution in seventeenth-century
Europe it is acknowledged that for a long time natural philosophers learned
more from the practical experience of artisans and industrialists than vice versa.
Thus, for example, the improvement of the steam engine in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth century was not a consequence of the development of the
science of thermodynamics, but was itself a major stimulus to theoretical

innovation in that field. The same can certainly be said in a number of other
areas.2
So far as China is concerned historical investigations along these lines have

scarcely passed the preliminary stage. Early in his great reconnaissance of premodern Chinese science and technology, Joseph Needham found himself drawn
towards the conviction that Taoism, which he characterized as 'a unique and
extremely interesting combination of philosophy and religion, incorporating
also " proto "-science and magic,' was 'vitally important for the understanding
of all Chinese science and technology.'3 He suggested that a distinctive
characteristic of the Taoists was a high valuation of the insights gained by

craftsmen and artisans of all sorts, and an emphasis on knowledge as the result
of empirical investigation rather than abstract speculation. Given these characI have received research and travel funds which have been helpful in the preparation of this
article from the British Academy, the Universities' China Committee, and the Research Committee
of the School of Oriental and African Studies. This help is most gratefully acknowledged. I would
also like to acknowledge helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article by Professor Nathan
Sivin, Professor T. H. Barrett, and Dr. M. A. N. Loewe. None of them is responsible for any
remaining errors and omissions.

2 The discussion referred to here can be followed in successive volumes of Technology and
culture, beginning with the symposium on 'The historical relation of science and technology', in
vol. 6, no. 4, 1965.
3 Science and civilisation in China, Joseph Needham et al. (1954-) [hereafter S.C.C.], vol. II, 33.
296
CHRISTOPHER CULLEN
teristics, he felt, it was no surprise that many of the achievements
science and technology could be shown to have Taoist connexio

birth of science requires the bridging of the gap between the sch
artisan.'4 Needham has continued to hold to his conviction
subsequent decades of research in the history of Chinese science tech
medicine, although he has not taken the topic of Taoist connex

further than he did in his original discussion. Amongst other
Needham's view of Taoism has drawn some assent, but the discus
succeeded in moving from the level of the general to the particular.

problem is perhaps that, given the non-exclusive nature of the label
applied by Needham, it becomes difficult to avoid circularity. It is ea
into a situation where any Chinese writer who takes an interest in t
artisans or in the processes of the natural world is ipso facto a Taois
influenced. Taoists identifiable through formal initiation into a know
not seem to have been more interested in knowledge-generating
were outsiders.5
But even if we put the question of Taoism to one side, the problem
Needham's hypothesis will not go away. It is generally acknowled
many centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, the achievemen
artisans and technologists were markedly in advance of those of

temporaries in Europe. What role, then, did contact between na
ophers and practical men play in the development of the rich
tradition of pre-modern Chinese scientific thought? This article is a

give a partial answer to that question.
2. The historical context of Song's work
An informed interest in scientific and technical matters was not
amongst members of the scholar-gentry elite in traditional Chinese
same could doubtless be said of the members of the social groups wielding
political power in Europe (or anywhere else for that matter) before recent
centuries. There were, however, some differences between conditions at
opposite ends of Eurasia, since in China the agenda of the imperial government
meant that it could not avoid direct concern with certain areas of science and
technology.
The prime representative of official science was astronomy. The cosmic

pretensions of Chinese rulers meant that their standing in the eyes of their
subjects was closely linked to their ability to promulgate an accurate luni-solar
calendar. The complexity of the task undertaken increased as the centuries

passed. By the first century B.C. the calendar included what was, in effect, a
planetary ephemeris, and the aim began to expand to include the prediction of
all predictable celestial phenomena. Much success was achieved, although

defects in cosmographical theory meant that solar eclipses remained just outside
the realm of certainty, and hence remained ominous.6 All this effort meant that
the astronomical bureau was an essential department of the central government,
and although its staff might not normally be drawn from the foremost
statesmen of the day, their role was certainly not unrecognized.
One famous example of a prominent statesman who was also a skilled
astronomer was Xu Guangqi t )J ' (1562-1633: baptised as Paul on his
conversion to Christianity). From his commanding position in the imperial
4S.C.C., ii, 131.

5 For a critique of Needham's position on the significance of Taoism and on his use of the term
' Taoist' to describe the positions of individuals, see Sivin (1978).
6 cf. Sivin (1969).
SONG YINGXING X ) : ON QI A AND THE WU XING Ei T
297
bureaucracy Xu sponsored the introduction to China of the new astronomical

techniques brought by the Jesuit missionaries, and was instrumental in the
translation of Euclid's Elements and other scientific and technical works into
Chinese.7 Xu's astronomical and mathematical attainments were of a very high
order, but rare as they might be among his colleagues, there was nothing in
principle anomalous in his possessing them. It was also quite in order, and
indeed essential, for a scholar-bureaucrat to take a detailed interest in technological matters of certain kinds: Xu's great compendium of agricultural
methods and machines Nongzheng quanshu ~j ilk a - was one of a long line
of similar Chinese works, many of them officially sponsored.8 Finally, Xu's
involvement in attempts to procure Portuguese cannon to stiffen Ming
resistance to Manchu incursions reminds us that a member of the imperial civil

service might well find himself with direct responsibility for military policy, or
even in operational command of forces on the ground. Under such circumstances, the need obviously arose for the compilation of manuals of military
techniques and armaments, and the surviving specimens of this genre are
important sources for the historian of technology.9

So there certainly were areas of science and technology in which the Chinese
scholar elite had by necessity to maintain a body of expertise, and although the
main highway to success did not lie through these regions they were by no
means off-limits to the orthodox. The resultant output of officially sponsored
literature is considerable. In such areas of proto- or pseudo-science as alchemy
or the techniques of siting buildings and tombs (often referred to in English as

' geomancy') the literature was, on the other hand, almost wholly unofficial in
origin. In the case of medicine, books were often the result of private initiative,
but were also frequently compiled under official auspices. But so far as
technology is concerned, once the limits of direct official concern are passed, the
picture is relatively barren. Thus there is no corpus of systematic works on the
practical aspects of such topics as mining, metal-working, paper-making,

ceramic manufacture or the exploitation of water-power, despite the great
accomplishments of Chinese artisans in these fields, and their great importance
to the economic functioning of the Chinese state. The broad category of

concerns that nowadays we would label as 'technological' was not seen as
constituting a related whole by pre-modern Chinese intellectuals, whose interest
in practical matters was in general ordered according to the administrative
scheme imposed by the imperial government's departmental structure. That left
clear places for armaments and agriculture, but the rest of the practical arts
were best left to those directly concerned with practising them or dealing in their
end-products. Such men were not, on the whole, likely to learn their business
from books or to write books for the instruction of others.
Against this background, it is of great interest that a contemporary of Xu

Guangqi and a fully accredited member of the scholar-gentry struck out along a
highly original path that marked him out as a clear exception to the general
trend. This was Song Yingxing X g , X, who lived from 1587 to about 1665
and is best known for his book Tiangong kaiwu X I Ir Tt (The exploitation of
the works of nature), a detailed survey of most aspects of the technology of his
day."? The copious and clear illustrations that appear in the various editions of
7 On Xu's life and work, see Hashimoto (1988).
8 For a discussion of these agricultural compendia see S.C.C., vi, 2, 6 55-92. Xu's book is treated
in pp. 64-70.
9On Chinese military manuals, see S.C.C., v, 7, 18-39.
10 For editions of works by Song Yingxing see bibliography. Tiangong kaiwu is translated into
English in Sun (1966) and Li (1980); which should be read together; Yabuuchi (1954) is an
298
CHRISTOPHER CULLEN
Song's book add much to its value. In the example shown here (fig. 1), iro
is being smelted using a double-action box-bellows to work the furnac
right, while on the left the molten cast iron is run into a puddling
conversion to wrought iron-or as the Chinese would have put it, ra
sheng tie t S is being converted to processed iron shu tie , Ri.
FIG. 1.
Song's book was unique in its coverage of such topics, and it was also unique in
its method of coverage. Xu Guangqi's great agricultural compendium was for

the most part a compilation (though a careful and critical one) of material from
previous treatises on the subject, and in this respect he followed in a long
Chinese tradition. Song, on the other hand, makes few explicit quotations from
written sources, and while he does not claim that everything he describes is the
result of personal investigation the flavour of his writing is highly suggestive of
first-hand experience."
important Japanese study of Song's book, translated into Chinese by Zhang and Wu (1959). For all
aspects of Song's life and work, including bibliographical problems, see the comprehensive study of
Pan (1981). In common with all students of Song Yingxing, I owe much to Professor Pan's
perceptive investigations, which have unravelled many problems about Song's activities. The topics
discussed in this paper are also touched on in Qiu and Qiu (1975) and He (1978). A recent study of
the concept of qi with much relevance to the contents of Song's essays is Cheng (1986).
1 Most of Song's mentions of written sources come in the introductions to each chapter, in
which he follows literary precedent to the extent of giving brief discussions based on material from
the pre-Han classics loosely related to the topic. In the bodies of the chapters, Song makes very few
references to the work of previous writers, and then only to express his disagreement. Despite this, it
nevertheless appears that he does use the contents of earlier agricultural manuals to some extent
(Professor Nathan Sivin, private communication). Presumably he found these in the Fenyi library, if
he had not already seen them (see below). Song must have known that his failure to quote explicitly
from written sources would have been regarded as an odd and unscholarly way to write. In his
preface he seems to be trying to disarm such criticism when he laments his inability to purchase rare
books and curios, or to call on the advice of other scholars, so that his book has had to be written
out of the limited information in his own mind.
299
SONG YINGXING *Z , g& ON QI A AND THE WU XING i 4T
Unlike Xu Guangqi, Song Yingxing never achieved a position of any power

or influence. By the standards of his age and class Song's life must be judged as
no more than a very limited success, or at worst a moderate failure. He came of
a gentry family in reduced circumstances, and naturally tried to follow the only
formal career route open to him by taking the Civil Service examinations. He
passed the provincial examination with some distinction in 1615 at the age of
twenty-eight, but all his attempts at the metropolitan examination ended in
disappointment, an experience shared by many talented contemporaries at a
time when civil service recruitment was in a state of worsening chaos. When in
1631 he tried for the fifth and last time he was already forty-four. Thereafter, he
held a number of minor posts in provincial government, and with the collapse of
the Ming dynasty before the Manchus in 1644 he retired to private life. The
books for which he is famous today are the results of a brief burst of literary
productivity from 1636 to 1637, a period when he had the benefits of access to a
good library and a fair allowance of free time as Director of Education of Fenyi
e f county in Jiangxi il N province. The preface of Tiangong kaiwu is dated
to the fourth lunar month of 1637 (April 25-May 23); the evidence on which this
extensive and detailed work is based was clearly gathered over a number of
years. It seems very likely that Song's unsuccessful trips to the capital to take the
examinations had helped him to gather material from beyond his native
province. In the sixth month (July 22-August 19) Song wrote a preface to a
collection of essays under the head title Lun qi 4r 1(On qi), and in the seventh
month (August 20-October 17) he completed a discussion of various astronomi-
cal questions entitled Tan tian 9 ~ (On the heavens). At about the same time
Song compiled a collection of poems and a series of essays on statecraft. All four
of these opuscules were made widely available when they were reprinted in
1976.12
My main topic will be the first of Song's two scientific tractates, Lun qi. Let
me begin by listing main section headings; page numbers refer to the 1976
reprint.
51: Preface
52-63: Xing qi hua 7 X {f (The interconversion of solid objects and qi)

64-79: Qi sheng i _q (On qi and sound)
80-85: Shuifei sheng huo 71 4 H 'k (Water does not conquer fire)
12 See bibliography. The preface of this reprinted edition states that it is based on a Ming dynasty
print of the Chongzhen reign-period (A.D. 1628-44) 'discovered in the Jiangxi provincial library
during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution [1967-76].' The Chongzhen date must be deduced
from those given in the prefaces to three of the tractates, since there is apparently no evidence of a
printing-house dating. A few pages of this edition are photographically reproduced. These include
the collective title page for the four tractates supplied by the last private collector through whose
hands the work passed, Cai Jingxiang (1877-1952), after whose death it went to the Jiangxi library.
The reprinted edition makes no reference to Cai by name, and for this and other bibliographical
information the reader must turn to Pan (1981: 75-82). Pan makes it clear that the claim of the 1976
editors to be reprinting a ' lost ' work is a little over-dramatized. The existence of these tractates was
noted by scholars in the 1930s, and Pan himself consulted the Jiangxi library edition in 1963, making
a manuscript copy which he deposited in the library of Academia Sinica in Beijing. This in itself in
no way detracts from the usefulness of the reprint, which has certainly made Song's work much
more easily accessible. It must be noted that this book is published in simplified characters. Since
one traditional Chinese character is not in every case represented by a unique simplified character it
is not always possible to reconstruct exactly what Song wrote from this edition, and it is therefore
highly desirable that a facsimile text is made available as soon as possible. There is, however, no
ambiguity in any of the instances where the original Chinese text is quoted here, and all such
quotations have been transcribed into full form. Where works by modem writers are concerned,
however, bibliographical references have been given in the form used by the work in question. Pan
notes some errors of punctuation in the reprinted edition and, more disturbingly, states that there
are some errors in the transcription of characters (op. cit., 82). I have not noticed any obvious
instances apart from those mentioned by Pan, although the problem about the number of lacunae
discussed in note 50 may be a case in point.
VOL. LIII. PART 2
21
300
CHRISTOPHER CULLEN
86-90: Shui chen 7k B? (Water and the atmosphere)

91-92: Shui feng gui zang 13 7J) fa X j (How water and wind retu
natural reservoirs)
93-95: Han re IS f (On cold and heat)
The main interest of this material is the original and highly flexi
which Song Yingxing uses the ancient concepts of qi i, and of t

~i I4 or Five Phases to make sense of a wide variety of physical p
Several other seventeenth-century scholars felt the need to re-e
traditional cosmological views in which these basic concepts played
in this context Song's readiness to rethink matters was not par
unusual.14 What is unusual in Song's writing is not the fact that he loo
concepts critically, but the fact that he applies them boldly to

particular physical instances in a way that is not common in the
Chinese scientific thought. What I mean will emerge more clea
discussion that follows.
3. Song Yingxing's cosmology

In the first place, let us deal with the question of the originality or otherwise
of Song's basic physical principles. At the beginning of his essay, he tells us that
'Everything between heaven and earth is either qi A or xing #J ... the
transformation from qi to xing and back again is something that people are
ignorant of although they take part in it every day.' 15

Of the two terms used here, xing is by far the easier to deal with: Song
Yingxing uses this word fairly consistently to mean ' solid objects' (xing AYf here
is a quite different word from xing f' 'phase'). Most sinologists nowadays
prefer to leave qi in transliterated form: there really does not seem to be any
suitable short English equivalent. Like most Chinese philosophical concepts,
the idea of qi was laid out in its basic outlines in the ferment of thought during
the last four centuries B.C. The problem for the modern reader trying to
understand the word in a given textual context is that this process did not result
in something he can readily grasp as a single concept. Senses that seem to be
simple and mechanical/material coexist with highly abstract ones apparently
unrelated to them, and no criteria exist for deciding which meaning is more
basic, or even which one is historically prior to another.16
Thus in some parts of Song's writing it would be sufficient to understand qi
as an all-permeating vapour, extremely subtle perhaps but still material in our
sense of the word. Solid objects, xing, are formed when this subtle vapour
condenses, and may revert back to vapour under the right circumstances. At a
wider cosmological level, qi is seen as just one stage in the unfolding of the
cosmic process: according to Song qi itself comes from the undifferentiated
void, xu RE, and eventually returns to it.17 We can recognize this at once as the
13 Gui zang is also the title of an alleged ancient divinatory manual grouped with the Yi jing in
some early references; no authentic text of this work has survived. From the context it seems that
Song has borrowed this phrase for its literal meaning, since he actually refers to the 'reservoirs' zang
of the winds in his text: see Lun qi, 91.
14 Readers unfamiliar with the concepts of qi and wu xing will find the clearest and most up-todate introduction at present available in Sivin (1987), ch. ii (from whom, with the kind permission of
the author and publisher, I have taken figs. (2) and (3)), together with full references to the literature
on the history of these concepts. For seventeenth-century criticism of traditional cosmology, see the
important study by John Henderson (1984), particularly chs. v-ix.
I5 Lun qi, 52.

16 See Sivin (1987: 46-53) for a summary of the development of the concept of qi, together with
references to historical studies such as Kuroda (1977) and Onozawa (1978). Cheng (1986) may also
be consulted.
17 Lun qi, 80.
SONG YINGXING * JE I ON QI A AND THE WU XING Ti 4T
301
situation described by Zhang Zai g ~ (A.D. 1020-77): 'The great void can
never be without qi; qi inevitably gathers together to form the myriad things; the
myriad things inevitably disperse and return to the great void.' 8
The cosmology described in Song Yingxing's essay is rather more complex

than the simple outline given by Zhang Zai. In the first place, some entities do
not participate in the cyclical transformation between qi and xing: ' The sun and
moon represent the case where qi gathers together without going on to be
transformed to xing; earth and stones represent the case where xing is formed
without further transformation to qi.' 19
Important components of the material world do not fall definitely into either
category: 'Water and fire represent a case intermediate between xing and qi.' 20
Since, however, he lacks a term for this intermediate state, Song mostly
refers to water and fire collectively as being qi.21
Any consistent attempt to apply this fairly straightforward physical interpretation of qi throughout Song's writing will reveal its inadequacy, although it
is certainly true that under some circumstances the most obvious aspects of qi
are more or less mechanical and material. The same would, however, be true of
a human being falling from a high building, although no one would claim that
consideration of a person from the point of view of dynamics alone would
reveal much of their essential nature. Just as Mozart would reveal more of his
real capacities seated at a keyboard rather than in free fall, qi unfolds more of its
nature when we see it in its most complex role as the basic endowment of
vitality-the breath of life, pneuma, that enables living things to function. This
functional role includes all processes, from the basic physiological ones of
respiration and digestion to those of perception and aesthetic and moral
judgement in human beings. At this level qi is less and less clearly any kind of
substance as we might recognize the term, and seems rather to refer to the
organized activity or energy perceptible in material structures such as the
human body. As Nathan Sivin has put it: 'We might define [ql]... as simultaneously " what makes things happen in stuff " and (depending on context)
"stuff that makes things happen " or " stuff in which things happen ".' 22
If we investigate Song's attitude towards the theory of the Five Phases, wu
xing shuo i Jf -; the situation turns out to be very interesting. Like the idea of
qi, the scheme of the Five Phases had its main growth in the last few centuries
B.C. The motivation behind the five-phase scheme was the wish to focus on types
of processes or types of phase within larger processes seen in cyclical terms.
These phases were named after five naturally occurring entities seen as
exemplifying their characteristics: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. One of
the most ancient texts (the Hong fan St X' Great Plan' section of the Shang
shu fA' * ' Book of Documents ', before ?350 B.C.) explains that: ' Water is said
to soak and descend, fire is said to blaze and ascend, wood is said to curve and
be straight, metal is said to obey and change, earth is said to take seeds and give
crops.' 23
18 Zhang Zi zheng meng zhu, 1, 5. This is the edition with the important commentary of Wang
Fuzhi, on whom see below n. 39.
19 Lun qi, 52.
20 Lun qi, 52.
21 For instance in Lun qi, 83.
22 Sivin (1987: 47). In modem terms as Sivin notes, we might say that pre-modern Chinese
thought lacked separate concepts to distinguish energies from their carriers.

23 Karlgren (1950: 30). The set of five phases was only one of a considerable number of five-fold
classifications of types of thing or activity current in the late first millennium B.C. although it came to
be seen as in some sense underlying or being correlated with all other five-fold sets. While five-fold
schemes became dominant, there were also schemes based on the number three, four, six, eight,
nine, ten and twelve. On these questions see Henderson (1984), 7-8.
302
CHRISTOPHER CULLEN
More abstractly, the Five Phases can be seen as subdivisions in

alternation between Yin [i and Yang i, the positive and negativ
any cycle (see fig. 2).
Equivalences between Yin-yang and Five Phases
Wood Immature yang Yang within yin

Fire Mature yang Yang within yang
Earth Central house, harmony
Metal Immature yin Yin within yang
Water Mature yin Yin within yin
FIG. 2
The sequence in which they are shown here is seen as the sequence of natural
growth, the sequence in which a process is evolving in an orderly and

undisturbed way. Perhaps the original rationale of this order may be linked with
the natural observation that wood can feed fire, fire produces ashes (i.e. earth),
metals can be extracted from earth, and water appears on cold metals by
condensation, while the growth of plants from water takes us back to wood. In
fig. 3 the natural production order runs clockwise round the arcs of the circle.
FIRE
EARTH
WOOD
Relationship of the Mutual Production and

Mutual Conquest Sequences of the Five Phases-
FIG. 3
SONG YINGXING X Y%, S ON QI A AND THE WU XING i 3T
303
If, however, we skip alternate phases by moving along the straight lines we
produce the so-called conquest sequence, in which each phase is seen as being
overcome by its successor. Once more, it is possible to produce a crude post hoc
rationalization of the sequence (wooden tools dig up earth, earth dams up
water, water puts out fire, fire melts metal, metal cuts wood), but it must be
emphasized that such rationalization played no role in the theoretical applications of the scheme. In medicine, for example, healthy physiological processes
would be linked with the natural production sequence, while the conquest
sequence marks the order of pathological change. Five-phase language was used
in realms of discourse to us as far removed as medicine, as cited here, and the
analysis of the cosmic processes felt to underpin changes of rule within the
Chinese state.
While Song speaks of all Five Phases shui, huo, mu, jin, tu 7 ) A * _ ?t
(water, fire, wood, metal and earth) it becomes clear that he does not think of
them as simply an abstract sequence of phases of equal status linked in an

unending cycle of production or conquest. Thus both wood and metal are said
by Song to contain water and fire; earth, it is implied, contains neither.24 Song's
wood and metal are on most occasions he discusses them simply the stuff that
trees and cooking-pots are made of, and the water and fire they contain can be
made to manifest themselves in an umambiguously physical way. In such

instances Song seems to use the names of some of the Five Phases to refer to
different kinds of stuff which compose, or at least play a part in the make-up of
more complex substances: for examples see section 6.
' So Song's Five Phases are something like five elements, are they?' the non-
sinologist will quite reasonably ask. Such a questioner will be unaware of the
embarrassment resulting from this innocent query. The fact is that it is now
more or less agreed amongst Western sinologists that to translate wu xing as
' five elements' is in most contexts to perpetuate a misunderstanding about the

meaning of the term which goes back to the polemics of seventeenth-century
Jesuit missionaries. In their eyes, the wu xing were simply inferior competitors
for the place occupied by the four Aristotelian elements of earth, air, fire, and
water.25 But as Joseph Needham pointed out a quarter of a century ago, the
conception of the wu xing ' was not so much one of a series of five sorts of
fundamental matter (particles do not come into the question), as of five sorts of
fundamental processes. Chinese thought here characteristically avoided sub24 Lun qi, 83-4. Song points out that water appears when metal is rested on earth but that this
does not occur when one piece of earth is placed on another. Thus metal contains water, unlike
earth. Presumably the reference is to the dampness appearing when a large metal object is left on the
surface of the soil. We would now of course interpret this phenomenon as due to the condensation
of water vapour from the soil on the cold metal, thereby proving the opposite point to that deduced
by Song, a neat example of the meaninglessness of observation detached from a theoretical
framework. As for metal containing fire, no fire results when one stone (here taken as equivalent to
earth) is ground against another, but fire does appear when metal strikes on stone. Thus metals
contains fire, unlike earth. The arguments used by Song to show that living wood contains both
water and fire are set out in section 6 below. So far as differences in status between the five phases is
concerned, this was by no means an unprecedented departure. Dong Zhongshu in the Western Han
dynasty and Zhu Xi under the Song had both given primacy to the phase of earth: see Henderson
(1984) p. 129.
25 Thus in a work in Chinese completed in 1608 Matteo Ricci stated that' What are called xing
IT are what all things come forth from. Thus xing means " origin ", yuan 7Y. Now xing must be
completely pure, without one being mixed with another or containing another.' Metal and wood
cannot be elements, since firstly they are not widespread constituents of the material universe, but
principally because they are not pure substances: 'who is unaware that metal and wood really
contain a mixture of water, fire and earth?' See Qian kun ti yi, 1,10 Oa. One wonders on what Ricci's
assurance of assent on this last point was based. On the one hand he may simply have been taking
the Aristotelian viewpoint for granted, but this seems unlikely given the trouble he usually took to
start from where his Chinese reader would find himself. Could he perhaps have been aware of what
Zhang Zai had said on the subject? See section 6 below and nn. 65, 73.
304
CHRISTOPHER CULLEN
stance and clung to relation.' 26 It is certainly the case that for mos
history the wu xing were definitely process-phases rather than kind
None the less, it is very hard to read Song's work without t
conviction that for him, in several central instances, the wu xing ar
stuff, and that at least water, fire, and possibly earth, are bas
ingredients of matter to look rather like what pre-modern Euro
have called elements. Why Song should have taken such a radical
route from most other Chinese natural philosophers is a fascinating
question to which I hope to provide a partial answer later in this
4. Qi and Xing
Space does not allow a detailed exegesis of Song's work here. W
therefore do is to summarize a few of the most interesting poin
makes in his essays without attempting to recapitulate his full argum
The first essay in his Lun qi tractate is entitled Xing qi hua f

interconversion of solid objects and qi'). As its title implies, Son
explain how this interconversion can be seen at work behind the app
the world we perceive.
In the first place, he suggests, the growth and decay of living matt
example of how qi is transformed to xing. Plants grow by transform
flowing up through the earth into xing; when they decay or are bur
proportion of their mass and volume vanishes, clearly having been t
back to qi. Song is prepared to speak in quantitative terms:
[when wood has been burned] if one balances [the ashes] against th
of what was there originally, less than one part in seventy remain
compares it with the original quantity (duo gua ; g [? presum

intended, since weight has already been mentioned]) less than
fifty remains.27
Given the distinction between mass and volume ratios made here, it is
difficult to avoid the conviction that Song had actually done some measurements to determine how much solid matter had been converted to qi in this case.
According to Song, even the ashy residues which remain eventually revert to qi.
Since he believes that earth is a specially stable form of solid body which does
not revert to qi, it is necessary for him to deny that these residues can become
earth. If this was the case, he argues, the ground level would rise appreciably
with the accumulation of extra earth over the centuries.28
So far Song is simply developing physical concepts that are not fundamentally novel in a Chinese context. There is however, something new in the way he
introduces the dimension of time into the discussion. In the management of any
technical process, ranging from the smelting of metals to baking a cake, it is
often little use merely to know that the process will take place under certain
conditions of temperature, etc.; what really matters is how slowly or rapidly it
will take place. It is characteristic of Song's distinctively practical orientation in
his discussion of xing/qi transformations that he concerns himself greatly with
the question of the rate at which they will occur.
26 S.C.C., II, 243. Regrettably, Needham did not abandon the older usage he criticized so
effectively. See also the discussion in Sivin (1987: 70-80).
27 Lun qi, 53.

28 Lun qi, 53-4. For the extension to include carnivores, see Lun qi, 59. Song does not believe that
earth is totally inert; earth can produce stones, which themselves eventually revert to earth, and
similarly ceramics revert to earth. This is however a closed' minor cycle' outside the main current of
interchange between qi and xing; see Lun qi, 61-2. Dr. Michael Loewe has pointed out to me that the
earth-+ceramics- earth cycle is referred to in Huai nan tzu & j T- 7,4a (Sibu congkan edition).
305
SONG YINGXING $R H & ON QI A AND THE WU XING i Tf
In the first place, he points out that the intermediate status of water and fire
between qi and xing means that it is easier for them to go either way, so
transformations involving them are likely to be more rapid than those involving
a direct interchange between qi and xing.29 Evaporation of liquids is certainly

seen much more commonly than sublimation of solids. His main insight into the
question of the rate of processes comes, however, in his idea of what we may call
rate reversibility, a principle which may be summarized as follows:
A solid body will in general revert to qi at a rate which is comparable with the
speed with which it was formed in the first place.
For example, a plant that grows in a few weeks will decay completely in a
similar time, while the wood from an ancient pine will last for about as many
centuries as it took to grow. The corpses of children decay rapidly in the tomb,
while the body of a centenarian corrupts very slowly.30 Most interesting in the
technological context is his discussion of this rate-reversibility principle as

applied to metals. Song begins by pointing out that there is a very great
difference in the rates at which different metals are extracted from the earth. He
lists the following figures, which give us some idea of how Song thought of the
relative rates of production of metals in his day:
Metal Overall Index Production Ratio
Iron
20,000
Lead and Tin 2,000

Copper
1,000
Silver
Gold
10
10:1
2:1
100:1
10:1
The
figures
in
by
Song
for
suc
list,
Song
notes
and
rusting
at
a
rapidly
even
wh
that
are
produc
are
produced
w
biological
grow
despite the very widespread production of iron, this commodity is not, he
claims, becoming more abundant. It is interesting to note in passing that Song
clearly regards human activity in industrial production as an integral part of the
stable cosmic ecology rather than as an interference with it.
29 Lun qi, 55.
30 Lun qi, 57-8.
31 Lun qi, 62-3. It is interesting to note that in his discussion of the metals in the Tiangong kaiwu
Song states that the price of gold (presumably per mass) is 16,000 times that of iron, a figure in fair
correspondence with the 20,000:1 production ratio given here. See Tiangong kaiwu (1978 edition),
335. The order of the list agrees well with the electrochemical series, in which the metals mentioned
here rank as iron, tin lead, copper, silver and gold in order of decreasing activity. Song may have
arrived at his list on the basis of actual figures for production, or price data, or just a subjective
impression of how readily metals corroded, or most probably a mixture of all three. The association
of lead and tin in the list may be linked to the fact that according to Song tin is always used with an
admixture of lead to cure its brittleness: see Tiangong kaiwu, ch. 14, section 8, p. 370.
306
CHRISTOPHER CULLEN
5. Sound
Song Yingxing's writing on the subject of sound is one of the most

interesting parts of his work. It is also one of the most difficult parts to discuss
without giving a misleading impression of its nature. The problem is that Song
writes in a way that makes it easy for the reader to assume mistakenly that this
Ming dynasty scholar shares the same assumptions about the nature, produc-
tion and propagation of sound as a modern physicist. It is worth while pausing
for a moment to say something about the modern view of sound before we
consider Song's account.
Viewed in its widest sense, the act of hearing involves phenomena at various
levels of complexity. At the highest level of all we have the observer's actual
consciousness of hearing something. What he is conscious of hearing will be
heavily conditioned by the unconscious effects produced by individual
experience and social training, and by expectations based on the immediately

past situation. At the neurological level a complicated sequence of information
processing goes on to determine which sounds are worthy of close attention,
and what harmonic components are present.32 The ear-drum and the apparatus
by which it stimulates the auditory nerves forms the interface between these
interior levels of activity and the vibrations of the air in contact with it. Such
vibrations can be transmitted through the air from some vibrating object by
means of longitudinal waves.33 For most of the last three centuries the
physicist's approach to sound has proceeded on the assumption that the
mechanical phenomena outside the ear were the appropriate objects of attention. These were 'objective', and the 'subjective' experiences of the observer
only entered into the discussion when the terms of his observer-language could
be mapped simply onto mechanical properties of the vibrating air or other
medium. Thus the physicist could talk about 'loudness' in terms of the
amplitude of oscillations of air molecules, and about 'high pitch' in terms of
the high frequency of those oscillations. And such has been the success of this
approach in terms of the ability to make mathematical predictions that sound is
commonly taken to be nothing but vibrations in the medium outside the

observer.
It is possible to read Song's work on sound as if he was giving such a

reductionist account of acoustics as the one just outlined. As we shall see, the
role played by qi seems very like the role played by air in the modern account,34
and there is certainly much about mechanical disturbances of various kinds.
Towards the end there is even a short comparison of the spreading of sound
from its source to the spreading out of water ripples. The temptation is read
modern physics back into Song's writing is thus very strong. If we do so,
however, much of the real character of Song's thought will be obliterated in the
process. Instead of seeing a powerful mind trying to make sense of a confrontation of traditional concepts with empirical observation, all we shall be left
with is a rather frustrating encounter with a writer who refuses to state the
obvious clearly, and obscures his basic principles under a mass of irrelevancies.
In fact, Song Yingxing was neither a modern physicist nor a confused thinker,
as I hope to show in what follows.
32 In this respect the ear functions as a 'Fourier analyser', unlike the eye, which cannot
distinguish a mixed colour into its component hues.

33 Longitudinal waves, in which the oscillations of small masses of air about their unchanged
mean positions occur parallel to the direction in which the disturbance is spreading, are to be
distinguished from transverse waves, in which the oscillation is at right angles to the direction of
propagation of the wave. Well-known examples of transverse waves are ripples on the surface of
water, and waves on a vibrating string.
34 But see section 7 below, in which Song distinguishes the merely material substance of the
atmosphere from the life-giving qi which pervades it.
SONG YINGXING $ R, R ON QI A AND THE WU XING 1i fT
307
How far Song was from reducing the concept of sound to coldly objectified
statements about the motion of dead matter emerges in his first few words on
the subject.
How subtle is the way of sounds and musical notes! The sounds of things
vary in a myriad ways, but the sounds made by the human [voice] can
imitate them all. No sound is harsher than that of the detonation of a gun;
no sound is more delicate than that of a well-tuned zither; no sound is more
full of delight than that of orioles in converse; no sound is more plaintive

than a pig under the knife. Changes of musical mode [conveying different
moods] certainly have some rough semblance [to the range of feeling
conveyed by such sounds]. If it was not for the fact that [human beings]
possess qi in all its completeness, how could this be so? 35
The emotional and aesthetic content of sound is thus part of its essential
nature rather than something confined to the subjective response of the
observer. The crucial link is of course the concept of qi introduced at the end of
the passage. Shortly afterwards Song continues:

Human beings live because they have received [an endowment of] qi. When
there is qi there can be sound, and sound returns to qi. Now when solid body
(xing) transforms to qi it returns to it very slowly, while when sound returns
to qi it does so in an instant. The sounds produced by human beings come

forth from the viscera [where the body's qi is stored], are modulated by the
lips and tongue, and then have to make contact and harmonise with the qi in
empty space [outside the body]. [To see that this is necessary] if the mouth
and nose are blocked what is outside cannot enter and harmonise [with what
is within] and what is within can only rise up to the roof of the mouth and
make an obscure grunting noise. In the human body the father's seminal
essence and the mother's blood are conserved in the ' reservoir of qi' and in
the ' gate of life '.36 Whether an individual's ' sound qi' is large or small,
short or prolonged, depends on the embryonic endowment and not on the
strength of effort made.37
Sound is thus produced by qi, and seems to share with qi the distinctive
combination of statuses as agent, patient and process which makes' qi' so hard
to translate.
Now since qi is always present, why is it that sound is not likewise always to
be heard? Song is clearly aware of the problem:
Qi is basically a continuous and homogeneous thing (hunlun zhi wu

X1 i1[ ; j ). Every tiny part has the principle in it [capable of] producing
sound, but it cannot do so by itself.38
Sound is produced, he says, whenever the qi is disturbed in some way.39 Two

lots of qi may rub against one another, as in the case of the wind; a special case
5 Lun qi, 64.
36 On the nature of these traditional anatomical entities see Sivin (1987: 155 and 120).
37 Lun qi, 64-5.
38 Lun qi, 66. The beginning of this section seems slightly disordered. As we shall see, the passage
quoted is followed by descriptions of ways in which qi can be made to produce sound, but it is also
preceded by similar instances, which would seem to belong after it with the other examples.
39 The core of what follows is clearly inspired by the writing of Zhang Zai in the eleventh century,
even to the extent of Song copying the precise wording in a number of places. Zhang says' Sound is
produced whenever solid bodies or qi strike together. [The striking together of] two lots of qi is
evidenced in such phenomena as the rolling of thunder echoing in a valley; [that of two bodies] in a
drumstick beating a drum; solid body strikes qi in the case of [beating] wings, a fan, or a sounding
308
CHRISTOPHER CULLEN
of this is when the qi of a human being rubs against the qi of the outside w
in the case of playing a reed-organ. Something may impact on the qi, as w
flying arrow; the qi may be divided, as when a whip is lashed through th
may be shaken, as when a string is plucked; it may be pulled apart, as wh
is torn, or brought together by clapping hands. When one body suc
hammer strikes another it carries some qi along with it, and the qi takes
the impact. In all these cases the seat of the sound is not in the actual
involved (which only serve to disturb the qi). Since any disturbance in the
away very rapidly the impacts, etc. just detailed have to take place rapidly
perceptible sound is to be produced.40 The discussion continues with a

on the final point that the clapping of hands etc. must be rapid in or
produce sound. Why is it that a high waterfall produces a loud noise w
the fall of water from a pot hardly makes any sound at all, despite the fa
both material and process are the same? The reason is that in the case
waterfall the qi possesses shi ' 'advantage of position' by reason of th
drop involved. Similar examples follow, such as the fact that there is
noise when gold and silver are divided by the impact of an axe, but little
when they are cut with snips.41 Despite these provisos, the important poi
notice in all this is that sound is essentially produced by any disturbing p
which triggers the li _ principle within the qi into being realized as
Vibration is only one of the ways through which the li can be actualized.
Song's next three sections are concerned with the production of sou
such implements as musical instruments.42 Consider the loud sounds p
by bells and drums: ' Is the sound produced by the metal and the drumski
does it come from the qi? 43
Song insists that the second answer is the correct one. The qi inside
instrument is stimulated to produce sound, and it immediately commu
this to the qi outside. It is easy to show that it is the qi rather than t
structure of the instrument that plays the essential role:
Suppose that the sound is not produced by the qi. Try stretching a dru
on the surface of the ground, or filling up a bell with earth. What sou
there then? 44
Similarly, if the bell-wall or the drumskin are made thicker and thick
volume of sound heard diminishes, showing clearly that something is
transmitted through the solid substance to the outside. Song now thinks o
apparent counter-instance and disposes of it neatly:
Someone might ask' if you hang up a sounding-stone and strike it, it e

penetrating note despite the fact that it has no hollow inside it [to conta
arrow; qi strikes a solid body in the case of a man sounding on a reed-pipe' (Zhang Zi zhe
zhu, 90-91, cf. Kasoff (1984: 38)). Song has departed from Zhang's model in that he insists
when two solid bodies strike together the significant interaction involves qi: see bel
interesting to note that in his commentary on this part of Zhang Zai's work Wang Fuzh
(1619-1692) seems to follow the same line: 'when the drumstick is whirled the qi follo
strikes on the drum, so here as in every other case qi is involved' (op. cit., 91). This is of
exactly what Song says is happening when a hammer hits something: see below. There
indications that Wang had read Song's astronomical tractate Tan tian which circulated with
qi (Pan, 1981: 97) and it certainly seems likely that Wang was influenced by Song at this p
also n. 68.
40 Lun qi, 66-7, with slight reordering to deal with the problem in n. 38.
41 Lun qi, 68.
42 Lun qi, 69-74.
43 Lun qi, 69.
44Lun qi, 69.
SONG YINGXING XZ f%, ? ON QI A AND THE WU XING ~i fT
309
What do you make of that?' I reply that what is going on is that the
suspended stone forms a barrier between the continuous qi on either side of
it. If you strike it from one side the qi on the other side responds. It is the
same principle as the bell and drum. Supposing that the sound was produced
by the stone rather than by the qi, what kind of sound is produced when the
stone is placed flat up against a wall and struck?45
It seems then that the role of the solid material of which the instrument is
made is to allow the qi within the instrument to make contact with the qi
outside. Song thus goes on to discuss this process of transmission in detail.
Some things will allow qi to pass through, but others will not: this is linked to
the fact that qi contains the ' spirits' shen ji of water and fire.46 Qi transmission
from inside a drum is easily understood, since wood is naturally porous. But
what about the metal of a bell? Now when a metal instrument is being cast, the
metal in the furnace reveals the watery part of its nature as it melts. When this
watery nature unites with fire, we are told, the solid metal appears: it is clear that
Song regards the cooling of the metal as is solidifies as a ' swallowing-up' of the
fire into a unity with water to form the solid. A well-made bell should unite the
qi of the Five Phases, so it is not to be wondered at that it should readily

transmit qi and so pass on sound.47
For qi to. pass easily through a body, it is not enough for that body to be
permeated by qi (as are all bodies strictly speaking). If this was so, all bodies
would transmit sound equally well. In some bodies the qi is so to speak
'jammed', and no more qi can get through the barrier so formed.48 This is the
explanation of why a fired porcelain cup rings when struck, although it gives no
note when in the unfired state. When the cup is drying after it has been thrown:
The water [from the clay] and the fire [from the sun] come together, and lock
on to the body of the pot. Thus when it is struck from the outside [the qi]
within does not respond and there is no sound. But when it is put into the
kiln in close contact with the fire, the affinities which were formerly bound
up melt away, and the essence of fire opens up the material, so that the
earthy substance changes its form. Now if it is struck once a clear sound
rings forth.49
In conclusion Song gives a brief statement of the close link between qi,
sound and the materials from which instruments are made:
Thus Heaven produces the five qi, so that there are the Five Phases. Each of
the Five Phases has the sound of its own note, and the notes of water and fire
permeate through the interior of metal and earth.50
It is clear that Song is far from any explanation of the qualities of sound in
terms of simple mechanical disturbance of qi. Sound is not a mere matter of a
45 Lun qi, 71-72.
46 See section 6 below.

47 Lun qi, 71.
48 As an illustration of this state of affairs, Song gives the example of a pastry withdrawn from
the steamer when half-cooked. If it is later put back again the middle will never be completely
cooked because the qi of water and fire have become solidified in the outer layer so that further qi
cannot get through. The same is said is to true of a half-cooked egg. I must confess to not having
tested these statements empirically, though they do not strike me as very plausible.
49 Lun qi, 72.
50 Lun qi, 72. There now follows a clause with two illegible characters in the original text, ci ke yi
tui wu yin [ ][ ]yi f- J, X ~i- [ ] [ ] . If one restored the lacuna as zhi li J E
the clause might be read as' This is the way one can infer from the principle of the five notes [of the
pentatonic scale],' but the ending of the clause with yi alone does not seem stylistically satisfactory.
310
CHRISTOPHER CULLEN
shaking of the qi. If this was so it is hard to see why Song thinks
transmission of sound as involving qi penetration through vessel wall
than the simple transmission of vibration from the qi inside a vessel to qi

by means of vibrations in the wall itself. It will be recalled that Song ha
said quite explicity that sound is not produced by the skin of a drum
metal wall of a bell. However, as the next two sections reveal, the fact th
high-level properties 51 does not mean that it can never be talked about
involving simple language about displacement or disturbance.
In his next section Song asks why, in general, musical instruments ten
rounded in shape rather than square. The answer he gives is clear:
When the qi in the central hollow [of the instrument] responds to the o
[stimulation], one wants this to happen uniformly and simultaneously
you have any squareness, then one part [of the qi] will be stimulate
another part is quiescent, and one part will be hurried while another i
As a result [the disturbances] will mingle confusedly in the middle
instrument, and the sound will not be worth listening to.52
The general principle that roundness produces a more tuneful effe
squareness is then illustrated with reference to drums, bamboo pipes, th

made by a door-post turning in its socket, and even the blaring of the animal
horns and conches used by the northern barbarians, of which Song says that
'The sound is loud, but it is hardly music.' 53
In the last section a crucial point in Song's argument is the tacit assumption
that the stimulation of one part of the qi takes some time to be communicated to
the rest. Song now goes on to use an analogy for the way such stimulation is
propagated that reinforces this impression of his view. He notes that the point
has already been made clearly that sound is generated when qi is struck or
divided.54 But it is likewise clear that sound can be heard far away from the site
of the stimulation. In the extreme case of a cannon being fired in a mountain
valley the sound may be heard for 10 li (about three miles). 'In general,' he
states 'all such phenomena are due to moving qi.' 55 There then follows
immediately a short but highly interesting passage.
When a body impacts on qi, it is like disturbing water. Water and qi are both
easily moved things. If one throws a stone into water, the area of water
surface that actually meets the stone is no bigger than the palm of a hand,
but the patterned ripples spread out one after another, and are not yet
exhausted after they have covered ten feet in all directions. When qi is
disturbed, it is like this. Only when the disturbance has been highly
attenuated does it become inaudible.56
51 As exemplified below in Song's explanation of perception in terms of the liang zhi ' innate
knowledge' embodied in that part of the human body's qi involved in hearing.

52 Lun qi, 73.
53 Lun qi, 74.
54 As Song says later in this section:' If there is quiescence, then qi will be quiescent and there will
be no sound. If there is motion, then qi will be in motion and there will be sound' (Lun qi, 76).
55 Lun qi, 75.
56 Lun qi, 75. For a discussion of other possible instances of the use of this analogy, see S.C.C.,
iv, 1, pp. 8 and 202-204. The (largely Western Han) source quoted in the second of these (Chun qiu
fan lu fk 1]k g i Juan 7, section 81, 8b-9a in the Sibu congkan edition is referring to the
transmission of good and bad moral influences through the cosmic qi rather than to the
transmission of sound, although it compares the ease with which the qi transmits such moral
influences to the ease with which the disturbance caused by a falling stone spreads out over the
surface of water. The text of the third century A.D. fragment by Liu Zhi liJ ;, quoted in the first
reference is taken from a fragment collection which appears to miscopy its original at a crucial
SONG YINGXING X jf & ON QI A AND THE WU XING i fT
311
Enough has by now been said to make it clear that it would be unwise to
credit Song with a wave theory of sound on the basis of this passage alone. As
his last sentence makes clear, all Song wants is an illustration of a disturbance
spreading out from a source, and undergoing gradual attenuation with increasing distance travelled. The fact that the example he chooses is an undulatory
disturbance does not mean that he believes that sound is an undulatory motion
of the qi.
The remainder of Song's text may be summarised briefly. The number of
different sounds is as infinite as the variety of bodies that can produce sound.
Sound is perceived through the interaction of that part of the vital qi of the body
which has its seat in the gall-bladder and communicates with the exterior
through the ear. This qi possesses the liang zhi ' X ' innate knowledge' which
enables it to distinguish the content of the sounds heard.57 If the sound is very
violent, as in an explosion, the shock given to the internal qi may damage the
viscera (which are the body's reservoirs of qi) and cause death. On the other
hand music of the appropriate kind can calm and harmonize the qi, so
producing a well ordered mind.58 He ends by reviewing the variety of sources of

sound in the natural world, from the smallest insect to the roaring of thunder.
6. Water and fire
We may perhaps best use the remaining space in considering a further essay
in the Lun qi tractate, Shuifei sheng huo 7kc T f k] (Water does not conquer
fire). This reveals more about the special role of these two of the wu xing in
Song's thinking. Song begins by denying that water ' conquers ' fire as laid down
in the traditional xiang sheng +tg f 'mutual conquest' order shown in fig. 3.
On the contrary, Song maintains, water and fire appear as a result of the
differentiation of the qi whose source is the void, and retain a very strong
point (Quan Shang Gu San Dai Qin Han San Guo Liu Chao wen, Jin wen, 39, 6b, p. 1685 in the 1985
reprint). Instead of reading chu shi er si chu zhe shui qi zhi tong ye J 3 jfjji _ ~ 7k A,
- A[|the source in the eighth-century A.D. Kaiyuan zhanjing JXC &! S (ch. i, p. 26b in the
Hengdetang zangban edition) has yun ` for ci ~, so that the reference is to the appearance of
clouds rather than to '(ripples) spread(ing) forth one after another' as Needham renders it. An
interesting source not mentioned by Needham is picked up in Dai (1988: 156), where Wang Chong
3E Yi (A.D. 27-97) compares the disturbance of qi by human activity to the way a fish disturbs the
waters in which it swims (see Lun heng ? {jjuan 4, pian 17, 15b-16a in the Sibu Congkan edition.)
The problem is that Dai does not give the context in his quotation, and this makes it quite clear that
the reference is to stimulation of qi in response to the moral qualities of human actions, caoxing
,N IT, just as in the Chunqiufanlu. Wang's point is a clear attack on the position taken by this text,
pointing out that such moral stimulation of qi would be very unlikely to extend as far away as
heaven, just as the disturbance of water by a fish dies away after spreading a few feet. There is no
reference to the human being disturbing the qi mechanically by emitting sound. Dai however
precedes the material about the fish etc. by a sentence pointing to the fact that a man high on a
terrace cannot hear the weak sounds emitted by ants on the ground below. This sentence is
separated from the material quoted on the fish by 164 characters in the original text. It belongs to a
quite different part of Wang's argument (op. cit., 4. 17. 15a) to the effect that heaven is very unlikely
to be able to hear what human beings are saying because it is so far away from them. The only point
that the two sections of text have in common is that they are both part of Wang's general argument
that heaven is unlikely to show any response to anything human beings do. It does seem, therefore,
that Song Yingxing is the first Chinese thinker to make any connexion between the spreading of
water ripples from a point of disturbance and the propagation of disturbance in qi from a source of
sound. Of course such discussions of priority do not in themselves form the proper primary concern
of historians of science. Needham points out (S.C. C., iv, 1, 202) that in Europe Vitruvius had in any
case given the analogy earlier, in the first century B.C.
57 Lun qi, 77. One might have expected to find here the more conventional linkage between the
renal system and the ears; see Sivin (1987: 228). The term liang zhi, literally ' good knowledge' can
be traced back to Mencius (7a, 15) where it refers to knowledge possessed without the exercise of
thought. The term was also used by Zhang Zai (Zhang zi zheng meng zhu, 6, 92), and was central to
the philosophy of Wang Shouren FE - 'f (1472-1529).

58 Lun qi, 78.
312
CHRISTOPHER CULLEN
affinity for one another. Given the opportunity they will show this
uniting with one another to form qi, which will forthwith in turn r
void from which it came.59
Song argues at length that qi formation requires proper correspondence

between the amounts of water and fire involved: thus if a cup of water is tipped
onto a burning faggot both the water and the fire vanish from sight as they unite
and revert to qi, and hence to the void. For a burning cartload of fuel, however,
a large cauldron of water is needed to match the much greater quantity of fire.
The qi formation process can take place even when fire and water are separated
by a metal or ceramic vessel wall. The relative positions of the two components
are unimportant, but throughout the rule is maintained that each quantity of
water lost to sight requires an equal amount of fire with which to unite. Song
quantifies the amount of fire required in terms which suggest that he is thinking
about the mass of fuel consumed during (as we would now say) the vaporization
of the water.60 Now I have no wish to be thought of as saying anything so

foolish as that Song was aware of or in some way ' anticipated' the concept of
latent heat of vaporization. The figures that Song gives are not necessarily based
on any actual measurement of fuel consumed in boiling away water-although

a rough check suggests they are not unrealistic.61 I would simply like to point
out that Song's theory is one which lends itself easily to quantitative prediction
and measurement. Further, if one carries along Song's line of reasoning one
might ask what happens when the qi produced by the united fire and water
strikes a cold surface. Song is aware (see below) that when this happens the
water reappears as a condensate. Rigorously applied, Song's theory would
therefore predict that the fire should likewise reappear, a prediction that would
be verified by the strong heating effect as condensing steam gives back its latent
heat of vaporization. This is not a point that Song makes, but we should
certainly not be too ready to dismiss the physics of qi and xing as a dead end
incapable of critical development under the right circumstances.

Given Song's idea of fire and water as complementary entities, one naturally
wonders how he explains what is going on during the process of combustion.

One remembers those illustrations in the Tiangong kaiwu of furnaces being
worked to smelting heat by double-action box-bellows (see fig. 1). What does
Song think is going on? In the first place, he thinks of the fuel in the furnace as
being in effect fire in a fixed or solid form. Charcoal, he tells us is solidified fire in
the same way that ice is solidified water, and he appears to regard coal in the
59 Lun qi, 80. In this essay Song speaks of the nature of water and fire in terms which differ
slightly from those in his first essay. In Xingqi hua, they were said to be intermediate in status
between qi and xing, but in the opening of Shuifei sheng huo we are told that qi comes from the void,
qi then forms xing, and xing then differentiates into water and fire. In the rest of the essay however
we commonly find water and fire referred to as qi, or else as forming qi by their union. The reference
to xing seems anomalous.
60 Chinese alchemists had been interested in precise measurements of fuel used as early as the
eighth century A.D. and possibly long before. The aim was to model the supposed sequence of the
cosmic process by, for instance, increasing the amount of fuel fed into the furnace daily in an
arithmetical progression for a number of days, and then reversing the sequence. Such measurements
were however not correlated with any quantitative and empirically determined outcome, such as the
amount of water boiled away; their basis was essentially a priori and numerological. See the
discussion of' fire phasing ', huo hou 9k f? by Nathan Sivin in S.C.C., v, 4, 266-79.
61 The complete combustion of one kg. of coal produces approximately 3 x 107. J of energy, and
one kg. of water at 100?C requires 2 x 106. J to convert it to vapour. According to Song's principle,
each kg. of water vaporized requires 1 kg. of fuel to be burned (quite probably coal in Ming China).
This is possible if the overall efficiency of combustion and heat transfer to the water is of the order of
10%. Given the circumstances of an unlagged pot sitting on a domestic cooking stove such a figure
would not be at all implausible. It may therefore be that Song found that experience appeared to
confirm the 'equal mass' rule that his theory dictated.
SONG YINGXING * }, - ON QI ., AND THE WU XING ti jT
313
same way.62 Similarly, although in living wood the amounts of fire and water
present are exactly balanced, dried wood has lost most or all of its water so that
the fire remaining predominates. In such circumstances it only requires a tiny
spark of free fire to nucleate the process of liberation of the fire in the fuel.63
Here again, Song's ideas can be traced back to a starting point in the
thought of Zhang Zai six hundred years earlier. Zhang tells us
Water and fire are qi... earth has no control over them... wood and metal
are respectively the flower and the fruit of earth; in their nature there is a
mingling of water and fire.64
As before however, Song's view is much more concrete and specific than
Zhang's. The presence of water and fire in wood is argued as follows:
If you squeeze a green leaf, a quantity of water may be easily obtained. If
you ignite a dry leaf, a quantity of fire may likewise be easily obtained. The
fact that a tree freshly felled does not ignite when held over a fire is because
the fire and water essences within it cling together and do not separate, and
are not free to abandon their mate to pass to the exterior. But if one heats it
in the rays of the sun, or by the side of a fire, or [exposes it to] a blast of wind,
this will gradually lead the spirit of water to depart back to the void, leaving
the wood ready to ignite. If these drying processes are not of sufficient
strength, one part in ten of the water may remain. This remains pent up and
is the cause of smoke, for the smoke of burning wood is the qi produced as
water and fire struggle to come forth. If the drying process is thorough, then
the wood only retains the substance of fire (huo zhi , ) and in the blazing
clarity [of the flames] any residue of smoke is rapidly transformed.65

But how are the men with the bellows helping matters? Song knew very well
that the blast they supplied was essential if a good blaze was to be maintained.
His explanation depends on the fact that the qi carried in by the blast itself
contains water and fire.66 The water in the blast causes the condensed fire of the
62 Lun qi, 82 on charcoal; compare likewise 59 on coal.
63 Lun qi, 59-60. In Tiangong kaiwu, ch. 1, section 6 (p. 25 in the 1978 edition.) Song tells us that
the flames of the will-o'the-wisp are caused by the release of the fire from rotting wood whose
decaying structure can no longer retain it.
MZhang Zi zheng meng zhu, ch. 1. 43-4. Another example of Song's borrowing from Zhang Zai
may be seen in section 5 below.
65 Lun qi, 83-4. Reading Song's argument to prove that fresh wood contains both water and fire I
am struck by the similarity of his arguments to those that would have been advanced by an
Aristotelian attempting a similar proof of the four-element theory. See for instance the speech of
Themistius in Robert Boyle's Sceptical Chymist, 'Physiological considerations ', 21.
' For if you consider a piece of green wood burning in a chimney, you will readily discern in the
disbanded parts of it the four elements ... The fire discovers itself in the flame ... The smoke by
ascending to the top of the chimney and there readily vanishing into air ... The water in its own
form hissing and boiling at the ends of the burning wood betrays itself... and the
ashes ... belong to the element of earth.'
I cannot help speculating that Song might have heard something of the Aristotelian scheme and the
arguments for it via the Jesuits; his younger contemporary and fellow Ming loyalist Fang Yizhi had
certainly done so: see Wu li xiao shi, ch. 1, 10-11 Peterson (1975: 376), and n. 73 below. The only
relevant printed Jesuit source known to me at present which might have been available to Song is
Matteo Ricci's Qian kun ti yi completed in 1608 (see bibliography and n. 25). Although this argues
for the four-element theory, and states that wood and metal both contain mixtures of water fire and
earth, it does not mention the instance of the burning green branch or anything similar to it. Of
course in addition to spreading his teachings through printed works Ricci also conducted an
extensive correspondence, and conversed with a constant stream of visitors, so we cannot be sure
that Song had not have heard of the Aristotelean scheme through some informal channel.
66 Lun qi, 85. Song seems to want to find a way of saying that the water and fire are not present in
the qi in a fully actualized form. Thus he says that the qi contains the shen' spirit' of water and fire,
and elsewhere that the qi contains the yi , ' notion' of water and fire, see Lun qi, 82. Song's
314
CHRISTOPHER CULLEN
fuel to leap forth to meet it, so that the harder the blast is worked the
released. To silence the sceptic, Song points out that it is easy to verif
blast of qi contains water: all one has to do is to breathe on to som

surface and take note of the dew which forms on it: as he says, w
instance could there be? 67
7. Minor tractates on the atmosphere and meteorology

The remaining short tractates can only be given brief summaries h
first of these, Shui chen 7Jc | may be translated as ' Water and the at
Song contends that just as a fish lives in a large body of water, human
in a body of chen. This term literally means 'dust', but it becomes clea
discussion that for Song chen is the gaseous atmosphere which sur
From what has gone before one might have thought that this was sim
it appears that the two are not identical. Normally both the atmosphe
water in contact with it are permeated by qi, and this qi is essential in
the life of the creatures that breathe in either of the two media. But ju
in a closed vessel of water will die when it exhausts the supply of qi in
a man will die when he exhausts the qi in the atmosphere trapped
room. Pure chen is naturally as clear as pure water, but like
atmosphere can carry finely divided matter that obscures vision.
Song's few paragraphs, entitled Shuifeng gui zang 7J c, t S 'H

and water return to their natural reservoirs', develop and atmosph
analogy further with a comparison of winds and water currents. His s
Han re 1 A, ' Cold and heat' argues that seasonal variations in tem
are not caused by the distance or proximity of the sun, but by the qi
the earth. If solar distance was the decisive factor, Song argues, one sh
warmer when one has climbed to the top of a high mountain, since on
nearer to the sun.

8. Conclusion
As I have already argued, there is nothing basically original in Song's

cosmology, in his treatment of the wu xing shuo with the special role it assigns to
water and fire, and so on. We have seen how Song's thinking in this area has
obvious roots in the thought of Zhang Zai six centuries earlier, and there were
others close to Song in time who were prepared to look critically at cosmological questions.68
So what is it that makes Song original? I suggest that Song's special place in
the history of Chinese science lies in the way he put into practice his conviction
that the theories of natural philosophy can appropriately and fruitfully be
European contemporaries might have suggested that the formulation he wanted was to say that
water and fire were present in the qi in potential form. On the other hand, he also says directly at
times that the two qi of water and fire are present in the space around us: see Lun qi, 83.
67 Lun qi, 85.
68 It must however be said that Song wrote at a fairly early stage of the seventeenth-century
development of a critical attitude to cosmological questions, if we are to judge from the account
given by John Henderson (1984: 137-47). It seems that the more well-known figures whose work
Henderson cites wrote about a generation after him. Whether Song's work had any influence on
later writers is hard to judge. We have already seen some evidence that Wang Fuzhi may have
known Song's tractates: see n. 39 above. His commentary in Zhang Zi zheng meng zhu, 44-5
discusses Five Phase theory without any very obvious trace of Song's thinking. Elsewhere, however,
the links may well be perceptible. In his Si wen lu wai pian Wang attacks the notion that water
conquers fire in a manner reminiscent of Song's writing on the topic (p. 46), and he also makes an
observation resembling Song's' rate reversibility principle' (p. 37). But I have not so far noticed any
direct borrowings by Wang from Song anything like as obvious as are Song's unacknowledged
semi-quotations from Zhang Zai.
315
SONG YINGXING X *i f ON Qf A AND THE WU XING :i 3T
applied to the technical arts. In contrast, when Zhang Zai tells us that all the
processes of the universe can be seen as the condensation of qi into various
temporary forms and its eventual dispersal, there is really no expectation at all
that we are entitled to ask for a detailed explanation of why a particular process
occurs in the way it does and in no other way. Zhang's object is served once he
has shown in outline that the universe can be seen as a rational place in which
basic principles operate in a universal way: it is not his task to tell us, for
instance, why iron corrodes rapidly and gold not at all. Indeed, it may be asking
too much of human reason to demand that it should seek for such detailed
insight into the workings of the cosmos. We may point to the words of Sh
Gua fij t4, a contemporary of Zhang Zai and a man with a wide interest
scientific and technical matters. Faced with the problem of why a lightning bo
had damaged metal objects while leaving wood untouched, despite the fact that
wood is normally more vulnerable to fire than metal, he says
this is something that human abilities cannot fathom... human beings ca

only attain to knowledge of those matters which fall within the ambit
human affairs, outside which are numberless matters whose principles would
be very difficult to search out using limited human intelligence.69
A further illustration is given by the case of Fang Yizhi ~ 1L ', Son
Yingxing's younger contemporary and fellow Ming loyalist. In his Wu li xiao sh
t1 4, /'- = (Short notes on physical principles), Fang gives an interesting a
penetrating discussion of wu xing theory; elsewhere in the same work he gives

much information on technological processes of a kind that might well have
found a place in the Tiangong kaiwu.70 These two kinds of knowledge are,
however, kept in separate compartments, and there is little sign of consciousness

that it might be interesting or helpful to bring them together.
The great significance of Song Yingxing's essays is that they show him
tentatively breaking through the barrier that separates natural philosophy from
technical knowledge. A European contemporary of Song's, Francis Bacon, used
words which would surely have struck an echo in his mind when he spoke of the
damage done to the progress of philosophy by the
opinion, or inveterate conceit... that the Dignity of the human mind is
lowered by long and frequent intercourse with experiments and particulars,
which are the objects of sense and confined to matter; especially since such
matters generally require labour in investigation, are mean subjects for
meditation, harsh in discourse, unproductive in practice, infinite in number,
and delicate in their subtlety.7'
And of course Bacon would have recognized Song's Tiangong kaiwu as a
precious contribution to the 'history of trades' he planned as a principal
component of his great project for the advancement of learning.
Now we must acknowledge at once that Song's application of Zhang Zai's
natural philosophy to technical processes was of no help at all to those whose
job it was to make those processes work efficiently. This is not a criticism of the
kind of cosmological scheme he was using: the seventeenth-century atomists in
Europe were equally useless to the practical men of their time and place. Indeed,
in some areas such as the question of how the internal structure of metals relates
to their physical properties it was not until well into the nineteenth century that
69 Mengqi bitan, ch. 20. par. 347, pp. 201-2. See the discussion of this and related passages in
Sivin (1986: 164).
70 Wu li xiao shi, ch. 1., pp. 10 ff. and ch. 7.
71 Novum Organon, Book the First, xxxiii.
VOL. LIII. PART 2
22
316
CHRISTOPHER CULLEN
the atomic view of matter was able to cast any light on what was
important industrial processes.72 Just as initially in Europe, the flow
in Song's confrontation of natural philosophy and the practical ar

the practical arts to natural philosophy. And we need not look ver
the ways in which Song's physical thought is heavily influenced by t
concerns. The oil-pressers, ink-makers, dyers, smelters and brewers w
he had studied were daily forced to think in terms of what ingre
needed to produce a desired outcome, in what precise quantities they
mixed to give a specified yield, and how long the manufacturing proc
take under given circumstances. Song was led to look at the bas
processes of the universe in a similar spirit. He found himself asking s
unusual question for a Chinese natural philosopher. What are thin

In what proportions are their ingredients mingled? How do the i
which compose something account for its properties? Under the
these concerns, as we have seen, the traditional concepts of qi and of t

underwent considerable modification. Qi became involved with the idea of
empirical quantitative measurement, and in the case of the wu xing, the

traditional notions of process-phases became transformed into something much
more like a pre-modern European element theory, at least in the sense that the
wu xing began to look like ingredients of the physical world in a way that they
had not generally done before.73 It would obviously be foolish to suggest that it
would have been commendable or useful for Song to have transformed himself
into an Aristotelian at the moment when Europeans were on the verge of
rejecting such notions. I claim no more than that the experience of trying to do
natural philosophy in a technical context opened up a line of development for
Song that was highly novel in a Chinese context and pregnant with the
possibility of growth.
The essays by Song that I have discussed here are short, apparently
unrevised and perhaps written in some haste. Quite what Song might have
produced if he had had the leisure and encouragement to take his ideas further
must remain at the level of speculation. But if the use of wu xing theory and the
concept of qi could produce such interesting results after such a relatively brief
confrontation with the technical arts that flourished in Chinese soil, it seems
clear that we should be cautious in putting ancient and medieval Chinese
physical theory on any blacklist of factors inhibiting the growth of Chinese
science. More general lessons for the history of science and technology may be
illustrated by Song's experience. His achievement as an isolated individual is a
striking example of the stimulus given to natural philosophy when it involves
itself with the concerns of practical men. The failure of his work to have any real
impact on the intellectual life of his contemporaries underlines the crucial role
of a framework of social or institutional support, however informal, in
72 See Smith (1965: xvii).
73 The view put forward here is that these changes in emphasis were a consequence of Song's
confrontation of traditional natural philosophy with his deep technical understanding. An

alternative (or at least supplementary) possibility is of course that Song Yingxing had met with a
systematic exposition of the Aristotelian elements from Jesuit sources, and that this had led him to
an interpretation of the Chinese scheme more in terms of substance than function: see note 61
above. This is certainly not an impossibility given the circumstances of the time and the pattern of
Song's own life and concerns, particularly his repeated journeys to the capital between 1615 and
1631. The Jesuits had been in residence in Beijing since 1601, and Matteo Ricci had completed a
book which included a section on element theory, Qian kun tiyi in 1608: see nn. 25 and 65, and the
discussion in Sivin (1987: 73-4). We know from Song's own writing that he was aware that
'Westerners think the earth is a round ball suspended in the void' (Tan tian, 101), a notion he
rejected as ludicrous, so he certainly had some contact with Jesuit teaching. A detailed comparison
of the Jesuit writings with Song's work would be needed to throw further light on this problem.
SONG YINGXING * , ON QI A AND THE WU XING ? IT
317
converting the insights of isolated individuals into new perceptions of reality on
a public level. Song himself complains bitterly that he did not have anybody
with whom to discuss his ideas.74 Both these lessons have already been drawn
from the experience of Western Europe; the case of Song Yingxing suggests that
they may embody basic requirements for the development of 'true natural
knowledge' in any culture.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Routledge & Sons, 1899.
Boyle, the Hon. Robert. The Sceptical Chymist. First published 1661. Everyman's Library edition,
London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1911. Repr. 1937.
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theory of original qi in ancient China). Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1986.
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Henderson, John B. The development and decline of Chinese cosmology. New York; Columbia
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English by various hands]. Taibei: China Academy, 1980.
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318 SONG YINGXING * ) * ON QI * AND THE WU XVIG i Tf

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The Science/Technology Interface in Seventeenth-Century China: Song Yingxing

on "qi" and the "wu xing"

THE SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY INTERFACE IN

SONG YINGXING X IM ON QI A AND THE

technology in seventeenth-century China.' I hope that its unusual perspective

and technology are not seen as problematical. In the popular stereotype,

daily concerns as a result of the systematic thought of natural philosophers.

science of thermodynamics, but was itself a major stimulus to theoretical

So far as China is concerned historical investigations along these lines have

of all Chinese science and technology.'3 He suggested that a distinctive

characteristic of the Taoists was a high valuation of the insights gained by

remaining errors and omissions.

teristics, he felt, it was no surprise that many of the achievements

science and technology could be shown to have Taoist connexio

artisan.'4 Needham has continued to hold to his conviction

subsequent decades of research in the history of Chinese science tech

medicine, although he has not taken the topic of Taoist connex

succeeded in moving from the level of the general to the particular.

not seem to have been more interested in knowledge-generating

Needham's hypothesis will not go away. It is generally acknowled

artisans and technologists were markedly in advance of those of

tradition of pre-modern Chinese scientific thought? This article is a

The prime representative of official science was astronomy. The cosmic

calendar. The complexity of the task undertaken increased as the centuries

all predictable celestial phenomena. Much success was achieved, although

One famous example of a prominent statesman who was also a skilled

astronomer was Xu Guangqi t )J ' (1562-1633: baptised as Paul on his

conversion to Christianity). From his commanding position in the imperial

4S.C.C., ii, 131.

SONG YINGXING X ) : ON QI A AND THE WU XING Ei T

bureaucracy Xu sponsored the introduction to China of the new astronomical

Chinese.7 Xu's astronomical and mathematical attainments were of a very high

resistance to Manchu incursions reminds us that a member of the imperial civil

important sources for the historian of technology.9

means off-limits to the orthodox. The resultant output of officially sponsored

literature is considerable. In such areas of proto- or pseudo-science as alchemy

or the techniques of siting buildings and tombs (often referred to in English as

practical aspects of such topics as mining, metal-working, paper-making,

to the economic functioning of the Chinese state. The broad category of

from books or to write books for the instruction of others.

Against this background, it is of great interest that a contemporary of Xu

its method of coverage. Xu Guangqi's great agricultural compendium was for

previous treatises on the subject, and in this respect he followed in a long

out of the limited information in his own mind.

SONG YINGXING *Z , g& ON QI A AND THE WU XING i 4T

Unlike Xu Guangqi, Song Yingxing never achieved a position of any power

e f county in Jiangxi il N province. The preface of Tiangong kaiwu is dated

month (August 20-October 17) he completed a discussion of various astronomi-

52-63: Xing qi hua 7 X {f (The interconversion of solid objects and qi)

86-90: Shui chen 7k B? (Water and the atmosphere)

93-95: Han re IS f (On cold and heat)

which Song Yingxing uses the ancient concepts of qi i, and of t

concepts critically, but the fact that he applies them boldly to

discussion that follows.

3. Song Yingxing's cosmology

'Everything between heaven and earth is either qi A or xing #J ... the

ignorant of although they take part in it every day.' 15

simple and mechanical/material coexist with highly abstract ones apparently

important study by John Henderson (1984), particularly chs. v-ix.

I5 Lun qi, 52.

17 Lun qi, 80.

SONG YINGXING * JE I ON QI A AND THE WU XING Ti 4T

The cosmology described in Song Yingxing's essay is rather more complex