Intellectual Networks and Exchange of Useful and Reliable Knowledge: Case Studies
of Early Modern Japan and Europe
Authors: Mina Ishizu (m.ishizu@lse.ac.uk) and Simona Valeriani
(s.valeriani@lse.ac.uk)
Affiliation: London School of Economics and Political Science1
Abstract
This article is concerned with the diffusion of Useful and Reliable
Knowledge between Western Europe and Japan in the early modern
period. Its primary focus is placed on the intellectual network of the
scientific-minded peoples in the East and the West who praised what
Harold Cook described as the ‘powers and pleasures of accurate
descriptive knowledge’. Under Japan’s ‘semi isolation’ policy, for two and a
half centuries since the beginning of the sixteenth century, Japan’s
importing and adaptation of foreign knowledge was confined to that from
Holland and from China (either originated there or imported from Europe).
Through the Dutch East India Company’s factory in Batavia, and its
monopoly over trade with Japan, Dutch books and scientific minded
individuals entered into Japan.
Focusing particularly on the study of botany, the article argues that the
diffusion of European scientific ideas was made possible by an indigenous
Japanese intellectual movement parallel to developments made in Europe.
Practical science characterised the seventeenth century European, and
more specifically Dutch, intellectual tradition. A new intellectual
aspiration for observation and description of the natural world to address
economic problems arose under the Tokugawa regime (1603-1868), and
paved the way for the diffusion of Western knowledge.
We make speculations about possible analogies and contrasts in the way
Japan and Europe re-acted and put to fruition respectively the inheritance
from ancient China and the classic Greco roman world.
Both authors are members of the URKEW Project (Useful and reliable Knowledge in the
East and the West from the accession of the Ming to the Industrial Revolution) funded by
the European Research Council and located at the Economic History Department, LSE.
This article is the first result of an ongoing collaborative project adopting the comparative
method.
1
Keywords:
Dutch Learning, Useful Knowledge, Intellectual Exchange, Botany
Comparative approach.
Introduction
In his book Matters of Exchange, Harold Cook writes: ‘The powers and
pleasures of accurate descriptive knowledge were not only praised by the
chief advocates of the new philosophy’ but were ‘also noted as the chief
concern of European science by others such as Japanese scholars who
interested themselves in such matters’.2 Cook illustrates this point with
reference to the intellectual exchanges between the VOC surgeon William
ten Rhijne and the Japanese scholars in the second half of the eighteenth
century. Both parties were scientifically minded and ten Rhijne enhanced
his interests in Japanese botany with the aid of the local scholars while
his accurate and practical anatomical knowledge fascinated the Japanese.
Japan’s cultural encounter with Europe through the Dutch East India
Company (VOC)3 is well known to historians. Between the expulsion of the
Portuguese and Spanish missionaries in 1639 and until the establishment
of trading relations with the United States in 1858, the Tokugawa regime
(1603-1868) effectively controlled its nationals’ direct or indirect contacts
with foreigners. The threat of Christianity became real for the newly
established Tokugawa regime when the revolt arose from peasants
converted to Christianity in the 1620s in the Kyushu region. It was put
down severely by the government and Christianity was banned.4 All the
foreign nationals were expelled except for the Chinese merchants and the
Cook, H. Matters of Exchange (Yale University Press 2007), 410.
The Dutch East India Company: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC)
4 J. Elisonas, ‘Christianity and the daimyo’ in: Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 4, ed.
J.W. Hall, J.L. McClain (Cambridge, 1991), Chapter 7. esp. 368-72.
2
3
Dutch who showed little interest in evangelical initiatives. No Japanese
nationals were permitted to travel overseas and imports of foreign books
with reference to Christianity were under strict censorship of the
Tokugawa government.
The Dutch Republic as a leading political power played a major role in
European cultural life and stood at the centre of a worldwide network for
commerce and the exchange of information. As Karel Davids puts it, “from
the end of the sixteenth century onwards, the Dutch Republic became a
hub in a global network of knowledge. A knowledge hub as a nodal point
or crossroads in regular, long- and short-distance flows of knowledge
where knowledge is being supplied, assessed, exchanged stored or
disseminated”.5 In contacts between Japan and Europe the exchange of
empirical and practical knowledge became significant and the role played
by VOC officials became increasingly prominent and their attitudes and
education also influenced the kind of knowledge that was exchanged. Carl
Thumberg, who arrived in Nagasaki from Sweden in 1775, had studied
under Linnaeus at Upsala University. During his stay in Edo (today’s
Tokyo) as well as in Nagasaki, he was repeatedly visited by Japanese
scholars who were interested in European books and knowledge. This
exchange, as in many other cases, is likely to have been mutual. While the
Japanese had strong interests in Western science and particularly
medicine, Thumberg was surely eager to acquire information about local
flora. On his return to Sweden, he succeeded his master as professor in
botany.6
Karel Davids, ‘Dutch and Spanish global networks of knowledge in the early modern
period: structures, changes and limitations’, paper presented at the International
Workshop Iberian-Netherlandish Knowledge Exchanges, Barcelona, Institu d’Estudis
Catalanas.
27-28
November
2009,
2
available
at
http://www.lowcountries.nl/papers/2009_1_davids.pdf, accessed in March 2011.
5
T. Screech, Japan extolled and decried: Carl Peter Thunberg and the Shogun’s realm
1775-1796 (London, 2005), 79.
6
In global intellectual history, Nagasaki in Tokugawa period can be
represented as a repository that stored the European knowledge which
prepared Japan for a rapid assimilation of western technologies and for
industrialisation.
Nagasaki’s
intellectual
encounter
needs
to
be
historicised by asking: was the interest shown by the Japanese incidental?
And why was Dutch knowledge particularly acceptable to the Japanese
regime?
Historians have assumed that the tendency towards the investigation of nature based
on detailed observation and practical application was “a quite uniquely European
coloured mode of investigation.” 7 Indeed, Europe seemed to develop this mode of
investigation into the natural world as early as in the late fifteenth century. As this
article will show, however, an interest in the natural world had developed in Japan at
least by the late seventeenth century. It had developed methods of investigation based
on detailed descriptions of observed phenomena and objects and had created diffusion
patterns clearly motivated by the practical application of such knowledge. Importantly,
the development of such (indigenous) practical and utilitarian orientation in the mode
of investigation in Japan played an important role in the intellectual interactions with
the Europeans (Dutch). The Japanese only took notice of the European scientific and
technological development when it had developed its own research tradition into the
observation and practical application of such knowledge. Between the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, both in Japan and Europe we see developments in attitudes
towards the scientific and philosophical understanding of nature that are comparable.
Our paper will elaborate upon comparisons by focusing on the intellectual and social
origins in both regions. In the Japanese case we show that the aspiration for practical
and utilitarian science emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In
Western Europe the shift from the late medieval Scholastic tradition towards more
practically orientated, ‘modern’ science was an accelerating phenomenon and Holland
and England were at the forefront of the new developments.
7
F. Cohen, ‘The onset of the scientific revolution’ in: ed. PR. Anstey, A. Schuster, The
Science of Nature in the Seventeenth Century, (Dordrecht, 2005), 9.
1.
The Recognition and Increased Importance of Useful and Practical
Knowledge: Japan
a. Useful and Practical Knowledge in Japan
An orientation towards practical and useful knowledge was clearly evident
throughout the Tokugawa period. The meaning of such terms as concrete
and practical learning such as nichiyo(日用), jitsuyo(実用) and jitsugaku(実
学 ) in the Tokugawa discourse were debated among historians of
Tokugawa intellectual history. 8 Of course the discourses of Practical
Learning need to be carefully assessed by more empirical studies within
the wider interdisciplinary perspective of economic and social history.
Clearly, practical and useful knowledge were significant in the circulation
of knowledge among shoguns and fief lords to village farmers, useful and
reliable knowledge of production. By the end of the first quarter of the
eighteenth century, Japan was arguably the most urbanised country in
the world. 9 The location of the Tokugawa government in Edo (today’s
Tokyo) was the largest city in the world with a population of over one
million. Osaka, the mercantile capital of western Japan, had a population
of nearly half a million. Kyoto, with a population of about a third of Edo,
was the cultural and imperial centre. These Great Three Cities were
linked via the commercial networks. Five Highways and coastal
navigation routes were integrated port towns and provincial cities in the
national commercial and informational networks.
The “Three Great Cities”, and the official foreign trading port of Nagasaki
were under the direct administration of the shogunate in Edo. The
Tokugawa government controlled roughly one-third of the land while the
There are some English sources available on this matter, see De Bray’s introduction of
the seminal works by R. Minamoto in Principle and practicality: essays in Neo
Confucianism and practical learning, ed. W. T. De Bary, I. Bloom, (New York, 1979).
9 N. Nakai and J. L. McClain, ‘Commercial change and urban growth in early modern
Japan’ in: Cambridge History of Japan, ed. J. W. Hall, Volume 4, (Cambridge, 2008), 519.
8
rest of the country was divided into some two hundred fiefs with semi
autonomy under fief lords called Daimyo in trading, military and economic
policies.10 In this multiple state system, travel promoted the accumulation
of useful and reliable knowledge particularly for agricultural production.
Thus the Genroku era (1688-1703) witnessed significant increases both in
agricultural and industrial production and the arable margin was
extended significantly by irrigation. Productivity increased through more
intensive application of fertiliser and human labour. The rise of
commercial economy promoted the institutionalisation of artisanal skills.
Agronomists often under the patronage of local Daimyo lords published
agricultural treatises, local almanacs and technical manuals. The
development of printing technology and relatively high literacy rates
popularised those texts which contained local knowledge of ‘how-to, whento, where-to’ related to agriculture, mining, textile production, and
hydrological engineering.
11
In the service of a fiefdom, the late
seventeenth century agronomist Miyazaki Yasusada ( 宮 崎 安 貞 ) spent
thirty years travelling to collect and record agricultural techniques across
western Japan and used this knowledge in experiments on his own land.
His enterprise culminated in the agronomical treatise called Nogyo Zensho
(農業全 書 ) in 1697. Unlike Chinese model agronomical treatise Nosei
Zensho Nose Zensho(農政全書) (1639), written by the Ming court scholar 徐
光啓 (based on bibliographical records), Miyazaki’s treatise drew upon his
observations and experiments which included techniques with Chinese
origins used by Japanese farmers. Miyazaki’s treatise was printed and
widely circulated across the country and promoted the accumulation of
knowledge on agricultural production.12
This example relates not simply to an increased production of compendia of
useful and practical knowledge in the period, it represents the transition from
Fief is a territory of domain and the Japanese term is han.
I. Sugimoto, Kinsei jitsugakushi no kenkyu: Edo jidai chuki niokeru kagaku gijutsu
gaku no seisei (Tokyo, 1967), 290-95.
12 H. Kandatsu, Kinse ichi nosyo no seiritsu, (Tokyo, 2005), Chapter 6.
10
11
Chinese originated practical manuals to the Japanese vernacular publications.
For example, when encyclopaedias came from China in the medieval period,
Japanese versions were published following the Chinese model. 13 These
volumes were primarily hand-copied for the personal libraries of court
aristocrats and used mainly for reference in reading Chinese poetries and
Confucian texts. There were ten collections of such reference works
appeared between the late tenth and the sixteenth centuries but seldom
contained information relevant for material production. In contrast, the
early and mid Tokugawa period (1610-1739) saw the publication of some
fifteen printed collections of encyclopaedias and compendia of herbal and
geographical data. 14 Advanced printing techniques, the expansion of a
reading public and basic schooling were behind this movement, but of
foremost importance was the desire to make knowledge accessible.15
Of particular interest is Yamato Honzo (大和本草) (1708) by the Confucian
scholar and herbalist Kaibara Ekken(貝原益軒) (1630 -1714) which was
designed for the utilitarian ordering and understanding of botany and the
properties of herbal medicines. It was in fact a Japanese version of a Ming
model Honzo Komoku (本草綱目) (1590) but Kaibara clearly intended to
make his version more relevant to production. For example, he paid much
attention to agricultural products as well as herbal and flora of China and
Japan. Learning from the Ming text, Kaibara modified the Ming
classification to a more suitable one for Japanese use. He made more
precise classification of the items according to their locations – mountains,
rivers, seas and land. 16 Kaibara served as Confucian official scholar to
The Far Eastern term of encyclopaedia is Ruisyo (類書).
Sugimoto, Kinsei Jitsugakushi, 341-45.
15 On literacy rate and reading public in Tokugawa period, see R. Rubinger, Popular
literacy in Early modern Japan (Hawaii, 2007) and Shikiji to dokusyo, ed. S. Matsuoka,
T. Yakuwa (Kyoto, 2010). For English sources on schooling in Tokugawa period, see R.
Dore, Education in Tokugawa Japan (Michigan, 1965), 252-70. Tokugawa schooling for
commoner pupils has been studied extensively by historians but teaching of practical
knowledge, we are concerned, in these schools remains to be explored.
16 In the preface to Yamato Honzo, Kaibara stated a number of criticisms on the
classification of Honzo Komoku. One of his doubts was that the Ming text did not
distinguish seaweeds from acuatic plants.
13
14
local Daimyo in the Fukuoka fiefdom. He frequently travelled on official
duty to other fiefs. He held a position among the cultural and intellectual
circle of Kyoto scholars. With useful connections to Kyoto publishers who
published collections of “Ekken books” drawn from Kaibara’s practical
knowledge and observation.17
Furthermore Kaibara wrote most of his books in simplified Japanese
letters – as opposed to philological Chinese contained in many texts
circulating in Tokugawa Japan. He ordered their contents alphabetically.
His clear intention was to diffuse useful knowledge, in an accessible form,
to Japan’s medical, technical and manufacturing professions.18
b. Encounter with and Diffusion of European Knowledge
The early Edo period, western texts translated into Chinese constituted
the main source of western scientific knowledge. From the 1630s, imports
of foreign publications remained under strict censorship of the Bakufu’s
Nagasaki Magistrate. Books flowed in. Orders were made almost every
year throughout the seventeenth century to Chinese merchants and the
VOC to supply with books on such practical subjects as medicine, history
and world geography. The eminent Neo Confucian scholar Arai Hakuseki
(新井白石 1657-1725) who acted as a consultant to the fifth shogun studied
the Chinese translations of European texts to acquire knowledge about
world geography.19
Before the 1730s, most Dutch books ended up unread into the court library.
Only occasional references by curious shoguns and their court members
were recorded. Books particularly favoured for the practical information
they contained included herbal remedies and zoological texts such as
17
F. Yokota, ‘Ekken bon no dokusha‘ in: T. Yokota ed. Kaibara Ekken: Taihe waraku no
bunmei gaku, (Tokyo, 2007), chapter 11.
18
The first alphabetically ordered European Encyclopaedia was the English Lexicon Technicum
(Harris in 1704).
19 It is known that Arai studied the Chinese texts of Matteo Ricci’s world geography.
Dodonaeus’ Cruijdeboeck (1554)20 (presented to the shogun in 1618) and
Jonston’s zoological treatise 21 (presented in 1663). Shoguns and daimyo
lords sometimes requested books on medicine and botany “with many
illustrations” and “preferably in Portuguese”.22 The supply of books came
from Amsterdam, the most active book trading centre in Europe, via the
Company’s Factory in Batavia. Imports of foreign books increased after
the relaxation of the censorship in 1726, when the eighth shogun
Tokugawa Yoshimune (徳川吉宗 1684-1751) ordered over three hundred
Chinese and Dutch texts on western science and practical subjects. While
Chinese texts remained the main source of Western knowledge, the study
of Dutch language was encouraged. Yoshimune ordered the herbal
scientist Aoki Konyo (青木昆陽 1698 -1764) to learn Dutch language to
study Dutch texts.
Japan’s encounter with Western knowledge was also established through
direct contact with men in the service of the VOC with both practical and
academic training acquired at Dutch educational institutions. Initially the
VOC had employed mere ‘barber surgeons’, medical doctors with
ambitions to achieve quick fortunes from smuggling in East Asian trade.
Later
the
company
selected
young
physicians
with
university
qualifications, chosen thorough interviews and on the basis of references
who turned out to be highly appreciated by their Japanese interlocutors.
The Company even received an official request to bring to Japan persons
who would have more grounded understandings of medical matters and
not mere practitioners.23
R.Dodonaeus, Cruijdeboeck (Leiden, 1554).
J. Jonston, Beschryving van de Natuur der Viervoetige Dieren (Amsterdam, 1660)
22 W. Boot, ‘The transfer of learning: the impact of Chinese and Dutch books in Tokugawa
Japan’ in : Canton and Nagasaki compared 1730-1830: Chinese, Japanese relations,
transactions, ed. E. Groenendijk, C. Vallé, L. Blussé (Leidenm 2009), 51.
23 Cook, Matters, 275,
20
21
The publication of practical compendia and technical manuals can,
however, be connected to an array of governmental initiatives put into
place as a reaction to large trade deficits that Tokugawa Japan
experienced in relation to its trades with China and Korea. The increased
urban consumption of goods such as silk and medicinal herbs imported
from China and Korea had led to a drain of silver from Japan. The Bakufu
then shifted economic policy in a mercantilist direction in order to boost
national production of raw silk, medicinal drugs and sugar to deal with
these deficit. 24 One initiative was the establishment of the Koishikawa
pharmaceutical research institute in Edo. Herbalists were sent across the
country to collect unknown plants and send them back to the institute.25
The herbalists involved in this project were, in fact, well acquainted with
traditional Chinese herbal knowledge and botany as well as some
European herbal knowledge. The plants and minerals they collected from
across the country were tested and identified against Yamato Hozou, its
Chinese original Honzo Komoku and other Chinese herbal texts. At the
same time the shogun Yoshimune himself a keen herbalist, was eager to
acquire the Western knowledge. Under him, the herbalists Aoki and his
colleague Noro Genjo ( 野 呂 元 丈 1694-1761) attempted to translate
Cruijdeboeck presented to an earlier shogun in 1618 by the VOC and
stored in the court library. The accurate reproduction of plants by
Dodonaeus through numerous illustrations caught Yoshimue’s attention.
By mid eighteenth century, the usefulness of European science became
more widely recognised among Tokugawa elites.
For
example, the
distinguished government councillor Matsudaira Sadanobu ( 松 平 定 信
1759-1829), wrote: “In the barbarian countries they know much about
principle: especially in astronomy and geography and armament, or
For Tokugawa mercantilism, see T. Fujita, Kokueki shiso no keifu to tenkai , (Osaka,
1998) ; Economic Thought in Early Modern Japan, ed. B. Gramlich-Oka, G. Smits (Leiden,
2010).
25 K. Kasaya, ‘The Tokugawa Bakufu’s policies for the national production of medicines
and Dodonaeus’ Cruijdeboeck’ in: Dodonaeus in Japan: translation and the scientific
mind in the Tokugawa period, ed. W.F. Vande Walle, K. Kasaya, (Leuvenm 2001), 180-90.
24
internal and external cures there is much one can profit from”. 26 The
attitude that Matsudaira held towards Western scientific knowledge
became very important for its diffusion in Japan. Between the last quarter
of the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth century,
he acted as the Bakufu’s Prime Councillor and commissioned the
commoner Rangaku scholars to diffuse the institutionalise the western
knowledge they had acquired. Thus two herbalists and the Nagasaki
translators embarked on the translation of Cruijdeboeck. Yoshio Kogyu (吉
雄耕牛 1724-1800), from the family of Nagasaki translators, attempted to
identify European species with their Japanese counterparts. Yoshio died
but the species identification was completed by the Kyoto herbalist Ono
Ranzan (小野蘭山 1729-1810) who was working independently.27 Another
of
Matsuidaira’s initiatives was to commission a gun smith Kunitomo
Ikkansai (国友一貫斎 1778-1840). In the first decade of the nineteenth
century, Kunitomo, (originally from Nagahama domain), found himself
among the Edo circle of scientifically minded intellectuals and their
patrons and given the opportunity to study, adapt and refine European
instruments such as pumps guns and telescopes operating as a proto
scientist. Kunitomo compiled and published his knowledge on air pressure
gun making.28 The book included his experiments with air pressure, which
were applied by many smiths making domestic mechanical items such as
oil pressure lamps by the first quarter of the nineteenth century.29
2. Recognition and Increased Importance of Useful and Practical
Knowledge: Europe
Boot, ‘Transfer of learning’, 51.
K. Matsuda, ‘Ono Ranzan kyozo Weinmann “Kafu” mosyazu nit suite’ in: Ono Ranzan
ed. Ono Ranzan Botsugo nihyakunen kinen shi hensyu iinkai (Kyoto 2010), 39-40.
28 K. Ota ‘Kunitomo Ikkansai to Edo jidai no kagaku gijutsu’ in: Kinsei Nihon ni okeru
kagaku gijutu no genryu, ed. Monbu kagaku sho Tokutei ryoiki kenkyu ‘Edo no mono
zukuri’ Dai 3 kai Kokusai Symposium jikko iinkai, (2003), 63 - 65..
29 K. Hirose, ‘Kunitomo Ikkansai ga tsukutta Gyokuto to Toukagu no rekishi’ in: Kagaku
gijutsu, 89-91.
26
27
a. Studying Nature for a Purpose
Before the end of the 17th century the Japanese were engaged in a new
kind of scholarly enquiry into the natural world and produced numerous
encyclopaedic texts that responded to practical economic needs. This
phenomenon occurred at roughly the same time in Europe. 30 Dodoneus’
work, for example, had probably been chosen as a present for the Shogun
because of the great success it had enjoyed in the Netherlands, where it
was produced, as well as all over Europe, it was translated into French in
1557, into English in 1578 and into Latin in 1583. Success originated not
merely from the book’s intellectual and scientific contributions but also
from its immediate agronomic and medical uses. In Europe and Japan
economic demands fostered the publication of botanical knowledge. Before
Dodoneus finished his famous Cruijdeboeck, he published part of it in the
book De frugum historia.31 This was to meet demands made by many of
his Belgian and foreign friends interested in cereals and legumes. He
described many lesser-known species of grain and a number of different
kinds of beans and peas for human and animal consumption.32 His effort
in this direction, together with the studies of many other botanists, was to
build up the basis for the advances in agronomy that came on stream in
the 18th century. The interest shown by his contemporaries is an
indication of the process of improving agricultural output through the
selection of better varieties of seeds, new crop rotations including for the
cultivation of plants for animal consumption that also enriched the soil.
In Japan and Europe we therefore see a development of applied knowledge
in the field of botany, driven by intellectual curiosity allied with economic
preoccupations. In Europe this was a movement brought forward mainly
We will here concentrate only on the field of botany, which is the case study at the
centre of the present paper, a discussion of technical and scientific manuals deserves
separate consideration.
31 R. Dodonaeus, De frugum historia, (Antwerp, 1552).
32 M. Ambrosoli, ‘Botanical Practice and Agricultural Demands in Early Modern Europe:
the Contribution of Rembertus Dodonaeus’, in: Dodonaeus in Japan, ed. W. F. Vande
Walle (Leuven, 2001), 59-76; for a treatment of the spread of new agricultural practice in
this period and its links with botany see Mauro Ambrosoli, The wild and the sown
(Cambridge, 1997).
30
by individual botanists while in Japan the effort became more
‘institutionalised’ under the patronage of the Shogun and the Daimyos.
b. New ways of ordering knowledge
Systems developed for the ordering of knowledge in encyclopaedic volumes
in which we also see similarities and differences between the Japanese
and European cases. Between the 16th and the 18th centuries in Europe
there was an extensive debate about plant taxonomy that culminated in
the establishment of the Linnaean system. From a utilitarian or an
alphabetical way of classifying plants Europe’s botanists moved towards a
taxonomy of plants according to species and “families”, a division that was
trying to reflect nature’s order. This was started by the German school in
the 16th century and was than developed further, Dodoneus’ work can be
read as one of the milestones on this route.33
This trend away from alphabetical ordering seems to be peculiar to botany
because if we look at general encyclopaedias compiled in Europe towards
the 17th century, we see that alphabetic ordering starts to take over. This
change -against the thematically ordering of the Middle Ages- was linked
to the use of the printing press and the different relationship people
developed with letters as ‘bricks’- building words and alphabets.
34
Encyclopaedias evolved from the idea of a “circle of knowledge”; a locus in
which man could organise all that was worth learning and therefore a sort
of curriculum. In this sense early works tried in their structure to reflect
the world and the way it had been conceived. By the 17th century –
however– scholars began to percive that the pieces of knowledge available
are too numerous and the attempt to organise them in an ‘organic’ system
is beyond reach. The alphabetical ordering seems, then, a feasible
alternative.
R. Visser, ‘Dodonaeus and the Herbal Tradition’, in: Dodonaeus in Japan, ed. W. F.
Vande Walle (Leuven, 2001), 54-58, exp. 51-52.
34 Tom Mc Arthur, Worlds of Reference, lexicography, learning and language from the
clay tablet to the computer, (Cambridge et alia, 1986), 77.
33
c. Tradition and Novelty: Towards More Integrated Systems of
Knowledge
We can consider similarities and differences with the developments in
Japanese botany. Specifically a comparison can be drawn with the move
“away” from the Chinese originals and the use of Chinese writing. In
Europe the new developments came about as a consequence of the fact
that scholars (who until the 15th century had been using reference texts
from antiquity for their studies), realised that the plants described in
those books were not necessarily co-extensive with or identical to the ones
people saw around them. This stimulated a trend towards direct
observation of the natural world that harmonised well with general
developments in natural philosophy from the late 16th and early 17th
centuries. Natural philosophers allied and consolidated their observation
with the retrieval of local knowledge through consultations with peasants
and absorbed the latter. The choice of the vernacular emanated from
several circumstances. Knowledge displayed in the books was local and
compiled in primis for a local readership (thus we find many small format
compendia of local flora published in the second half of the 16 th century).35
Secondly, it has been argued that it often reflects a religious-political
agenda, whereby Protestant scholars pushed for the use of the vernacular
as opposed to Latin.36 It needs however to be noticed that in general the
relationship between the use of Latin and the use of the Vernaculars was
a complex one. The former was in fact at the time the international
language, used by scholars –both protestant and catholic– to reach wider
audiences. But this tendency to use vernacular languages in scientific
writings is observable in many areas and is not necessarily connected to
protestantism. If we take, for example, Italy, the stronghold of Catholicism,
we see that many original writings are composed in the vernacular
Ambrosoli, ‘Botanical Practice’, 64.
On the dissemination of new ideas through the use of the vernacular in protestant
countries as opposed to the persistence of Latin in catholic circles see U. Rublack,
Reformation Europe, (Cambridge, 2005).
35
36
(famously by Galileo) and that translations of classical texts into the
vernacular are a major preoccupation. Telling examples of the latter are
the editions by Daniele Barbaro of the classic text on architecture by
Vitruvius which is published in 1556 in Italian and is followed in 1567 by
a double edition in Italian and Latin. If we consider the scientific circle in
Urbino we see the famous Mechanicorum Liber by Guidobaldo del Monte
appearing in 1577 in Latin but being translated in 1581 –explicitly to
make it more easily available to a wider public– by Filippo Pigafetta. In
17th century Europe we also observe a wide discussion amongst scholars
(particularly among mathematicians) expressing doubts about the
advantages and perils of making knowledge available to a wider public
through the use of vernacular languages. For example Billingsley’s
translation of Euclid’s Geometry37, famously enriched by a ‘Mathematicall
Preface’ by John Dee (1527 – 1608) in which the necessity of enlarging the
reading public of scientific works by translating them into vernacular
languages is stressed. Billingsley also explicitly makes the link between
the availability of this knowledge in the vernacular and the development
of new, useful technical applications:
“Our Englishe tounge shall no lesse be enriched with good Authors, then
are other straunge tounges: as the Dutch, French, Italian, and Spanishe:
in which are red all good authors in a maner, found amongest the Grekes
or Latines. Which is the chiefest cause, that amongest them do florishe so
many cunning and skilfull men, in the inuentions of straunge and
wonderfull thinges, as in these our daies we see there do.” 38
H. Billingsley, ‘The Translator to the reader’, in: Euclide of
Megara, The Elements of Geometries of the most ancient
37
Philosopher Euclide of Megara. Faithfully (now first) translated into
the Englishe toung, by H. Billingsley, Citizen of London… With a
very fruitfull Præface made by M. I. Dee.., (London, 1570).
The twenty-fourth book of Alsted’s famous Encyclopaedia is concerned with education.
J. H. Alsted, Encyclopaedia Cursus Philosophici, (Herborn, 1630). For a discussion of
Alsted’s views on this see P. R. Cole, A Neglected Educator: F. H. Alsted, (Sydney, 1910).
38
This reflects a tendency towards opening up knowledge to a wider public
that becomes evident in Europe also in other contexts. One of the most
striking examples are educational theorists, who in this period are
pleading for a reform in many different European locations: from the
German Countries and England, to Central Europe, France and Holland
with writers such as Francis Bacon, Jon Amos Comenius, Johann Heinrich
Alsted, Samuel Hartlib39, John Milton40 and Renè Descartes41. John Amos
Comenius (1592 –1670, one of the most well known European pedagogists
of the time)42, famously advocated universal education (for the poor and
the rich, female and male).
Comenius’ project for reform exemplifies the European tendency in the
period towards a more empirical and practically oriented kind of
scholarship that culminated in the writings by authors such as Bacon and
Descartes. Comenius urged a broadening of the subjects being taught in
primary and higher education and he reflected upon the necessity to
confront students with the natural world, material objects and practical
problems. For secondary and higher education
“the pupils should learn four languages and acquire an encyclopaedic
knowledge of the … seven liberal arts. ... But our pupils must aim higher
than this, and in addition must be Physicists, who know the composition
of the earth, the force of the elements, the different species of animals, the
powers of plants and of minerals, and the structure of the human body,
and who, beside knowing these things, can apply them to the various uses
39
Hartlib published two studies on Comeniu’s theories on education: S. Hartlib,
Conatuum Comenianorum praeludia (Oxford, 1637) and S. Hartlib, Comenii pansophiae
prodromus et didactica dissertatio (London, 1639). He was a strong supporter of
educational reform in England and was instrumental to the coming of Comoenius to
England in 1641.
40 J. Milton, Of Education, (London, 1644).
41 See in particular the first chapter of René Descartes, Discours de la method (Leyden,
1637).
42 Comenius, a protestant Czech teacher, later became a bishop. Religious wars forced
him to live and work in many different countries such as Sweden, Poland, Transylvania,
The Holy Roman Empire, England, the Netherlands and Hungary.
of life. Under this rubric is thus comprised a part of medicine, of
agriculture, and of other mechanical arts.”43
Comenius devoted a whole chapter of his “Didactica magna” 44 to “The
method of the sciences, specifically”, in which he stresses the importance
of direct observation and of experiencing with the senses the materiality of
things.45
Although Comenius was very influential for educational theory and its
practice in Europe and beyond, his principles were not put into practice
during his life time. 46 Nevertheless it interesting to notice that the
recommendations to study the material world through observation, were
diffusing beyond the ranks of the most advanced natural scientists and
philosophers and started to percolate among a wider constituency.
Conclusion
Throughout this article, we have highlighted the comparable orientations
in the modes and diffusion patterns of practical and useful knowledge in
early modern Europe and Japan. Compilers of such knowledge in both
cultures were encouraged to develop the methods of accurate and detailed
description of natural objects and phenomena. They were motivated to
avail themselves of the knowledge in practical use by the people in many
strata of the society. The knowledge was indeed widely utilised in
commercial production as well as for people’s well-being maintenance, as
we have discussed in the example of botanical knowledge and its
J. A. Comenius, The Great didactic, translated into English and edited with
biographical, historical and critical introductions by M.W. Keatinge, (New York, 1967)
374-275. This work was written between 1627 1nd 1638 but was first published only in
1657.
44 Comenius, The Great didactic.
45 Comenius, The Great didactic, 183- 184.
46 He was particularly influential in his home country, in Sweden and Holland. It took
until the 19th century before the principle of universal education, for example, came into
operation.
43
commercial use. In the seventeenth century intellectual movements, both
in Europe and Japan, promoted a shift from a dependency on, what was
considered in each locality, the Classical tradition to independent modes of
enquiry into the natural world. Furthermore, the promotion of the use of
simplified language, more attuned with that used in everyday life, paved
the way to a wider exchange of and access to useful and practical
knowledge. In Japan, the mercantilist motivation of the Bakufu and
daimyo lords promoted the diffusion useful knowledge of agricultural
production. Economic motivation was behind the circulation of practical
knowledge in Europe as well. Access to useful and practical knowledge
was further promoted in Europe through attempts at reforms (sometimes
only much later enforced) of the educational system, which started to be
used by a larger proportion of citizens.
The success of intellectual exchange between the scientifically minded
men of Europe and Japan through Nagasaki occurred through objects,
conversations and books and was based on comparable scientific
reordering and orientations in both cultures. This is clear from the fact
that some European books which contained practical knowledge and were
descriptive in their form, did not receive official recognition before such
knowledge came to be more widely appreciated in late seventeenth
century.
We have also investigated the role played by the conduits or cultural and
social conditions or institutions in promoting this type of knowledge in
Europe and Japan. The role of publication media, education, and the
states have been discussed. Nevertheless the role played by institutions
in each culture remains to be studied in more detail, in a comparative
way. For example, the importance of urban cultural circles has been
increasingly recognised by social historians of Tokugawa period. 47 The
circle of scientifically minded intellectuals in which Kaibara Ekken and
47
Kunitomo Ikkansai developed their inquiry modes might be another
example of this. But we need to analyse carefully to what extent such
Japanese associational culture functioned in a similar manner with the
European one. Also to be investigated in more depth is the extent to which
these tendencies towards a direct study of nature to practical aims
involved other fields of knowledge and human activities outside the case
study of botany analysed here.
Acknowledgements:
The authors are indebted to the generous funding by the ERC, that made
the URKEW project and their collaboration possible. Furthermore they
would like to thank the participants to the URKEW seminar “The
Encounter of Learning Traditions: Japan and Europe in the 17 th century”
(May 12th 2010) where first ideas connected with this paper were
discussed, as well as the participants to the workshop “Intellectual
Networks and Exchanges”, and particularly Isabel DiVanna for their
feedback. For comments on earlier drafts of this paper and editorial work
a huge thank goes to Prof. P. O’Brien and Ms. L. Long.