Chapter 71 Chapter 71 "Thick Black" Shen Kuo

People with thick faces and dark hearts mostly exist among politicians who are princes and generals. There are very few such people among writers, artists, and scientists. A counterexample. Shen Kuo has a very important position in the history of science. His "Mengxi Bi Tan" was called "a milestone in the history of Chinese science and technology" and "a coordinate in the history of Chinese science" by the British science historian Joseph Needham. lackluster.Shen Kuo not only has a thick face, but also a dark heart, and has a particularly high level and deep attainments in these two aspects.

Speaking of the thick blackness of the great scientist Shen Kuo, the great writer Su Shi and the great politician Wang Anshi are two figures that cannot be avoided. In 1069 A.D., Song Shenzong Zhao Xu came to the throne, and soon after, Wang Anshi was appointed prime minister and began a large-scale reform movement.The Shen family and the Wang family are family friends, and the epitaph of Shen Kuo’s father was written by Wang Anshi himself. Therefore, Shen Kuo actively participated in the reform and was trusted and valued by Wang Anshi. . Su Shi had just returned to the capital after his father's funeral.On his way back to Beijing, he saw that the new law had caused damage to ordinary people, and thought that the new law was not convenient for the people, so he wrote a letter against Wang Anshi's reform.As a result, Su Shi, like his teachers and friends who were forced to leave Beijing before, could not stand up in the court controlled by the reformists, so he asked to be released and transferred to Hangzhou Tongju.

Two years later, Shen Kuo was ordered by Emperor Shenzong to inspect the work in the Liangzhe area where Su Shi was an official. Before leaving, Shenzong, who loved Su Shi's poems, specially asked Shen Kuo not to embarrass Su Shi's great poet when he arrived in Hangzhou. Although one of Shen Kuo and Su Shi is good at science and the other is a master of literature, they are both high-level intellectuals, and they used to be colleagues of the National Library, so they have always maintained relatively close contact with each other.After the two met, Shen Kuo greeted his buddy first, and then he wanted to appreciate Su Shi's recent poems.Su Shi has always been narcissistic about his own words and poems, so he happily wrote them and sent them to Shen Kuo, but he didn't expect that these poems would later become his incriminating evidence.

In 1079 A.D., Li Ding and others among the reformists deliberately distorted Su Shi's poems and made a big fuss in the name of satirizing the new law. Arrested and imprisoned, this is the famous "Wutai Poetry Case" in the history of literature. What Su Shi didn't expect was that his former good friend Shen Kuo also stood up to expose and criticize himself.Shen Kuo used the poems Su Shi gave him as so-called evidence and reported Su Shi to the central government, saying that Su Shi slandered the government and satirized the emperor in the poems. Fortunately, Song Shenzong was not a really confused emperor, and he was quite talented, and Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin set the national policy of "not killing scholar-bureaucrats" as early as the founding of the country, so Su Shi was in prison for 103 days. After being on the verge of being beheaded, he was lucky to escape the most terrible and heaviest catastrophe in his life.

If it is said that Shen Kuo does not miss the old love, and framing Su Shi is still a bit of a political dispute, then his attack on Wang Anshi can only prove that he is a ungrateful, ungrateful and repeated villain. As mentioned above, when Wang Anshi was promoted to prime minister and started the reform, Shen Kuo actively participated in it, supported the new law, and became one of the backbone figures in the reform school.However, a few years later, when Emperor Shenzong of the Song Dynasty dismissed Wang Anshi's position under the pressure of the empress dowager, Shen Kuo made a 180-degree turn and wrote a letter listing the disadvantages and harms of Chen Xinfa. Shen Kuo is a villain, don't get close to him."

After the "Wutai Poetry Case", Su Shi embarked on a farther and farther road to the outside world, that is, from Huangzhou to Hangzhou, then went to Huizhou to Danzhou, but Shen Kuo's official position became bigger and bigger, and even became a He became the chief official of the frontier who was in charge of the ruling party. In 1080 AD, in order to resist Xixia, the imperial court appointed Shen Kuo as the prefect of Yanzhou, and concurrently as the appeasement envoy of Fuyan Road Jinglue.Two years later, he was promoted to a direct bachelor of Longtu Pavilion. But when the moon is full, it loses, and when the water is full, it overflows. Shen Kuo soon ran into trouble.During the First Battle of Yongle City, he, Xu Xi and others in the middle of the war, did not listen to the advice of Li Shunju, the attendant, and built the city on the ground. As a result, Yongle City suffered a disastrous defeat, with the loss of more than 20,000 soldiers. , Li Shunju, etc. all sacrificed heroically.This battle was one of the biggest fiascos in the history of the Northern Song Dynasty, and ruined the good unification situation after the great victory in Pingxia City.

Although Shen Kuo was not the first offender in this matter, he was responsible for leadership after all. In addition, he was ineffective in rescue during the battle, so he was relegated to Junzhou regiment training deputy envoy and resettled in Suizhou. In 1088, Shen Kuo moved to Runzhou, managed the garden he had bought before, named it "Mengxi Garden", and lived in seclusion here. At this time, Su Shi happened to be an official in Hangzhou again, as the prefect of the prefecture and county, which was one level higher than the general judge, and he was not too far away from Runzhou where Shen Kuo was located.

Shen Kuo, who was at home at home, heard that Su Shi became the prefect of Hangzhou, so he couldn't bear the loneliness and poverty. It was the same as before, and he often went to Su Shi with the cheek to talk about the old days.It is said that every time the elderly Shen Kuo went to Su Shi's place, he was respectful and courteous, like a junior meeting an elder, so that Su Shi was annoyed by him but he couldn't lose his temper, so he had to let him go, helpless. Comrade Shen Kuo did this for the sake of being a man, it is really difficult for this great scientist.