Chapter 4 Quarter 4 stagnation period

After entering the Ming and Qing dynasties, astronomy began to stagnate.The Shoushi calendar in the Yuan Dynasty continued to be used for more than 270 years in the Ming Dynasty until the "Western New Method Calendar" compiled by European Jesuit missionaries was adopted in the early Qing Dynasty. Why didn't Chinese astronomy continue to develop?There are social reasons such as economics and policy, as well as astronomy itself.First of all, the astronomical instruments of the Yuan Dynasty had already reached the limit of naked eye measurement. Unless convex and concave lenses were added, the accuracy would not be improved, and the telescope technology was born in Europe.Secondly, ancient China was good at algebraic calculations. When solving the problem of bridging the positions of celestial bodies and calculated values, they only paid attention to appearances, and did not pay attention to geometric structures and theoretical basis.In contrast, ancient Greek astronomy focused on geometry.Since the 14th century, the scientific gap between China and Europe has become wider and wider, which cannot but be distressing.While it is painful to do this kind of reflection, it helps us think about today.

People usually call the most incomprehensible books "Books from Heaven", and the books about astronomy and calendar in ancient China are the real books from Heaven.From the next chapter onwards, we intend to use the most popular language to analyze the "Book of Heaven" to readers. If necessary, we will use the method of comparing and describing the basic common sense of modern astronomy with ancient astronomy, and omit some unimportant details and some complicated calculations. . As we all know, astronomical and calendar knowledge is inseparable from astronomical observations, of course observation instruments are required for observations, and the introduction of instruments cannot fail to mention the coordinate system of the instruments, so let's start with the coordinate system of the instruments.