IUHPST - International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology

2 symposia organized by the DHST-DLMPST scientific section IASCUD

International Association for Science and Cultural Diversity

on:

How can the description of visual and material practices contribute to a better understanding of scientific cultures?

1. Title of the Symposium 1:

How can the description of visual and material practices contribute to a better understanding of scientific cultures?—1: Mathematical cultures

2. Organizer

Karine CHEMLA

Academic title: Senior Researcher

Institution: SPHERE (CNRS-Université de Paris)

Address: Université de Paris / Laboratoire SPHERE, UMR 7219 / Bâtiment Condorcet, case 7093 / 5 rue Thomas Mann / 75205 Paris cedex 13 / France

Email: chemla(at)univ-paris-diderot(dot)fr

Karine Chemla, Senior Researcher, CNRS, in the laboratory SPHERE (CNRS & Université de Paris) and assessor in the Council of IASCUD, focuses, from a historical anthropology viewpoint, on the relationship between mathematics and the various cultures in the context of which it is practiced. Chemla published Les Neuf Chapitres (with Guo Shuchun, Dunod, 2004). She edited The History of Mathematical Proof in Ancient Traditions (Cambridge University Press, 2012); Texts, Textual acts and the History of Science (with J. Virbel, Springer, 2015); The Oxford Handbook of Generality in Mathematics and the Sciences (with R. Chorlay and D. Rabouin, Oxford University Press, 2016); Numerical Tables and Tabular Layouts in Chinese scholarly documents (Special issues of East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine, 43 (2016, March 2017) & 44 (2016, April 2017)); and Cultures without culturalism: The making of scientific knowledge (with Evelyn Fox Keller, Duke University Press, 2017). Website: http://www.sphere.univ-paris-diderot.fr/spip.php?article78

3. Abstract

The symposium aims at understanding how historians and philosophers might draw on visual and material resources used in given contexts, and on the ways actors used them (that is, the practices with them), to better grasp scientific cultures. Part 1 focuses on mathematical cultures. To address the issue at stake, we concentrate on diagrammatic resources and their uses in drafts (Haffner) and in published papers (Steensen, Secco). Haffner relies on engagements with diagrammatic resources, within a mathematical culture, to distinguish between different times of mathematical activity (research practices and writing practices). Secco examines the shaping of a new culture of proof, in relation to how actors shape a new articulation between diagrams and computing devices. Steensen analyzes how the introduction of new diagrammatic practices might characterize the mathematical work carried out in the context of an emerging culture, and might as well constitute one of the outcomes that other mathematical cultures adopt and recycle. By contrast, Wagner analyzes the impact of culture-specific diagrammatic practices on the shaping of concepts and rules in this context.

4. Keywords

Visual and material practices; mathematical cultures; mathematical work

5. Chairperson

Karine CHEMLA

Academic title: Senior Researcher

Institution: SPHERE (CNRS-Université de Paris)

Address: Université de Paris / Laboratoire SPHERE, UMR 7219 / Bâtiment Condorcet, case 7093 / 5 rue Thomas Mann / 75205 Paris cedex 13 / France

Email: chemla(at)univ-paris-diderot(dot)fr

Abstract 1 of symposium 1:

1. Title

The mathematical use of graphic position in C. F. Hindenburg’s combinatorial school

2. Author.

Full name: Anna Kiel Steensen

Academic title: doctoral student

Institution: Chair of History and Philosophy of Mathematical Sciences, ETH Zürich

Address: Storchengass 22 8805 Richterswil Schweiz

Email: anna(dot)steensen(at)gess(dot)ethz(dot)ch

Short biographical note Anna Kiel Steensen is a doctoral student at the Chair of History and Philosophy of Mathematical Sciences, ETH Zurich. Anna studied mathematics at the University of Copenhagen, specializing in algebraic topology. The focus of her doctoral research is the semiotics of mathematics.

3. Abstract

How can we use mathematical texts to describe practices that use diagrams and diagrammatic features of written language? What is the relation between how a reader interprets the diagram and how actors consider the mathematical status and function of the diagram? In this talk, I will address these questions in the case of German mathematician C. F. Hindenburg (1741 – 1808).

Specifically, I focus on how Hindenburg (e.g. [1795]) makes mathematically significant the relative positions of individual letters, numbers and line segments (not geometric position, but graphic position as a spatial feature of letters etc.). Following Knuth, who wrote that Hindenburg gave “combinatorial significance to the digits of numbers written in decimal notation” [2006: 69], I am interested in a specific semiotic process: how interpretations of diagrams arise from the interplay between text and diagrams, and how the interpretations relate to Hindenburg’s mathematical use of position.

To describe this process, I apply a structural-analytical approach, which does not presuppose that the interpretation of the diagram is given or universal, but constructs it in the analysis.

The heritage of Hindenburg’s combinatorial school is generally regarded as limited when it comes to defining new mathematical concepts and proving theorems. The present project opens the question of the school’s influence: its semiotic work may have contributed to opening up a new domain for mathematical consideration. The project thus indicates how a local visual-textual practice can influence wider mathematical practice.

References

Hindenburg, C. F. (1795): Ueber combinatorische Involutionen und Evolutionen, und ihren Einfluß auf die combinatorische Analytik. Archiv der reinen und angewandten Mathematik, hg. von C. F. Hindenburg, 1 (1), 13 – 46.

Knuth, D. E. (2006): Generating All Trees, History of Combinatorial Generation. The Art of Computer Programming. Vol. 4, fasc. 4. Addison-Wesley.

4. Keywords (3): diagrams, mathematical text, C. F. Hindenburg, mathematical practice

Abstract 2 of symposium 1:

1. Title

Writing practices in mathematical drafts: what can the materiality of writing before publication tell us about mathematics?

2. Author

Full name: Emmylou Haffner

Academic title: Dr.

Institution: Université Paris-Saclay (Université Paris-Sud)

Address: Laboratoire de mathématique d’Orsay, UMR 8628

UFR Sciences, Université Paris-Sud, Bât. 307

91400 Orsay

Email: emmylou(dot)haffner(at)universite-paris-saclay(dot)fr

Short biographical note: Emmylou Haffner is a post-doctoral researcher at the Laboratoire de Mathématiques d'Orsay of the Université Paris-Saclay.

3. Abstract

The varieties and singularities of ways of writing in mathematics are well-known by historians of mathematics, and are identified as rooted in certain scientific cultures. Many characterizations of mathematical writing focus on published papers alone, putting aside an important part of the mathematical work: the researches done before writing down a text for publication. Mathematical drafts provide us with material traces of the research process(es) and of the writing practices of the mathematician at work, and allow us to see that such writing practices can sometimes differ significantly from the ones witnessed in publications. Using examples from the archives of 19th century German mathematicians Richard Dedekind (1831-1916) [1] and Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866) [2], who shared a common mathematical culture and important methodological tenets, I will study some aspects of these writing practices such as drawings, tables, and spatial arrangements of the writings. I will pay particular attention to the extent to which these writing practices are specific to research writing, in contrast to writing practices observable in these two mathematicians published works, and whether they are shared by the two authors.

[1] Cod. Ms. R. Dedekind, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen.
[2] Cod. Ms. Riemann, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen.

4. Keywords (3): mathematics, 19th century, scientific drafts

Abstract 3 of symposium 1:

1. Title

Computer-assisted proofs as a new form of mathematical culture?

The case of the Four-Color Theorem

2. Author(s)

Full name: Gisele Dalva Secco

Academic title: Associate Professor

Institution: Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (Federal University of Santa Maria)/Brasil

Address:

16-18 Rue Suger

(635) - 75006 Paris/ France

Email: gisele(dot)secco(at)ufsm(dot)br

Short biographical note: I have a MA degree with a thesis in Philosophy of Logic (2006, on the philosophical aspect of the standard system for deontic logic) and wrote a Ph.D. dissertation in Philosophy of Mathematics (2013, on the philosophical debates about the first proof of the Four-Color Theorem). I am a member of the Graduate Program in Philosophy in the same Department I work as Associate Professor; a researcher of the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES); associate member of the Grupo Conesul de Filosofia das Ciências Formais (GCFCF); and member of the Association for the Philosophy of Mathematical Practice (APMP). I have been working for years with the preparation of philosophy teachers for High Schools, and my current research project is about the interplay between diagrams and computers in mathematical practices, a study case on the different versions of Four-Color Theorem proof.

3. Abstract

The Four-Color Theorem (4CT, delivered in [1] and [2]) is the first case of an original mathematical result obtained through the use of computing devices. The philosophical citizenship of this result was due to an argument presented in [3], in which the uses of computational machinery is intended as a clear-cut case for the introduction of experimentation in mathematical practices. Building on the methodological guidelines suggested in [4] I offer in my talk a description of [1] and [2], focusing on how computing devices interact with other important resources of the proof: diagrams. With this description, my aim is to propose the 4CT proof as the turning point in the relations between mathematics and computer science – the advent of new forms of cultures of proving [5] whose understanding is one of the tasks philosophers and scientists must urgently share and act upon [6, p.3].

[1] APPEL, K., & HAKEN, W. (1977). Every planar map is four colorable. Part I: Discharging. Illinois Journal of Mathematics, 21(3), 429–490.

[2] APPEL, K., HAKEN, W., & KOCH, J. (1977). Every planar map is four colorable. Part II: Reducibility. Illinois Journal of Mathematics, 21(3), 491–567.

[3] TYMOCZKO, T. (1979) The four-color problem and its philosophical significance. The Journal of Philosophy, 27(2), 57–83.

[4] CHEMLA, K. (2018) How has one, and How could have one approached the diversity of mathematical cultures? In: Mehrmann, V. & Skutella, M (eds.), Proceedings of the 7th European Congress of Mathematics 2016, Berlin, 18-22 July 2016: 1-61.

[5] MacKENZIE, D. (2005) Computing and the cultures of proving. Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences – The Nature of Mathematical Proof, v. 363, nº 1835: 2335 – 2350.

[6] PRIMIERO, G. (2020) On the foundations of computing. Oxford University Press.

4. Keywords: computer-assisted proofs, diagrams, mathematical culture.

Abstract 4 of symposium 1:

1. Title

Diagrammatic cognition and distinct mathematical cultures

2. Author:

Full name: Roy Wagner

Academic title: Prof. Dr.

Institution: Chair of History and Philosophy of Mathematical Sciences, ETH Zurich

Address: Roy Wagner, ETH Zürich, GESS dept., Clausiusstrasse 59, 8092 Zürich

Email: roy(dot)wagner(at)gess(dot)ethz(dot)ch

Short biographical note : Roy Wagner has PhDs in mathematics and in philosophy of science. He is professor for the History and Philosophy of Mathematical Sciences at ETH Zürich. His latest book, “Making and Breaking Mathematical Sense: histories and philosophies of mathematical sciences”, was published by Princeton University Press (2017).

3. Abstract

The cognitive and philosophical discussion on the use of diagrams in mathematics often focuses on the norms that would render diagram-based inferences correct in some universal sense. Mathematical use of diagrams, however, is not in fact committed to such norms. Diagrams may be used to organize information, simplify explanations and suggest new arguments and conjectures without committing to rigor (to the extent that the relevant mathematical culture is rigorous, rigor may rely on complementary forms of reasoning).

In order to understand how a “risky” diagram may be used to reason mathematically, we need a cognitive theory of mathematical (specifically, diagrammatic) reason that is not focused on rigorous mathematical inference. The work described in [1] and [2] provides a neuro-cognitive infrastructure for such a theory, while [3] provides a philosophical counterpart.

After briefly presenting this theoretical infrastructure, I’ll analyze some historical and modern examples for non-rigorous or “risky” diagrammatic reasoning. This kind of reasoning follows diagrammatic elements that might diverge from the represented mathematical situation into forming new objects or inferences. In turn, these objects and inferences may shape new mathematical concepts and rules that may be a culture-specific effect arising from the culture-specific diagrammatic representation.

4. Keywords: diagrams, mathematical cognition, non-rigorous reasoning

Symposium 2

1. Title of the Symposium 2 : How can the description of visual and material practices contribute to a better understanding of scientific cultures?—2: Scientific cultures

2. Organizer

Karine CHEMLA

Academic title: Senior Researcher

Institution: SPHERE (CNRS-Université de Paris)

Address: Université de Paris / Laboratoire SPHERE, UMR 7219 / Bâtiment Condorcet, case 7093 / 5 rue Thomas Mann / 75205 Paris cedex 13 / France

Email: chemla(at)univ-paris-diderot(dot)fr

3. Abstract

The symposium aims at understanding how historians and philosophers might draw on visual and material resources used in given contexts, and on the ways actors used them (that is, the practices with them), to better grasp scientific cultures. Part 2 focuses on scientific cultures. The first two presentations examine the relationship between, on the one hand, material devices and practices and, on the other scientific cultures. Drawing on philosopher of science Rein Vihalemm, Müürsepp analyzes how material practices in the context of experimental research, including the equipment they bring into play, shape scientific cultures. Focusing precisely on a specific apparatus used in the National Accelerator Laboratory, that is, supersonic gas jet targets, Vitaly Pronskikh unpacks how epistemic practices and then, an epistemic culture take shape in the Laboratory. The last two presentations examine how pictural representations and practices with them characterize scientific cultures, and how this has a bearing on the way in which knowledge circulates. Xi Gao deals with a case when a body of knowledge was introduced in China, without the material practices on which it drew in Europe, that is, autopsy. She thus describes how material and visual resources and practices are shaped to accommodate and teach the new knowledge, thereby leading to the shaping of a scientific culture. Han Qi examines how practices of representing scientific instruments brought from Europe in China sheds light on the culture receiving them.

4. Keywords

Visual and material practices; scientific cultures; circulation of knowledge

5. Chairperson

Karine CHEMLA

Academic title: Senior Researcher

Institution: SPHERE (CNRS-Université de Paris)

Address: Université de Paris / Laboratoire SPHERE, UMR 7219 / Bâtiment Condorcet, case 7093 / 5 rue Thomas Mann / 75205 Paris cedex 13 / France

Email: chemla(at)univ-paris-diderot(dot)fr

Karine Chemla, Senior Researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), in the laboratory SPHERE (CNRS & Université de Paris), focuses, from a historical anthropology viewpoint, on the relationship between mathematics and the various cultures in the context of which it is practiced. Chemla published Les Neuf Chapitres (with Guo Shuchun, Dunod, 2004). She edited The History of Mathematical Proof in Ancient Traditions (Cambridge University Press, 2012); Texts, Textual acts and the History of Science (with J. Virbel, Springer, 2015); The Oxford Handbook of Generality in Mathematics and the Sciences (with R. Chorlay and D. Rabouin, Oxford University Press, 2016); Numerical Tables and Tabular Layouts in Chinese scholarly documents (Special issues of East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine, 43 (2016, March 2017) & 44 (2016, April 2017)); and Cultures without culturalism: The making of scientific knowledge (with Evelyn Fox Keller, Duke University Press, 2017). Website: http://www.sphere.univ-paris-diderot.fr/spip.php?article78

Abstract 1 of symposium 2:

1. Title

Practical Realism and Material Practices

2. Author(s)

Full name: Peeter Müürsepp

Academic title: PhD, Associate Professor

Institution: Tallinn University of Technology

Address: Akadeemia tee 3

12618 Tallinn

Estonia

Email: peeter(dot)muursepp(at)taltech(dot)ee

Short biographical note: Peeter Müürsepp is Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Tallinn University of Technology and Professor of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. Dr Müürsepp was Visiting Professor at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University for the Spring term of 2019. He is corresponding member of the International Academy of the History of Science, Editor-in-Chief of Acta Baltica Historiae et Philosophiae Scientiarum and the Chairperson of the Estonian Association for the History and Philosophy of Science. Peeter Müürsepp has his first degree (MSc equivalent) in Mathematics and MPhil in Philosophy from the University of Tartu and PhD in Humanities (Philosophy) from the University of Vilnius.

3. Abstract

In the early 21^st century the Estonian philosopher of science and of chemistry Rein Vihalemm initiated a new approach to understanding science called practical realism. The main tenets of practical realism addressing practice are:

1. The fact that the world is not accessible independently of scientific theories – or, to be more precise, paradigms (practices) – does not mean that Putnam’s internal realism or “radical” social constructivism is acceptable.

2. Theoretical activity is only one aspect of science; scientific research is a practical activity and its main form is the scientific experiment that takes place in the real world, being a purposeful and critical theory-guided constructive, as well as manipulative, material interference with nature.

3. Science as practice is also a social-historical activity, which means, amongst other things, that scientific practice includes a normative aspect, too. That means, in turn, that the world, as it is accessible to science, is not free from norms either.

There are at least two major perspectives to be discussed here. From the philosophical perspective, Vihalemm takes up the practice-based approach to science understanding the Kuhnian paradigms as practices. The core of those practices is obviously the methods of experimental research, which represent guidelines for manipulative, material interference with nature. From the technological perspective, the extent and essence of this interference depends on the equipment that is available for it. Therefore, the level of technological development that, for the scientist, starts from its description plays a crucial role in scientific practice and influences scientific cultures. There is an obvious feedback from scientific practices to general material practices in society as well. Science may owe more to the steam engine than the steam engine owes to science but it is not one-way traffic.

4. Keywords: paradigm, practical realism, scientific cultures

Abstract 2 of symposium 2:

1. Title

Gas jet targets at NAL: from material practice to epistemic culture

2. Author

Full name: Vitaly Pronskikh

Academic title: Scientist

Institution: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, USA

Address: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Kirk Rd & Pine Str, Batavia, 60510 IL, USA

Email: vpronskikh(at)gmail(dot)com

Short biographical note: Vitaly Pronskikh is a scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia (Chicago Area), USA, since 2010. Before, he had worked at Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), Dubna, Russia. Vitaly holds PhD in Nuclear and Particle Physics (JINR, 2005), and PhD in Philosophy of Science (Moscow State University, 2017). His recent physics research is focused on physics beyond the Standard Model. His research interests in HPS include the social history of US-USSR collaborations in physics, the philosophy of experimentation, and social epistemology.

3. Abstract

A series of experiments with supersonic gas jet targets to advance the cutting edge of knowledge of proton interactions formed the basis of high-energy physics program at National Accelerator Laboratory (Batavia, USA) making use of its newly built Main Ring accelerator in 1970s [1]. The experiments can be characterized by their resource-centrism and their evolution as a series of epistemic practices with similar aims, techniques, and apparatus. In addition to its role as the central boundary object of the experiment chain that existed in 1970-1980, the gas jet target technology gave birth to two experimental trends at NAL: deploying gas jet technology in the domain of new particles, and using the concept of gas jets in NAL-manufactured targets. We will examine the creation and evolution of the cryogenic gas target technology, its proliferation within the Laboratory, and transformation. We trace how, in the course of material practice with gas jet targets, an epistemic culture [2] based on supersonic gas technology develops, and a related tradition arises in the Laboratory. We point out that long-term experiments reveal themselves as not only symmetrical networks [3] of actors of different natures, but also trading zones [4] between epistemological cultures to explain the resistance of such experiments to paradigmatic shifts in phenomenal theory.

References

[1] Pronskikh, Vitaly ‘E-36: The First Proto-Megascience Experiment at NAL’, Physics in Perspective, Vol. 18, No 4, pp. 357-378.

[2] Chemla, Karine Cultures without culturalism: the making of scientific knowledge, Duke University Press, 2017.

[3] Latour, Bruno Science in Action: how to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Harvard University Press, 1987.

[4] Trading Zones and Interactional Expertise: Creating New Kinds of Collaboration / Ed. by M.E. Gorman. – Cambridge, 2010.

4. Keywords: material practice; epistemic culture; high-energy physics

Abstract 3 of symposium 2:

1. Title

A Way of Understanding body knowledge: Illustrations and wax models for anatomical education during the Qing dynasty

2. Author(s)

Full name: Xi Gao

Academic title: Professor of History

Institution: Department of History, Fudan University, China

Address: Department of History, Fudan University, No.220 Handan Road, Shanghai 200433, China

Email: gaoxi(at)fudan(dot)edu(dot)cn

Short biographical note: Gao Xi ( gaoxi(at)fudan(dot)edu(dot)cn ) received her Ph.D. degree in history from Fudan University. She is now director, professor and Ph.D. supervisor of modern history at Department of History, Fudan University; she is also deputy director of the Committee of the Chinese Society for the History of Medicine, and a committee member of the Chinese Society for the History of Science and Technology. She was a Member of the European Society for the History of Science’s Academic Committee for its 7th International Conference in 2016. She is the author A Biography of John Dudgeon A British Missionary and Chinese Medical Modernization in late Qing. She has published over 30 influential papers on her research fields, such as medical missionaries, Chinese medical modernization and the history of medical cultural exchange between West and East. She was a visiting fellow and visiting associate of Harvard University, Yenching Institute in 2004-2006 and 2013-2014. She has organized three international conferences, two on the history of medicine, and the other on the westward spread of Chinese knowledge and goods.

3. Abstract

How could anatomical instruction be carried out in an environment without autopsies? It was the dilemma faced by European anatomists around the 15^thcentury, and also in the 19^th century China. Basing his observations on dissections, Andreas Vesalius wrote and illustrated the first comprehensive textbook of anatomy, De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem (1543), which was introduced and translated into Chinese in the 17^th century. Later, French missionaries also translated a French work on anatomy into Manchurian and circulated it within the Qing court. The images of the internal bodily structures and organs in these books presented to Chinese scholars and physicians a different system of body cognition in the world -- anatomy. As knowledge of anatomy spread to East Asia, Japanese scholars and doctors formed the view that the traditional body knowledge was wrong. They dissected the human body and peeped into the organs and internal construction to correct the traditional “erroneous” cognition.

While Japanese scholars embraced anatomy as scientific knowledge, Chinese accepted it passively as westerners initiated the spread of anatomy in China. From the early 19^th century, protestant missionaries began teaching Chinese students’ anatomy. However, it was not until the 20^th century that anatomy became one of the critical disciplines and thoughts influencing the transformation of the Chinese social concepts. In 1913, the Chinese government issued an autopsy regulation, which allowed autopsies for anatomical instruction. So how did anatomy education unfold without autopsies over the previous 80 years? Through a survey of the Anatomical Altas and wax model of the human body, this paper explores the process of acquiring medical knowledge and shaping scientific culture in the dissemination and acceptance of western body knowledge. It further analyzes how the transformation of Chinese practitioners’ body cognition and the establishment of anatomy discipline during the Qing dynasty were completed.

4. Keywords: Anatomy, medical missionaries, wax model

Abstract 4 of symposium 2:

1. Title

Picturing Science: Scientific Instruments as a Part of Ritual Objects---Scientific Cultures at the Kangxi and Qianlong Courts

2. Author

Full name: Han Qi (University of Chinese academy of Sciences)

Academic title: Professor

Institution: Department of History of Science, School of Humanity

University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

Address: No. 19 (Jia), Yuquanlu, Shijingshan District, Beijing 100049

Email: hanqi(at)ucas(dot)ac(dot)cn

Short biographical note HAN Qi received doctoral degree from the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1991. He is now professor at the Department of History of Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. His main research field is East-West cultural exchanges from the seventeenth to twentieth century, especially the transmission of Western science in China during the Kangxi and Qianlong reigns. He has published several books and numerous papers on the history of scientific contacts between China and Europe in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. The most recent book entitled 通天之学：耶稣会士和天文学在中国的传播 (2018) won the award of book prize by the International Convention of Asia Scholars. He is the former editor-in-chief of the Ziran kexueshi yanjiu (Studies in the history of natural sciences). He now serves as member of the editorial board of the Archive for History of Exact Sciences, Annals of Science and Historia Scientiarum.

3. Abstract (max. 300 words, including possible references)

In the past three decades, scholars in the field of history of science have written quite many papers on the Kangxi emperor and his study of European mathematics and astronomy. However, no detailed studies have been done about his interest in scientific instruments. Actually he not only collected many European instruments, but also displayed them at the court and showed to his subjects. Based on European and Chinese sources, I will discuss how scientific instruments were brought to China, and how the Kangxi emperor practiced them in his trips to provinces. As the grandson of the Kangxi emperor, the Qianlong emperor also ordered the court painters to draw paintings of various birds and flowers, including those of exotic origin. More importantly, he ordered the compilation of an imperial illustrated book related to ritual objects, in which European scientific instruments were included. These will show how scientific cultures practiced at the Qing court and the reasons why European astronomical instruments and canons were added as a part of ritual objects within political context.

4. Keywords: scientific instruments, emperors, ritual