The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan / Federico Marcon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Marcon, Federico, 1972- Author.

Series:

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nature study--Japan--History.

Nature study.

Science--Japan--History.

Science.

Japan--History--Tokugawa period, 1600-1868.

Japan.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (429 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Between the early seventeenth and the mid-nineteenth century, the field of natural history in Japan separated itself from the discipline of medicine, produced knowledge that questioned the traditional religious and philosophical understandings of the world, developed into a system (called honzogaku) that rivaled Western science in complexity-and then seemingly disappeared. Or did it? In The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan, Federico Marcon recounts how Japanese scholars developed a sophisticated discipline of natural history analogous to Europe's but created independently, without direct influence, and argues convincingly that Japanese natural history succumbed to Western science not because of suppression and substitution, as scholars traditionally have contended, but by adaptation and transformation. The first book-length English-language study devoted to the important field of honzogaku, The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan will be an essential text for historians of Japanese and East Asian science, and a fascinating read for anyone interested in the development of science in the early modern era.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Prologue

Part I. Introduction

Part II. Ordering Names: 1607- 1715

Part III. Inventorying Resources: 1716- 36

Part IV. Nature's Spectacles The Long Eighteenth Century (1730s- 1840s)

Part V. The Making of Japanese Nature The Bakumatsu Period

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Japanese and Chinese Terms

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226252063

022625206X

OCLC:

912422375