Missionaries And The Sprout Of Scientific Establishment During The Westernization Movement

Initial establishment of modern science in China emerged during the Westernization Movement Period, in which the Western missionaries played an important role. The missionaries facilitated the development of science education and scientific publishing industry of China, they began the unification of scientific terms, opened the first local Chinese research institutions-Xujiahui Observatory. In the area of science education, church organizations run a large number of schools in China, some of the schools offered science courses, such as Dengzhou College, anglo-Chinese college and so on were known for their science curriculum and were emulated by other schools, these schools played an exemplary role for the new schools in China in science education. In the new government-run schools, the missionaries taught directly as a learning one post of dissemination of scientific knowledge, and some of them even had a decision-making power on science education in the government-run schools, for example, a missionary post Wiliam Alexander Parsons Martin, who was the chief directory in the Capital Tongwen School, developed new Timetable which opened the curtain of official science education in China. In the area of Scientific publishing, church publishing houses published a large number of scientific books which were translated by missionary, the most famous church publishing houses were the School and Textbook Series Committee and the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge Among the Chinese during the Westernization Movement. In the Government-operated publishing houses, the missionary work couldn't not be ignored, they cooperated with Chinese scholars and translated a lot of science books, they also trained some Chinese traditional scientists as well as disseminating the scientific culture. During this period, there has been a large number of newspapers and periodicals published in scientific knowledge, making science communication faster and broader, especially for" The Globe Magazine " which was edited by Young J.Allen, it began to run a series of books on Western science, another science magazine called "Pursuing compilation " was founded by John Fryer, which played an important role in the scientific enlightenment of ordinary people. In the area of the unification of scientific terms, missionaries had done a lot of work, the most successful one was the School and Textbook Series Committee. In order to carry out the work of unification of scientific terms, it set up a special committee for the names of books as well as people and other technical terminology committees, which published many bilingual dictionaries of scientific terms. In the Chinese government-run publishing houses, the missionaries in the Jiangnan Arsenal bureau made a great contribution to unity scientific terms,, they summed up its own unifying principle of scientific terminology during the process of translation of scientific books, and published bilingual dictionaries of terms in various disciplines. In addition to the completion of unification of scientific terms, there were also some people in the missionary worked individually, who have made certain achievements. In the area of scientific research institutions, missionaries founded the first research institutions in Shanghai, China-Xujiahui Observatory, the leaders served as the captain of the station possessed high scientific literacy, and the missionaries in the station were dedicating themselves to scientific research. The data they observed and recorded provided first-hand information for scientific research in China. Therefore, the missionaries had played a catalytic role for the initial scientific establishment during the Westernization Movement, their contribution was enormous.