The Gu Guanguang And The Mechanics Of The Late Qing Dynasty

After the Opium War, the advanced intellectuals of old China realized the under-developedsituation of China both in technology and culture.Some of them deemed that the only way toshorten the gap between China and the western world and strengthen the country is to learn theoccidental science and technology, which leaded to a rush for translating occidental books in1860s. Zhong Xue and Tan Tian are the representative work among all the natural scientificbooks in that period, the origina l works by Chinese native writers could be reckoned up withthe fingers of one hand .The people studied in this paper, Gu Guanguang, is an important and outsta nding ma n in thehistory of development of Chinese natural science and technology. He paid much attention toaccumula ting and assimila ting knowledge when he studied the Zhong Xue (a famousmecha nical book written by Li Shanla n) and then published his experience. There are fivechapters in this paper. In the first chapter, I analyze the historica l background during the time ofGu Guanguang creating his works and give a brief introduction in time order on the spread ofmecha nical knowledge in china. In the second chapter, we provide a biographica l sketch of GuGuanguang and a classification of his works. The ones focus ing on mecha nics are carefullyinvestigated in the third chapter with three aspects including contents, systematica l arrangement,and knowledge level. To highlight these works'features, a comparison with Zhong Xue is donein the forth chapter. In the fifth chapter, the influence of Gu Guanguang and his works in themovement of learning occidental science is evaluated; a overview combining the view ofcollea gues and the author is also given in the this chapter.