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Sojourners in a strange land : Jesuits and their scientific missions in late imperial China /

Though Jesuits assumed a variety of roles as missionaries in late imperial China, their most memorable guise was that of scientific expert, whose maps, clocks, astrolabes, and armillaries reportedly astonished the Chinese. But the icon of the missionary-scientist is itself a complex myth. Masterfull...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Clasificación:Libro Electrónico
Autor principal: Hsia, Florence C. (Autor)
Formato: Electrónico eBook
Idioma:Inglés
Publicado: Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Colección:Science and Its Conceptual Foundations S.
Temas:
Acceso en línea:Texto completo
Descripción
Sumario:Though Jesuits assumed a variety of roles as missionaries in late imperial China, their most memorable guise was that of scientific expert, whose maps, clocks, astrolabes, and armillaries reportedly astonished the Chinese. But the icon of the missionary-scientist is itself a complex myth. Masterfully correcting the standard story of China Jesuits as simple conduits for Western science, Florence C. Hsia shows how these missionary-scientists remade themselves as they negotiated the place of the profane sciences in a religious enterprise. Sojourners in a Strange Land develops a genealogy of Jesuit conceptions of scientific life within the Chinese mission field from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Analyzing the printed record of their endeavors in natural philosophy and mathematics, Hsia identifies three models of the missionary man of science by their genres of writing: mission history, travelogue, and academic collection. Drawing on the history of early modern Europe's scientific, religious, and print culture, she uses the elaboration and reception of these scientific personae to construct the first collective biography of the Jesuit missionary-scientist's many incarnations in late imperial China. --From publisher's description.
Descripción Física:1 online resource (xv, 273 pages) : illustrations
Bibliografía:Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-260) and index.
ISBN:9780226355610
0226355616