“科学·文明”系列学术讲座由北京大学科学技术与医学史系和北京大学人文社会科学研究院共同策划组织，旨在搭建一个自然科学与人文学科的对话平台，邀请海内外杰出学者演讲，直面当今人类社会面临的一些根本性问题，激活“科学与文明”这一经典议题，在文明的视域中认识科学的意义，在科学的基础上构建文明的养育，为中国科学与中华文明的发展注入新的思想生机和活力。
讲座信息：
题目：Material Sources for the History of 17th Century Science: The Beijing Palace Museum Collection of Scientific Instruments
主讲人：詹嘉玲 Catherine Jami （法国国家科学研究中心高级研究员）
主持人：张 藜 （北京大学科学技术与医学史系教授 ）
时间：2026年10月15日 13:30—15:00
地点：静园一院201
主讲人简介
Catherine Jami is a Director of Research (Exceptional Class) at the French CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research). She has a dual background in mathematics and Chinese studies. Her PhD dissertation (1985, Université Paris-Nord) focused on an eighteenth-century Chinese mathematical work. Working at CNRS since 1991, she studies the reception of European sciences introduced into China by the Jesuits from the early 17th century onwards. Starting with the mathematical sciences, she has extended her work in several directions: the role of Chinese scholars in this reception process; imperial science at the beginning of the Qing dynasty; the role of elite mobility in the circulation of knowledge; the circulation of science between Europe and East Asia. In the autumn of 2024, she visited the Palace Museum as a Taihe Fellow. She was the editor-in-chief of the journal East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine from 2017 to 2024. She has held positions of responsibility at an international level. In particular, she was Secretary General of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. She is currently on the Governing Board of the International Science Council.
摘要：
The history of science has long been, and to a great extent remains, based on written sources. Studying phenomena as complex as the circulation of knowledge across the Eurasian continent entails bringing together sources written in different languages, sometimes preserved far away from the place where they were first produced; that is complex enough. But in some cases, we are lucky enough to also have access to material sources, and they change our perspective on the phenomena we study, and enrich our understanding of them.
In this lecture, I would like to show an example of this, by presenting some of the research that Prof. Christopher Cullen and I conducted in 2024 during our tenures as Taihe Fellows at the Palace Museum in Beijing. We were able to study some of the objects relevant to ‘Western learning’ (xixue 西學) in the late Ming and early Qing period, when Jesuit missionaries contributed to imperially sponsored enterprises such as astronomical reform.
The earliest astronomical instruments of that period that we were able to identify date to the first decades of the Qing dynasty, and were made in Beijing for the emperors. One of their features was their uniqueness as gifts. Their purpose was mainly pedagogic, but they also embody the personal patronage by Shunzhi and Kangxi of knowledge and methods presented to them as tools for ensuring the consolidation of the dynasty.
Another set of instruments of interest entered the imperial collection from 1688 on: in contrast to those previously mentioned, they were brought from France, and bear witness to what can be described as an early example of science diplomacy. Beside royal gifts from the king of France to the emperor of China, they include more ordinary instruments, designed mainly to be used for surveying and cartography.
Confronting these instruments to written sources has enabled them not only to bring out their importance as historical artefacts, but also to gain insight into the practices that underlay the written sources that we use to write the history of the mathematical sciences during that period.
