Programme « Commentaire et diffusion des savoirs » (2024-2028) du CRCAO
1. Première séance du séminaire de lecture de textes
Guo Jinsong 郭津嵩 (Université de Pékin) proposera une lecture guidée intitulée « An Innovative Astronomer Defends Classical Authority: Yixing’s (683-727) Discourse on Eclipses in Commentarial Contexts »
Date : Le mercredi 8 novembre 2023 de 14h à 18h
Lieu : Campus Condorcet, Bâtiment de la recherche Nord, salle 3.086
Principal discutant : Daniel P. Morgan (CNRS)
Résumé de l’intervention :
The reading session will focus on the “Discourse on Solar Eclipses” by Yixing (683-727), who was a leading astronomer, a classical scholar and a Buddhist monk at Emperor Xuanzong’s (r. 712-756) court in the Tang. One of Yixing’s series of critiques on key issues in calendrics and astronomy, the essay nevertheless remarks on a number of classical texts and their commentators, and can itself be read as a commentarial piece. We invite the participants to closely examine the content of this essay and set it in the contexts of both long-term commentarial and astronomical development and contemporaneous politics that involved the author. The aim is to reach a understanding of how the technical issue of computing eclipses, once intertwined with the interpretation of classical texts, turned into a heatedly contested epistemological and political problem. The session also seeks to show that commentaries can be as polemical as they are expositional.
2. Conférence
« Astronomy in the Library: Textual Undertakings in Kublai Khan’s Calendar Reform »
par Guo Jinsong 郭津嵩 (Université de Pékin)
Date : Le jeudi 9 novembre 2023 de 10h à 12h
Lieu : Campus Condorcet, Bâtiment de la recherche Nord, salle 3.086
Résumé de l’intervention :
The Shoushi Calendar produced in the 1280 calendar reform commissioned by Kubali Khan of the Mongol Yuan dynasty represents the finest achievement of traditional Chinese astronomy. Historians have largely attributed the high quality of the calendar to new instruments and new observations that the Yuan astronomers made. This talk aims to show, however, that systematic examination of past astronomical texts and observational data carried no less weight in forming the calendar’s empirical foundations and authoritative status. The Dadu observatory built for the reform was designed to be a site for archives as well as observational activities. Tracing their archival practices demonstrates that the astronomers were sophisticated readers and interpreters in constructing historical narratives, in selecting textual testimonies, and in developing hermeneutical strategies.
Ces deux événements se tiendront en anglais.
Aucune inscription préalable n’est exigée.
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