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"Figure of Two Circular Arcs and Two Chords"
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There are still some unclear points regarding this picture. "枝" is probably a concept close to a vector. However, it is puzzling that the angle between the "北-北" axis and the "南-南" axis is 30 degrees. Baien may not have felt the need to reflect the inclination of the earth's axis accurately. All his maps and diagrams are patterned, and even the most realistic ones are not realistic depictions. This picture combines annual motion and diurnal motion into one figure. Paper and ink were valuable items in the Edo period, so Baien compressed all expressions. For this reason, Gengo became a very esoteric book. What is characteristic in this figure is that both ends of the earth's axis are marked "北" - north. This means that Baien set the earth's axis as the "north axis." Similarly, Baien marked both ends of the axis perpendicular to the ecliptic plane as "南" - south. Therefore, it is named the "south axis." The celestial equator is "西" - west, and the equator is "東" - east. These two words mean "the way to the west" and "the way to the east." Of course, these are directions seen from the global ecosystem. This indicates that Baien expanded east, west, south, and north, which usually indicate directions on a plane, into concepts on a celestial scale. This idea did not come from the teachings of the Tendai monk Ninmon. It came from ancient Greek astronomy, which the Jesuit Matteo Ricci brought to the Ming dynasty. The philosophers of ancient Greece thought that the universe consisted of layers of spheres. The Chinese, however, had thought that the world was a four-sided figure stretching infinitely under a vast canopy. The religion of the Ming dynasty was Mingjiao, which was Chinese Manichaeism transformed into Buddhism. Because Manichaeism was based on dualism, the Chinese thinkers of that age were able to accept a different worldview. The astronomers of the Ming dynasty did not exclude this utterly different worldview from the traditional Chinese image of the world. The ancient Greek worldview was orthodox in Catholic society. It changed the shape of nature for Chinese scholars who had thought that the earth was square, and it produced several historically important works. The most important among them is "Tenkei Wakumon". |
A picture of the Japanese version of "Tenkei Wakumon" and Baien's self-made celestial globe.
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This fact means that the astronomical views of ancient Greece and Baien were closely linked across a historical gap of more than 2,000 years. This was the world history behind European history, unknown even to great historians such as Arnold Toynbee. It was the history of China and Japan from the early modern period to the modern period. There is certainly a historical fact that the thought of early modern Japanese folk thinkers arose through the Christian mission that carried ancient Greek thought to China through Matteo Ricci. In this process, great thinkers and astronomers represented by Miura Baien and Asada Goryu, together with many other thinkers, were born. Many folk scholars in the Edo period read this book, not only Baien and Goryu. As a result, Japanese astronomy in the middle of the Edo period made dramatic progress. The transformation of the worldview brought to China by Matteo Ricci was not a problem concerning the immovable center of the universe, but a problem concerning the shape of the universe. Until he taught ancient Greek astronomy to Chinese people, both Chinese and Japanese thought that the earth was square. Asada Goryu, whose name remains as "Crater Asada" on the moon, was a lifelong friend of Baien and gained much of his astronomical knowledge from the book "Tenkei Wakumon." Baien also gained a great deal of knowledge from this book and from Yoshio Kosaku, a Dutch interpreter in Nagasaki. Motoori Norinaga also studied astronomy in his twenties, and that became a driving force for his later research. Many such thinkers were born in the middle of the Edo period. The idea that the earth is a sphere floating in space brought about a revolution in the view of nature among Chinese thinkers of the Ming dynasty. It also had a revolutionary influence on Japanese thinkers and became one of the driving forces of the Meiji Restoration. However, the idea did not spread widely in China because the country was too vast. The picture below may be useful as a reference. If Baien had been able to use a PC, he would have drawn his figures in 3D. |
by "https://www.astro.ufl.edu/~freyes/classes/ast2003/FR_CH_2.pdf"
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