Zhong Xue 重學附園錐曲線 [An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics]

Woodblock edition

Numerous in-text illustrations. 重學 20 卷，園錐曲線3卷 , in 6 volumes. Tall 8vo(28x17.3cm), orig wrappers. 金陵官書局？Woodblock. 同治五年秌湘上左楨署, 1866

Translated into Chinese by British Protestant missionary Joseph Edkins (艾约瑟, 1823–1905) and Li Shanlan (李善蘭, 1811–1882) — stands as one of the most influential scientific works of the late Qing dynasty, and the first systematic presentation of Newtonian mechanics in the Chinese language.

Comprising twenty juan, with an additional three juan on conic sections, Zhong Xue represents a monumental effort to introduce the mathematical foundations of Western physics to Chinese readers. The first seventeen juan are based primarily on William Whewell’s An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics, a standard Cambridge textbook of the early nineteenth century.

The content of the first seven juan is devoted to statics, discussing in sequence the theory of levers, composition and resolution of forces, mechanical instruments, centers of gravity, equilibrium of rigid bodies, and resistance of surfaces. The following ten juan cover dynamics, explaining the principles of motion, impact and momentum, uniform and accelerated motion, parabolic trajectories, motion in curves, rotation around a fixed axis, the dynamics of machines, and resistance of moving bodies. The final three juan (18–20), added by Edkins himself, address hydrodynamics, corresponding closely to his serialized essays “Liu zhi zhong xue 流質重學” (“Fluid Mechanics”) in Zhongxi tongshu 中西通書.

Because many parts of Chung Hsüeh make reference to the geometry of conic sections, Edkins and Li prepared an additional treatise entitled Yuan zhui qu xian shuo 圓錐曲線說 (“On Conic Sections”), in three juan, which served to clarify the mathematical principles underlying planetary motion and parabolic trajectories.

The collaboration between Edkins, a missionary scholar deeply versed in Western science, and Li Shanlan, one of the most accomplished Chinese mathematicians of his age, made this translation both mathematically rigorous and linguistically accessible. Their joint effort exemplified the productive scientific exchanges between Chinese scholars and Western missionaries in mid-nineteenth-century.

By introducing systematic reasoning, mathematical formulation, and empirical analysis into the study of motion and force, Zhong Xue laid the conceptual groundwork for modern physics education in China. It profoundly influenced the intellectual transition from classical Chinese natural philosophy to modern scientific thought, marking a crucial step in the late Qing scientific enlightenment and the broader transmission of Newtonian mechanics to East Asia.

Vol. 6 with c.20 leaves slightly torn along the left margins.

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