Song Yingxing (Simplified Chinese:宋应星; 1587-1666 AD), born in Yinchuan of Jiangxi, was a Chinese scientist and encyclopedist who lived during the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). He was the author of an encyclopedia that covered a wide variety of technical subjects, including the use of gunpowder weapons. Comparing him to the famous French encyclopedist Denis Diderot, the British sinologist and historian Joseph Needham called Song Yingxing, "The Diderot of China."

Biography

Song Yingxing achieved only modest wealth and influence during his life. Born in 1587 to a gentry family of reduced circumstances, he participated in the imperial examinations, and passed the provincial test in 1615, at the age of 28. However, he was repeatedly unsuccessful in the metropolitan examination. Song sat for the test five times, the last being in 1631 at the age of 44. After this last failure, he held a series of minor positions in provincial government. The works for which Song is known today all date from 1636 to 1637. The repeated trips to the capital to participate in the metropolitan examination likely provided him with the broad base of knowledge demonstrated in the works. Song retired from public life in 1644, after the fall of the Ming dynasty.

Written works

Encyclopedias

Although Song Yingxing's encyclopedia was a significant publication for his age, there had been a long tradition in the history of Chinese literature in creating large encyclopedic works. For example, the Four Great Books of Song compiled much earlier in the 10th and 11th centuries (and all four combined, were much more extensive in size than his work). Just a few decades before Yingxing's work, there was also the Ming Dynasty encyclopedia of the Sancai Tuhui, written in 1607 and published in 1609. Song Yingxing's famous work was the Tiangong Kaiwu (天工开物), or The Exploitation of the Works of Nature, published in May of 1637. The Tiangong Kaiwu is an encyclopedia covering a wide range of technical issues, including the use of various gunpowder weapons. Copies of the book were very scarce in China during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) (due to the government's establishment of monopolies over certain industries described in the book), but original copies of the book were fortunately preserved in Japan. The technical encyclopedia of the Tiangong Kaiwu was divided into separate chapters with broad overall themes, which included

1. agriculture, irrigation, and hydraulic engineering,
2. sericulture and textile technology,
3. agriculture and milling processes,
4. salt technology,
5. sugar technology,
6. ceramics industry,
7. bronze metallurgy,
8. transportation; ships and carts,
9. iron metallurgy,
10. coal, vitriol, sulfur, and arsenic,
11. oil technology,
12. papermaking,
13. metallurgy of silver, lead, copper, tin, and zinc,
14. military technology,
15. mercury,
16. ink,
17. fermented beverages,
18. pearls and jade.

It featured detailed illustrations that were valuable for historians in understanding many early Chinese production process. For example, illustrations for brick-making; one shows a kilnmaster checking the temperature of a furnace while an assistant stands by and douses the kiln to induce superficial glazing; another illustration shows a brick-maker filling a wooden mold with clay while he dresses the brick's surface with a finishing wire strung on a bow.

As the historian Joseph Needham points out, the vast amount of accurately drawn illustrations in this encyclopedia dwarfed the amount provided in previous Chinese encyclopedias, making it a valuable written work in the history of Chinese literature. At the same time, the Tiangong Kaiwu broke from Chinese tradition by rarely referencing previous written work. It is instead written in a style strongly suggestive of first-hand experience. In the preface to the work, Song attributed this deviation from tradition to his poverty and low standing.

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