6 pm (CET)

Venue:

Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften

Einstein-Saal
Jägerstraße 22/23

10117 Berlin

For registration, online participation and more information, please visit the BBAW event page.

Early Chinese astrological devices, shi 式/栻 , usually translated as “cosmographs,” “diviners’ boards,” or more recently as “diviners’ mantic astrolabes” or simply “cosmic models,” are known from the 2nd century BC. Made of lacquered wood, these portable instruments consist of a static square plate, representing the Earth, and a rotating disc placed on top of it, representing the Heavens.

Development of “commercial” printing for commoners in late imperial China gave rise to schematic cosmographic maps (ca. early 17th century, onwards). Their structure strikingly resembles shi, with the difference that the square Earth is placed in the centre of the round Heavens. These maps were then transmitted to Korea. They apparently served as one of inspirations of the circular world maps found in popular Korean atlases (18th-19th centuries). The aim of this presentation is to show how the ancient Chinese concept of ‘Round Heavens & Square Earth’ visualised as a time-space relationship continued to be in use in East Asia until the beginning of the 20th century, co-existing with modern Western science.

PROGRAM

• Visualising Time-Space in East Asia: Mapping ‘Round Heavens & Square Earth’ from Ancient Rotating Devices to Late Modern Commercial Maps
  Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (CNRS, Paris; EC-C and Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science)

• Discussants:
  Stamatina Mastorakou (Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science)
  Paul Delnero (Johns Hopkins University, EC-C)

Part of the Lecture Series Maps and Mapping in Global History and Culture

Organized by Dagmar Schäfer, Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann and Ute Tintemann.

> Program (PDF)

In cooperation with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences