Road Shilimingche Of The Qing Dynasty And Its Scientific Achievements

This paper researches on Li Mingche, a famous Taoist in Qing Dynasty, and his scientific achievements. And it will be done from eight aspects.The first chapter introduces astronomy and cartography of Ming-Qing Dynasties. Chinese astronomy and geomatics had some progresses, having closely relation with western learning. The theory of "Chinese origin of western learning" isn't proper because insistent with the fact. We should differentiate two cases. One emphasized the homology between Chinese and western learning which helped western learning to spread, the other denied the advantage of western learning which obstructed it to spread.The second chapter summarizes Li Mingche's life, personal material, stories and old comments. There is Chaodou Platform, the oldest observatory in Guangzhou, in the Chunyang Temple. It was no use in Li's main researches. Though Li got high appraise at his times, Xian Yuqing gived a bad opinion of Talk about Circular Skies in Figures in 20 century 50s. Later people accepted the opinion. As a result, nobody went on studying Li.The third chapter describes Li's works and the relation between Ruan Yuan and him. Li's works are classified as 3 parts including Talk about Circular Skies in Figures, General History of Guangdong and some Taoist works. We study the origin of Talk about Circular Skies in Figures. There are 96 "talks", 7 "songs", 75 "figures" and 10 "tables" in the book in the fields of astronomy, meteorology, earth geophysics, oceanography, geography, physics, religion and mathematics. We find that Li Mingche mapped not only regional maps but also sea-defensive maps in General History of Guangdong.The forth chapter summarizes the cosmic ideas of Talk about Circular Skies in Figures. They include: the earth sphere theory and "Chi" theory; the ten circular skies and the geocentric theory; the epicycle theory and emphasizing...