A Brief Analysis On The History Of Concept Acceptance Of "Electricity" In China

The acceptance process of the concept of "electricity" in China is of great significance to Chinese electrical science history and even the history of science and technology.This process directly leads to two results in China: firstly,the ancient Chinese character " ? " enriched the meaning of " ? " in modern Chinese after absorbing the concept of "electricity" from western countries;secondly,the knowledge of "amber" and "thunder and lightning" in Chinese ancient traditional culture was transformed to part of knowledge on Chinese ancient electricity history in the context of modern science,which is a very important process but neglected nowadays.This dissertation is dedicated to study on above issues.Based on this,this paper is divided into five parts:The first part briefly analyzes the background of the etymology of "electricity",as well as the evolution of its concept with the development of modern western science.The second part is to explore the evolution processes of different Chinese translations for "electricity" by looking through literatures such as English-Chinese dictionaries in the late Qing Dynasty.Meanwhile,from perspective of terminology,finding out word-building reasons and rationales for these translations.Thus this thesis verifies that It was not a simple word-for-word translation from "electricity" to "?",but a long and complex history of conceptual acceptance which reflected the cultural exchange between ancient and modern China and foreign countries.The third part is to discuss the conceptual evolution process of "?" through the examination of "Word Book" in Chinese historical literatures.We believe that significant changes had taken place in the meaning of “?” after the introduction of "electricity" into China.Chinese word “ ? ”,which was originally described as a natural phenomenon had been gradually replaced by modern Chinese interpretation of "charge movement",Although there was a certain degree of twists and turns,eventually,"charge movement" had become the main meaning of the word "?" in modern Chinese.In the fourth part,through analyzing historiography of the history of electricity in ancient China,it is found that related research on ancient Chinese electricity is on thepremise that "electricity" and the ancient Chinese word " ? " had a common knowledge base,related treatises all build the electricity system in ancient China according to the development of western electricity history,and absorb while transform the meaning of "amber" in ancient China,thus analogy Franklin "kite" experiments,the rich and diversified knowledge of "thunder and lightning" in ancient China was selected and compiled into the history,thus forming the distinctive historical text of " the history of electricity in ancient China ".The fifth part,through the examination of the ancient Chinese "encyclopedia" such as Collection of Ancient and Modern Books,especially explores the historical materials about "amber" and "thunder and lightning".It is found that the meaning of these words were completely different from the interpretation of ancient Chinese electrical history in the context of modern science.Therefore,this paper argues that the knowledge of "amber" and "thunder and lightning" in ancient Chinese traditional culture,especially the latter,had been deleted and lost a lot of rich contents in the process of being compiled into the history of ancient Chinese electricity,and these contents are exactly the more important components in the genealogy of Chinese traditional knowledge.