The Knowledge Of Nature And The Nature Of Knowledge In Early Modern Japan

Author : Federico Marcon
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022625190X
Total Pages : 429 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan written by Federico Marcon and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-07-16 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the early seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century Japan saw the creation, development, and apparent disappearance of the field of natural history, or "honzogaku." Federico Marcon traces the changing views of the natural environment that accompanied its development by surveying the ideas and practices deployed by "honzogaku" practitioners and by vividly reconstructing the social forces that affected them. These include a burgeoning publishing industry, increased circulation of ideas and books, the spread of literacy, processes of institutionalization in schools and academies, systems of patronage, and networks of cultural circles, all of which helped to shape the study of nature. In this pioneering social history of knowledge in Japan, Marcon shows how scholars developed a sophisticated discipline that was analogous to European natural history but formed independently. He also argues that when contacts with Western scholars, traders, and diplomats intensified in the nineteenth century, the previously dominant paradigm of "honzogaku "slowly succumbed to modern Western natural science not by suppression and substitution, as was previously thought, but by creative adaptation and transformation.

Author : Federico Marcon
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022625206X
Total Pages : 429 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan written by Federico Marcon and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-07-16 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Opens a fascinating window into the history of Japan’s relationship to its natural environment. . . . A must-read for historians of early modern science.” —New Books in East Asian Studies Between the early seventeenth and the mid-nineteenth century, the field of natural history in Japan separated itself from the discipline of medicine, produced knowledge that questioned the traditional religious and philosophical understandings of the world, developed into a system (called honzogaku) that rivaled Western science in complexity—and then seemingly disappeared. Or did it? In The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan, Federico Marcon recounts how Japanese scholars developed a sophisticated discipline of natural history analogous to Europe’s but created independently, without direct influence, and argues convincingly that Japanese natural history succumbed to Western science not because of suppression and substitution, as scholars traditionally have contended, but by adaptation and transformation. The first book-length English-language study devoted to the important field of honzogaku, The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan will be an essential text for historians of Japanese and East Asian science, and a fascinating read for anyone interested in the development of science in the early modern era. “Marcon introduces to a Western readership for the first time the early history of natural history in Japan . . . Who those naturalists were, how they fitted into society, and what they accomplished, is Marcon’s beautifully told story.” —Archives of Natural History “A bold attempt to provincialize Eurocentric narratives of modernity’s relation to nature.” —Canadian Journal of History “An essential resource.” —Journal of Japanese Studies

Author : Federico Marcon
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 9780226479033
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan written by Federico Marcon and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-03-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the early seventeenth and the mid-nineteenth century, the field of natural history in Japan separated itself from the discipline of medicine, produced knowledge that questioned the traditional religious and philosophical understandings of the world, developed into a system (called honzogaku) that rivaled Western science in complexity—and then seemingly disappeared. Or did it? In The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan, Federico Marcon recounts how Japanese scholars developed a sophisticated discipline of natural history analogous to Europe’s but created independently, without direct influence, and argues convincingly that Japanese natural history succumbed to Western science not because of suppression and substitution, as scholars traditionally have contended, but by adaptation and transformation. The first book-length English-language study devoted to the important field of honzogaku, The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan will be an essential text for historians of Japanese and East Asian science, and a fascinating read for anyone interested in the development of science in the early modern era.

Author : Terrence Jackson
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824853598
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Network of Knowledge written by Terrence Jackson and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2016-02-29 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nagasaki during the Tokugawa (1603–1868) was truly Japan's window on the world with its Chinese residences and Deshima island, where Western foreigners, including representatives of the Dutch East India Company, were confined. In 1785 Ōtsuki Gentaku (1757–1827) journeyed from the capital to Nagasaki to meet Dutch physicians and the Japanese who acted as their interpreters. Gentaku was himself a physician, but he was also a Dutch studies (rangaku) scholar who passionately believed that European science and medicine were critical to Japan's progress. Network of Knowledge examines the development of Dutch studies during the crucial years 1770–1830 as Gentaku, with the help of likeminded colleagues, worked to facilitate its growth, creating a school, participating in and hosting scholarly and social gatherings, and circulating books. In time the modest, informal gatherings of Dutch studies devotees (rangakusha), mostly in Edo and Nagasaki, would grow into a pan-national society. Applying ideas from social network theory and Bourdieu's conceptions of habitus, field, and capital, this volume shows how Dutch studies scholars used networks to grow their numbers and overcome government indifference to create a dynamic community. The social significance of rangakusha, as much as the knowledge they pursued in medicine, astronomy, cartography, and military science, was integral to the creation of a Tokugawa information revolution—one that saw an increase in information gathering among all classes and innovative methods for collecting and storing that information. Although their salons were not as politically charged as those of their European counterparts, rangakusha were subversive in their decision to include scholars from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds. They created a cultural society of civility and play in which members worked toward a common cultural goal. This insightful study reveals the strength of the community's ties as it follows rangakusha into the Meiji era (1868–1912), when a new generation championed values and ambitions similar to those of Gentaku and his peers. Network of Knowledge offers a fresh look at the cultural and intellectual environment of the late Tokugawa that will be welcomed by scholars and students of Japanese intellectual and social history.

Author : Mary Elizabeth Berry
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520941465
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Japan in Print written by Mary Elizabeth Berry and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006-02-16 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A quiet revolution in knowledge separated the early modern period in Japan from all previous time. After 1600, self-appointed investigators used the model of the land and cartographic surveys of the newly unified state to observe and order subjects such as agronomy, medicine, gastronomy, commerce, travel, and entertainment. They subsequently circulated their findings through a variety of commercially printed texts: maps, gazetteers, family encyclopedias, urban directories, travel guides, official personnel rosters, and instruction manuals for everything from farming to lovemaking. In this original and gracefully written book, Mary Elizabeth Berry considers the social processes that drove the information explosion of the 1600s. Inviting readers to examine the contours and meanings of this transformation, Berry provides a fascinating account of the conversion of the public from an object of state surveillance into a subject of self-knowledge. Japan in Print shows how, as investigators collected and disseminated richly diverse data, they came to presume in their audience a standard of cultural literacy that changed anonymous consumers into an "us" bound by common frames of reference. This shared space of knowledge made society visible to itself and in the process subverted notions of status hierarchy. Berry demonstrates that the new public texts projected a national collectivity characterized by universal access to markets, mobility, sociability, and self-fashioning.

Author : Kenneth E. Wilkening
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262265096
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Acid Rain Science and Politics in Japan written by Kenneth E. Wilkening and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-05-21 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acid Rain Science and Politics in Japan is a pioneering work in environmental and Asian history as well as an in-depth analysis of the influence of science on domestic and international environmental politics. Kenneth Wilkening's study also illuminates the global struggle to create sustainable societies. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 ended Japan's era of isolation- created self-sufficiency and sustainability. The opening of the country to Western ideas and technology not only brought pollution problems associated with industrialization (including acid rain) but also scientific techniques for understanding and combating them. Wilkening identifies three pollution-related "sustainability crises" in modern Japanese history: copper mining in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which spurred Japan's first acid rain research and policy initiatives; horrendous post-World War II domestic industrial pollution, which resulted in a "hidden" acid rain problem; and the present-day global problem of transboundary pollution, in which Japan is a victim of imported acid rain. He traces the country's scientific and policy responses to these crises through six distinct periods related to acid rain problems and argues that Japan's leadership role in East Asian acid rain science and policy today can be explained in large part by the "historical scientific momentum" generated by efforts to confront the issue since 1868, reinforced by Japan's cultural affinity with rain (its "culture of rain"). Wilkening provides an overview of nature, culture, and the acid rain problem in Japan to complement the general set of concepts he develops to analyze the interface of science and politics in environmental policymaking. He concludes with a discussion of lessons from Japan's experience that can be applied to the creation of sustainable societies worldwide.

Author : Andrea E. Murray
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1785333860
Total Pages : 185 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Footprints in Paradise written by Andrea E. Murray and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2017-06 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: "We Want Them to Know Nature -- Chapter 1. Okinawa's Tourism Imperative -- Chapter 2. Slow Vulnerability in Okinawa -- Chapter 3. Knowing and Noticing -- Chapter 4. Ecologies of Nearness -- Chapter 5. Healing and Nature -- Conclusion: Yambaru Funbaru! -- References -- Index

Author : Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi
Publisher : Harvard Univ Asia Center
ISBN 13 : 9780674040373
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Anti-foreignism and Western Learning in Early-modern Japan written by Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi and published by Harvard Univ Asia Center. This book was released on 1986 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ESSAYS ON THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE JAPANESE BETWEEN 1600-1870.

Author : Stefan Köck
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350181080
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion, Power, and the Rise of Shinto in Early Modern Japan written by Stefan Köck and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-08 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sheds new light on the relationship between religion and state in early modern Japan, and demonstrates the growing awareness of Shinto in both the political and the intellectual elite of Tokugawa Japan, even though Buddhism remained the privileged means of stately religious control. The first part analyses how the Tokugawa government aimed to control the populace via Buddhism and at the same time submitted Buddhism to the sacralization of the Tokugawa dynasty. The second part focuses on the religious protests throughout the entire period, with chapters on the suppression of Christians, heterodox Buddhist sects, and unwanted folk practitioners. The third part tackles the question of why early Tokugawa Confucianism was particularly interested in “Shinto” as an alternative to Buddhism and what “Shinto” actually meant from a Confucian stance. The final part of the book explores attempts to curtail the institutional power of Buddhism by reforming Shinto shrines, an important step in the so called “Shintoization of shrines” including the development of a self-contained Shinto clergy.

Author : Eiko Ikegami
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521601153
Total Pages : 496 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bonds of Civility written by Eiko Ikegami and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-02-28 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book combines sociological insights in organizations with cultural history.