The last year of the Ming Dynasty, when Xu Guangqi was born, was the transition period of Chinese science and technology, and Western science and technology were introduced with missionaries, and the first person to realize the importance of advanced science was Xu Guangqi.
Xu Guangqi is a native of Xujiahui, Shanghai. His father failed in business and switched to farming, and his mother spun yarn and weaved cloth. Life is hard.
Xu Guangqi had a famous alumnus, Sun Yuanhua, a great scientist of the Ming Dynasty, whose specialty was explosives, ballistics, and, in short, cannons.
It is said that he was not only proficient in physics and chemistry, but also knew Portuguese, and he also attended the Portuguese artillery training class that year, and belonged to the artillery expert.
At that time, he was conducting scientific experiments (building cannons) with the Portuguese, and there was a shortage of people under his command, and Kong Youde led people to run over, very happy, and immediately took people in.
Mr. Sun devoted himself to scientific research, had also fought in battles, and had previously served as a deputy envoy to Ning Yuan, worked for Yuan Chonghuan, and had also seen the world.
Xu Guangqi, who is diligent and studious, is a noble son from the cold door, and he was admitted to xiucai at the age of 19, but he went to the examination several times to be named Luosun Mountain, so he had to teach in his hometown.
In addition to teaching, he likes to stay in the farmland in his backyard and observe the growth of various crops.
For example, he has long observed that the branches of cotton are horizontal. Then he also went to ask the village chief with the best harvest, how far apart the two cotton seedlings should be.
This is different from Wang Yangming observing bamboo and turning to the inside and becoming the founder of mind science.
He taught the students: although the teacher hopes that you will all pass the examination, the person, or the talent, but the number of places admitted every year is limited. Fill in the talent pool, if you want to get the title of the gold list, you have to work harder than others. Therefore, books must be read, and agricultural affairs must be understood. Even if you become a high official, you must understand agricultural affairs. Farming is learned, don't be afraid of being looked down upon.
This is the same as Wu Mengchao's teaching that students should be people among men, not enjoy the honor of people.
For example, he saw the "Tang Bencao" written by the Tang Dynasty, which mentioned that cabbage grows in the south, and if it is moved to the north, after two years, it will become kohlrabi. vice versa.
He asked his friends in the north for some seeds of kohlrabi and sowed them in his backyard. Year after year, the kohlrabi is still a kohlrabi, and it has not become a cabbage.
Unfortunately, Xu Guangqi did not cultivate a father of hybrid rice, Yuan Longping, the creator of China's fifth-largest invention.
China's sixth major invention is the COVID-19 vaccine.
Xu Guangqi was the year he was 42 years old. Because he believed in science in everything, in that superstitious era, of course, he would be excluded. His official fortunes were not smooth, and he was deposed several times. Compared with Newton, a politician who has long been a member of Congress, he lives in an era that is ultimately frustrating.
Xu Guangqi was 34 years old, in the twenty-seventh year of the Wanli Calendar, on his way to Nanjing, where he was taking the exam in Beijing, he met Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary, at the church.
In Beijing, Xu Guangqi asked Matteo Ricci how to let Chinese know about Western technology.
They began to collaborate and translated the first 6 volumes of the Primitive Geometry, the first Western mathematical book in Chinese history.
Xu Guangqi returned home to guard the funeral for three years, and he personally went down to the field to cultivate. Xu Guangqi's education of his disciples is not just talking, he really practices it himself.
He tried to grow sweet potatoes in Shanghai, choosing to plant them in the warmer climate of late spring and early summer. He observed the growth of the potato vine every day and recorded it. He wrote "On sweet potatoes". Sweet potatoes are widely grown in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
Three years later, Matteo Ricci died. Xu Guangqi personally held the funeral.
Xu Guangqi did not want to get involved in the political storm in the capital and voluntarily resigned. He bought wasteland in Tianjin, planted rice, and obtained a bumper harvest.
In the first year of the Ming Xi Sect's Heavenly Revelation, Xu Guangqi was 60 years old. He told his three grandsons that he was going to write a book on agricultural policy, called the Complete Book of Agricultural Politics.
When Emperor Ming sizong ascended the throne, Xu Guangqi was recalled to Beijing to work on revising the calendar. Xu Guangqi's translation of the Western calendar was not officially used until 1644, the first year of the Shunzhi dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, and was called the "Shi Constitutional Order".
Xu Guangqi died as early as 1633, at the age of 72.
Throughout his life, he worried about the country and the people, spared no effort in the dissemination of scientific ideas, and led to the scientific development of modern China.
Needham wrote The History of Science and Technology in China, and he changed the international community's understanding of China's only agriculture and art.
Today, we can also find the historical process and cultural self-confidence in the rich connotation of traditional Chinese scientific and technological culture