In ancient society, the ancestors summed up many experiences through continuous observation and reflection, such as the twenty-four solar terms are one of them. It is worth mentioning that the Han Dynasty also had a kind of law and weather, which also had a far-reaching impact on future generations, but the repeated experiments of successive dynasties and dynasties were unsuccessful, until the Kangxi Emperor did not say that it was false... What's going on here? The following Xiaobian will reveal the secret to you.
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The twenty-four solar terms are well known to everyone, it is a set of laws obtained by the ancient ancestors to observe the changes of the sun, moon and stars, including the change of seasons and the occurrence of phenological phenomena, which is one of the greatest achievements of ancient agricultural civilization. In the process of determining the twenty-four solar terms, the ancients divided the rotational motion of the sun into 24 parts on average, each part is about 15 ° (360 ° circumference), just every 15 ° movement of the sun changes a solar term.
During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the twenty-four solar terms were included in the Taichu Calendar, which was of great significance to refer to agricultural production and life. In order to accurately judge the changes in temperament, the Han Dynasty also specially set up officials to observe the stars, record daily reports, and once the solar terms change, they will be announced to the world. Later, some officials thought that stargazing was too cumbersome, so they thought about whether there was any other way, and finally there was a method of regulating weather.
The ancients believed that a change in solar terms is a change in qi, and if you can see qi, everything becomes very easy. In order to observe qi, the ancients used a rhythm tube, that is, a bronze pipe that can emit different sound rhythms (twelve sound laws). The length of the twelve law tubes decreases sequentially, from the longest 27 centimeters to the shortest 15 centimeters, and the longer the pipe, the duller the sound, and vice versa, the crisper it becomes. In addition, the temperature will also affect the rhythm tube, that is, the higher the temperature, the crisper the sound, and the more dull it is anyway. Therefore, the ancients first used temperature and sound changes to determine the solar terms.
The change of solar terms is always accompanied by changes in temperature, for example, from Lichun to Lixia, the temperature must rise, so the sound of the same law tube will become more and more crisp; and from Lixia to Lidong, the sound will become more and more dull. However, practice shows that everyone feels differently about the level of the rhythm, so it is difficult to make accurate judgments. Later, the ancients improved and came up with a new method.
According to the Book of later Han, the ancients inserted twelve legal pipes into the ground, arranged them in different directions to form a circle, and then put grass and wood ash into the legal pipe and covered them with thin silk. Or use the temperature change to perceive the solar terms, if the temperature rises, the grass and wood ash in the law tube will fly out, and then look at which law tube it flies out, you can determine which solar term has arrived. This is the law of the Han Dynasty, is it scientific? People throughout the dynasties have been trying, but the results have not met expectations, and people have to be suspicious.
In the Sui Dynasty, there was an astronomer named Mao Shuang, who experimented with the weather according to the historical records, and the result of the experiment was that all the grass and wood ash flew up as soon as the temperature changed, but sometimes, there was no grass and wood ash flying up, and the contradictory experimental results were probably confusing the experimenters. By the Song Dynasty, the great scientist Shen Kuo was also very interested in the legal management weather, but unfortunately he only theoretically agreed with the legal management weather, but he did not succeed in practice. Later, Guo Shoujing, an astrogener of the Yuan Dynasty, conducted a study of the Vinaya weather for eighteen years, and the results were not successful once, but he did not doubt the ancients, but said that there was a problem with his method.
In the Ming Dynasty, there were also many people who experimented with the method of regulating weather, such as Han Bangqi, the military secretary at that time, Zhang Juzheng, the iron-blooded prime minister, and the great scientists Song Yingxing and Xu Qiguang, etc., and none of them succeeded, but there were still people who were fascinated and yearning for it.
During the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, Western missionaries brought many advanced scientific achievements, especially in astronomy, but the Kangxi Emperor was more conservative and not very interested in Western science and technology. Therefore, the Kangxi Emperor prepared to kill the missionaries, so he asked the officials of the Qin Tianjian to show the achievements of ancient science, but unexpectedly, the officials said that the Han Dynasty's law and regulation were weathered, and they also had to show them in front of the missionaries.
It is embarrassing that the officials' experiments have not been able to achieve the effect of the ancient law of weather, and the officials do not dare to falsify, otherwise it is the crime of deception. Therefore, the failure of the legal management weather test made the Kangxi Emperor lose face, so he immediately ordered that the legal management weather be declared false, and whoever mentioned the legal weather in the future would be beheaded for the crime of deceiving the king. At this point, the law tube weather withdrew from the stage, and no one tried again.
After the demonstration of modern science, although there is a certain scientific reason for the law management of weather, it requires very strict conditions in practice, and the most important thing is that there are many influencing factors, so it is difficult to achieve results in each experiment. In any case, we must learn the achievements of ancient science and technology, but at the same time we must learn to identify and look at them dialectically.
Resources:
"The Twenty-Four Solar Terms of the Chinese" by Qiu Bingjun, Publisher: Chemical Industry Press
Wenlan Hairun Studio Editor-in-Chief Wen Xiucai, this article is written by: Special History Writer: Liu Lijiang's