This article is an intensive reading of Chinese history in 261 series, and the History of the Song Dynasty is serialized in 29, welcome to watch.
The science and technology of the Song Dynasty occupied an extremely important position in the history of China's scientific and technological development. Among the four world-famous inventions of ancient China, movable type printing and the compass appeared in this period, and the formula of gunpowder was also perfected during this period, widely used, and had a huge impact on history.
Movable type printing was invented by Bu Yi Bisheng during the Northern Song Dynasty (1041-1048). The printing technology of the Song Dynasty was mainly engraving printing, and the engraving technology was excellent. However, engraving costs time and time, and storing engraving plates occupies a lot of places, which has great limitations on the development of the printing industry.
Bi Sheng may have been an engraver in Hangzhou, the center of the Dangshi Book. He made a single word out of clay, hardened it by fire, arranged them on a wooden shelf according to the rhyme of the words, and before printing, he placed an iron frame on an iron plate, in which rosin, wax and paper ash were placed, and then arranged in the iron frame according to the needs. After the words are arranged, the iron plate is heated on the fire, so that the rosin and wax are melted, and then the movable type is flattened with a flat plate, and after cooling, the movable type is firmly glued into a piece, and it can be printed.
If the original version is not used, the wax and rosin can be re-burned and the movable type can be picked out for use when re-typesetting.
The clay movable type printing invented by Bi Yi was not popularized in the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty. According to Shen Kuo's "Mengxi Pen Talk", after Bi Sheng's death, his movable characters were obtained by Shen Kuo's entourage and treasured. Shen Kuo also recorded this great invention. It was not until the end of the Southern Song Dynasty that someone used this movable type printing technique to print Zhu Xi's "Primary School" and "Recent Thoughts" and other books.
Bi Sheng's invention pioneered modern lead typography technology, four hundred years before the movable type printing in Gutenberg in Europe, and is recognized by the world as one of the greatest inventions of ancient times.
The invention and application of the compass to navigation also appeared during the Northern Song Dynasty.
Before the Song Dynasty, the ancient working people of our country already knew that magnets have finger polarity, and made a kind of pointing instrument called "Sinan". Han Feizi of the Warring States period said that "the first king LiSi nan ended the night".
The hands of the "Sinan" are like a spoon, ground from natural magnets, placed on a smooth carved "turf", "common guide". Because the natural magnet is easy to lose its magnetism due to blows and heat when it is ground into a pointer, the magnetism of "Sinan" is weaker, and the friction between it and the "turf" is relatively large, so the guidance effect of "Sinan" is relatively poor and has not been widely used for a long time.
In the Song Dynasty, people created the method of artificial magnetization, using natural magnets to grind needles, using the magnetic field of natural magnets to make steel needles magnetic. The device of magnetic needle also created methods such as "water floating" and "wisp suspension" in the Song Dynasty to reduce the friction when the hands are rotated. One of the guide turtles is a natural magnet that is mounted inside a woodcut turtle belly, and a small smooth hole is dug under the wood turtle's belly, aligned with a sharp bamboo nail placed on the top. The frictional resistance at the fulcrum of this bamboo nail is very small, and the wood turtle can turn freely to guide.
This guide turtle is the precursor to the dry compass that appeared later. An instrument that could accurately indicate the direction finally appeared during the Northern Song Dynasty.
The invention of the compass was immediately applied to navigation. Since then, people can sail on the vast sea to have a more accurate direction. The invention and application of the compass is also a major contribution of the working people of the Song Dynasty to mankind.
Although gunpowder appeared before the Song Dynasty, it was not widely used because the formula was not perfect. In the Song Dynasty, there were major improvements in gunpowder formulations, in which the content of nitrate increased greatly. The content of sulfur and nitrate in Tang Dynasty gunpowder was 1:1, which increased to 1:2 or even 1:3 in the Song Dynasty, which is similar to the formula in which nitrate accounted for three-quarters of the later black powder.
Other flammable, explosive and toxic raw materials are also added to the gunpowder, which greatly increases the power of gunpowder. Gunpowder also entered the practical stage in the Song Dynasty and was widely used in military firearms. The Government of the Northern Song Dynasty set up a "Guangbei Siege Work" in Kaifeng to manufacture various war materials, including factories specializing in the manufacture of gunpowder.
The weapons made of gunpowder in the Song Dynasty included rockets, artillery, muskets and so on. In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, Feng Jisheng offered rocket methods to Song Taizu. This kind of rocket is loaded with incendiary material made of gunpowder near the arrow, ignited, and fired with a bow at the enemy camp.
Artillery was a stone-thrower that threw explosives made of gunpowder into the distance, and there were no tubular cannons at that time. The artillery such as the "thunderbolt cannon" and "earthquake thunder" that appeared in the anti-Jin struggle at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty were probably also thrown by stone throwers.
Artillery made in the Song Dynasty has become an important equipment of the army. Li Zengbo at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty said that the Song army in the Jinghuai area had more than 100,000 iron artillery pieces. In the anti-Yuan struggle in Jingjiang (present-day Guilin), Guangxi, 250 people in Lou's unit finally held an artillery piece and lit an explosion, a loud thunderous sound, 250 people died together, the moon city collapsed, the sky was full of smoke, and many of the Yuan soldiers who besieged the city were also killed. It can be seen that the power of the artillery at that time was already quite large.
A musket is a bamboo tubular firearm. In the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, when fighting against the Jin soldiers, the defender of De'an (Hubei Anlu) created a kind of "long bamboo pole musket", which was loaded with gunpowder in a long bamboo pole and ignited and fired to burn the enemy when he was about to strike. At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, the musket made in Shouchun Province (Shou County, Anhui) used giant bamboo as a barrel, and after firing, ziqi shot out of the bamboo tube, and more than 150 steps were heard.
The manufacturing technology of muskets has obviously improved greatly from the beginning of the Southern Song Dynasty to the end of the Southern Song Dynasty. This kind of musket is already the precedent of tubular weapons such as modern guns. Its appearance is an important breakthrough in the history of weapons development.
In addition to the three major inventions, many fields of science and technology in the Song Dynasty have seen considerable new achievements.
In mathematics, the "open method" of solving equations in ancient China has taken a big step forward. Jia Xian, a mathematician in the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty, made a table of binomial theorem coefficients, called the "Origin Diagram of the Open Square Method", which detailed the coefficients of each high power expansion and pointed out the method of finding these coefficients. The "Basga Triangle" that appeared in Europe in the 17th century yielded the same coefficient as the Jashin coefficient table.
At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, the mathematician Qin Jiushao's creation of the "Great Yan Qiu Yi Technique" also occupied a glorious position in the history of mathematics in the world. In his book", "Nine Chapters of the Book of Numbers", he systematically pointed out the general calculation steps of solving a congruent group with the "Great Derivative One Technique", and its method was correct and rigorous. It wasn't until 500 years later that Europeans studied the same problem in greater depth.
It can be seen that the mathematics of the Song Dynasty was far ahead in many fields in the world.
Astronomy, which is closely related to mathematics, also achieved great achievements in the Song Dynasty.
During the Northern Song Dynasty, the Celestial Supervisor established by the imperial court concentrated a group of astronomical and calendar specialists, specializing in astronomical research and calendar calculation. Si Tianjian has carried out large-scale observations of the position of stars five times. Among them, the results of the fourth observation made during the Yuan Feng period (1078-1085) were drawn into astronomical star maps by Huang Bao in the early Southern Song Dynasty, and later carved by Wang Zhiyuan in Suzhou. This is the world-famous Suzhou stone carved astronomical star map.
This star chart is eight feet high, three and a half feet wide, and has 1,430 carved stars, centered on the North Pole, and is painted with three concentric circles, representing the North Pole Permanent Circle, the South Pole Permanent Hidden Circle and the Equator. There are twenty-eight rays of radiation representing twenty-eight degrees of distance. This astronomical star map is recognized as one of the oldest astronomical star maps in the world.
For the observation of novae and supernovae, the achievements of the Song Dynasty have also attracted worldwide attention. In the first year of The reign of Emperor Renzong of Song (1054), Si Tianjian observed the outbreak of the Tianguan guest star. In recent decades, the astronomical community has widely recognized the Crab Nebula near Tianguan Star as the remnant of a supernova that erupted in the first year of the Same Era. The scientific value of this observation record has also received widespread attention.
The observation record of Halley's Comet in the third year of Zhiping (1066) has also become a precious historical material for studying the orbit of Halley's Comet in history.
The great achievements of astronomy are also manifested in the manufacture of astronomical instruments. In the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty, Su Song's book "New Instrument Elephant Law" details the creation methods of "armillary instruments", "armillary elephants" and "water transport instrument elephant platforms", and attaches 63 kinds of figures, which is a scientific work reflecting the new level of astronomical instrument manufacturing in China during this period.
The "Water Transport Instrument Elephant Platform" made by Su Song and Han Gonglian and others is complex and exquisite in structure, with a grand scale, more than 36 feet high and 21 feet wide, propelled by water power, and is the world's first hydrodynamic astronomical clock.
In terms of medicine, the Song Dynasty attached great importance to the revision of various medical books. During the Northern Song Dynasty, it successively revised the "Kaibao Materia Medica", "Jiayou Materia Medica", "Tujing Materia Medica", "Zheng class Materia Medica", "Materia Medica Derivation" and so on.
Among them, the "Tujing Materia Medica" was compiled by Su Song and is the earliest extant Materia Medica with drawings in China.
"Evidence Class Materia Medica" was compiled by Tang Shenwei in the late Northern Song Dynasty, including more than 1700 kinds of drugs, introducing the contraindications of various drugs, and also including many unilateral prescriptions. Because this book not only summarizes the achievements of the predecessors, but also further develops the achievements of the predecessors, it has been repeatedly revised and published for the Song Dynasty government. Before the appearance of Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica in the Ming Dynasty, it had been a model for Materia Medica.
"Materia Medica" was written by Kou Zongyi at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, and although there are not many drugs, there are many insightful scientific insights. The two medical books of "Evidence-like Materia Medica" and "Derivation of Materia Medica" have had a greater impact on medicine.
The progress of medicine in the Song Dynasty was also highlighted in the more meticulous division of disciplines and the improvement of diagnosis and treatment technology. In the Tang Dynasty, Chinese medicine was divided into only four disciplines, and the Song Dynasty was divided into nine departments. Among them, pediatrics, obstetrics, acupuncture are the most famous. Pediatricians at that time were able to distinguish between infectious diseases such as smallpox, measles, and chickenpox, and each had a special prescription. In obstetrics, there have been works dedicated to the situations of normal and difficult births.
The Northern Song Dynasty Qian Yi's "Pediatric Drug Certificate Direct Recipe" and Yang Zijian's "Ten Births" are representative works of pediatrics and obstetrics, respectively.
The most important achievement in the development of acupuncture is the only one written by Wang in the early Northern Song Dynasty, the "Copper Man Acupuncture Acupuncture Diagram Sutra" and the two acupuncture copper people produced by him. This book has been an important reference book for the teaching of acupuncture in future generations. The structure of acupuncture copper people is exquisite and the shape is realistic, so that the acupuncture image has a three-dimensional sense and a sense of reality, which has long been valued by the medical community at home and abroad.
Song Ci's "Record of Washing Grievances", written in the seventh year (1247) of Song Lizong Chunyou, is the first systematic forensic science work in China, which records a wide range of contents, including human dissection, examination of corpses, inspection of the scene, identification of causes of death and injury, various phenomena of suicide or murder, various poisons and first aid, detoxification methods, and so on. This forensic work, which was first published in the West by the Italian Federico in 1602 AD, more than 300 years ago, was widely valued by the medical community of international law and was translated into many languages and published.
In terms of construction technology, the Song Dynasty also had considerable achievements.
During the Northern Song Dynasty, the competent government agency attached great importance to the specification of building technology, and compiled the "Yuanyou French Style" in the sixth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1091). Then it was re-edited by Li Jie. It took Li Zhi 6 years to compile the book "Constructing the French Style" in the third year of Yuan Fu (1100). The book makes a systematic summary of the architectural experience of successive dynasties and the achievements of song dynasty building technology, and makes strict regulations on the selection of materials for various official buildings, the slope standards of various structures, and various technical operations, and there are many extremely precious architectural patterns, which is not only a sign of the development of song dynasty building technology to standards and stereotypes, but also the most complete architectural works in the world at that time. The various building technology systems stipulated in this book have played a considerable role in the development of construction technology for future generations.
The architecture of the Song Dynasty is most famous for its towers and bridges. The tower is mainly a brick tower, but there are also wooden towers and stone towers, and the appearance is mostly in the style of a pavilion. The "iron tower" of Kaifeng Youguo Temple, built in the first year of the Northern Song Dynasty (1041), the base is octagonal lotus-shaped, a total of 13 floors, all made of pre-fired glazed bricks, because the appearance of the color is like iron, known as the iron tower. For more than 900 years, despite natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes, the base of the tower has sunk, but the entire tower has been standing in Kaifeng City, which shows the solidity of the tower building.
The fusheng pagoda built by the famous carpenter Yu Hao in the second year of the Song Taizong Duangong (989) in Kaifeng Kaibao Temple is also an 8-corner 13-story tower with a height of 120 meters. The famous Quanzhou Kaiyuan Temple East and West Pagodas were transformed from wooden pagodas into brick pagodas in the Song Dynasty, and were successively converted into stone pagodas during the Southern Song Dynasty, and have been preserved to this day, reflecting the superb technology of stone structure architecture in the Song Dynasty.
The architecture of the bridge is most famous for the Hongqiao Bridge in Kaifeng, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, and the Luoyang Bridge and Anping Bridge in Quanzhou.
Hongqiao is a representative work of wooden arch bridges in this period, all connected into arches with wooden beams, with a span of nearly 25 meters, a net span of about 20 meters, an arch of about 5 meters, a bridge width of 8 meters, no pillars, and the ship can sail at will under the bridge. This wooden arch structure is like a long rainbow flying over the river, which is a masterpiece in bridge architecture.
Quanzhou Luoyang Bridge and Anping Bridge are both stone bridges. Luoyang Bridge was built in the fourth year of the Northern Song Dynasty (1057), the bridge is 1200 meters long, 5 meters wide, there are 47 bridge holes, built at the entrance of the Luoyang River, the water is high, the project is very arduous, in order to solve the problem of the stability of the bridge foundation, the builders pioneered the "raft foundation", throwing tens of thousands of cubic stones along the bridge position to the bottom of the river, building a stone embankment that is one mile long and more than 20 meters wide, and then building a pier on the stone embankment, the sea facing surface of the pier is sharply split, which can reduce the impact of the sea tide, and plant a solid foundation on the bridge foundation and the pier. Taking advantage of the characteristics of the opalpin's calcareous shells attached to the propagation between the rocks, the stones of the piers and bridge foundations are connected by the reproduction of the oyster shells.
The stone beams of the bridge deck weigh 20 to 30 tons each. The completion of this huge stone bridge is a miracle in the history of bridge architecture. To this day, in the Quanzhou area, there are still some wonderful myths about the construction of Luoyang Bridge, saying that the construction of this bridge has divine help. In fact, this is the crystallization of the ingenuity of bridge construction craftsmen, which opens a new page in the history of Chinese bridges.
Built in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, Anping Bridge is more than 270 meters long, spanning Anhai Bay, and is the longest bridge left over from ancient China.
The construction of towers and bridges fully reflects the superb architectural technology of the Song Dynasty.
In the history of the development of science and technology in the Song Dynasty, it is worth mentioning Shen Kuo and his famous book "Mengxi Pen Talk".
Shen Kuo (1031-1095), a native of Qiantang (present-day Hangzhou, Zhejiang), actively participated in the Xining Reform, but on many issues did not fully agree with Wang Anshi, so he was scolded by Wang Anshi as a "villain" and rejected by Wang Anshi.
Shen Kuo was not politically ambitious, but his achievements in science and technology were spectacular. The Biography of Song Shi Shen Kuo says that he was "erudite and good at writing, and wrote treatises on astronomy, Fang Zhi, legal calendar, music, medicine, and fortune telling, all of which are knowledgeable." Unfortunately, most of his writings have not been preserved, but from the existing "Mengxi Pen Talk", it can also reflect the wide range of scientific and technological fields involved in Shen Kuo.
Shen Kuo's outstanding achievements in science and technology have been admired by posterity and recognized by Chinese and foreign scholars as outstanding scientists in history.
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The content of this article is compiled from the "History of the Song Dynasty" of the Chinese reading book "Classic Chinese General History" jointly created by China International Broadcasting Publishing House and "Reading History".
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