Shen Kuo
# Shen Kuo

Shen Kuo (chino: 沈括, pinyin: Shěn Kuò) (1031-1095) fue un polímata chino que fue físico, geólogo, astrónomo, agrónomo, embajador, general militar, matemático, cartógrafo, ingeniero hidráulico, meteorólogo, botánico, zoólogo, farmacólogo, autor, y burócrata del gobierno de la Dinastía Song (960-1279) en China. Shen Kuo vivió en Qiantang, el actual Hangzhou. En 1063, a la edad de 35 años, Shen Kuo pasó con éxito el examen imperial para el servicio del gobierno. Fue como embajador al Imperio Tangut y estuvo en las campañas militares llevadas contra ellos. Fue el administrador principal de la oficina de astronomía y canciller de la academia de Han-lin. También fue aliado político y confidente del canciller Wang Anshi y del emperador Shenzong (神宗 Shénzōng; 1067-1085).

Shen Kuo fue el primero en describir la brújula magnética en su libro Mengxi Bitan. Esto ocurría un siglo antes de que Alexander Neckham la describiera en Europa. Hizo también una teoría geológica de la geomorfología observando los depósitos del barro, los fósiles de mar que se encontraban en las montañas, y los fósiles petrificados subterráneos de bambú encontrados en una región en la que no se desarrolla el bambú. Describió también el tipo móvil de impresión de arcilla, inventada por el artesano llamado Bi Sheng en los años 1041 y 1048. Mejoró las invenciones de la esfera armilar, del gnomon, y del reloj de clepsidra. Descubrió el concepto astronómico del norte verdadero, y alegó, que el sol y la luna eran esféricos, no planos, empleando la observación del eclipse solar y el eclipse lunar. Hizo dos atlas, y creó una carta geográfica tridimensional. Fue también el primero en China en describir el dique seco para la reparación de barcos. Reformó el calendario chino con la base de unas observaciones astronómicas precisas que realizó durante meses.

Shen Kuo vivió al final de su vida varios años en aislamiento, en su casa que poseía un jardín que le servía de esparcimiento, cerca de Zhenjiang, provincia de Jiangsu. Su tumba se sitúa en la zona de Yuhang de Hangzhou, que recientemente por iniciativa del gobierno chino se ha reconstruido enteramente en septiembre del 2001.

## Bibliografía

* Anderson, James A. (2008). "'Treacherous Factions': Shifting Frontier Alliances in the Breakdown of Sino-Vietnamese Relations on the Eve of the 1075 Border War," in Battlefronts Real and Imagined: War, Border, and Identity in the Chinese Middle Period, 191–226. Editó Don J. Wyatt. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-6084-9.
* Barnhart, Richard. "Marriage of the Lord of the River: A Lost Landscape by Tung Yüan," Artibus Asiae. Supplementum (v. 27, 1970): 3–5, 7, 9, 11–60.
* Biderman, Shlomo and Ben-Ami Scharfstein. (1989). Rationality in Question: On Eastern and Western Views of Rationality. Leiden: E.J. Brill. ISBN 90-04-09212-9.
* Bielenstein, Hans. (1986). "Wang Mang, the Restoration of the Han Dynasty, and Later Han," in The Cambridge History of China: v. I: the Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 B.C. – A.D. 220, 223–290. Editó Denis Twitchett & Michael Loewe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-24327-0.
* Bodde, Derk (1991). Chinese Thought, Society, and Science: The Intellectual and Social Background of Science and Technology in Pre-modern China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1334-5
* Bowman, John S. (2000). Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.
* Chan, Alan Kam-leung; Gregory K. Clancey, Hui-Chieh Loy (2002). Historical Perspectives on East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine. Singapur: Singapore University Press. ISBN 9971-69-259-7
* Cherniack, Susan. "Book Culture and Textual Transmission in Sung China," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (v. 54 (1) 1994): 5–125.
* Chung, Anita. (2004). Drawing Boundaries: Architectural Images in Qing China. Manoa: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 0-8248-2663-9.
* Crespigny, Rafe de. (2007). A Biographical Dictionary of Later Han to the Three Kingdoms (23–220 AD). Leiden: Koninklijke Brill. ISBN 90-04-15605-4.
* Deng, Yinke. (2005). Ancient Chinese Inventions. Translated by Wang Pingxing. Beijing: China Intercontinental Press. ISBN 7-5085-0837-8.
* Desmond, Adrian. "The Discovery of Marine Transgressions and the Explanation of Fossils in Antiquity," Am. J. of Sci. 1975, 275: 692–707.
* Dong, Paul. (2000). China's Major Mysteries: Paranormal Phenomena and the Unexplained in the People's Republic. San Francisco: China Books and Periodicals, Inc. ISBN 0-8351-2676-5.
* Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, Anne Walthall, and James B. Palais (2006). East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-618-13384-4.
* Ebrey, Patricia Buckley (1999). The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43519-6 (hardback); ISBN 0-521-66991-X (paperback).
* Elisseeff, Vadime. (2000). The Silk Roads: Highways of Culture and Commerce. New York: Berghahn Books. ISBN 1-57181-222-9.
* Embree, Ainslie T. Carol Gluck (1997). Asia in Western and World History: A Guide for Teaching. New York: An East Gate Book, M. E. Sharpe Inc. ISBN 1-56324-265-6.
* Fairbank, John King and Merle Goldman (1992). China: A New History; 2ª ed. agrandada (2006). Cambridge: MA; London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-01828-1.
* Fan, Dainian; Robert Sonné Cohen (1996). Chinese Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN 0-7923-3463-9
* Fraser, Julius Thomas; Francis C. Haber. (1986). Time, Science, and Society in China and the West. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 0-87023-495-1.
* Gernet, Jacques. (1996). A History of Chinese Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-49781-7.
* Hargett, James M. "Some Preliminary Remarks on the Travel Records of the Song Dynasty (960–1279)," Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) (julio de 1985): 67–93.
* Hartman, Charles. "Poetry and Politics in 1079: The Crow Terrace Poetry Case of Su Shih," Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 12, 1990: 15–44.
* Hartwell, Robert. "Markets, Technology, and the Structure of Enterprise in the Development of the Eleventh-Century Chinese Iron and Steel Industry," The Journal of Economic History 26 (1) 1966: 29–58.
* Henderson, John B. "Ch'ing Scholars' Views of Western Astronomy," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 46 (1) 1986): 121–148.
* Hsu, Mei-ling. "Chinese Marine Cartography: Sea Charts of Pre-Modern China," Imago Mundi 40 1988: 96–112.
* Huff, Toby E. (2003). The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-52994-8.
* Hymes, Robert P. and Conrad Schirokauer (1993). Ordering the World: Approaches to State and Society in Sung Dynasty China. Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Katz, Victor J. (2007). The Mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islam: A Sourcebook. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-11485-4.
* Kim, Yung Sik. (2000). The Natural Philosophy of Chu Hsi (1130–1200). DIANE Publishing. ISBN 0-87169-235-X.
* Li, Chu-Tsing. "The Autumn Colors on the Ch'iao and Hua Mountains: A Landscape by Chao Meng-Fu," Artibus Asiae 21, 1965: 4–7, 9–85, 87, 89–109.
* Li, Chu-Tsing. "A Thousand Peaks and Myriad Ravines: Chinese Paintings in the Charles A. Drenowatz Collection," Artibus Asiae 30, 1974: I-XI, 1–5, 7–49, 51–79, 81–133, 135–161, 163–199, 201–217, 219–289, 291–301, 303–319, I-CV, CVII-CXIV.
* Lian, Xianda. "The Old Drunkard Who Finds Joy in His Own Joy -Elitist Ideas in Ouyang Xiu's Informal Writings," Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR) 23, 2001: 1–29.
* Menzies, Nicholas K. (1994). Forest and Land Management in Imperial China. New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc. ISBN 0-312-10254-2.
* Mohn, Peter (2003). Magnetism in the Solid State: An Introduction. New York: Springer-Verlag Inc. ISBN 3-540-43183-7.
* Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 1, Introductory Orientations. Taipéi: Caves Books, Ltd.
* Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 3, Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth. Taipéi: Caves Books, Ltd.
* Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology, Part 1, Physics. Taipéi: Caves Books Ltd.
* Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology, Part 3: Civil Engineering and Nautics. Taipéi: Caves Books, Ltd.
* Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 1: Paper and Printing. Taipéi: Caves Books, Ltd.
* Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 7, Military Technology; the Gunpowder Epic. Taipéi: Caves Books, Ltd.
* Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology, Part 1: Botany. Taipéi, Caves Books Ltd.
* Parker, Joseph D. (1999). Zen Buddhist Landscape Arts of Early Muromachi Japan (1336–1573). Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-3909-7.
* Restivo, Sal. (1992). Mathematics in Society and History: Sociological Inquiries. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN 1-4020-0039-1.
* Ropp, Paul S. (1990). Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese History. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-06440-9
* Salam, Abdus (1984), "Islam and Science" in C. H. Lai (1987), Ideals and Realities: Selected Essays of Abdus Salam, 2nd ed., World Scientific, Singapore.
* Rudolph, R.C. "Preliminary Notes on Sung Archaeology," The Journal of Asian Studies (Volume 22, Number 2, 1963): 169–177.
* Ruitenbeek, Klaas. (1996). Carpentry & Building in Late Imperial China: A Study of the Fifteenth Century Carpenter's Manual Lu Ban Jing. Leiden: E.J. Brill. ISBN 90-04-10529-8.
* Sarkar, Tapan K., Magdalena Salazar-Palma, and Dipak L. Sengupta. (2006). "Development of the Theory of Light," in History of Wireless, 20–28. Editó Tapan K. Sarkar, Robert J. Mailloux, Arthur A. Oliner, Magdalena Salazar-Palma, Dipak L. Sengupta. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons Inc. ISBN 0-471-78301-3.
* Sivin, Nathan (1995). Science in Ancient China: Researches and Reflections. Brookfield, Vermont: VARIORUM, Ashgate Publishing.
* Sivin, Nathan. (1984). "Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not Take Place in China—Or Didn't It?" in Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences: Essays in Honor of I. Bernard Cohen, 531–555, ed. Everett Mendelsohn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-52485-7.
* Sivin, Nathan. "Science and Medicine in Imperial China—The State of the Field," The J. of Asian Studies 47 (1) feb. 1988: 41–90.
* Stanley-Baker, Joan. "The Development of Brush-Modes in Sung and Yüan," Artibus Asiae 39 (1) 1977: 13–59.
* Steinhardt, Nancy Shatzman (1997). Liao Architecture. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
* Stock, Jonathan. "A Historical Account of the Chinese Two-Stringed Fiddle Erhu," The Galpin Society Journal 46 1993: 83–113.
* Sung, Tz’u, translated by Brian E. McKnight (1981). The Washing Away of Wrongs: Forensic Medicine in Thirteenth-Century China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-89264-800-7
* Tao, Jie, Zheng Bijun and Shirley L. Mow. (2004). Holding Up Half the Sky: Chinese Women Past, Present, and Future. New York: Feminist Press. ISBN 1-55861-465-6.
* Wu, Kuang Ch'ing. "Ming Printing and Printers," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies febrero de 1943: 203–260.
* Yao, Xinzhong. (2003). RoutledgeCurzon Encyclopedia of Confucianism: v. 2, O–Z. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-7007-1199-6.
* Zhang, Yunming (1986). Isis: The History of Science Society: Ancient Chinese Sulfur Manufacturing Processes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Plantilla:Cref
