• Sketching out Portents Classification and Logic in the Monographs of Han Official Historiography

    Author(s):
    Grégoire Espesset (see profile)
    Date:
    2017
    Group(s):
    Historiography, History, Science Studies and the History of Science
    Subject(s):
    China, Area studies, Cosmology, Hermeneutics, Historiography
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    worldview, portents, astrology, astronomy, Sinology, Early Chinese thought
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/6php-v708
    Abstract:
    In ancient China, portentology was a “science” in its own right, a specialised field of knowledge developed by rational individuals who endeavoured to fathom the concealed mechanisms at work beneath the spectacles of history and the world at large. This paper focuses on the nomenclature of portents (observed phenomena interpreted as auspicious or inauspicious signs) displayed in the chapters of the Han-era official historiography known as the “monographs” (or “treatises”) on celestial phenomena and the Five Agents, examining the pre- and early imperial sources of this typology and its underlying classificatory principles, and assessing how this epistemic object has been dealt with by modern scholarship.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Publisher:
    Fakultät für Ostasienwissenschaften, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
    Pub. Date:
    2017
    Journal:
    Bochumer Jahrbuch zur Ostasienforschung / Bochum Yearbook of East Asian Studies
    Volume:
    39
    Page Range:
    5 - 38
    ISSN:
    0170-0006
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    4 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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