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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume
7, Issue 2, Article 1 (Dec., 2006) Shu-Chiu LIU Historical models and science instruction: A cross-cultural analysis based on students’ views
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Conceptions of the universe in early China and Europe
Before the seventeenth century, astronomy had developed differently in China and in Europe. The similarities of these two lines of scientific development are that, first, both focused on the study of the heavens (the order of the heavens as a major preoccupation), and that, second, both dealt with the calendar, cosmography (sometimes along with the study of the movements of the planets), and what we call today “astrology”. The scientists in the two early worlds paid great attention to the sky and believed the heavens to be organized in order. Regulating the calendar, drawing the sky map, and investigating omens, are the same tasks they undertook.
As Lloyd (1999) cited, the subject matter of the both enquiries in early Chinese and Greek antiquity was the same, yet they developed and presented very different theories and concepts, which are associated with the questions they chose to study and, consequently, the answers they chose to give to them. Their fundamental conceptual differences can be summarized as follows:
1. Greek astronomy highlighted planetary motions (the apparent irregularities threatened the very notion of celestial order itself, so the Greeks sought to geometrize them and in doing so turn irregularities into regularities). In contrast, the Chinese were more confident in the inherent order of the heavens and more open minded about its possible messages for the Earth. Chinese theories seem to have “imposed far less rigid patterns on the order they expected” (Lloyd, 1999).
2. The early Chinese and Greeks developed very different models of the universe: the former primarily with a flat Earth, round heaven, free heavenly bodies and infinite cosmos, and the latter with a round Earth centered by layers of round heavens, bound heavenly bodies and finite cosmos/heavens. The motions of heavenly bodies were, for the Greeks, the consequence of the rotation of the concentric celestial spheres on a common axis, and, for the Chinese, generated by vapor with each having its own path around the Earth (Chen, 1996).
3. The Chinese concentrated on the polar star (based on their keen observation to the sky) as opposed to the Greeks on the Earth and, much later on, the Sun (Needham, 1959).
4. The Chinese were focused on an arithmetic approach, the Greeks on a geometrical one.
In ancient China, three main theories of cosmology can be distinguished. These theories do not give detailed descriptions of the movement of the heavenly bodies, which draws a contrasting point to the European cosmology of the time. The Greek tradition persisted in using homocentric spheres to construct the picture of the universe and placed the Earth or, at the end, the Sun at the center, probably for the reason that such conceptions (celestial spheres with uniform motion) were regarded as the “perfect form”. For the ancient Greek scientists, their aim was to provide a tempo-spatial model of the universe for explaining the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies – the Sun, Moon, planets and stars - as seen from the Earth (Sun, 2000). It is worth noting that the shape of Earth had not been a problem for either of the Chinese and Greeks before the seventeenth century when missionaries arrived in China. For the Chinese the Earth had been always flat, whereas the Greeks had taken for granted the Earth was spherical. These two very different ideas seem to both be rooted in what people considered as ideal shape in their own cultural context. The Chinese term of “flat” or “square” also means the highly respected moral quality of being righteous and strong-minded; in contrast, the spherical shape was repetitively regarded by ancient Greeks as perfect form. Nevertheless, the Greeks went further to seek evidence by conducting experiments unlike the Chinese who for centuries simply premised the flat Earth in their astronomy (Chu, 1999).
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