Achievements and Constraints of Late Qing Translations of Heat, 1868–1895

By the 1850s and 1860s, books like the Bowu xinbian and the Gewu rumen gave their Chinese readers an introduction to the basics of Western science. They might not have been a “linguistic turn” in a Kuhnian sense in the history of science in China, but they did mark the beginning of a large number of science and technology publications, in which new terms and new technical language were introduced to convey new theories that could not have been expressed by traditional Chinese natural philosophy. After the 1870s, various books and magazine articles, which were mostly translated or authored by foreign missionaries in collaboration with their Chinese colleagues, were published. The subjects, ranging from chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, and physics to mining, military strategy, and international politics, formed a body of knowledge called Xixue (Western learning). As shown by Xiong Yuezhi and many others, Western learning attracted the Chinese literati, especially those who had opportunities to witness Western technological power in the treaty ports of Shanghai, Guangzhou, or Tianjin. How might those translated texts have made an impact on the Chinese understanding of nature and technology?