Glossary & Enlightenment

The translation has come to a hold for the moment because of the glossary of terms that is being compiled for those parts of the text we have already translated.

Compiling the glossary is kind of a drag for impatient people because one moves on very slowly. Each page contains important terms - which include not only nouns, but also verbs, which obviously were used in a fairly precise and consistent manner.

Besides providing linguistic consistency, the most important thing about the process of highlighting specific terms is that mistakes become visible. I have already found two rather heavy ones in the first pages of our translation.

This glossary will be a very important tool for approaching Ricci's Qiankun tiyi as well as the Chinese astronomical tradition before the publication of Tianwenlüe.

Qiankun tiyi and its relation with TWL

The Qiankun tiyi was the first work introducing Western astronomy to China. It was compiled by Ricci and Li Zhizao and much more ambitious in scope than the TWL. Its main model seems to have been Sacrobosco's Sphaera. How did this work fail? And is its failure related to the composition of the TWL?

In the introduction we have to provide one extensive section on this book.