Shen Kuo: a Pioneering Scientist in Ancient China
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It is an ordinary and narrow street in Zhenjiang, a small city near Nanjing, the capital city of eastern China’s Jiangsu Province. At the end of this street is an ancient courtyard residence where Shen Kuo (1031-1095), a native of Hangzhou, a government official and an extremely knowledgeable scholar, once lived about 900 years ago. “Dream Stream Garden” is the name of his residence. And the pioneering scientist of ancient china named his collection of science papers “Dream Stream Essays”, one of the greatest science books of ancient China.
Shen’s significance can’t be overestimated. Today, an asteroid carries his name and roams in deep space. Mr. Hu Daojing, a modern scholar of ancient Chinese history of science and technology, concludes that Shen Kuo was a rare all-round talent not only in the history of China but also in the world. Hu explains that Shen did profound studies of literature, arts, science, technology, history and archaeology. He proposed many original thoughts and some of his scientific conclusions a few hundred years before his counterparts in the west.
Shen Kuo was born in Hangzhou. His father served as a low-ranking government official at provincial level. And his mother was an educated woman. At fourteen, Shen Kuo had finished reading all the books in the family library under his mother’s guidance. After the death of his father, Shen Kuo became a government official in accordance with a hereditary arrangement.
His first successful application of his knowledge to practice occurred when he was 24 and served as the registrar at Muyang County where he organized a large-scale water control project. Tens of thousands of laborers were involved. Under his guidance the project brought potential flood hazards under control and turned about 7,000 acres of swampland into prime farmland.
As magistrate at Ningguo County, he also organized a large water control project. It resembled his first success: an irrigation and drainage system was built to turn 1,270 acres of land into a food basket shielded against droughts and floods.
In 1072, Shen organized a large scale water control project on Bian River. In order to understand the river, he prospected a 420-km section sector by sector and acquired accurate data on the topography. He figured out a way to build dams to let silt deposit to form farmland. In five years, more than 17,000 acres of farmland were created through the project he organized.
In 1074, Shen Kuo was appointed to a key position and he turned his attention to military affairs and diplomatic relations with the northern tribes. In 1075, Shen Kuo was sent to Liao Kingdom on a mission for a negotiation on border demarcation. A diplomat of the Liao had visited the Song and raised the issue ofa watershed. Shen Kuo did a thorough research into government files and discovered a 15-km disparity in a demand made by the Liao diplomat. The Emperor was very pleased for the newly discovered evidence. Shen Kuo held six rounds of talks with the Liao government. History records say that each talk took place with an audience of more than 1,000 looking on and listening. Unflustered, Shen talked convincingly and finally successfully concluded the issue.
After he was demoted, Shen Kuo moved to a property in Zhenjiang, which he had bought in earlier years but never visited. When he finally arrived, he found to his great surprise that the garden residence amazingly resembled a place in a dream he had had in his 30s. The dream had been so vivid that he still remembered a lot of details: he climbed to a small hill where flowers blossomed so furiously that the whole ground looked as if it were carpeted by bright colored layers of brocades; at the foot of the hill was a pool and thick trees had their reflections on the crystal water.
Shen Kuo named this scenic property “Dream Stream Garden” and it was here that he completed all of his essays and named his essays after his dream. These essays were actually his memoir that recorded what he had studied and done or observed in the past. There are altogether over 600 entries of various lengths in his memoir; more than 200 concern science and technology touching a wide range of topics such as astrology, calendar, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, geology, medicine, literature, history, and archaeology.
One entry is about compass, which is the earliest written note on magnetic-needle compass in human history. In another entry he describes the declination of magnetic needle, saying it does not point to the due south and it often points to south slightly by east. Columbus described the same phenomenon about four hundred years later.
Among his subjects, Shen mentions petroleum used for cooking and lighting and warming in a place in the north. He had read about it in a book and did a field study. The brown liquid was locally known as stone paint and stone grease. Shen named it stone oil or 石油, a name still in use today in China.
Shen was widely admired as a scholar for his wide range of knowledge by his peers and those immediately after him. His name and achievements appeared in various essays and books In the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279).
Dr. Joseph Needham (1900-1995) described Shen Kuo as the most important person in China’s history of science and his “Dream Stream Essays” as a landmark. Dr. Joseph Needham quotes Shen Kuo in his “Science and Civilization in China”.