Among the civilisations of the world, China is so far unequaled, since it is the only civilisation that can look back on a continuous tradition of 5,000 years. It has, accordingly, acquired a rich body of written culture, much of which remains untranslated and therefore unknown in the West.
Ancient China’s rulers sought to align the ideology of the elite with a set of unified moral and ethical principles informed by officially sanctioned philosophical and historical works. This was especially true following the victory of Confucianism during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–221 CE). It is therefore not surprising that the ancient Chinese works known to us today primarily concern history and philosophy, whereas relatively few works containing scientific and technological content have been conveyed to us.
The Zhanguo period (475–221 BCE) distinguishes itself by a lively development of science and technology that has been confirmed not only by the profound research of Joseph Needham and his many collaborators, but also by diverse archaeological findings over the last few decades. One of the most important technological books of ancient China is the “Kao Gong Ji” (The Artificer’s Record), which was, perhaps tellingly, “hidden” as the sixth and last chapter in the work “Zhou Li” (Rites of Zhou Dynasty), but rediscovered and commented upon already during the Han dynasty. It has so far however not reached Western audiences.
The “Kao Gong Ji” is the oldest book on technology known in China. Excerpts with technological content appeared only later in philosophical, mathematical or historiographic works. Because its largest part probably originated in the era between the Chunqiu (770–476 BCE) and the Zhanguo period (475–221 BCE) about 2,500 years ago, “Kao Gong Ji” is also the oldest surviving technological work in the world. Written sources on science and technology that are roughly comparable include the works, from a later moment in time, of the Greek mathematician, physicist and engineer Archimedes (287–212 BCE).
In the philosophical works of the Chunqiu and the Zhanguo period, one can find statements containing scientific and technological content as well. This is especially true of the work “Mojing” by Mo Di, which dates from about the same time as “Kao Gong Ji”. Nevertheless, “Kao Gong Ji” is the first book containing purely technological content.
Western research on the history of science and technology was for a long time essentially restricted to European civilisation. However, in the last decades a change took place, especially through the pioneering research work on the history of Chinese science and civilisation conducted by English biochemist and science historian Joseph Needham (1900–1995) and his colleagues in China and the West. Interest clearly shifted to civilisations outside of Europe, especially Chinese civilisation. Needham’s research work explored the development of the national sciences to construct a world science and trace the connections between the national sciences.
Due to “Kao Gong Ji’s” pre-eminent significance for the technologies developed in China, we have decided to present this book to a worldwide audience of readers interested in the history of science and technology, and to offer three translations: modern Chinese and, for the first time, English and German. For the translation, we built on the longstanding, praiseworthy research of Professor Wenren Jun on “Kao Gong Ji”, and we feel deeply indebted to him. We also wholeheartedly thank Dr. Matthew Klopfstein and Dr. Marieke Krijnen, who finished the English translation. Further, we thank Mr. Björn Wysfeld who photoshopped the illustrations in this book.
However, the present translations into modern Chinese, English and German do not uncritically follow existing translations. Rather, based on our research, we provided new interpretations of the original text in different places. This is the case for instance in the chapter on the manufacture of carriages, regarding the sizes of the wheels and the hubs; in the chapter on bronze technology, when discussing the reasons for the compliance and non-compliance of the composition of excavated artefacts’ bronze with the mixture ratios of the bronzes indicated in “Kao Gong Ji”; and for the design of the ancestor temple in the king’s city. We hope that future archaeological findings will clarify remaining questions on the interpretation of “Kao Gong Ji”.
May this edition contribute to propagating knowledge about ancient China’s scientific achievements all over the world.
Guan Zengjian and Konrad Herrmann
Shanghai 2018