Acknowledgements
As with any first monograph, this work began life as a doctoral thesis while I was a PhD candidate at Edinburgh University (2014–18). I am very grateful to my supervisors, Thomas Ahnert and John Henry, whose erudite scholarship, patient guidance and invaluable feedback, all made it possible for the completion of my thesis and this book. I am also very grateful to the external examiner of my thesis, Rob Iliffe, for insightful comments and illuminating perspectives from which I have greatly benefited. The final shape of this book could not have been possible without the unfailing patience and encouragement of Christoph Lüthy, to whom I owe enormous thanks for his page-by-page comments.
Over the past couple of years, I have been particularly fortunate to have extremely delightful and friendly colleagues with outstanding scholarship. My conversation with them have been a great inspiration for my own work. I thank, at Edinburgh, Michael Barany, Stephen Bowd, Lawrence Dritsas, Ben Fletcher-Watson, Natalie Goodison, Dmitri Levitin, David McOmish, Richard Oosterhoff, Niki Vermeulen, Steve Yearley; and special thanks to Sergio Orozco- Echeverri, for his unwavering support for my research, comments on several early draft chapters, and valued company and reliable friendship. I am deeply grateful for the advice and feedback (for my thesis), in Berlin, from Maria Avxentevskaya, Lorraine Daston, Hansun Hsiung, Andrew Lea and Elaine Leong; at Wolfenbüttel, from Elizabeth Harding; in London, from Stephen Clucas, Jill Kraye, Sara Miglietti and Anthony Ossa-Richardson; and now at Warwick (for this book), from my postdoctoral mentor Michael Bycroft, and David Lines. I am also immensely grateful to Ofer Gal, Bernard Lightman and Wu Guosheng, whose encouragement has always meant a lot to me over these years.
My thesis and this book were also possible thanks to the generous support of the University of Edinburgh/China Scholarships Council Joint Scholarship (2014–17), The BSHS Butler-Eyles Fund (2017), the Writing-up Predoctoral Fellowships awarded by The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (2018), Dr Günther Findel-Stiftung Predoctoral Fund from the Herzog August Bibliothek (2018), Francis A. Yates Fellowship from The Warburg Institute (2018), Susan Manning Research Fellowship from IASH, Edinburgh (2019–20), Society for Renaissance Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship (2019–20), The Science History Institute Short-term Fellowship (2021–22), and the Leverhulme Trust (2021–24).
I also wish to thank the editors of Brill (MEMPS). I could never thank enough Christoph Lüthy who read the whole manuscript at least three times; Paul J.J.M. Bakker, Stefan Einarson, Theo Joppe, and Rosanna Woensdregt for their professional and patient assistance; and Brian Clarke for his suggestions on improving the text. I owe gratitude to the helpful comments of the anonymous referees on an earlier version of this book as well. All errors are my own.
My greatest gratitude is to my family and several close friends, especially to Marco, Pete, Raito, Reiko, Xiaolu and Xiaowei. I dedicate this book to my parents and to Cy Chen.