hee!

[telophase]

On my daily commute, and when I've been inking, I've been listening to the audiobook of Lost Discoveries by Dick Teresi. It's about the scientific achievments of non-Western cultures, and is quite interesting. It's certainly worth it just for discovering the existence of the Chinese south-pointing chariot.

Comments

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes! That one quite tickled me. I must keep an eye out for the Teresi--more books on non-Western science, always good.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what others think of the book and his conclusions, but I think it's pretty impressive how far the Chinese got with optics and physics, especially considering that they were working almost entirely with theory and not experiment a lot of the time.

There's a chapter on cosmology that I failed to see the point of - it might be that I have a harder time following long threads of argument when listening to it than when reading it - because it seemed to be "Look, here's our cosmology [Big Bang etc]! Lots of ancient cultures had vaguely similar cosmologies, too! [insert many creation myths where the world was created out of nothing]"

And the narrator mispronounces words here and there, although he's self-assured enough in his cadence and the rest of his diction that it makes you go "Wait? Have I been saying that wrong all these years?" for a moment.

[rabican.livejournal.com]

That's just nifty!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Knowing these things actually existed make me feel the world is a slightly better place.

I love reading about ancient technology. :D

[telophase.livejournal.com]

* Not to mention that reading the timeline of discovery and rediscovery make syou realize that there's story there:

423 .. 452 Kuo Shan-Ming fails to make one for emperor Thopa Tao.
423 .. 452 Ma Yo succeeds, but is killed by Kuo Shan-Ming.

[rabican.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Oh man.

[snarp]

The chariots are real?... That is *awesome*. I'd read about them in a couple of folklore books, but I'd thought they were like never-empty bowls of stew.

Now that I know that Chinese fairy tales are 100% factual, I shall be seeking the hand of the dragon king's beautiful daughter at earliest possible opportunity.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

:D Sometimes Teresi seems to be taking items that were described but possibly never built and using them as examples of ancient technology, but in this case, after I was intrigued by his mention (in a list of devices the Chinese devised that didn't get used much, or something like that) I looked it up, and lo and behold it seems to work well enough that someone constructed a prototype of it.