Dagmar Schaefer, “The Crafting of the 10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth-Century China” (University of Chicago Press, 2011)

New Books in Technology · May 31, 2011 · 58m

In her elegant work of historical puppet theater The Crafting of the 10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth-Century China (University of Chicago Press, 2011), Dagmar Schaefer introduces us to the world of scholars and craftsmen in seventeenth-century China through the life and work of Song Yingxing (1587-1666?). A minor official in southern China, Song has earned a major reputation among scholars of Chinese history for writing the Tiangong kaiwu, a work on practical knowledge that covers topics ranging from salt-making, to gunpowder, to metallurgy. Schaefer’s book flesh out…