| 초록 |
This paper deals with a Korean Confucian philosopher Choe Han-gi's(崔漢綺, 1803~1877) qi-based celestial mechanics and cosmological ideas which were proposed by criticizing Newtonian celestial mechanics of mid-nineteenth century Europe. I mainly analyzed his Seonggi unhwa(星氣運化, Dynamic Change of Stellar Qi, 1867) where he claimed his final cosmological ideas based on his own philosophy of qi氣. Choe, in his Kihak(氣學, the Study of Qi) written in 1857, declared that he had established a true philosophy of qi which can be applied to any kinds of natural phenomena including celestial ones. In around 1860, Choe red Tantian(談天, Conversation on the Heaven, 1859), the Chinese translation of the Outlines of Astronomy(1851, 4th edition) written by John Herschel(1792~1871), an English astronomer. Herschel's book widely adopted Newtonian celestial mechanics to explain newly discovered various celestial phenomena and their gravitational motions such as the orbital motion of satellites and asteroids, double star, double cluster, etc. Li Shan-lan(李善蘭, 1811~1882), a Chinese mathematician and Alexander Wylie(1815~1887), an English missionary, co-worked for the translation of Herschel's book. With his philosophy of qi, Choe criticized the concept of Newtonian gravity which had no causal explanation on its occurrence and action at a distance. Being convinced that all kinds of forces must be occurred and driven by qi, Choe invented the concept of qi-globe(氣輪), a globe of diffused qi surrounding a certain material body, to explain the gravitational phenomena. According to him, the gravitational force can be driven and conveyed only by the qi-globes when one globe intersected the other. Choe's argument in Seonggi unhwa(星氣運化, Dynamic Change of Stellar Qi, 1867) seems to be a bit dogmatic from a modern scientific point of view, but it was inevitable for him, I think, because he was definitely convinced with his philosophy of qi. From his reading style of Newtonian celestial mechanics, we can find that modern science, from Choe's point of view, can be understood in a different way from its original one. |
