Luis M R Saraiva – författare

This book explores the interaction between Europe and East Asia between the 16th and the 18th centuries in the field of mathematical sciences, bringing to the fore the role of Portugal as an agent of transmission of European science to East Asia. It is an important contribution to understanding this fundamental period of scientific history, beginning with the arrival of Vasco da Gama in India in 1498 and ending with the expulsion of the Society of Jesus from Portugal in 1759. The former event opened a new era in relations between Europe and Asia, in particular regarding the circulation of scientific knowledge, leading to major social and intellectual changes in both continents. The Society of Jesus controlled education in Portugal and in the Empire. It was central to the network of knowledge transmission until the Society was expelled from Portugal in 1759.The proceedings have been selected for coverage in:• Index to Social Sciences & Humanities Proceedings® (ISSHP® / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Social Sciences & Humanities Proceedings (ISSHP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)

At the end of the 15th century, Portugal was given the oversight (Padroado) of all Catholic missions in Asia. The Society of Jesus played a major role in this enterprise of evangelization, which in Jesuit hands led to the transmission of major elements of European mathematical sciences to East Asia. The essays in this volume present important new data and analysis on the extent to and ways in which Jesuit scientific culture and Portuguese policies regarding education, trade and mission shaped the reception of “Western learning” in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam in the early modern period.

In recent years, research on the history of early modern cartography has undergone remarkable developments. At the same time, European travel accounts and works on China and Japan are also being investigated more systematically. Finally, studies of translations between European and East Asian languages have highlighted the more general issue of how and to what extent representations of the world that prevailed at one end of Eurasia informed and influenced the representations prevailing at the other end of the continent, sometimes to the point that novel forms of representations were being generated.This volume brings together a series of essays on this theme. It is divided into five sections which address as many topics: the textual representation of the "Other"; 16th- and 17th-century maps of China, Japan and Vietnam; the phenomenon of hybridisation in visual representations; knowledge and representations of the world in Europe and East Asia; and the circulation of representations of the heavens in astronomy between these two regions.