On Alexander Wylie’s Jottings on the Science of the Chinese Arithmetic

Abstract

Starting from August of 1852 the British Protestant missionary and sinologist, Alexander Wylie (1815–1887), published in nine instalments an account Jottings on the Science of the Chinese Arithmetic in the newspaper North China Herald. He explained clearly the purpose of his account at the beginning: ‘The object of the following desultory notes, made from time to time, in the course of some researches entered upon, with another purpose in view, is to draw attention to the state of the arithmetical science in China, a subject which has not been so fully explored as it might with advantage, and on which some erroneous statements have been current in modern publications.’ Alexander Wylie is a well-known figure in the last quarter of the Qing Dynasty for his contribution in transmitting Western science into China during the latter half of the 19th century. In mathematics he was known for translating three treatises in collaboration with the Qing mathematician Li Shanlan (1811–1882) — Supplementary Elements of Geometry in 1856 but published in 1865 (believed to be based on the English translation of Book VII to XV of Elements by Henry Billingsley in 1570), Treatise of Algebra in 1859 (based on Elements of Algebra by Agustus De Morgan in 1835) and Analytical Geometry and Differential and Integral Calculus Step by Step in 1859 (based on Elements of Analytical Geometry and of the Differential and Integral Calculus of Elias Loomis in 1850). He was also the author of Compendium of Arithmetic published in 1853. This presentation will discuss the knowledge of Chinese science and mathematics which most European sinologists of the 18th and 19th centuries possessed and the low regard they held it in, but the viewpoint of which was critically examined by Wylie in his account.