The Heart of the Eye and the Heart of the Sun: The Struggle to Translate Science in Tokugawa Japan (East Asian Studies and CHSTM Joint Seminar)
| Dates: | 11 November 2025 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 17:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Medical Sciences |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, Alumni, Current University students, General public |
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| Speaker: | Dr Lewis Bremner |
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In 1802, the Nagasaki-based translator Shizuki Tadao completed the final volume of a work that presented Japanese readers for the first time with explanations of universal gravitation, Newtonian optics, and several other groundbreaking scientific ideas. That work was Rekish? shinsho (‘New Book on Calendrical Phenomena’). It was based on a book by the Oxford professor John Keill, yet in Shizuki’s manuscripts we also find ideas about the nature of the universe – even the existence of alien life – that were entirely distinct from Keill’s.
This talk uses these points of difference as anchors to investigate the motives and modes of translation in eighteenth and early nineteenth century Japan, and by so doing re-examine the role of translation in the emergence of modern science.
Dr. Lewis Bremner is a Teaching Associate in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. He works on the history of science and technology in Japan. He recently co-edited the volume Reopening the Opening of Japan: Transnational Approaches to Japan and the Wider World (Brill, 2024), and he is currently completing a book on the history of the magic lantern in Japan.
Speaker
Dr Lewis Bremner
Role: Teaching Associate in the History and Philosophy of Science
Organisation: University of Cambridge
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
2.57 (CHSTM Seminar Room)
Simon Building
Manchester
