Western Science, Cosmological Ideas, and the Yijing Studies in Seventeenth-and Eighteenth-Century Korea

When Western science came to Korea in the seventeenth century, the Korean intellectuals of the time showed various different attitudes towards it. The Ouistian beliefs and practices that accompanied Western science posed problems to most of them, but much of the scientific knowledge did not; the Western scientific knowledge was generally accepted. Yet, ChosQn scholars, imbued with sangnihak (tt.f]l1 ~), the Korean version of Zhu Xi neo-Confucianism, had to deal with the cosmology associated with the Western calendrical arts, which contained many elements in conflict with the traditional world-view. Some eventually adopted the Western cosmology, and made it part of their own world-view. It is the argument of this paper that when they did, they did so in the framework of the Yijing studies and the theory of "the Chinese origin of the Western leaming." In presenting this argument, I shall examine the situation surrounding the transmission of the Western ideas of the earth's sphericity and rotation, and look at the works of Kim SOk-mun and SO Myong-i1ng.