Dirk L. Couprie - When the Earth Was Flat: Studies in Ancient Greek and Chinese Cosmology

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Whether or not there was an actual relationship between early Chinese thought and early Greek thought is difficult to determine. But we can really claim that there is analogical relationship between early Chinese thought and early Greek thought. Even with regard to the concepts of Yin and Yang which have been regarded by most scholars for a long time and up to now as very peculiar Chinese ideas, we can find that there is analogical relationship with the concepts of the hot and the cold and the dry and the wet in early Greek thought. Therefore, I strongly believe that, if we systematically and profoundly try to do comparative research into early Chinese thought and early Greek thought, we should meet many surprising discoveries. And this will help us not only to find many comparable thoughts between the two, but also to solve the puzzles which have remained for understanding because of the lost and the lack of documents on either side.

Dirk L. Coupries new book, When the Earth Was Flat: Studies in Ancient Greek and Chinese Cosmology , is a great attempt in this aspect. In this volume, he continues the research of his earlier work, Heaven and Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology , and makes a detailed and deep study of flat earth cosmology. While in the previous book he paid more attention to how spherical earth cosmology replaced flat earth cosmology and was accepted in early Greek thought, in the new book he devotes much more discussion to the question of how flat earth cosmology has explained all kinds of puzzles of astronomy. It is precisely in this context that he devotes an independent and special part to the study of Chinese flat earth cosmology, called the gai tian system, which was contained in an ancient Chinese work, Zhou Bi Suan Jing . He makes use of his extensive knowledge of ancient astronomy when studying its thoughts related to flat earth cosmology deeply and professionally, so that although I am a Chinese person, I become a layman with respect to him regarding this Chinese ancient work. But, I dare say, it is by his new book that he illustrates how a comparative research between early Chinese thought and early Greek thought may provide useful material to remedy the deficiency of literature on both sides.

I got acquainted with Dirk Couprie in Thessaloniki, Greece, in July 2014, when I attended the Fourth Conference of International Association for Presocratic Studies. In that conference, Dirk Couprie read his paper, The Paths of The Celestial Bodies According to Anaximenes, and my paper was Yin and Yang, and the Hot and the Cold. In my paper, I compared the cosmological concepts of the hot and the cold in Pre-Socratics with the concepts of the Yin and Yang in Pre-Qin and paid special attention to the analogies between Lao Tzu and Anaximander. I did not anticipate that this paper would arouse the interest of Dirk Couprie. We had an intense discussion about Anaximeness cosmology and ancient Chinese cosmology such as the gai tian system and the hun tian system, the former of which claims the idea of flat earth and the latter the idea of spherical heavens. I felt shy that as a Chinese person, I could not provide him with more knowledge than he already possessed about ancient Chinese cosmology. After that meeting, we met again in February 2016 at the 10th London Ancient Science Conference. At that conference, we talked about Anaximanders cosmology, especially about the puzzle in this sentence, a kind of sphere of flame from this was formed round the air surrounding the earth (Ps.-Plutarch Strom . 2; DK 12 A 10). He told me that he intended to publish a book about flat earth cosmology based on the comparative study of early Greek cosmology and early Chinese cosmology.

Now, I receive the last draft of his new book, When the Earth Was Flat: Studies in Ancient Greek and Chinese Cosmology , which is just what he promised in 2016. I believe this work will be a new beginning in the comparative studies of ancient Western thought and ancient Chinese thought, which tells us about the similarities and differences between their cosmologies. Dirk Couprie tends to stress the differences. In my opinion, however, to inquire for the similarities will give us even more inspired ideas than to inquire for the differences.