A Northern Song statesman and polymath (1031–1095). His late work Dream Pool Essays is the sole near-contemporary record of Bi Sheng's baked-clay movable type; it also first notes that the magnetic needle points "slightly east" (declination), coins and predicts petroleum will "surely come into wide use," and infers the origin of the North China Plain from marine fossils in the Taihang range. He matters above all as a recorder of Song technical knowledge, not as the author of any one invention.
This thing will surely come into wide use in the world; it was I who first made it.
—— Shen Kuo, Dream Pool Essays, ch. 24 (on petroleum and the ink made from its soot, c. 1088)
History
Shen Kuo (courtesy name Cunzhong) was a Qiantang man of the Northern Song who held high office, took part in Wang Anshi's reforms, and directed the Bureau of Astronomy and frontier defence. In retirement at the Dream Brook estate near Runzhou he wrote the twenty-six-chapter Dream Pool Essays, ranging over astronomy, mathematics, geology, physics, biology, engineering, and music. It was here, in a few hundred characters, that he recorded the commoner Bi Sheng's baked-clay type—without which the invention would have vanished unrecorded. He also first noted that the magnetic needle "always points slightly east, not due south" (declination), some four centuries before Europe; coined the term "petroleum" (shíyóu) and predicted it would "come into wide use"; and, from marine fossils in the cliffs of the Taihang mountains, inferred that the region had once been coast and that the North China Plain was built of silt.
Connections
Consequences2
- Movable-Type PrintingcontributedThe Dream Pool Essays is the sole near-contemporary record of Bi Sheng's type
- The CompasscontributedFirst record of magnetic declination
Echoes1
- Su SongechoesFellow officials of the Song court, both expert in astronomical instruments
Sources
- 沈括《梦溪笔谈》
- 李约瑟（Joseph Needham）, 《中国科学技术史》相关卷
- Shen Kuo
Open questionspartly uncertain
- It is established that he lived from 1031 to 1095 and that the Dream Pool Essays date from about 1088.
- Whether the modern word shiyou ("petroleum") descends directly from Shen Kuo's usage is debated.
- The accounts of magnetic declination and movable type are in the original text of the Dream Pool Essays.
Why it matters
Shen Kuo's value lies, for the most part, in his being not an "inventor" but a recorder. His contribution to movable type was not to make it but to write it down, and in the history of technology one who carefully records another's invention sometimes stands no lower than the inventor. Shen Kuo is also a specimen of the Song polymath-official: with science not yet partitioned, one man could reform calendars, read fossils, and record type alike—the borders of knowledge were drawn only later.