STROBE checklist

Research Focus In her PhD thesis Anna Strob examines the Kongji gezhi 空際格致 (Investigation into Celestial Phenomena), a treatise written by the Jesuit missionary Alfonso Vagnone (c. 1568-1640) around 1633 as an adaption of the Coimbra commentaries on Aristotle’s natural philosophy. In particular, she traces the linguistic and conceptual challenges of this cultural translation with which the author intended to introduce the Aristotelian theory on elementary substances in the sub-lunar world to the Chinese literati in the times of early globalization. Her doctoral thesis, supervised by Prof. Dr. Hans Ulrich Vogel, is generously funded by a PhD scholarship of the Gerda Henkel Foundation.  Moreover, it is part of the international project “Translating Western Science, Technology and Medicine to Late Ming China:  Convergences and Divergences in the Light of the Kunyu gezhi 坤輿格致 (Investigations of the Earth’s Interior; 1640) and the Taixi shuifa 泰西水法 (Hydromethods of the Great West; 1612)” at the University of Tübingen. Publications As a result of her lecture at the 27th Agricola Colloquium: “Kunyu gezhi or the History of the Chinese Translation of De re metallica” organized by the Agricola Research Center Chemnitz in November 2018, Anna Strob published the article “Aristoteles im Gewand des Konfuzius: Alfonso Vagnone’s Kongji gezhi 空際格致 (Eine Studie Himmlischer Phänomene, c. 1633),” 27. Rundbrief: Agricola-Forschungszentrum Chemnitz, 2019, pp. 8-24.

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The «Sixingqing tu» 四行情圖 (Drawing of the Properties of the Four Elements) taken from Alfonso Vagnone’s «Kongji gezhi» 空際格致 (Investigation into Celestial Phenomena, c. 1633), woodblock print, accessed online: World Digital Library/Library of Congress.

The «Jiuchongtian tu» 九重天圖 (Illustration of the Nine-layer Heavens) as seen on Matteo Ricci’s «Kunyu wanguo quantu» 坤輿萬國全圖 (A Map of the Myriad Countries of the World) published c. 1602, displayed in Huang Shijian 黄时鑒 (2004): «Li Madou shijie ditu yanjiu» 利瑪竇世界地圖研究 (Studies on Matteo Ricci’s World Map), Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, image 19.