Shen Kuo
1031 – 1095 · China · Astronomy, Engineering, History
Described the magnetic compass and deduced geological deep time.
Index entry
Shen Kuo is currently a short index entry. The research desk can draft the full profile — achievements, works, living legacy and what is documented about the family line.
Expand this profileContinuity of ideas
Who shaped Shen Kuo, and who they shaped
Inherited from1
- Su Song
1020 – 1101 · Engineering, Astronomy
Song court instrument-making and Shen Kuo's Dream Pool Essays record the same technical programme.
Passed the work to1
- Cheng Dan'an
1899 – 1957 · Traditional Chinese Medicine
Shen Kuo's insistence on empirical verification is the Chinese precedent for modernised clinical method.
Sources and references
Numbered markers in the text above point to the entries below. Each links to a primary document, archival collection or scholarly reference where the claim about Shen Kuo can be checked.
- 1.Primary texts and first editions by or about Shen Kuo
Internet Archive · Primary source
- 2.Catalogued holdings and archival finding aids for Shen Kuo
WorldCat (OCLC) · Archive
Nearby in the annals
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544 BCE – 496 BCEThe Art of War is still on military and business curricula worldwide.
Cai Lun
50 – 121Standardised papermaking, the substrate of recorded civilisation.
Zhang Heng
78 – 139Built the first seismoscope and mapped 2,500 stars.