Knowledge Diffusion and Intellectual Change: When Chinese Literati Met European Jesuits
研究1580年后耶稣会士如何影响中国儒家文人从事科学研究，发现耶稣会士所在府的科学著作数量平均增长四倍，但1723年被驱逐后效果减弱，且研究服务于治国而非经济进步。
From 1580, the Jesuits introduced European sciences to China―an autarkic civilization whose intelligentsia was dominated by Confucian literati. Drawing upon prefectural distributions of the Jesuits and Chinese scientific works, this paper demonstrates that the Jesuits stimulated Confucian literati to study science. On average, the literati’s scientific works increased four times in prefectures with Jesuit scientists after 1580. But this effect shrank after the Jesuits were expelled by the emperor of China in 1723. Since China’s scholar-official system remained unchanged, the literati’s scientific research aimed to serve the needs of statecraft rather than translating into economic progress.