During the Northern Song Dynasty, China produced a great scientist who was proficient in astronomy, calendar-making, music, medicine, divination, and more. His work "Dream Pool Essays" meticulously recorded the outstanding achievements of ancient Chinese working people in science and technology, as well as his own observations and research findings, reflecting the highest level of technological development in the Northern Song. It was hailed by Western scientists as an ancient Chinese encyclopedia, and he himself was praised by British science historian Joseph Needham as "the most outstanding figure in the history of Chinese science." This was the renowned Shen Kuo.
Shen Kuo was born in Qiantang, Zhejiang, and as a very young child he moved with his family to live in the Wuyi Mountain area of Fujian. The Shen family had served as officials for generations; Shen Kuo's grandfather once held the position of Chief Judge of the Grand Court of Revision, and his father also served as an official in Quanzhou, Kaifeng, and Jiangning.
Growing up in such a family environment, Shen Kuo developed a strong passion for reading from a young age. By the time he was fourteen, he had already read through all the extensive collection of books in his home. In ancient China, it was commonly believed that a woman's virtue lay in her lack of talent, but Shen Kuo's mother was an exception. She was highly learned and placed great importance on her son's education. During his early childhood, Shen Kuo received instruction from his mother, and in his youth, he traveled with his father to various places, broadening his knowledge and experience.
When his father became a local official in Quanzhou, Fujian, Shen Kuo went along with him. While in Quanzhou, he heard about a bitter spring in Qianshan, Jiangxi, whose water was greenish and tasted extremely bitter, like bile, leading locals to call it "gall water." It was said that boiling this gall water in an iron pot until dry would yield yellow copper. Unable to suppress his curiosity, Shen Kuo personally traveled to Qianshan County to investigate and found the rumor to be true. Later, in his work *Dream Pool Essays*, he recorded in detail the process of "smelting copper with gall water." In fact, this gall water was sulfuric acid, which, when heated, turned into copper sulfate, commonly known as blue vitriol. The blue vitriol reacted chemically with the iron of the pot, producing copper. Additionally, according to *Dream Pool Essays*, there was a copper mine near Qianshan, and later generations exploited it to develop a large-scale copper mine, making Jiangxi a major copper-producing region in China.
It can be said that Shen Kuo not only read ten thousand books but also traveled ten thousand miles, which laid a solid foundation for his future scientific research. After his father's death, Shen Kuo inherited his father's official position and entered the bureaucracy. He first served as an official in Jiangsu, where he organized the people to build dams for flood control and irrigation, reclaim wasteland, and develop agricultural production. Seven years later, he became a county magistrate in Anhui, where he organized the people around Wuhu to build polder fields, known as the "Wanchun Polder." During this period, based on his practical experience, he wrote "Five Theories on Polder Fields" and "Illustrated Record of the Wanchun Polder."
At the age of thirty-three, Shen Kuo passed the imperial examination and subsequently took up a post in the capital. The capital provided Shen Kuo with broad opportunities for development and richer scientific resources. During his tenure in the capital, Shen Kuo developed an interest in astronomy and calendrical systems, dedicating himself to in-depth research in these fields. He once served as an editor at the Jixian Academy, which granted him access to the imperial library's collection. While reading and conducting research, Shen Kuo was also frequently dispatched on inspection tours to other regions. These experiences contributed to his substantial scientific accumulation, and his scientific works such as "Discourse on the Armillary Sphere," "Discourse on the Clepsydra," "Discourse on the Gnomon," and "Regulations for Fortification Construction" were all written during this period.
Shen Kuo also possessed profound expertise in geography. Using his personally drawn "Map of All Prefectures and Commanderies of the Great Song Dynasty," he argued vigorously on the basis of reason during negotiations with Liao envoys over the border demarcation between Song and Liao, yielding not an inch of territory, and ultimately thwarted the Liao's scheme to encroach upon Northern Song's land. This shows that Shen Kuo was not only a great scientist but also an outstanding diplomat.
Shen Kuo was a member of the reformist faction at court, and during Wang Anshi's reforms, he actively participated and earned Wang Anshi's appreciation. After Wang Anshi's reforms failed, Shen Kuo was implicated and transferred to Xuanzhou in Anhui to serve as a prefect. During the conflict between the Northern Song Dynasty and the Western Xia, Shen Kuo was sent by the court to the frontier as a commanding general. However, due to his subordinates' reckless pursuit of glory, the Song army suffered a devastating defeat despite favorable circumstances. As the commanding officer, Shen Kuo was demoted for ineffective leadership, marking the end of his official career.
Shen Kuo once purchased a garden in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, and in his later years, he moved there to live, naming it "Dream Brook Garden," which is the origin of the book title Dream Brook Essays. From then on, Shen Kuo withdrew from worldly affairs and devoted himself to writing Dream Brook Essays. Over about six years, he finally completed this monumental work, which gathered the knowledge of his entire life.
Dream Pool Essays is a scientific work in the notebook genre, divided into three parts: Essays, Supplementary Essays, and Continued Essays, covering astronomy, calendars, meteorology, geography, physics, chemistry, biology, agriculture, water conservancy, architecture, medicine, history, literature, art, military affairs, law, and many other fields. This shows that Shen Kuo was truly an astonishing polymath. The book contains 609 entries, with over one-third belonging to the natural sciences, which is quite rare for works in the notebook genre.
In his work Dream Pool Essays, Shen Kuo meticulously documented the process of petroleum and its extraction, marking the first such record in Chinese history. Previously, people referred to petroleum by a variety of names, including fire oil, fierce fire oil, stone lacquer, and stone fat water, all of which denoted the same substance. Shen Kuo unified these terms under the name "petroleum," a pioneering achievement in the history of world science.
British historian of science Joseph Needham highly praised Dream Pool Essays as "a landmark in the history of Chinese science." To commemorate Shen Kuo's outstanding contributions to the development of Chinese science, in 1979, the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences specially named an asteroid discovered in 1964 after Shen Kuo.
Shen Kuo's major scientific achievements amazed the world, but in politics, he was often criticized by his contemporaries because he once participated in framing the great literary figure Su Shi during the "Crow Terrace Poetry Case."
After Shen Kuo's death, no one erected a tombstone for him or wrote his epitaph. In the *History of Song*, this great scientist did not even have a dedicated biography, a truly desolate fate. The reasons for this are twofold: on one hand, science was undervalued in ancient China; on the other, it likely stemmed from Shen Kuo's political morality. When the reformist faction held a dominant position in the Northern Song court, Shen Kuo firmly supported the reforms and did not hesitate to frame the conservative Su Shi to curry favor with the reformers. Later, when the reformists fell from power and Wang Anshi was demoted, Shen Kuo turned against the reformists, questioning Wang Anshi's reforms. Wang Anshi thus denounced Shen Kuo as a despicable villain.
However, as the saying goes, "a single flaw does not obscure the jade," and future generations should make a fair judgment of Shen Kuo, never denying his immense contributions to science for humanity simply because of his political shortcomings.