Brush Talks from a Dream Book

[jamie]

Hi,

I'm quite new here and I am wondering if anyone is familiar with the work of Shen Kuo titled "The dream pool essays". He's more familiar as a figure in chinese history due this his multiple contributions in a wide array of subjects and to quote wiki they say:

Shen Kuo was a polymathic Chinese scientist and statesman of the Song Dynasty (960–1279). Excelling in many fields of study and statecraft, he was a mathematician, astronomer, meteorologist, geologist, zoologist, botanist, pharmacologist, agronomist, archaeologist, ethnographer, cartographer, encyclopedist, general, diplomat, hydraulic engineer, inventor, academy chancellor, finance minister, governmental state inspector, poet, and musician.

I happened to chance him just recently having realised that I have ignored several thoughts/questions over my own eastern roots having mostly concentrated on the western adepts talked about more on this site. I simply googled my surname which happens to be "shen" after reading what laura mentioned about "laurente" in the article regarding fucanelli and the DVC. I was curious about what my surname meant.

And apparently, :O his name popped up as one of my only notable ancestors whom I had never known about.

Anyway :) I realise the questions I have require greater depth of pondering (I am still reading up) but I'd like to share my first *footprint* in case I can get *accidental* inputs of new directions.

To sum :

This book was Shen's ultimate attempt to comprehend and describe a multitude of various aspects of nature, science, and reality, and all the practical and profound curiosities found in the world.

To go on, some things he talks about seems to border on some form of channelling and on naming his book he simply wrote:

Because I had only my writing brush and ink slab to converse with, I call it Brush Talks.

The talking brush aspect simply screamed out at me.

To go on though...
Of Daoism and the inability of empirical science to explain everything in the world, Shen Kuo wrote:

Those in the world who speak of the regularities underlying the phenomena, it seems, manage to apprehend their crude traces. But these regularities have their very subtle aspect, which those who rely on mathematical astronomy cannot know of. Still even these are nothing more than traces. As for the spiritual processes described in the [Book of Changes] that "when they are stimulated, penetrate every situation in the realm," mere traces have nothing to do with them. This spiritual state by which foreknowledge is attained can hardly be sought through changes, of which in any case only the cruder sort are attainable. What I have called the subtlest aspect of these traces, those who discuss the celestial bodies attempt to know by depending on mathematical astronomy; but astronomy is nothing more than the outcome of conjecture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Pool_Essays