Why is Heavenly Creations called "China17th century craft encyclopedia"?

Tiangong Wu Kai is a comprehensive book summarizing production technology, covering agriculture, handicrafts and other aspects, including machinery, bricks, ceramics, sulfur, candles, paper, weapons, gunpowder, textiles, printing and dyeing, salt making, coal mining, oil extraction and other production technologies, with wide coverage and high practical value. Therefore, it is called17th century encyclopedia of science and technology in China, which is of great significance for studying the development of ancient production technology in China. 1637, Song, a scientist of Ming Dynasty, compiled and printed a book called Heavenly Creations, with 18 articles in three volumes, which collected the agricultural and handicraft technologies of Ming Dynasty, accompanied by detailed text descriptions and illustrations, and showed the technological process and mechanical principles in great detail. Ordinary people can also try to figure out these production techniques according to books, which will greatly promote social development and progress. Many natural science theories in the book are ahead of the world, and this kind of induction and summary of knowledge points is consistent with the concept of the encyclopedia, which can be said to be the first technical encyclopedia in the world.

The emergence of heavenly creations is due to the close relationship between the development of science and technology in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. The budding of China's attention to capital did not change his way of thinking, but his pursuit of technological progress became more and more enormous, and various technologies came into being, creating a good environment for the appearance of technical reference books. Environment can change the development direction of technology. For example, the architectural method of the Song Dynasty is the induction and summary of the overall architectural technology after the society has developed to a certain extent. However, Tiangong Wu Kai is a folk work compiled by the Song Dynasty, and the Building Law is a manual of building codes compiled by the official institutions of the Song Dynasty. By comparing the differences between them, we can also see the role of social environment in technological development.

Limited by the overall cultural level of the society, the spread of heavenly creations in the Ming Dynasty was not very extensive. After the demise of the Ming Dynasty, there was a great retrogression in culture, so that many advanced technologies became a dead letter and could not provide assistance for social development. I'm really sorry.