Mozi and Eclipse

choi

Kenneth Chang, A Shadow That Illumines; For centuries, astronomers have turned to eclipse to explain fundamental physics. Ne York Times, Aug 15, 2017 (in the weekly section).
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/ ... veries-science.html

Excerpt in the window of print: In the fourth century BC, a Chinese philosopher, Mozi, wrote that "the sun rose at night."

Seven consecutive paragraphs:

"Solar eclipses have been used not just to deduce what is going on in the solar system but also to study Earth.

"In 1695, the astronomer Edmund Halley discovered that modern calculations did not quite predict eclipses reported in ancient times. As it turned out, that is because the Earth’s spin has been slowing.

"Chinese historical records provided clues needed to figure out how much. In the fourth century B.C., a Chinese philosopher, Mozi, wrote that “the sun rose at night,” describing an epic battle that had occurred about 1,500 years earlier.

"While paging through the text at the University of California, Los Angeles, a couple of decades ago, Kevin D. Pang, a former NASA scientist, realized this was not a poetic account of a fiery combat, but a description of a total eclipse.

"The eclipse, which occurred close to sunset, indicated a passage into night, and the re-emergence of the sun was thus a sunrise at night.

"The day and place of the battle were known. Computer simulations determined how much slowing of Earth’s rotation rate was needed to make the shadow of an eclipse that occurred that day pass over the battlefield.

"If the Earth was spinning faster back then, the day was shorter — by 0.07 of a second.

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest.
(b) illumine (v) "a literary word for illuminate"
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/illumine
(c) 墨子/非攻下
https://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hans/墨子/非攻下
("禹征有苗 * * * 昔者三苗大乱，天命殛之，日妖宵出")

非攻: 上, 中, 下
(d) KD Pang, KK Yau and Hung-hsiang Chou, Astronomical Dating and Statistical Analysis of Ancient Eclipse Data. In SM Razaullah Ansari (ed), History of Oriental Astronomy: Proceedings of the Joint Discussion-17 at the at the 23rd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, organised by the Commission 41 (history of astrology), held in Kyoto, August 25-26, 1997. Springer 2002, at pages 111 and 112
https://books.google.com/books?i ... ;dq=%22september+24,+1912+bc%22&source=bl&ots=mzYpmeq2ql&sig=ykDIm2uanZxALGgUftj_Q0jzIbg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwin_P62qNrVAhUS84MKHSNADLwQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=%22september%2024%2C%201912%20bc% 22&f=false
("11. The 'Double Sunset' Eclipse of 1912 BC and the Third Year of King Yu of Xia Dynasty[:] The recently discovered second Xia solar eclipse record is also based on three sources: (1) Philosopher Mozi (ca 468-382 BC) wrote -- 'In ancient times the san (three) Miao tribes were in disarray. Heaven ordered their destruction. The Sun rose at night . . .' King Yu led a punitive expedition against the san Miao, and defeated them (Condemnation of Offensive Wars [非攻] III). (2) The Bamboo Annals [竹书纪年] states 'When the san Miao were about to perish . . . The Sun disappeared by day and reappeared at night . . . ' (3) The Sui Chaozi [随巢子: 墨翟的弟子] account is same as the Bamboo Annals.' * * * The space and time intervals for matching this eclipse are extremely tight. First, historical atlases put the san Miao domain just south of the Yangzi River, west of Lake Pengli [彭蠡泽] (now Poyang) and east of Mount Heng (Herrman, 1966). Second, the astronomically verified Bamboo Annals Xia chronology puts Yu's reign in 1914-1007 BC (Nivision and Pang, 1990). There was indeed such an eclipse within the eight-year and 100-mile constraints!  The September 24, 1912 BC annular eclipse (in the third year of King Yu's reign [禹三年] ), magnitude 0.97-0.99, produced a 'double sunset' at 28oN, 114oE -- exactly over the san Miao domain, as required!")