Song Yingxing

Song Yingxing (1587–c. 1666), courtesy name Changgeng, was a native of Fengxin, Jiangxi, and a scientist and thinker of the Ming dynasty. After failing the metropolitan examination five times, he turned to practical learning and, while serving as an instructor in Fenyi, completed Tiangong Kaiwu (The Exploitation of the Works of Nature), a systematic record of agricultural and handicraft techniques hailed as "China's seventeenth-century technological encyclopedia"; Joseph Needham called him "the Chinese Diderot." The library holds 12 of his works, including several editions of Tiangong Kaiwu (public-domain, annotated, translated, and illustrated versions) as well as related compilations from the Siku Quanshu and the Chinese ancient material culture series. His writing is grounded in field observation and practical technology, clearly classified and concretely detailed, covering crop cultivation, textiles, metallurgy, papermaking, and weaponry, with data and operating procedures that reflect an empirical and people-oriented approach. His work has had a profound influence on later studies of the history of science and technology and of material culture.