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I am working with Rui Magone (Berlin) on the edition of Manuel Dias' Tianwenlüe 天问略 (1615). It has been great fun, but also lots of work. You can check the blog where we discuss our progress.
Photo in newspaper Público when they did a piece on our work.
Rui (left) and me surrounded by photocopies of the Tianwenlüe.
(Want to know more about Rui Magone? See here.)
The Tianwenlüe 天问略 is famous mostly because of its last page where Galileo's telescopic observations are described for the first time in Chinese. Pasquale d'Elia was one of the very first persons to note this page. It is indeed remarkable that discoveries that Galileo had announced in 1610-11 were already being explained in China in 1614, by a Portuguese Jesuit missionary.
People who are familiar with Galileo studies even if completely ignorant of Chinese (as I am), will immediately recognize in the diagram of this page the image of three-bodied Saturn that Galileo announced.
There are many more things of interest in the text besides the Galileo page. Rui and I have already translated the whole text and we are now working in the notes and introductory study. If you're interested, the Tianwenlüe 天问略 is online at the Ricci Institute in San Francisco. You can also see some papers Rui Magone and I wrote (more are under way). Newspaper Público, in a nice piece titled «Foi Manuel Dias que ensinou aos chineses quem era Galileu» (Ana Machado, 19 Jun 09) covered our work. This gave some publicity to Tianwenluë and Manuel Dias.
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