Ancient energy-saving black technology! The 800-year-old oil-saving lamp contains the neglected beauty of science

Mr. Chen Yinke spoke highly of the historical development of the Song Dynasty: "The culture of the Chinese nation has evolved for thousands of years and reached its peak in the Zhao Song Dynasty." When talking about our impression of the Song Dynasty, in addition to its highly developed commodity economy and philosophical humanistic spirit, we are more intoxicated by its contemporary aesthetics. Appreciating the cultural beauty of the Song Dynasty from poems and songs, feeling the beauty of history from cultural relics, and experiencing the beauty of life from the four great elegant events are the basic ways for us to appreciate the aesthetics of the Song Dynasty today.

Mainstream Aesthetic Imagery of Song Dynasty Porcelain

The ceramic production of the Song Dynasty occupies an important position in Chinese history and is also an important material manifestation of the aesthetics of the Song Dynasty. The works of the five famous kilns and many folk kilns with different craftsmanship and styles have triggered extensive discussions on the aesthetics of creation within the society, and gradually formed the unique aesthetic characteristics of the Song Dynasty. If the creation aesthetics of the Tang Dynasty advocated the arbitrary and heroic intricate colors and gold, then the Song Dynasty respected the natural and inaction of the lotus emerging from the water. Song Dynasty porcelain abandoned the previous eccentric shapes and exaggerated and useless decorations, and focused on the rigorous rationality and simple and exquisite design of the shape, and in accordance with the Neo-Confucian thought, emphasized the functionality of the object. The glaze color experiment under the constraint of the shape is a concentrated expression of the Song people's refined craftsmanship and gentle and elegant aesthetic taste.

Poems such as "After the rain, the sky clears and the clouds break", "The setting sun suddenly turns purple and green into mist", "Holding delicately, the fragrant spring splashes milk, and the golden thread partridge spots" are all different visual presentations of Song Dynasty porcelain under the overall aesthetic tone of "ethereal and elegant". Aesthetic concepts are consistent within a certain space and field, so this simple and elegant, light and simple aesthetic proposition has laid the basic background of the Song Dynasty's creation aesthetics, and of course it has also become our basic impression of Song Dynasty aesthetics.

Reshaping the Song Dynasty Aesthetic System

The aesthetic system of the Song Dynasty was not single. In addition to the basic style of elegance and subtlety, the creations of the Song Dynasty also showed scientific beauty beyond the visual aesthetic level. At that time, the Qiong Kiln in Sichuan fired a kind of porcelain oil-saving lamp, called the Jiadengzhan, which was later unearthed in Hunan, Tianjin and other places.

Regarding the shape and structure of the oil-saving lamp, Lu You once recorded in "Notes from Laoxuean": "In the collection of Song Wen'an Gong, there is a poem called "Oil-saving Lamp". It is now in Hanjia, which is a clamp lamp. A small hole is made at one end, and clear cold water is poured into it, which is changed every night. Ordinary lamps are burned by fire and dry quickly. This is different, and it saves almost half of the oil." Slightly different from the previous lamp body structure, the oil-saving lamp is designed with a sandwich at the bottom of the lamp plate. By injecting cold water into the sandwich, the temperature of the lamp body can be effectively reduced when the oil lamp is in use, thereby reducing the loss and volatilization of fuel. In terms of manufacturing materials, commonly used metals such as copper and iron are not selected, but ceramics with relatively low cost and slightly slower thermal conductivity are used. On the one hand, the burning cost of lamp oil is saved, and on the other hand, the production cost of lamps is reduced, which fully reflects the skilled craftsmanship and ingenious ideas of the craftsmen.

Joseph Needham, a famous British scholar of science and technology, affirmed the scientific value of this oil-saving porcelain lamp, believing that it "foreshadowed the birth of modern technology for distilled condensed water and steam circulation systems". From a visual aesthetic point of view, the oil-saving lamp uses the opalescent green glaze commonly seen in the Song Dynasty. It is moist and warm, practical and low-key. It does not pay too much attention to the lightness and color expression of the glaze, which is very consistent with its identity characteristics that appear on the desks of literati all year round. The oil-saving lamp was deeply loved by literati in the Song Dynasty and was often given as a gift to scholars. When Shao Bo was the governor of Hanjia, he bought oil-saving lamps several times to give to the literati in the court. It can be seen that this kind of porcelain lamp is quite popular.

Admittedly, the oil-saving lamp is just a faint starlight among the many great scientific inventions of the Song Dynasty. However, as the golden age of ancient Chinese scientific and technological development, the Song Dynasty rarely mentioned the scientific beauty of creation, nor did it actively advocate scientific beauty at the aesthetic level. This is indeed something worth thinking about.

We generally examine formal beauty through the material image level, and also explore conceptual beauty with the help of spirit and thought. In the aesthetic process, sensibility becomes an important way to explore beauty and aesthetics; science, as a rational result, cannot be easily obtained in a short period of time, and was not included in the research scope of aesthetics in the early days. From the perspective of the craft aesthetics of Song Dynasty porcelain, the Song people first focused on the elegant shape and beautiful glaze color of porcelain, and then combined it with the Neo-Confucian thought and literati value orientation at the time for discussion, and then shaped the mainstream aesthetic content of the Song Dynasty. This is a process from vision and touch to feeling and thought, and then sublimated to philosophy. It is also a soothing and enjoyable process. However, the relatively restrained and abstract scientific nature condensed in porcelain production cannot quickly bring physical and psychological pleasure to people, so it has not received widespread attention from the public.

The Beauty of Creation Science in the Song Dynasty

So, how do we understand the scientific beauty of creation in the Song Dynasty? The author believes that scientific beauty is an important part of the aesthetic system. Scientific beauty has multiple forms, and the scientific beauty of the Song Dynasty focuses on "the beauty of results."

The design and creation, aesthetics and other behaviors we discuss are centered on the perspective of people, focusing on people's survival and development in the present and future. The design purpose of the fuel-saving lamp is to save living costs in human daily life through scientific structural design, thereby achieving the purpose of saving energy. From the perspective of the entire ecosystem, this "design result" of the fuel-saving lamp fully considers people and various resources, environment and other factors that have a relationship with people, presenting the care and kindness of scientific beauty. Although this scientific beauty plays an important role in many production fields, it is still fragile and not strong enough in the aesthetic system of the Song Dynasty and even later generations.

This reminds us of the "Needham Puzzle": Ancient China made many important contributions to the development of human science and technology, so why did the scientific and industrial revolutions not occur in modern China? It is true that the formation of this pattern is the result of a combination of various factors, but perhaps we can also try to find the answer from an aesthetic perspective. Although the Song Dynasty produced the most highly developed scientific and technological achievements in modern times, it was precisely because of the strength of spiritual aesthetics that the beauty of science and the ability of scientific technology to transform nature were ignored. From this perspective, aesthetics itself is also a kind of productivity, which is still applicable today.