Mind the Gap: Acoustical Answers to Cosmological Concerns in First-Century B.C.E. China

AbstractFrom the mid-third century b.c.e., Chinese experts used the manipulation of sound as a technology to synchronize society with the cosmos. In the Western Han, the polymath Jing Fang ?? (78?37 b.c.e.) detected an acoustical problem, known in the West as the Pythagorean comma, in the musical system. In the Chinese system, the comma is characterized by a minute but audible discrepancy, a gap between two pitches that should sound identical and that carry the same numerical representation. Jing Fang reduced the comma by designing a model of sixty pitches, superposed onto the calendar. This essay argues that his acoustical endeavors are inseparable from his ultimate goal: to track seasonal change accurately throughout the year and use it in weather prognostications. Sound was the tool he used to measure the yearly flux of qi and interpret what contemporary thinkers had termed the hidden realities and subtle transformations of the cosmos.