杨光先 / Yang Guangxian

Yang Guangxian enters the wiki through EP259 与苗师傅漫谈徐光启：四百年前如何让人变聪明？ as the Qing critic who attacked 汤若望 and the foreign calendar network. The episode places him in the Kangxi-era controversy around burial dates, astronomical administration, and suspicion of Jesuit influence.

The source uses Yang as the hard case for science value transmission and 晚明西学东渐. He is not presented only as ignorant; the episode notes that many intellectuals could see him as defending Chinese cultural purity. But his stance also shows how cultural-sovereignty arguments can block technical accuracy, destroy learning communities, and turn institutions against people trained in new methods.

Yang therefore functions as an anti-example to 徐光启. Where Xu’s story centers curiosity, translation, and disciplined learning, Yang’s story centers closure, purity, and suspicion when foreignness and state legitimacy collide.

Connections

• 汤若望 - main target in the calendar controversy.
• Calendar Reform Legitimacy / 历法改革与政治合法性 - institutional setting of the conflict.
• Late-Ming Western Learning / 晚明西学东渐 and Science Value Transmission / 科学价值观传入 - knowledge-transfer concepts tested by his case.
• Science-Religion Civilization Tension and Knowledge Monopoly - adjacent frames for knowledge, authority, and cultural boundary-making.