Abstract
In the first half of the 20th century, Chinese people hoped to modernize their society and catch up with the colonial powers. Many studied modern scientific disciplines to achieve with their assistance a modernization of material and institutional aspects of Chinese civilization and at the same time to establish modern scientific thinking among Chinese literati as an indispensable tool for competing with the West.
A useful means for the internalization of modern science was the study of Chinese scientific traditions. It can be shown on the example of Chinese mathemtics, which was pursued not only by specialists later regarded by the entire world as historians of science (e.g. the college mathematics professor Qian Baocong 1892-1974 and the railway engineer Li Yan 1892-1963), but also by many other engineers, mathematicians and intellectuals.
The influence of Japanese historians of Chinese mathematics reinforced the feeling of importance of Chinese mathematics for understanding of Chinese culture and its relationship with science. The Japanese emphasized that mathematics of a given nation revealed its national character.
This paper analyzes the publication trends related to Chinese mathematics between 1911 and 1937 and show on significant cases the role Chinese mathematics played for the intellectuals of the period.
