清末《普通百科全书》中的物理著作研究

The Research on Physics Works in the General Encyclopedia in the Late Qing Dynasty

《普通百科全书》是我国最早以"百科全书"命名的成套书籍,该书由留日学生范迪吉主持编译,于1903年由会文学社出版.其中与物理学相关的书籍有《物理学问答》、《物理学新书》和《应用机械学》.对这3本书的内容进行了分析,总结各书在体例、内容和术语方面的特色,认为它们对我国物理学的引入和消化发挥了各具特色的推动作用.同时指出,《物理学问答》、《物理学新书》缺少数学推理,《应用机械学》中虽然能看到数学、实验结合的公理化物理学知识,但仅译出一章.这与我国数学的引进速度缓慢、水平低和教育的普及度欠缺等有关.

The General Encyclopedia is the earliest series of books named after the encyclopedia in China.Its translation and edition was directed by Fan Diji,a returned scholar from Japan,and was published in Hui Wen Xue She in 1903.There are three books relating to physics in the series： Questions and Answers of Physics,The New Book of Physics and the Applied Mechanics.The characteristics of style,contents and terms in the three books mentioned above were analyzed,as well as their contents.The conclusion was that every one of these three books played its own particular driving role in introduction and digestion of physics in China in the early 20th century.At the same time,the first two books were short of mathematical reasoning.Although the third one has the knowledge of axiomatic physics which combines mathematics with experiments,only one chapter of it was translated.Perhaps,this phenomenon is related with the situation of mathematics at that time： its slow pace of introduction,transmission,its low level and the lack of its popularity in education,etc..