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Autho的 Note This work is based on the Sixth Annual East Asian History of Science Foundation Lecture, October, 1988, sponsored by the East Asian History of Science Foundation and the University of Hong Kong. In this written version, 1 have added the topic astronomy to the two topics, namely the physics of motion and acoustics, selected in the lecture for the 間， examination of the early Chinese work in natural science and, in addítíon, expanded my lecture account of early scientific ídeas and thoughts of nature, and their effect on the development of natural science. 1 am conscious of the fact that the three topics studied here do not necessarily represent adequately the nature of early Chínese work in natural science. But the physics of motion has been considered by leading historians of science as being totally absent from Chinese physical thinking. The accounts of early Chinese works on acoustic and astronomy in the p間，Qín period, on the other hand, contain serious mistakes. After the presentation of each topic, comments and discussion are given in response to some of the characterizations of Chinese work made by leading sinologists and historians of science. Evaluations are also made to the claims that acoustics and astronomy in China have their roots in Babylonia. The study presented here, though limited only to three topics, serves to illustrate that the traditional accounts and characterizations of early Chinese work in natural science requires drastic modifications. Some comment should be given with regard to the conventions used in this work. Chinese technical terms, titles, and quotations, on first appearance, are given in romanized form followed by Chinese characters and then English translations, enclosed in parentheses. Thereafter, they will generally be represented in their romanized form without English translations. The system of romanization used is the Hànyu pïnyïn 漢語拼 音 system, but concatenation are not adopted for all compound Chinese characters. Concatenations are used for proper names such as the names of places. But for Chinese personal names, concatenations are not used to concatenate the first and second given names into onej they are XXIV Early Chinese WIσrk in Natural Science connected by a hyphen. Tonal marks are provided for all the romanized Chinese characters. For long quotations offset by indentation, the romanized form is omitted, only the Chinese characters and English translations are provided. The book titles in their Chinese character form are enclosed within double angle brackets . The method for indicating dates adopted in this work is the modified -/+ system in which the - sign corresponds. to B.C. and the + sign corresponds to A.D. This system is used by Joseph Needham in his monumental series Science and Civilisation in China. The modified -/+ system does not contain a year 0 (as in the -/+ system used by astronomers). All the B.C. dates will have a - sign. The + sign is explicitly used only for the year A.D. 1 to 99. Any three, or four, digit year without a - s1gn 1S an A.D. year. ...

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