Physical Sciences
Some of the first scholars of Rangaku were involved with the assimilation of 17th century theories in the physical sciences. This is the case of Shizuki Tadao an eighth-generation descendant of the Shizuki house of Nagasaki Dutch translators, who after having completed for the first time a systematic analysis of Dutch grammar, went on to translate the Dutch edition of Introductio ad Veram Physicam of the British author John Keil on the theories of Newton (Japanese title: Rekishō Shinsho (暦象新書?, roughly: “New Text on Transitive Effects”), 1798). Shizuki coined several key scientific terms for the translation, which are still in use in modern Japanese; for example, “gravity” (重力, jūryoku?), “attraction” (引力, inryoku?), “centrifugal force” (遠心力, enshinryoku?), and “center of mass” (集点, jūten?). A second Rangaku scholar, Hoashi Banri, published a manual of physical sciences in 1810 – Kyūri-Tsū (窮理通?, roughly “On Natural Laws”) – based on a combination of thirteen Dutch books, after learning Dutch from just one Dutch-Japanese dictionary.
Read more about this topic: Rangaku, Types of Rangaku
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