Wang Chong

Wang Chong (; 27 – c. 97 AD), His main work was the Lunheng (論衡, "Critical Essays"). This book contained many theories involving early sciences of astronomy and meteorology, and Wang Chong was even the first in Chinese history to mention the use of the square-pallet chain pump, which became common in irrigation and public works in China thereafter. Wang also accurately described the process of the water cycle.

Unlike most of the Chinese philosophers of his period, Wang spent much of his life in non-self-inflicted poverty. He was said to have studied by standing at bookstalls, and had a superb memory, which allowed him to become very well-versed in the Chinese classics. He eventually reached the rank of District Secretary, a post he soon lost as a result of his combative and anti-authoritarian nature.

Life Wang was born into a poor family in modern Shangyu, Zhejiang. With the urging of his parents, Wang travelled to the Eastern Han capital at Luoyang to study at the Imperial University. Due to his humble origins, Wang became resentful of officials who were admired simply because of their wealth and power and not for any scholarly abilities. However, Wang soon resigned from this post as well. Wang later died at home around the year 100. The politician Wang Lang (d. 228) acquired a copy of Wang's Lunheng and brought it with him on his trip in 198 to the Han court established at Xuchang by the notable statesman Cao Cao (155–220).

Although Wang Chong was certain of his ideas about eclipses (without the knowledge of how gravity forms naturally large spherical bodies in space), his ideas on this would not be later accepted in China. Although there were some figures like Liu Chi, writing in his Lun Tian (Discourse on the Heavens) of 274 AD that supported Wang's theory by arguing the inferior Yin (Moon) could never obstruct the superior Yang (Sun), Liu was still outside of the mainstream accepted Confucian tradition. The Song dynasty (960–1279) polymathic scientist Shen Kuo (1031–1095) supported the old theory of a spherical Sun and Moon by using his own reasoning about eclipses, which he explained were due to the Moon and the Sun coming into obstruction of one another. The Song dynasty Chinese philosopher Zhu Xi (1130–1200) also supported this theory in his writing. Although Wang Chong was right about the water cycle and other aspects of early science, his stern opposition to mainstream Confucian thought at the time made him a skeptic of all their theories, including eclipses (the Confucian-accepted model being correct).