The arrival of Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit missionary, in Macao in 1582 was a milestone in the history of cultural exchanges between China and the West. In China, Ricci collaborated with Li Zhizao and others to draw Kunyu wanguo quantu (Complete Geographical Map of Ten Thousand Countries) and dedicated it to the Ming Emperor Wanli. He also cooperated with Xu Guangqi to translate part of The Elements of Geometry, of Euclydes thus starting the process of the dissemination of modern Western scientific knowledge in imperial China. With Matteo Ricci identified as a Jesuit missionary, science precisely came along with religion.
Macao's unique geographic position has put it at the forefront of global exchanges of knowledge, religious beliefs and customs. Buddhism, Taoism, A-Ma BeliefsMazu faith and European Catholicism have been practiced side by side in Macao, by the Chinese people and various foreign communities with different faiths, thus shaping the city’s distinctive character of coexistence in diversity. In modern and contemporary times, the emergence of the gaming industry has tempted people to investigate further into destiny, fortune, chance, and fate. Hence divination, as well as dispelling evil spirits at home (Zhenzhai), and geomancy (Kanyu), have become more prevalent in our daily lives.
Besides, Macao is a place where modern science and traditional thought have collided forcefully. Filled with legends of devils and gods, the city has also been disenchanted with the rise of modern science. The power of instrumental reason, trade, and money, coupled with military power enabled by modern weaponry, have for centuries removed darkness in the spiritual world, reshaping humanity into a new species that believes in evidence, data, and statistics. In China: A Macro History, historian Huang Renyu (Ray Huang) laments the failure of governance in traditional Chinese society, arguing that its main drawback was failing to administer by numbers. By contrast the modern world wasis one governed by numbers, measurements, and statistics.
The history of science is intertwined with that of human spirituality. The Abbasid House of Wisdom, (Bayt al-Ḥikmah) aka Grand Library of Baghdad, fostered science in the Islamic Golden Age; roughly at the same time, Yixing, a Tang Dynasty monk successfully measured the length of the meridian line. Isaac Newton was both the world’s first scientist and its last alchemist. In 1818, in Venice, English writer Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, considered the last Gothic novel and the first science fiction. The history of science is full of the Cartesian dDemon, Maxwell's demon and Laplace dDemon. Meanwhile, today Fengshui and geomancy (Kanyu) are being turned into environmental and ecological sciences, while divination and fortune-telling are being shifting to forecasting by big data, providing guidance on marriage, employment, and the choice of a home. People’s biggest concern today is whether AI is growing into new demons, and whether gene editing is creating unsuspecting monsters.
Modern natural science is based on empirical experience and statistics, with the latter helping to consolidate the power of trade and money. Today's artificial intelligence (AI) and big data give full play to the role of statistics. But trying to predict the future by divination and other means is also grounded upon the underlying statistical knowledge. Therefore, a similar foundation is shared by both folk beliefs and rationality.
Themed on The Statistics of Fortune, the “Art Macao: Macao International Art Biennale 2023” aims to explore the correlation between science and religion. Since ancient times ‘scientific’ research has been closely linked with religious activities and a lot of mysteries remain unsolved in the annals of science. Conversely, religious activities often tend to look empirical, and underline the role of the mind as an interactive element in statistics. Having said that, here we follow works of art that explore religious traditions in a new light and those reflecting on the history of technology from a profound, humanistic perspective.
Qiu Zhijie
Chief Curator