Obed Simon Johnson
| Obed Simon Johnson | |
|---|---|
 File:9HnKFIRQ.png | |
| Born | May 5, 1881 Lanyon, Iowa, US |
| October 12, 1970 (aged 89) Minneapolis, MNOctober 12, 1970 (aged 89) Minneapolis, MN | |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| Known for | Contributions to the history of Chinese Alchemy |
| 👩 Spouse(s) | Vida Maude Lowry (m. 1911) |
Before Obed Simon Johnson's book, "A Study of Chinese Alchemy", most European writers gave credit for the origin of alchemy to Greeks in Egypt in the third century AD. Johnson showed that alchemy started at least 500 years earlier in China.[1] He was the first Westerner to recognize the ancient Chinese alchemists.
Johnson was an early and pioneering sinologist. Johnson's contributions were the translation, collation, and synthesis of Chinese alchemy from many of the Chinese classics and books. He then made Western scholars aware that one of the central tenets in chemistry, the elixir concept, emerged far earlier in China than in Europe (i.e., with Roger Bacon). This is a key contribution to history in general and the history of science and chemistry in particular. He contributed important epistemological perspectives to the historical literature including Confucian and Taoist classics, books such as Chuang Tzu and Huai Nan Tzu, and dynastic histories in his seminal book “The Study of Chinese Alchemy”[1] published in Shanghai in 1928. This book, which is referenced in The Hero With a Thousand Faces[2] by Joseph Campbell, influenced Joseph Needham[3], Arthur Waley[4], Lynn Townsend White, Jr.[5], and many other works on Chinese Alchemy[6][7][8][9].
Obed Johnson, born May 5th, 1881[10], was also an American academic, chaplain, congregational missionary, and student of Chinese culture and history.
Background and early life
Johnson was born in Lanyon, Iowa[11], in 1881[12]. He received a B.S. in 1906 from Carleton College. Following a year each at seminaries at Oberlin, U. Chicago, and North Park, Johnson left for China in 1909. Upon his return to the US in 1923, he studied at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving his PhD in 1925.
He was sponsored by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (a Congregational organization) to go to China as a missionary. There he met another missionary, Vida Lowrey. Obed and Vida were married in Shanghai and raised two children, James Waldemar and Johanna Dorothea. They spent fourteen years in Shanghai, learning the language, history, and customs of China. When Vida’s malaria worsened, Obed brought the family to the States, where he did two years of post-graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley.
At UC Berkeley, Johnson taught the Chinese language, history, and civilization while taking advanced classes on Asia. His principal faculty adviser was Dr. Edward Thomas Williams with whom he shared a rural background; Johnson growing up in rural Iowa, Williams from rural Ohio. Williams had gone to China in 1887 as a missionary. After nine years, Williams was appointed interpreter to the American Consul General in Shanghai. Williams held other offices in the U.S. State Department before returning to the States to teach at the University of California, Berkeley. The two men had many common experiences.
China and Alchemy
While Johnson was a missionary in China, 1909–1923, he had translated several texts in Chinese on alchemy. This work became a foundation for his dissertation topic at UC Berkeley. The dissertation was published as "A Study of Chinese Alchemy". It was later translated to Chinese.
Obed Johnson wrote in his introduction that he was “especially interested in the supernatural beliefs of the Chinese and in the practices to which these beliefs gave rise.”[1] As the two men discussed various dissertation topics, Williams suggested Chinese alchemy, to which Obed Johnson agreed. They outlined six chapters: “Taoism,” “The Changing Concept of Early Taoist Teaching,” “The Alchemy of Prolonging Life,” “The Alchemy of Transmuting Metals,” “Later Development of Chinese Alchemy,” and “Alchemy East and West.” The dissertation was published as a book, “A Study in Chinese Alchemy,” in Shanghai in 1928. Obed Johnson “hoped his study of Chinese alchemy may serve... to stimulate the interest aroused in Chinese Culture... and to add a modest contribution to the subject at hand.”
The book was initially received with mixed reviews. An evaluation of Obed Johnson’s book is found in Dr. Carmen Lee’s[13] dissertation, “A Bibliographical Study of Western Publications on Traditional Chinese Science (1800-1985).”
Eminent sinologist Joseph Needham later wrote: “But by far the widest influence was exerted by the book of Obed Johnson finished in 1925 and printed three years later. The Study of Chinese Alchemy was based chiefly on what could be got from the Confucian and Taoist classics, and from books such as the Chuang Tzu and the Huai Nan Tzu, but it also made some use of the dynastic histories, showing clearly that while the elixir concept had been mightily prevalent during the Chhin and Han it did not manifest itself in European alchemy until the time of Roger Bacon and the incorporation of Arabic knowledge."[3]
"After Johnson things were never quite the same. His work directly stimulated Arthur Waley... to make several contributions which raised the subject to a previously unattained level of scholarship. It also obliged the great synthesizers to take China seriously.”[3]
Waley went on to write a supplement to Johnson's work[4]. Spooner took some of the most well-known Chinese alchemical writings and compared them with European alchemical texts, acknowledging that Johnson’s book was "the source for much of my material."[13][14]
Arthur Waley’s evaluation of Johnson’s A Study of Chinese Alchemy: “This [is a] most important study on Chinese alchemy before the contributions by T.L. Davis and his collaborators. Discusses the question of the origins of alchemy, the first references in historical sources, the Zhouyi canton qi, the Baopu zi neipian, and the rise of neidan [internal alchemy].” Quoted in Fabrizio Pregadio, Chinese Alchemy: An Annotated Bibliography of Works in Western Languages[15], quoted from Arthur Waley[4].
Lynn Townsend White, Jr. said this about Johnson "... in the 1920s I too received much imprinting, not least while auditing Obed Johnson's pioneering lectures on Chinese alchemy."[5]
Joseph Campbell and The Hero With a Thousand Faces
Interviews with Joseph Campbell were popularized by Bill Moyers on the PBS series, The Power of Myth. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell quoted Johnson's translation of a Chinese preparation for achieving immortality: “Take three pounds of genuine cinnabar and one pound of white honey. Mix them. Dry the mixture in the sun. Then roast it over a fire until it can be shaped into pills. Take ten pills the size of a hemp seed every morning. Inside of a year, white hair will turn black, decayed teeth will grow again, and the body will become sleek and glistening. If an old man takes this medicine for a long time, he will develop into a young man. The one who takes it constantly will enjoy eternal life, and will not die.”[16]
See also
- A Study of Chinese Alchemy
- Chinese Alchemy
- Joseph Campbell
- Lanyon, Iowa
- List of Protestant missionaries in China
- The Hero With a Thousand Faces
- Waidan
- Category:1881 births
- Category:Carleton College alumni
- Category:Chinese Alchemy
- Category:Hero With a Thousand Faces
- Category:People from Webster County, Iowa
- Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni
External Links
- https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Study_of_Chinese_Alchemy.html?id=BERj76BF1BIC&source=kp_book_description "A Study of Chinese Alchemy" in Google Books
- https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10097424/1/out.pdf References and reviews concerning A Study of Chinese Alchemy
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 [Obed Simon Johnson, A Study of Chinese Alchemy, Shanghai, Commercial P, 1928. rpt. New York: Arno P, 1974.]
- ↑ [Joseph Campbell, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces", 1949 (Pantheon Books), ISBN 978-1-57731-593-3 Search this book on
.]
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 [Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5 pt. 2, pp. 6]
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Arthur Waley (1930), "Notes on Chinese Alchemy ("Supplementary to Johnson's" A Study of Chinese Alchemy)", Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 6.1: 1-24.]
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Lynn Townsend White, Jr., Review: Science in China, Reviewed Work(s): Science and Civilisation in China by Joseph Needham, Wang Ling, Kenneth Robinson, Lu Gwei-Djen, Ho Ping-Yu and Nathan Sivin, Review by: Lynn White, Jr. and Jonathan D. Spence, Source: Isis , Mar., 1984, Vol. 75, No. 1, Sarton, Science, and History (Mar., 1984), pp. 171-189, https://www.jstor.org/stable/232368]
- ↑ [Tenney L. Davis and Lu-Ch'iang Wu, "Chinese Alchemy", The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Sep., 1930), pp. 225-235 (11 pages), Published By: American Association for the Advancement of Science, https://www.jstor.org/stable/14972]
- ↑ [JOHN J. KAO, "Chinese Alchemy: Confluence and Transformation", The American Journal of Chinese Medicine, Vol. 05, No. 03n04, pp. 233-240 (1977)]
- ↑ [J. R. PARTINGTON, "Chinese Alchemy", Nature volume 128, pages 1074–1075(1931)]
- ↑ [Fabrizio Pregadio, "Chinese Alchemy, an Annotated Bibliography of Works in Western Languages", Monumenta Serica, Vol. 44 (1996), pp. 439-473 (35 pages), Published By: Taylor & Francis, Ltd., https://www.jstor.org/stable/40727097]
- ↑ [Obed Simon Johnson, “John Peter Johnson” in Lost Grove Township, 1869-1969, compiled by the Committee of the Harcourt Commercial Club. Gowrie, Iowa: The Gowrie News, 1970, page 85]
- ↑ [Mrs. Harry Carlson and Mrs. Ted Swanson, "Lost Grove Township, Webster County, Iowa", 1969]
- ↑ [Obed S. Johnson, “A Country School Teacher” in Lost Grove Township, 1869-1969, compiled by the Committee of the Harcourt Commercial Club. Gowrie, Iowa: The Gowrie News, 1970, page 83.9]
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 [Carmen Lee, "A Bibliographical Study of Western Publications (1800-1985) on Traditional Chinese Science", Thesis submitted for Ph.D. in Library and Information Studies, University of London School of Library, Archive and Information Studies, 1996]
- ↑ [Roy C. Spooner, "Chinese Alchemy", Journal of the West China Border Research Society, ser. A, 12 (1940), 85]
- ↑ [Fabrizio Pregadio, Chinese Alchemy: An Annotated Bibliography of Works in Western Languages. Mountain View, California: Golden Elixir Press, 2009, p. 13]
- ↑ [Obed Simon Johnson, A Study of Chinese Alchemy, page 63 Shanghai, Commercial P, 1928. rpt. New York: Arno P, 1974.]
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