科学 Kagaku, 究理 Kyūri/Science
科学 /Kagaku / 究理 /Kyūri: Science Tsukahara Tōgo Translation by Matt Fargo and Jordan Sand What sort of intellectual apparatus was necessary to incorporate and develop science and technology from the Meiji era onward, both as a national policy and as something inherently foreign? The ideology accompanying the introduction of science and technology was one of consummate Enlightenment faith (keimōshugi). This trait is evident in the case of the “Kyūri Fever” that arose in early Meiji Japan. In the narrowest terms, kyūri was the word for physics in the Dutch Studies tradition. In Japan, the study of physics or kyūri had always been an inquiry into the concept of “reason” (or order) conceived on the basis of the Neo-Confucian notion of the unity of reason (ri) and spirit (ki). The word kyūri was used in Dutch Studies as the translated term for Dutch words related to the study of nature (natuurkunde) or natural philosophy. Incidentally, in Dutch Studies the word for chemistry was seimi (舎密)—a transliteration of the Dutch chemie—and the biological disciplines became the “natural sciences” (博物学; hakubutsugaku), replacing the traditional pharmacology (本草学; honzōgaku). Along these disciplinary lines, kyūri was the general term for the study of nature, and loosely corresponds to our contemporary concept of “science” (科学; kagaku). The word that came to be used for “science” in the early Meiji period—kagaku （科学)—is actually short for bunka no gaku (分科の学), or “taxonomical studies.”