Illustration with added terminology of a drawloom with ‘figure tower’. Source: Tiangong Kaiwu [The Works of Heaven and the Inception of Things], 1637, compiled by Song Yingxing (1587-1666?). Guan-edition.

The project's approach proceeds from the assumption that the dynamics of innovative processes are crucially affected by the distinct culture of communicating, accumulating and implementing practical knowledge. It sees that innovation benefits in a cumulative way from the circulation, access and recombination of different, pre-existing bits of knowledge embodied by a variety of actors. The project distinguishes between transmission methods, i.e. personal contacts that transport tacit as well as explicit knowledge, skills and experience supplemented by the transmission of knowledge in materia as apparent in tools, machines and products and finally written transmission. In the scope of the investigation it asks about the role and function of each form of transmission and how they combine to form a distinct culture of knowledge in pre-modern China.

Practical knowledge is transmitted in different ways:

(1) orally and visually,

(2) materially and

(3) textually.