After determining the goal of becoming a "great Confucian", the training to improve the ability to take the exam did not relax, and even tightened a little. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 infoAfter all, this is an era of looking at fame, although Confucianism does not have to be the first assistant to be a big official, but fame is still essential. If you talk about Confucianism, I am afraid that no one in the Ming Dynasty is more qualified to be called a Confucianism than Wang Yangming, and although Mr. Wang Yangming failed to take the Jinshi and the first, he is also the seventh in the Jinshi background. Of course, Mr. Wang Yangming's Jinshi also took many years to be admitted.

In August, Mr. Wang began to ask Zheng Sen to conduct current essay training, at first it was a one-way training, such as solving problems or something, and then it was paragraph writing, and at the end of the year, Zheng Sen finally completed his first eight-strand essay.

"Ah Sen, in this article, I still can't control myself, I am writing and writing, and I am coming up with my own arguments again. Asen, Shiwen is to speak on behalf of the sages, not for yourself! Even Mr. Yang Ming, when he took the imperial examination, he also had to write according to Zhu Zi's annotations. Alas! You're really ......," Mr. Wang scolded through gritted teeth.

"Sir, I heard you talk about 'the unity of knowledge and action' last time, and the eight entries of "University" also attach great importance to 'sincerity', I think so in my heart, if I don't write like this, then isn't it insincere in my thoughts, insincere in my thoughts, and my heart is not right, so how can I speak on behalf of the sages?" Zheng Sen deliberately stubbornly did it.

"Alas! You kid, tell me what to say! Is this the same thing as sincerity and righteousness? Mr. Wang's angry beard floated up, "What Shiwen wants to test is not what you think, but what you think Zhu Zi will think!" It's like I asked you, what did Ah Ying and Xiao Wu say, what should you answer? Naturally, the answer was that A-Ying said something, not what you said. Is this the same thing? So when you write Shiwen, you are paraphrasing Zhu Zi's thoughts, not your own thoughts! I said, you kid, why are you just like this in this matter? ”

Hearing this, Zheng Sen did not respond immediately, but lowered his head and thought about it, and then said after a while: "What the teacher said is right, and here the student thinks crookedly." ”

"You kid, now you know that you want to be crooked!" Mr. Wang laughed, and he could see that he was very happy to refute Zheng Sen's fallacy, "Now that you know that your thoughts are wrong, you should know what the real 'unity of knowledge and action' should be when writing Shiwen, right?" ”

"The students got it." Zheng Sen nodded and said.

"You, what a headache!" Mr. Wang said, "Then take this article back and write it again." ”

……

Seeing off Zheng Sen, Mr. Wang closed the door of the clan study and walked into his small courtyard, where his wife Liu greeted him and said with a smile: "Why is it so late today?" ”

"It's not Zheng Sen's kid, let him write a current article, and he will talk nonsense there. So I scolded him well, hehe......" Mr. Wang said to his wife quite proudly.

"I said that you are also interesting, scolding a child so hard, and being so proud after scolding, it's like a child playing a game and winning another child." Liu couldn't help it, so she also sarcastically said to her husband.

"What you say is not unreasonable." Mr. Wang didn't think it was wrong, but replied with a smile: "It's just that you don't know, this child is different from ordinary children, you can't treat him as a child." This boy will be a sage in the future. Now I can take advantage of the fact that he has not yet become a saint and sage, and press him first, wouldn't it be a happy life? ”

"That's scary, isn't it?" Liu shook his head disapprehantly, "It's just an eight or nine-year-old child, as the saying goes, 'It's an hour, it's not inevitable'." How much more are the sages? ”

"Zheng Sen's baby is not the kind of 'hour' smart, but wise. There are two types of prodigies, the most common is that Luo Bingwang and Wang Rong are smart and clever, but Zheng Sen is not like this, if I want to find a prodigy who is a little similar, Kong Rong may be more like. Well, don't laugh, I'm not talking about Kong Rong at the time of 'Jun Xiao will be gone', but leaving Zhang Jian, Kong Rong when he fought to the death. Moreover, when it comes to cleverness, he is not bad, and he works extremely hard...... To be honest, even if it is an article, Asen is not bad, although he is only eight or nine years old now, but the article he writes is actually no worse than that of some talents, although there are more problems in the text, but at least it is not as empty and incomprehensible as others. Mr. Wang praised Zheng Sen at this time.

"And you're still scolding him? It seems that he is the one you scold the most among these students, right? Liu smiled.

"This kid has the wind of the road, and he is really happy when he smells it. Besides, among the disciples of Confucius, who was scolded the most? Zilu was scolded the most, wasn't he? But Zilu is one of Master's favorite students. In addition to Yan Hui, Confucius's favorite student is probably Zilu. ”

If you look through the Analects or the Book of Rites, Zilu appears, and there are very few times when you are not criticized by Confucius. However, after the news of the civil strife and the killing of Zilu came, Confucius was extremely grief-stricken, even to the point of "overstepping the courtesy". According to the record in the "Book of Rites: Tan Gong": "Confucius cried in the atrium, someone hung him, and the master worshipped him." When he wept, he entered the messenger and asked why. The messenger said, 'it.' And he died. "According to the weekly rites, crying in the atrium is the gift of the crying master, and some people hang and worship, they regard themselves as mourners. This level of grief is no less than when Yan Hui died.

Liu's family is also from a scholarly family, and she understands when she hears her husband say this, so she also said with a straight face: "Since Zheng Sen has such qualifications, you as a teacher, you should really keep an eye on him, and don't waste others." ”

"It's up to you to say ......," Mr. Wang laughed again.

……

Mr. Wang thought that Zheng Sen was extremely hardworking, and that was because when he was teaching Zheng Sen's "Four Books", Zheng Sen's questions and answers were quite profound. He didn't know that Zheng Sen, who came from later generations, had been exposed to many other equally profound ideological systems, and the depth of knowledge and thinking had long exceeded that of ordinary students, in his opinion, Zheng Sen could ask those questions, and he could have that kind of thinking, it must be the result of very hard work, so in his imagination, Zheng Sen returned to his small courtyard, must have lit a candle, and was seriously studying those Confucian classics, and even his head was hanging from the beam and the cone was thorny. So, once, when practicing calligraphy at noon, Zheng Sen couldn't help but doze off a little, Mr. Wang saw it, of course, he didn't say to other students like in a joke: "You guys, some words doze off, look at Zheng Sen, people doze off and write, I don't know where you are smarter!" Instead, he was called up and criticized. But when he turned his head, Mr. Wang went into the back room and made Zheng Sen a cup of strong tea. In addition, the time for teaching the scriptures in the evening was much shorter than usual.

Zheng Sen returned to the courtyard every day, and he was indeed fighting at night, but he was not really studying Confucianism, but was busy learning Latin and translating the book "On Various Triangles", and writing letters to the missionary John Tang on behalf of his father.

"On All Kinds of Triangles" is the first book in Europe to systematically study trigonometry, and its status in the history of mathematics is not low, but it is definitely not difficult to talk about difficulty, at least in Zheng Sen's view, this level of content is not difficult at all. In fact, it is not the translation of the original text that really takes the time, but the annotations made by the translation.

The concept of sine was proposed in "On Various Triangles", and in Zheng Sen's annotation to it, according to the custom of later generations, coordinate systems and algebraic methods were introduced to analyze it, which also led to the controversy over the invention of coordinate systems and analytic geometric methods in later history. Most European countries insist that Descartes is the founder of coordinate systems and analytic geometry, and call Cartesian coordinate systems "Cartesian coordinate systems"; Most of the Eastern countries believe that Zheng and his son are the pioneers of coordinate system and analytic geometry, so they call the Cartesian coordinate system "Zheng's coordinate system". Just like the "Pythagorean theorem" and the "Pythagorean theorem".

And to do this, there are many things involved. As a result, this commentary is much longer than the original text of On Triangles. As a result, it was not until November that the matter was basically formed. During this period, Zheng Sen also continued to send these things back to his father one after another through letters.

These mathematical problems, which are not difficult in Zheng Sen's eyes, are like heavenly books in Zheng Zhilong's eyes, and he has studied them a little, and the first part is barely understood, and as for the back part, he basically can't understand it. Especially when Zheng Sen began to send back his annotations for "On Various Triangles", he found that he could understand a lot when reading "On Various Triangles", and there were some things that he felt he could use when directing navigation, but Zheng Sen's annotations were completely incomprehensible.

"What the hell are you talking this stinky boy is doing! Can this also be considered a commentary? Damn, he doesn't make this annotation, Lao Tzu can still understand a little, but he makes a commentary, but I don't understand anything! ”

According to Zheng Sen and Zheng Zhilong's original plan to deceive their reputation, Zheng Zhilong first sent the translation of "On Various Triangles" to Tang Ruowang, who was in Beijing as a prisoner of Dangqin, through the Society of Jesus, and smoothly established a relationship with Tang Ruowang.

Like all missionaries, John Tong attached great importance to those who had money and status and were interested in "Western Studies", and he believed that only through these people could Catholicism spread better in China. Now that the Zheng family, a wealthy man in Fujian, has shown such kindness, John Tang certainly feels that he must firmly grasp it.

John Tong has also been in China for several years, and he has a very deep understanding of the situation in China. He knew that although Zheng Zhilong was rich, his political status was not high. He also understood that Zheng Zhilong sent this thing to him, most likely to convince Xu Guangqi through him. Although since the Denglai Rebellion, Xu Guangqi's student Sun Yuanhua has done something bad, causing Xu Guangqi to be dragged down to a certain extent, but his status and influence are not comparable to Zheng Zhilong, at least for now.

So John Tang handed over this work to Xu Guangqi. And then, well, here comes the trouble......