---
title: "Dream Pool Essays"
chunk: 1/5
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Pool_Essays"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:31:47.882363+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The Dream Pool Essays (or Dream Torrent Essays) was an extensive book written by the Chinese polymath and statesman Shen Kuo (1031–1095), published in 1088 during the Song dynasty (960–1279). Shen compiled this encyclopedic work while living in forced retirement from government office, naming the book after his private estate near modern Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province. The Dream Pool Essays was heavily reorganized in reprint editions by later Chinese authors from the late 11th to 17th centuries. In modern times it has been translated from Chinese into several languages. These include English, German, French, and Japanese translations.
The Dream Pool Essays covers a range of topics including discoveries and advancements in traditional Chinese medicine, mathematics, astronomy, science and technology, optics, architecture and civil engineering, metallurgy, and early archaeology. Observations of the natural world included those of wildlife, meteorology, hypotheses advancing early ideas in geomorphology and climate change based on findings of petrification and natural erosion, and strange recorded phenomena such as the description of an unidentified flying object. In addition to establishing the theory of true north in magnetic declination towards the North Pole, Shen was also the first to record the use of a compass for navigation, the first to describe the invention of movable type printing by contemporary artisan Bi Sheng, and the first in China to describe a drydock for repairing boats out of water.

== History ==
Shen Kuo was a renowned government official and military general during the Northern Song period of China. However, he was impeached from office by chancellor Cai Que (蔡確; 1036–1093), who wrongly held him responsible for a Song Chinese military defeat by the Tangut-led Western Xia dynasty in 1081 during the Song–Xia wars. When Shen compiled and published The Dream Pool Essays (Meng Xi Bi Tan, 《梦溪笔谈》) in 1088, he was living in retirement and relative isolation on his lavish garden estate near modern-day Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province. He titled the book after the name he gave to his private estate, the "Dream Brook". In English a full literal translation of the title is Brush Talks from a Dream Brook, and Shen Kuo is quoted as saying:

Because I had only my writing brush and ink slab to converse with, I call it Brush Talks.
As the historian Chen Dengyuan points out, much of Shen Kuo's written work was probably purged under the leadership of minister Cai Jing (1046–1126). For example, only six of Shen's books remain, and four of these have been significantly altered since the time they were penned by the author. The Dream Pool Essays was first quoted in a Chinese written work of 1095 AD, showing that even towards the end of Shen's life his final book was becoming widely printed. The book was originally 30 chapters long, yet an unknown Chinese author's edition of 1166 AD edited and reorganized the work into 26 chapters. There is one surviving copy of this 1166 edition now in Japan, while a Chinese reprint was produced in 1305. In 1631 another edition was printed, but it was heavily reorganized into three broad chapters.
In modern times, Zhang Jiaju's biographical work Shen Kuo (1962) contains selected translations of the Dream Pool Essays from Middle Chinese into modern Vernacular Chinese. The Dream Pool Essays has also been translated from Chinese into various foreign languages. Various volumes of Joseph Needham's Science and Civilization in China series published since 1954 contain a large amount of selected English translations of the Dream Pool Essays. The Brush Talks from Dream Brook is the first complete English translation, presented in two volumes by translators Wang Hong and Zhao Zheng, and published in 2008 by the Sichuan People's Publishing House, China. A Japanese translation of the 1166 Chinese edition was prepared by the History of Science Seminar, Institute for Research in Humanities (Jimbun Kagaku Kenkyusho) for Kyoto University, and printed by the author Umehara Kaoru in his 3-volume edition of Bokei hitsudan (1978–1981). Quoted excerpts from the Dream Pool Essays in French were printed in the written works of J. Brenier in 1989  and J. F. Billeter in 1993. A complete German translation is offered in Shen Kuo: Pinselunterhaltungen am Traumbach. Das Gesamte Wissen des Alten China, translated and edited by Konrad Herrmann, and published in 1997 by Diederichs Verlag Munich (Gelbe Reihe Magnum, vol. I).

== Content ==
The text addressed scientific knowledge in areas including physics, astrology, mathematics, and medicine; it contended that there was no contradiction between technology and Confucian precepts.

=== Geological theory ===
With Shen's writings on fossils, geomorphology, and shifting geographical climates, he states in the following passages:

In the Zhi-ping reign period [1064–67 AD] a man of Zezhou was digging a well in his garden, and unearthed something shaped like a squirming serpent, or dragon. He was so frightened by it that he dared not touch it, but after some time, seeing that it did not move, he examined it and found it to be stone. The ignorant country people smashed it, but Zheng Boshun, who was magistrate of Jincheng at the time, got hold of a large piece of it on which scale-like markings were to be seen exactly like those on a living creature. Thus a serpent or some kind of marine snake (chhen) had certainly been turned to stone, as happens with the 'stone-crabs'.