Mr. Needham wrote a massive seven-volume work on science and technology in ancient China. It is an astounding triumph of scholarship; he and his collaborators delved through the entirety of ancient Chinese literature — of which there is far more than we have from Greece and Rome — to assemble this material and make sense of it. I have been plowing through it, page by bloody page, but I have only completed two volumes. Here are some significant quotations from just one of the those volumes: Volume 7: Language and Logic. I have had to remove some of the direct quotations in the actual Chinese because I don’t know how to display Chinese characters.
On the Nature of Truth
The concept of janpujan ('what is so and what is not') is the closest the ancient Chinese came to an unambiguous concept of factual truth.
Whereas Greek philosophers were very often preoccupied with the notions of factual and evaluative truth for its own sake, their Chinese counterparts looked upon language and thought as much more pragmatically embedded in social life.
Thus we must be careful not to impose our Western scientific notions of objective truth upon Chinese texts where they really do not belong. There is excellent reason to warn against the uncritical assumption that the notion of scientific objective truth played the same kind of central role in China that it did in the West.
In China one tended to look upon someone who, we would say, is wrong, as someone who sees only part of the truth. The sage is thought to have the overarching vision reconciling all such partisan or partial views, seeing the point of each. Chu Hsi brings this out explicitly:
Ordinary people’s studies are often partisan to one point if they are dominated by one theory (shuo ). Therefore they are not catholic in their vision. As a result disputes arise . The Sage stands at the exact centre and is conciliatory, leaning to neither side.
The Chinese quest for ‘truth’ tends to be the quest for this un-partisan catholic vision which is above controversy in the sense that it understandingly embraces rather than refutes seemingly opposing views.
It is not a foregone conclusion that the Chinese had anything like our concept of knowledge which is at the heart of Western notions of science and the philosophy of science. In any case, the ancient Chinese did not have a noun that corresponds to belief as opposed to knowledge. On the other hand, there seems to be a clear distinction between believing and knowing in ancient texts. The notion of belief as opposed to knowledge comes out clearly in the following passage:
“South of the mouth or the Hsia River there was a man called Chlian Chu-Liang. In disposition he was stupid and very fearful. When the moon was bright, he was walking in the dark. He looked down, saw his shadow and thought it was a ghost following him. He looked up, saw his hair and thought it was an ogre. He turned round and ran. When he got to his house he lost his breath and died.”
There is little room in traditional Chinese culture for knowledge for its own sake.
There was little enthusiasm for ‘academic knowledge’ as cultivated by philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, who continued the heritage of Socrates. For the ancient Chinese what mattered was action , i.e. , personal action and political action. Insight was valued insofar as it led to successful action.
Confucians, for their own reasons, rejected ‘intellectual excellence' when it was not constructively instrumental in the good conduct ofthe moral and political life. Confucius and his followers thought that intellectual excellence was secondary to moral excellence, and that the effects of intellectual excellence upon the moral qualities of the individual as well as the political qualities or the state were predominantly negative. Intellectual excellence was therefore not to be especially cultivated except as a handmaid to moral edification or to political administration.
On Logic
The necessary logical relations obtaining between propositions, such as that of one proposition being a logical consequence of another, have not been widely discussed as such among Chinese thinkers. In this specific sense logical necessity was not an issue that preoccupied the ancient Chinese.
If one takes a very strict view of logical necessity, defining it in terms of truth in any conceivable or possible world, then I suppose there is no neat evidence that the ancient Chinese ever thought in such terms. They failed to make that explicit step from the consideration of the world as it appeared to them to the consideration of any possible world that anyone might conceive.
Even the highest authorities on logic in China literally did not know what they were talking about, and frequently contradicted themselves without being bothered by it.
On Abstraction
The Classical Chinese language lacked such morphemes as the English '-ness'. Antisthenes would have had trouble telling the ancient Chinese in their own language what he told Plato: ‘I can see horses, but I cannot see horsehood.’
Numerological tendencies
The Chinese have always had a thing about numerology. They consider some numbers to be good, lucky, or auspicious, and other numbers as bad or unlucky. Wikipedia has a nice article on this superstition. It goes far back into Chinese history:
‘The human body is composed of three hundred and sixty joints with four limbs and nine passages as its important equipment. Four limbs plus nine passages make thirteen. The functioning of these thirteen things is subsumed under (shu) life .’
'You must show moderation.... Heaven has the Six Ethers, which descending generate the Five Tastes, issue as the Five Colours, are evidenced by the Five Sounds, and in excess generate the Six Diseases. The Six Diseases bring wind and rain, dark and light. They divide to make the Four Seasons, in sequence make the Five Rhythms, and in excess bring about calamity. From ??? in excess cold diseases, from ??? hot; from wind in excess diseases of the extremities, from rain of the stomach; from dark in excess delusions, from light disease of the heart.
In the fourth month there was a year star in Chhen. Pi Tsao of Cheng said: 'In five years the state of Chhen will be re-established, and after two years it will finally perish.' Tzu Chhan asked for a reason. Pi Tsao replied: 'Chhen belongs to the element of water. Fire is the element antagonistic to water and is under the supervision ofChhu. Now the year star has come out and brought rain to Chhen. This indicates that Chhu is ousted and Chhen is established. Antagonistic elements are ruled by the number five. That is why I say in five years. The year-star must five times come to the configuration before Chhen perishes. That Chhu will gain control over it is in the nature of Heaven. That is why I say 52 years.
Lastly, an Orwellian statement:
When a man has good fortune, wealth and honour come to him. When wealth and honour come to him, he dresses and eats well. When he eats and dresses well, arrogance will arise. When arrogance arises, his behaviour will be wicked and his actions will be contrary to principle. When his behaviour is wicked, he will die an untimely death. When his actions are contrary to principle, he will not be successful. On the one hand he will have the misfortune of having an untimely death. On the other hand he will be known as unsuccessful. That is misfortune. Therefore it is said: ‘Misfortune lurks in good fortune.’
When a person suffers misfortune, his mind grows fearful. When his mind grows fearful, his actions will be straight. When his actions are straight, his deliberations are mature. When his deliberations are mature, he gets to the inner principles of things. When his actions are straight, he suffers no harm, he will live out his natural span When he lives out his natural span of life, he stays intact into old age. lf his life reaches its proper end, he gets rich and noble. To live intact until old age and be rich and noble, that is called good fortune. Therefore it is said: ‘Misfortune is the basis of good fortune.’
Table of Contents | Bibliography | Sources
