Establishing the Theory of Chinese Science
Chengdu Longtan Hospital · Deng Wanfa
In Taiwan's Natural Therapy, issue 120, Verification-Thinking, I noted: "The history of the Chinese nation is the history of the existence and development of Chinese science." Its canonical representatives are the Daodejing, the Yijing, and the Huangdi Neijing. The core question of these Chinese-science canons is respect for and accordance with nature. They view the whole cosmos as a web of mutual relations. The theoretical system is built under this integral philosophy, focused on the relations among things, taking practical verification as the standard. This is the objective fact of Chinese science's millennia of existence.
1. The fate of Chinese science
Since Chinese science has thousands of years of history, why is there still no formed concept of it in people's minds today?
Laozi: "The Named is the mother of the ten thousand things." The Named, Being, is what we have recognized; name is our definition of what we have recognized — the form of expression of Being, the way one thing is distinguished from another. So for the Chinese culture-system to rise to the concept of science, it must stand in correspondence with other culture-sciences — only thus is the conceptual condition met.
Western culture-science entered China in modern times. Before this, Chinese culture had no other culture to stand against; so it lacked the necessary condition for distinction. So before the Western invasion, the concept Chinese science could not be set up.
When Western gunboats defeated Chinese sword and spear, the Chinese nation recognized: it was that our culture could not make foreign guns, foreign cannons, foreign machines that left us backward and beaten. To live and grow, the Chinese nation had no choice but to use the spear of one's foe against the foe's own shield — to accept and use Western culture-science and technology to build our own foreign guns, foreign cannons, foreign machines — only then could we stand. This is a necessary stretch of Chinese history. We still live in it. In this special history, Western culture has always carried the name of science and held the seat of rule in China, forming a Western-culture-science one-element monopoly. Chinese culture was put in the unscientific corner. This is the bitter cause that Chinese culture could not rise to the concept of science. But — when humanity has accumulated high-energy killing weapons enough to wipe out humanity; when uncontrollable three-wastes pollution is enough to destroy the living environment; when Western medicine is powerless before the development of human disease; when humanity must again choose the way to live — that era of Western-culture-science one-element monopoly must end. The era of the Chinese national-cultural system rising to the Chinese science system comes.
2. How to treat Chinese science
Chinese science belongs to the products of Chinese national culture (hereafter, relational science). Modern science belongs to the products of Western culture (hereafter, structural science). Two sciences, two fates — a necessary process of historical development. We know: every thing's growth passes through affirmation and negation. This is the necessary law of human recognition.
How should we rightly face the coexistence of two sciences? How, in joint development, are we to establish for relational science its proper social standing?
First, recognize that science is multi-element, not one. Two sciences each have their own modes of recognition and practice, their own theoretical systems, their own strengths and shortcomings; they cannot be conflated.
Second, both sciences are humanity's common wealth. To bring out each's strengths, to serve humanity's survival and growth, we must use a single key — grasp the structure and principle. Only by recognition through conceptual logic and structural-principle study can we lay bare each science's uses and superiorities, and so better serve humanity.
3. Respect the fact that science is multi-element
Today, at the word science, all that is named is the mode of recognition and practice built on Western culture. The Xinhua Dictionary, p. 501, gives this gloss: "Science is one form of ideology. The knowledge system of the laws of nature, society, and the development of thinking. Built and grown on the basis of social practice, it is the summing of practical experience. It divides into natural science and social science; philosophy generalizes and sums both." That is, with such a philosophy, such a science. On p. 1132 it glosses philosophy as: "The doctrine concerning the world; researching the most general laws of nature, society, and thought; the general summary of natural and social knowledge. The relation of thinking to being is its basic faction. In class society, philosophy as a social form has strong class-character."
Reading these two pages: the concepts of science and philosophy are not only blurred — they are forced into the class struggle. Because our country's modern times used Marx's struggle-philosophy, the explanation of science and philosophy must stand from the proletarian and materialist position. This must distort the concepts. So science can only be limited to the mode built on Western culture, focused on material structure — concrete, microscopic. The mode built on Chinese national culture — under integral-philosophy guidance, focused on the relations among things, abstract, macroscopic — must be cast off as idealist, unscientific. This is Marx's struggle-philosophy producing in China the Western-culture-science one-element monopoly. It is the tragedy of the Chinese nation, and a great disaster for humanity.
We all know knowledge has no class-character; only in the struggle of whom does it serve is class concept attached. We do not here discuss class struggle; we discuss only knowledge's essential character.
Idealism and materialism cannot be cleanly cut apart. The Marxian materialist holds: outside the motion of matter, there is nothing. All existence is the form of matter's motion. Human thinking is also a form of matter's motion (now confirmed by structural science) — the reflection of objective things in the brain. Use this formula: Matter shapes Mind // Mind recognizes Matter. Matter is master of Mind; Mind is shaped by Matter. They are linked; one cannot be cut off from the other to be purely materialist or idealist. The supposed struggle of idealism and materialism as two-class, two-road struggle is the pure expression of extremism: the need of struggle, dividing two camps to make a target. If we step outside this artificial circle, lift the fog of one-element monopoly, the dawn of multi-element science is not hard to see. By studying Laozi's discourse on Being and Non-being in the first chapter of the Daodejing, we feel Chinese science's brilliance in epistemology. See the sister piece Laozi's Philosophy within Chinese Science.
Fact tells us: whichever worldview, all share one basic point — they come from conclusions reached by a mode of recognition and practice. Different modes stand for different worldviews and yield different conclusions. And different worldviews guide and constrain recognition and practice.
Different worldviews — different philosophies. Every science runs under some philosophy; each is relative and partial. No science is perfect. Different sciences can lay bare the laws of motion and change of objective things from different angles.
Hence only a society of multi-element sciences in joint development is a highly civilized, highly developed society.
To represent only one science and suppress others is to make a deformed, savage, backward society.
To walk the road of multi-element sciences in joint development is a strong move to open the future. China has a multi-element culture-science foundation; if we dare to step first, we are bound to enter the ranks of strong nations.
Science's multi-element character is objective. Science's purpose: to lay bare the laws of motion and change of things, for the survival and growth of humanity. Hence: any mode of recognition and practice that can lay bare the laws of motion and change of objective things may be called a scientific mode — may serve us — without sticking to school-and-faction disputes.
To recognize scientific modes, only by conceptual-logic and structural-principle study can the similarities-and-differences and strengths-and-weaknesses among sciences be understood — so multi-element sciences can better serve humanity.
4. The concepts and content of two sciences
4.1 Basic conditions for setting up a scientific concept
The birth and growth of a science are closely tied to the regional culture of the time-and-space conditions. Different regional cultures decide different modes of recognition and practice — hence different scientific conceptual characters.
A concept has high generality and abstraction. The correct concept of a thing should reflect all the characteristics of that thing.
4.2 Concept and content of Chinese science
Current science (structural science) is universally known and used. Chinese science (relational science), though objectively existing and widely steeped through every country and people, is used but its concept and value are not known.
Narrow-sense Chinese science: a verification-science (relational science) built on Chinese national culture. Note: Chinese science refers to the regional-cultural sense. Relational science refers to its focus — relations among things. Verification-science refers to its thought-mode.
Broad-sense Chinese science: the verification-science mode without regional limitation — any theoretical system of recognition-and-practice mode that takes integral philosophy as guide, focuses on relations among things, and uses verification-thinking, may belong to the Chinese science category.
Ying (response) is the link from objective to subjective; yan (verification) is the link from subjective to objective. Verification-science is the science built on the mutual linking of objective and subjective — taking integral philosophy as guide, focusing on relations among things, with practical verification as the standard. It is a science of abstract, macroscopic mode, premised on following the laws of nature. The mode is tied closely to Chinese national culture and cannot be separated. Chinese national culture's basic feature is integral concept; its theoretical core is the yin-yang doctrine. Representative canons: Daodejing, Yijing, Huangdi Neijing — the total fount of Chinese culture. China's thought, social science, natural science, and many religious and non-religious doctrines all draw from these canons, or marry with them.
Chinese science holds: "Yin and yang are the way of Heaven and Earth, the outline of the ten thousand things, the parents of change, the root-beginning of life-and-killing, the dwelling-place of spirit-brightness." (1) It views the whole cosmos as built of yin and yang; every birth and transformation is born of the motion of yin and yang. Yin-yang concept can explain every correspondence. The laws of yin-yang motion are the laws of motion of all things. In Chinese science this law is called the Way. "The Way models on nature." (2) This is the core question of the three canons; the theoretical system born from it is Chinese science's theoretical system — its feature and strength.
4.3 Concept and content of structural science
Structural science is the experimental science built on Western culture. Experiment is to verify, by definite form and content, whether a definite consciousness-thought is correct. Experimental science is the science built through ceaseless recognition, ceaseless verification, ceaseless lifting — a mode focused on material structure, microscopic and concrete. The mode is tied closely to Western culture. Western culture focuses on the individuality of things, skilled at recognition from the depth of structure, hence: every thing's motion and change has its inner law; to recognize it, only experiment can give a verifying answer. Structural science is the experimental-science mode built on this culture.
5. The dialectical relation of the two cultural-sciences
Without Western culture's modes of recognition and practice, there is no structural science. Without Chinese national culture's modes of recognition and practice, there is no Chinese science. A scientific mode must take a corresponding culture as nurture; leave the particular culture, and the science vanishes.
The relation of national culture to science mainly shows in the modes of recognition and practice under the rule of philosophy. The two sciences each have strengths and shortcomings; each has its own thinking mode; each has its principle; each is constrained accordingly. Verification-thinking's principle: respect and accord with nature; aim: safeguard and evolve life. Strengths: broad practicality and constancy. Shortcomings: blurry thinking, hard to grasp the quantitative-change relations in motion. Dialectical relation: it restrains human desires — social progress is slow; but at the same time it can safeguard the living environment to the maximum. Experimental-thinking's principle: verification; aim: lay bare the secret of things, for use. Strengths: lifts human intelligence, brings out the active recognition of nature and its transformation. Dialectical relation: it maximally satisfies human desires, pushes social progress; but at the same time it gradually destroys the living environment and leads humanity toward ruin.
6. The two scientific principles
6.1 Structure and principle of Chinese science
Under integral philosophy, Chinese science holds: in the whole cosmos no thing exists in isolation; every thing has broad linkage to others. The yin-yang doctrine can be verified. Chinese science is also called relational science; its object is the mutual relations among things. Yin-yang is the medium of relation. Chinese science uses this medium to recognize the laws of motion and change of every thing in the cosmos. Its theoretical structure is the abstract system of yin-yang motion laws under integral philosophy.
Having something within, it must show without: to verify the inner by knowing the outer — this verification-thinking is Chinese science's dialectic. This corresponds to structural science's structural-principle and verifying-thinking. Both sciences can lay bare the laws of motion and change of things; only their modes differ, hence different content and results.
6.2 Structure and principle of structural science
Structural science holds: in the cosmos, outside matter's motion, there is nothing. Every matter can be dissected back to molecules, atoms, microparticle structures; all knowledge of matter comes from the physico-chemical relations of these microparticle structures. Recognize their physico-chemical laws and you recognize all. But these microparticles are not directly sensed by humans; only experiment yields the verifying answer. So structural science's principle is verification built on the laboratory; its physico-chemical data form its basic theoretical structure. This is decided by structural science's thinking mode.
7. The inherent shortcomings of structural science's theoretical development call for relational science's complement
7.1 The trend of contradiction
Though structural science has satisfied human material desires and authority-desires to the maximum, it has brought a crisis of human survival. The contradiction of material-desire vs. survival-desire will become the chief contradiction beyond this century. How is it resolved? Only by the joint development of multi-element sciences — to restrain the excess becomes harm result.
7.2 Structural science is not perfect
Although structural science has, with the pace of the times, developed the physico-chemical structure and function-use of matter to a high, fine, advanced level, it still cannot resolve some basic natural questions. It cannot produce a single leaf, a single blade of grass; and it cannot fully explain the many problems of life-phenomena. For instance: what is the material basis of human thought and emotion? Which substances master thought and which master emotion? Why does every life propagate strictly by its own species, ruled by the natural baton — evolving or devolving? Why cannot humanity escape the natural baton? If we could, would it not mean humanity's end? Why? Such questions show that structural science is not perfect, not omniscient. Many it is powerless before.
When the world's many religious phenomena, human special-ability phenomena (including qigong), and the many objectively existing strange phenomena of nature cannot be explained from structural science, structural science generally takes an evading and denying attitude, daring not face them. For instance: even ordinary people understand that, in the vast cosmos, there must be planets like Earth, that aliens must exist. Earthlings' sighting of UFOs is a years-long objective fact, yet the only answer is special atmospheric phenomena yielding illusion. How many can accept this evasion?
Relational science can tell people: human recognition is limited; the existence of matter is unlimited. We cannot use limited recognition to deny or replace unlimited existence. Especially verifying experiment is constrained by objective conditions. From the recognition angle, relational science's macroscopic, abstract, blurry theoretical frame still has eternal guiding value for structural science's practice. The principle the whole is greater than the sum of the parts (3) sets that structural-science theoretical development cannot escape relational science's macroscopic frame.
8. Set up Chinese science's proper social standing
People today widely hold: what is built on the lab basis and verified is scientific; otherwise unscientific. Because our society has not yet recognized the true meaning of science. Broad-sense science is the doctrine and theoretical system about modes of recognition and practice. Science's aim is to lay bare the laws of motion and change of things, for human survival and growth. Hence: any mode of recognition and practice that can lay bare the laws of motion and change of objective things may be called science. This is the sole standard for practice to test truth. Chinese science not only laid down great merit for the multi-millennia flourishing of the Chinese nation, building Chinese national culture's distinctive system; her follow-nature, integral thought will play a vast role for humanity's survival and growth. So we must correct the error of treating Western culture-science's modes as the only scientific mode. We must adjust people's vision and thinking mode.
We should know: the Opium War's role was to push us to choose structural science — a choice for Chinese national survival. Now, for humanity's survival, we must accept Chinese science. We must change the policies, statutes, organizational structures, and personnel systems that do not fit Chinese science's survival and growth. This is the wise move from China-chases-tide to China-leads-tide.
25 April 2002
References:
(1) Huangdi Neijing · Discourse on the Correspondence of Yin and Yang
(2) Laozi, Daodejing, ch. 25
(3) Jin Guantao, Philosophy of the Whole, Sichuan People's Press, March 1987