Scientific Definition and Philosophical Method
Beijing Xi-Huang Culture Research Center — Lü Jiage
1. Philosophical method has absolute guiding force over our knowledge of all things
No civilization, no culture, no single discipline — not even an experience or a concept and definition — can do without the guidance of philosophical method. With the long-lost Chinese philosophical method now retrieved, the Chinese must, in modern society and in Western science, take many concepts, definitions, principles, and theories and test them by Chinese philosophical method. A Chinese cultural revival, with the popularization of Chinese philosophical method at its core, is at hand.
The first change in humankind's passage from primitive to civilized state was that, in long survival and development, the various peoples shaped philosophical methods of different content. With philosophical method as guide, the great civilization-making of each people began. As for the Chinese, the most important era in our history was the Yangshao Culture period (about 6,000 years ago), when Fuxi's wordless Yijing had drawn the Chinese philosophical method into a great synthesis. Under its guidance, Chinese civilization and culture began to be created on a great scale.
The Chinese have always used the Chinese philosophical method to create civilization and culture, to make scientific discoveries and inventions, and have produced the splendid ancient Chinese civilization. China's science and technology stood at the world's leading edge before the 17th century only because the Chinese philosophical method guided it.
But philosophical method is subtle — its influence and guidance on human practice are imperceptible. The Yijing gives a fitting phrase: "The common people use it daily and do not know." The ancients had long recognized both the importance of philosophical method and the hiddenness of its application.
Today's philosophical textbooks are also in this state of daily use without awareness. To overlook the guiding force of philosophical method on practice — to neither recognize nor admit it — is a blind spot in today's scholarship. Especially when scholarship uses scientific method to replace philosophical method, the blind spot is plain. What is science? What is scientific method? What is their relation to philosophical method? These we must first clarify; this is part of the Chinese cultural revival of today.
2. The definition of science is determined under the guidance of philosophical method
Once we have grasped the guiding role of philosophical method on civilization and culture, on creation and survival, it is not hard to draw the conclusion that the definition of science itself is determined under the guidance of philosophical method. The phrase scientific method is vague and inexact; what is meant is still philosophical method. Philosophical method is divided into Western and Chinese.
Science is a much-fashionable word of the last hundred years. Today's science, more exactly, is Western science; it has become the standard of right-and-wrong for everything, the stick by which Western-science defenders beat all who differ — high-handed in the extreme. Anything granted the cap of science is worth a hundredfold; anything stamped not science or traditional is wrong and backward. Today, with the Chinese philosophical method retrieved, the supremacy of Western philosophical method will break, the monopoly of Western science will fall, and the Western-science-only habit and view will find themselves in an awkward place. As philosophical method divides into Chinese and Western, so science divides into Chinese (Eastern) science and Western science; the Western science that has spread in China for nearly a century will meet a strong rival in Chinese science. Through Chinese philosophical method we can win back this lost territory of science: the Chinese will, under the guidance of Chinese philosophical method, build a modern Chinese science. One ancient discipline of Chinese science — Chinese medicine — will resume its true face and show the infinite scope of Chinese science.
Because of the long loss of Chinese philosophical method, many Chinese no longer understand it but worship and inculcate Western philosophical method, accept Western definitions of science, and have built up a deep national inferiority complex over a century. Since the New Culture Movement, the study of Chinese learning has been conducted entirely under the guide of Western philosophical method; the result can only be that Chinese culture is taken apart beyond recognition. The Chinese have grown estranged from their own learning, and Chinese medicine more so. Some, with ill intent, even call qigong, or even Chinese medicine, pseudo-science — a typical sign of Westernization in China. Plainly Western science cannot cover Chinese learning; on the contrary, it lays siege and slaughter to extinguish Chinese learning. So the Chinese must understand Chinese philosophical method, must understand the relation between scientific definition and philosophical method, must understand why science must be divided into Chinese (Eastern) and Western.
3. Chinese and Western scientific definitions
With Chinese philosophical method drawn out, Chinese cultural revival is today's main cultural trend. The many concepts and definitions of Western philosophical method, born of microscopic seeing, must be given Chinese-style concepts and definitions by Chinese philosophical method's macroscopic seeing. To know clearly both Chinese and Western scientific definitions is a needed common knowledge for the Chinese today. One may foresee: modern Chinese science will be born under the guide of Chinese philosophical method.
(1) Western scientific definitions
There are more than a hundred Western definitions of science — a sign of the Western preference for the microscopic, leading easily to scattered, endless understanding. Selected excerpts follow:
1. Cihai (Sea of Words), 1979 edition:
"Science is a knowledge system about nature, society, and thought; it arose and developed to meet the needs of people's production and class struggle; it is the crystallization of practical experience."
2. Cihai, 1999 edition:
"Science: a knowledge system using such forms of thought as categories, theorems, and laws to reflect the essential laws of various phenomena of the real world.
A form of social consciousness.
By the object studied, science divides into natural science, social science, and thought science, plus philosophy and mathematics, which span and underlie all three. By relation to practice, into theoretical science, technical science, applied science, and so on. Science comes from social practice and serves social practice. It is a revolutionary force historically driving progress. In our age, science and technology are the first productive force; science's development and role are conditioned by social conditions. Modern science is now developing along the integral direction of intense disciplinary specialization and intense integration."
3. The French Encyclopedia:
"Science is first different from common sense; science seeks order in things through classification. Further, science seeks to explain things by revealing the laws that govern them."
4. The Soviet Great Encyclopedia:
"Science is a category of human activity, whose function is to summarize and systematize knowledge of the objective world. The concept of 'science' itself covers not only the activity of obtaining new knowledge but also the result of that activity."
5. General Survey of Modern Science and Technology:
"Briefly, science is a system of knowledge that faithfully reflects the inherent laws of objective things." And so on.
Each of these definitions is shaped under the guidance of Western philosophical method.
(2) The Chinese definition of science
By Chinese philosophical method, science need not be defined. To pair with Western science, however, I attempt the following:
"Chinese science: that which, in accord with nature, grasps things from the macroscopic — winning over things without harming them — reflecting their macroscopic and microscopic, inner and outer, visible and invisible, formed and formless contents and laws, and explaining things and establishing disciplines by this means."
Grasping things from the macroscopic is the core of Chinese philosophical method; Chinese science will reflect that core. Chinese philosophical method is the soul of Chinese culture; once popularized among the people, the era of Westernization's monopoly will end. Chinese philosophical method, with its incomparable charm, deep cultural accumulation, and powerful vitality, will rouse a great tide of Chinese cultural revival and open a new era — a Chinese-style industrial revolution. This revolution should stand selectively on Western science's base and break with its model of development at the cost of human survival environment, replacing it wholly with a Chinese, accord-with-nature, macroscopic model.
4. Science will have borders
When philosophical method divides into Chinese and Western, the definition of science must split into two — Chinese (Eastern) and Western. As the old saying goes, no singularity exists without a pair. So science will have borders. When science is paired, it also proves that no civilization, culture, discipline, or empirical summary is acquired without the guidance of philosophical method.
The importance of philosophical method in creating civilization cannot be overlooked. Every individual's practice is silently guided by the philosophical method of his own culture — used yet not known. One content of Chinese cultural revival is to let the Chinese know the importance of philosophical method's guiding role and to apply Chinese philosophical method consciously.
5. Chinese philosophical method will break the high-handedness of Western science
In current philosophy textbooks the concept of philosophical method is absent, let alone its guiding role. For Chinese disciplines that Western philosophical method cannot cover, the response is to belittle and deny them as empirical and traditional. Take Chinese medicine — among Chinese disciplines, almost the only one left: under the strong wave of Westernization, it has been capped with empirical, unscientific, pre-scientific, traditional, out-of-date — and is being remade, in plan and in stages, by Western medicine, dignified by the name TCM modernization. Once the guiding role of Chinese philosophical method is understood, these belittling caps and grand projects of Western-medicine modernization of Chinese medicine lose their reason to exist. Even an empirical medicine needs philosophical method to summarize itself.
Because Western philosophical method likes to set categories and give definitions, anything not fitting those categories and definitions is rejected and denied. Long-term use has given today's science its high-handed habit. Under the Westernization of Chinese culture, this high-handedness has been given the green light; today Western science is its alias. The state of real Chinese medicine on the brink of extinction is the direct result of that high-handedness.
Under such monopoly, Chinese scholarship has plainly split into an academy school and a folk school. The academy school is now overbearing, paying the folk school no heed; the hundred schools no longer contend; instead, scholarly differences are excluded. The folk school here means the school that studies questions by Chinese philosophical method; for all its shortcomings, it is no inferior to the academy school in scholarship. Only — the channels for publishing papers and contending in scholarship are all held by the academy school; the folk school has no equal footing and no free chance to publish. Chinese cultural revival will break this scholarly monopoly.
6. Cast off the national inferiority complex and pursue Chinese cultural revival
Today China's Westernization deepens. In education, the teaching of the mother tongue has been simplified, so that the Chinese-language level of college and middle-school students is extremely thin; English teaching tends to outweigh mother-tongue teaching. The language and script of a people are the root of that people and culture; a people without its own culture is doomed to pity. Not strengthening mother-tongue teaching for our children but making English the primary language is an act of suicide for the people, and will cast the Chinese nation into second class. In the world's sovereign states, none diminishes mother-tongue teaching while strengthening English teaching as we do. That used to exist only in colonies — at gunpoint!
In medicine, Chinese medicine is near extinction; the constitutional clause of equal weight to Chinese and Western medicine is not enforced; Western medicine governs Chinese medicine. The weak position of Chinese medicine today is likewise the fruit of Westernization.
Long Westernization has bred a national inferiority complex. It has caused the massive destruction and loss of Chinese culture — a fact every Chinese is loath to see, but helpless to change. Under the Qing, the various disciplines of Chinese science were suppressed and killed; modern science therefore did not arise in China. This fact became one cause of Chinese inferiority and a pretext for Western-worship. Since the New Culture Movement a powerful inferiority feeling has spread; belittling and disparaging Chinese culture became fashionable.
With Chinese philosophical method, born of the Yi, drawn out, a great tide of Chinese cultural revival is at hand. By then Chinese will, under the guidance of Chinese philosophical method, compete in new science and technology and create new disciplines; modern Chinese science will present itself in the East in an unprecedented form. Chinese cultural revival will bring industrial revolution. Chinese philosophical method will return to the Chinese mind, and what Napoleon did not wish to see will come: this sleeping lion of China will awaken. The inferior, Western-only habit and view of Chinese culture will be utterly smashed by this revival.