The hallmark of a P-language is its M-presuppositions, the absolute presuppositions underlying core sentences of the language, which determine the (conceptually or actually possible) truth-value status of its sentences. As contingent factual presumptions about the world perceived by the language community, M-presuppositions of a P-language can manifest themselves in many different ways. It is almost impossible to give a complete list of all forms of M-presuppositions since they may vary with different P-languages. Nevertheless, we can still specify three exemplars of M-presuppositions based on the three corresponding forms of semantic presuppositions identified earlier:
(i) Existential presumptions—existential presuppositions;
(ii) Universal principles—state-of-affairs presuppositions;
(iii) Categorical frameworks—sortal presuppositions.
We will discuss existential presumptions and universal principles here, and categorical frameworks in chapter 11.
An existential sentence, such as (16) (‘The present king of France is bald’), presupposes the existence of the denotation of the subject of the sentence. In a similar way, many sentences of a scientific language presuppose the existence of the theoretical entities postulated by the corresponding theory. For example, the existence of phlogiston—as an existential presumption about the existential state of the world around the language community of phlogiston theory—is presupposed by the theory. Consider how sentence (30) (‘Element a contains more phlogiston than element b’) and its negation (~30) (‘It is not the case that element a contains more phlogiston than element &’) presuppose (30a) (‘Phlogiston exists’). (30a) is the core ontological commitment of phlogiston theory. Suspension or denial of (30a) would render both (30) and (~30) truth-valueless. Similarly, the existence of the yin and the yang as well as the Five Elements, as existential presumptions of traditional Chinese medical theory, underlies core sentences of the language, such as sentence (4) (‘The association of the yin and rain makes people sleepy’). Rejection of the yin and the yang would undermine Chinese medical theory and render those sentences presupposing them truth-valueless. We will call those ontological commitments to the existence of some theoretical entities by a scientific language its existential presumptions. The existential presumptions of a scientific language function as shared existential presuppositions underlying numerous core sentences of the language.
The term ‘universal principles’ is used by Feyerabend in his mature explication of the concept of incommensurability. Initially, Feyerabend calls universal principles ‘fundamental rules or laws’. By ‘fundamental rules or laws’, Feyerabend means some very basic assumptions underlying a language. Feyerabend assumes that
The rules (assumptions, postulates) constituting a language (a ‘theory’ in our terminology) form a hierarchy in the sense that some rules presuppose others without being presupposed by them. A rule R′ will be regarded as being more fundamental than another rule R″, if it (is) presupposed by more rules of the theory, R″ included, each of them being at least as fundamental as the rules presupposing R″. It is clear that a change of fundamental rules will entail a major change of the theory, or of the language in which they occur. Thus a change in the spatiotemporal ideas of Newton’s celestial mechanics makes it necessary to redefine almost every term, and to reformulate every law of the theory, whereas a change of the law of gravitation leaves the concepts, and all the remaining laws, unaltered. The former ideas are more fundamental than the law of gravitation. (Feyerabend, 1965a, p. 114; the second italics is mine)
Similarly, the notion of impetus depends upon the Aristotelian principle that all motion is the result of the continuous action of some force, which constitutes the fundamental universal principle of the impetus theory.
Although Feyerabend speaks of incommensurability in many domains of the sciences and illustrates his thesis of incommensurability by many celebrated case studies from the history of science, his prize example, in my reading, is one from a domain outside science: his case study on the shift from the ‘archaic style’ to ‘the classical style’ in ancient Greek art (Feyerabend, 1978, pp. 230-48, 260-77). It is in this case study that Feyerabend gives a detailed analysis of the notion of universal principles.
Feyerabend recognizes that every formal feature of a style (a theory or a language) corresponds to (hidden or explicit) assumptions inherent in the underlying cosmology. Therefore, although there is no one-to-one correspondence between a style and its underlying cosmology, it is possible to unearth the cosmology of a style (which is a precise account of the world as it is seen by the participants of the style) by means of analyzing its formal features. The cosmology of a style, for Feyerabend, consists of basic elements (entities, the concept of objects, and the concept of facts) as well as universal principles. In terms of analyzing the formal features of ‘the archaic style’ and ‘the classical style’, Feyerabend unearths their underlying cosmologies respectively and proceeds to describe the transition from the universe of the archaic Greeks (cosmology AG hereafter) to the substance-appearance universe of the classical Greeks (cosmology CG hereafter).
The transition from one cosmology to an incommensurable one involves two major changes: the change of elements and the change of the universal principles. Let us, following Feyerabend, examine these two changes in detail.
To begin with, cosmologies AG and CG are built from totally different elements before and after the transition. The transition introduces new entities and new relations between entities, thereby introducing a totally different, new concept of objects. Cosmology AG contains things, events, and their parts; it does not contain any appearances. The entities of cosmology AG are relatively independent parts of objects that enter into external relations without changing their own intrinsic properties. The concept of an object in cosmology AG therefore is none other than the concept of an aggregate of equi-important perceptible parts or entities. The entities and their relations constitute the object; when they are given, then the object is given as well. Thus, complete knowledge of an object is complete enumeration of its parts and peculiarities. On the contrary, cosmology CG that arose in the seventh to the fifth centuries BC distinguishes between reality and appearances. The elements of cosmology CG fall into two classes: essence and appearances (of objects). No enumerations of aspects or parts of an object are identical with the object. Therefore,
[T]he concept of an object has changed from the concept of an aggregate of equi-important perceptible parts to the concept of an imperceptible essence underlying a multitude of deceptive phenomena. (Feyerabend, 1978, p. 264)
Accordingly, the transition from cosmology AG to cosmology CG involves a very different way of conceptualizing facts by introducing a new concept of fact. After the transition, it is not just that the participants of the new cosmology describe the same state of affairs differently, but rather that they describe altogether different states of affairs. Cosmology CG does not contain a single element of cosmology AG, neither a single object nor a single fact of AG. Moreover, there is no way of incorporating an AG-fact into the CG-picture and vice versa. This is because cosmology CG (or cosmology AG) has some structural properties that prevent the co-existence of AG-facts and CG-facts. These structural properties are set up by the underlying universal principles of cosmology CG (or cosmology AG). This brings us to the second major change in the transition from cosmology AG to cosmology CG: the change of the universal principles of each cosmology.
For Feyerabend, ‘universal principles’ is another name for ‘fundamental rules or laws’ as introduced earlier in his contextual theory of meaning. According to Feyerabend, the essential function of the universal principles of a cosmology is to set up a set of (conceptually) possible worlds in which some possible facts can be described. Violation of a universal principle of a cosmology (theory or language) results in suspending all the possible facts that presuppose the universal principle. In Feyerabend’s own words,
We have a point of view (theory, framework, cosmos, mode of representation) whose elements (concepts, ‘facts’, pictures) are built up in accordance with certain principles of construction. The principles involve something like a ‘closure’: there are things that cannot be said, or ‘discovered’, without violating these principles (which does not mean contradicting them). Say the things, make the discovery, and the principles are suspended. Now take those constructive principles that underlie every element of the cosmos (of the theory), every fact (every concept). Let us call such principles universal principles of the theory in question. Suspending universal principles means suspending all facts and all concepts. (1978, p. 269)
Now, if the transition from one cosmology (a theory, a language, a framework) to another involves the transition between two incompatible universal principles, then mutual violation of each other’s universal principles will mutually suspend each other’s presumptive facts.
Let us call a discovery, or a statement, or an attitude incommensurable with the cosmos (the theory, the framework) if it suspends some of its universal principles. (Feyerabend, 1978, p. 269; italics as original)
It is true that incommensurable frameworks and incommensurable concepts may exhibit many structural similarities—but this does not remove the fact that universal principles of the one framework are suspended by the other. It is this fact that establishes incommensurability despite all similarities one might be able to discover. (Feyerabend, 1978, p. 277; italics as original)
This process is what happens during the transition from cosmology AG to cosmology CG.
Feyerabend’s analysis of the incommensurable relation between cosmology AG and cosmology CG due to mutual suspension of each other’s universal principles applies to many other classical transitions in the history of science, such as those from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics, from the impetus theory to Newton’s mechanics, etc. For instance, the quantum theory constitutes facts in accordance with the uncertainty relations,1 one crucial universal principle of the quantum theory. This principle is suspended by the classical approach.
The transition from Newtonian mechanics to the theory of relativity can be used to illustrate further Feyerabend’s point. Numerous sentences of the language of Newtonian mechanics presuppose one universal principle: The properties such as shapes, masses, and periods inhere in objects and change only by direct physical interactions. This universal principle is suspended by the theory of relativity. The relativity theory implies that these inherent properties do not exist (at least in the interpretations of Einstein and Bohr), and that shapes, masses, and periods are relations between physical objects and co-ordinate systems so that they may change, without any physical interaction, when the coordinate system is replaced by another. Furthermore,
The theory of relativity also provides new principles for constituting mechanical facts. The new conceptual system that arises in this way does not just deny the existence of classical states of affairs, it does not even permit us to formulate statements expressing such states of affairs. It does not, and cannot, share a single statement with its predecessor—assuming all the times that we do not use the theories as classificatory schemes for the ordering of neutral facts. ... Using classical terms we assume a universal principle that is suspended by relativity which means it is suspended whenever we write down a sentence with the intention to express a relativistic state of affairs. Using classical terms and relativistic terms in the same statement we both use and suspend certain universal principles which is another way of saying that such a statement does not exist: the case of relativity vs. classical mechanics is an example of two incommensurable frameworks. (Feyerabend, 1978, pp. 275-6; italics as original)
It is worth pointing out that Feyerabend’s notion of universal principles is closely related to Kuhn’s notion of metaphysical commitments of a disciplinary matrix. The metaphysical commitments of a disciplinary matrix provide the theorists with an explicitly or implicitly formulatable ontology, and provide answers to some fundamental questions concerning the existing state of the world around a language community. Two different metaphysical commitments of two competing disciplinary matrices populate the world with different properties and entities with different interactions. To use an example given by Kuhn:
After 1630, for example, and particularly after the appearance of Descartes’ immensely influential scientific writings, most physical scientists assumed that the universe was composed of microscopic corpuscles and that all natural phenomena could be explained in terms of corpuscular shape, size, motion, and interaction. That nest of commitments proved to be both metaphysical and methodological. As metaphysical, it told scientists what sorts of entities the universe did and did not contain: there was only shaped matter in motion. As methodological, it told them what ultimate laws and fundamental explanations must be like... . (Kuhn, 1970a, p. 41)
Feyerabend’s universal principles of a scientific language are one kind of M-presupposition of a P-language, an absolute state-of-affairs presupposition. According to Feyerabend, the essential function of the universal principles of a theory or language is to construct a set of (conceptually) possible worlds in which some possible facts can be described. Violation of a universal principle of a theory or language results in suspending all the possible facts that presuppose the universal principle. A possible fact is the state of affairs described by a sentence with a truth-value. Therefore, it is a universal principle of a language that determines whether a sentence has a truth-value, and thereby determines whether a state of affairs described by the sentence is a possible fact. Rejecting the universal principles of a language amounts to denying the states of affairs described by the sentences of the language as possible facts, thereby denying that these sentences have truth-values.
Therefore, it seems to me to be appropriate to reconstruct Feyerabend’s concept of incommensurability as follows: A theory T (a language, a conceptual scheme) is incommensurable with another theory T’ (another language, conceptual scheme) if T suspends T’s crucial universal principles that are presupposed by crucial facts. The conflict between universal principles is an essential nature of incommensurability.
To sum up, universal principles are fundamental factual assumptions underlying a P-language about the existential state of the world around the language community: The postulate of ‘absolute space and time’ in Newtonian physics; ‘Fermat’s conjecture’ in classical arithmetic; the principle that any motion is due to the action of some kind of force in Aristotle’s theory of motion; the ‘inertial law’ in the impetus theory of motion; the presumption that shapes, masses, and orbital periods are changed only by physical interactions in Newton’s mechanics; uncertainty relations in the quantum theory, and so on. These assumptions function as the fundamental shared state-of-affairs presuppositions of the language. They construct a set of conceptually possible contexts in which the sentences of the language could have conceptually possible truth-values. Some universal principles are so essential to a P-language that the denial of them is unacceptable by the users of the language. Failing to identify and comprehend them would deprive the conceptually possible truth-values of many substantial sentences of the language. Using the traditional Chinese medical theory as an example, for Western physicians, many core sentences of the Chinese medical language, such as sentence (4) (‘The association of the yin and rain makes people sleepy’), do not describe any conceptually possible state of affairs, and therefore do not possess any conceptually possible truth-values. This is because the underlying universal principles (the yin-yang doctrine and the pre-established harmony between human affairs and nature) presupposed by those sentences are beyond Western physicians’ conceptual reach. They cannot identify and comprehend possible contexts in which these sentences have truth-values.
Furthermore, suspending or rejecting the universal principles of a P-language would make its core sentences actually truth-valueless. For instance, the Leibnizians are able to identify a conceptually possible context in which the sentences like (9) (‘The body b at time t could have located in a different place’) and (10) (‘The spatial location of body b at time t1 is different from its location at time t2’) could have conceptually possible truth-values. This is because the Leibnizians can identify the truth-value conditions of the sentences, that is, the existence of Newtonian absolute space. However, the Leibnizians deny the reality of those possible contexts. Therefore, for the Leibnizians, although (9) and (10) could have conceptually possible truth-values, they are actually truth-valueless.
As we have introduced in chapter 6, I. Hacking presents a historical thesis that there are different styles of scientific reasoning existing within the Western scientific tradition. Recall that we have identified two distinctive features of Hacking’s styles of scientific reasoning. First, a style of reasoning is not supposed to be a set of beliefs or assumptions about the nature of the world, but is the way beliefs or propositions are proposed and defended. Second, a style of reasoning is not a truth-preserving rule of formal logic, like deduction and induction, but the way of determining what are taken to be legitimate candidates for truth-or-falsity.
C. Taylor, in his comment on P. Winch’s interpretation of Zande magical rites, hits upon a concept of modes of thinking or ways of understanding substantially similar to Hacking’s concept of styles of scientific reasoning. In Taylor’s interpretation, Winch describes that the Zande were trying to, by virtue of their magic rites, express an attitude toward contingencies in their rites, rather than trying to gain control of these contingencies (Winch, 1979). The problem with Winch’s interpretation, Taylor argues, is that it assumes that the Zande were able to make the distinction between expressing and controlling contingencies. According to Taylor’s interpretation, however, the Zande were not able to make what seems to be a fundamental distinction for us. Therefore, the right thing to say about the Zande is that they tried to accomplish the function of controlling contingencies also when they seemed only to express them in their rites, since, for the Zande, expressing and controlling are intertwined. Taylor further points out that the absence of the distinction between expressing and controlling can be better understood by grasping a traditional way of understanding the world or a mode of thinking that makes no distinction between understanding the world and coming into attunement with it:
We don’t understand the order of things without understanding our place in it, because we are part of this order. And we cannot understand the order and our place in it without loving it, without seeing its goodness, which is what I want to call being in attunement with it. Not being in attunement with it is a sufficient condition of not understanding it, for anyone who genuinely understands must love it; and not understanding it is incompatible with being in attunement with it, since this presupposes understanding. (Taylor, 1982, pp. 95-6)
Taylor identifies a traditional mode of thinking or way of understanding that is frequently congenial to the human mind in our past: the intertwinedness between understanding and attunement. Taylor believes that this unique mode of thinking appeared in the European cultural tradition before the advent of modern science. Actually, Taylor’s observation is applicable to other cultural traditions also. We can find a similar way of understanding embodied in the past of other cultural traditions, including the pre-modern Chinese intellectual tradition, which I will turn to shortly.
By focusing on the relationship between understanding the world and being in attunement with it, Taylor actually explores a unique mode of thinking or way of understanding. It is a distinctive mode of thinking existing in the past of some cultural and intellectual traditions. This mode of reasoning has the following three aspects: (a) The attitudes toward the world that attunement involves: There are different versions of attunements specified by different attitudes toward the world. For instance, ‘Taylor’s characterization of attunement as involving love of the world seems best suited to Platonic Christianity. The Chinese version of attunement involves acceptance and appreciation rather than anything we could characterize as love’ (D. Wong, 1989, p. 148). (b) The understanding of the order of the world and the place of human beings in it: How human beings, as part of this order, become attuned to the world by keeping certain relations to it. (c) The connection between understanding and attunement: Whether or not understanding the world is closely associated with achieving attunement with it. For example, for the Zande, attunement is intertwined with understanding. Expressing the recognition that life is subject to contingencies, as a version of attunement to the world, is intertwined with the Zande way of understanding the world that makes control possible.
There is a common formal feature shared by both Hacking’s styles of reasoning and Taylor’s modes of thinking. That is, they are not supposed to be the premises of reasoning or a set of basic beliefs about the world, but rather are assumed to be the form of reasoning or the way of justification. This kind of form of reasoning has two critical features: (a) It is the form of reasoning that determines what facts count as legitimate evidence for justification, in what ways they count, and the weight of evidence in support of propositions; (b) It is the form of reasoning that determines whether a sentence has a truth-value. For example, within the Renaissance tradition, the form of reasoning embodied in the tradition regards states of affairs dealing with the mutual interaction between the human body and celestial bodies and other chemical elements as alleged facts. The very form further determines that the associations between mercury, the planet Mercury, the marketplace, and syphilis count as evidence for the claim that mercury salve is good for syphilis. Within this form of reasoning, a Paracelsan sentence like ‘Mercury salve is good for syphilis’ has a truth-value.
Both Taylor’s concept of modes of thinking or ways of understanding and Hacking’s concept of styles of reasoning concern a special kind of forms of reasoning from different perspectives. From now on, I will use the concept of modes of reasoning to refer to both Taylor’s modes of thinking and Hacking’s styles of reasoning without further distinction.
According to Hacking, the style of reasoning is a form of reasoning rather than the premises of reasoning. It is not an usual form of reasoning, but a form of reasoning that determines the truth-value status of the sentence. Roughly put, a form of reasoning is an inference process that can pass some specific semantic values of a set of sentences (such as the truth-values of the premises in an argument) to another related sentence (such as the conclusion in an argument). The mode of reasoning that Hacking has in mind is supposed to be a special kind of form of reasoning that can pass the truth-value status of a set of sentences to the truth-value status of another sentence. If so, the classical bivalent forms of reasoning, such as deduction, induction, or reduction, will not do for this purpose. Since these classical forms of reasoning are truth preserving, they can only be used to pass truths, instead of truth-value status, from a set of sentences to another related sentence. Hacking clearly realizes this and claims that his styles of reasoning are not the forms of reasoning in the traditional sense. But he does not specify at all what alternative kind of forms of reasoning he has in mind except to claim that his forms of reasoning are supposed to determine the truth-value status of sentences.
I fail to see how a form of reasoning, no matter what it is, can determine the truth-value status of sentences. More precisely, how can a mode of reasoning, as a form of reasoning, determine whether a sentence has a truth-value unless it can be linked to certain premises or assumptions?2 According to our Convention P, the truth-value status of a sentence is determined by the truth-value of its presuppositions. A presupposition of a sentence is a factual assumption about the existential state of the world around a language community. This means that as far as the function of truth-value status determination is concerned, a mode of reasoning should be conceived as the premises of reasoning, instead of as the form of reasoning. In fact, Taylor’s mode of thinking seems to be more like a set of basic premises about the world than a form of reasoning. On the other hand, however, a mode of reasoning should not be reduced to a premise of reasoning. According to Hacking, a mode of reasoning is the way beliefs or propositions are proposed and defended, not the content of beliefs. According to Taylor, a mode of reasoning is a specific way of thinking or understanding, not the content of a belief to be understood.
To rationalize the essential function of a mode of reasoning, but at the same time not to simply reduce it to premises or beliefs, I hypothesize that a mode of reasoning is associated with some hidden universal principles. More precisely, we can imagine that every mode of reasoning is embedded in an underlying cosmology. The essential core of any cosmology consists in some (hidden or explicit) general assumptions. Those general assumptions function just as the universal principles do. Historically, the universal principles of a cosmology were some explicit factual beliefs about the existential state of the world observed by a cultural or scientific tradition. A tradition is best characterized by the specific way of understanding the world. It is likely that, at the early development of a tradition, both the view of the order of things and the place of human beings in it on the one hand and the attitude toward the world on the other were initially basic premises or beliefs about the world. It is reasonable to assume that during the historical development of the tradition, those basic premises or beliefs operated constantly within the tradition and eventually become treated as constants within it to the extent that they become incorporated into the conception of understanding to generate a unique way of understanding the world. As a result, a unique mode of reasoning evolved from the same process.
If the above hypothesis is right, although there may not be one-to-one correspondence between a mode of reasoning and its underlying cosmology, it is possible to unearth the hidden assumptions or universal principles inherent in the underlying cosmology of a mode of reasoning by means of analyzing the formal features of the mode of reasoning. It is these hidden assumptions of the underlying cosmology of a mode of reasoning—functioning as universal principles—that determine the truth-value status of the sentences embedded with the mode of reasoning. Then to say that a mode of reasoning determines the truth-value status of sentences is actually to say that the hidden assumptions associated with the mode of reasoning determine the truth-value status of the sentences. In this way, we can effectively resolve the internal conflict between two merits of a mode of reasoning: as a form of reasoning and as a truth-value condition.
The Paracelsan sentence (15) ‘Mercury salve might be good for syphilis because of associations among the metal mercury, Mercury, the market place, and syphilis’ sounds so alien to us that it is hard to assign a truth-value to it. One might say that this is because the sentence is embedded in the Renaissance mode of reasoning, which is totally alien to us. But more precisely, the truth-valuelessness of the Paracelsan sentence is because we cannot comprehend the Renaissance medical, alchemical, and astrological doctrines of resemblance and similitude, which had internalized into the Renaissance mode of reasoning. These doctrines, functioning as the universal principles of the Paracelsan language, assign positive truth-value status to Paracelsan sentences. Failing to identify and comprehend them renders the sentences truth-valueless.
To further illustrate and support the above hypothesis, let us follow the historical path to trace the evolution and development of the pre-modern Chinese mode of reasoning from the corresponding pre-modern Chinese cosmology and its hidden assumptions in the next section.
In our case study of traditional Chinese medical theory, I suspected that the reason why, for Western physicians, a great many of the substantial sentences in Chinese medical theory sound nonsensical and cannot be assigned truth-values is not that they cannot understand the words or cannot translate the sentences of the language, but that the mode of reasoning underlying Chinese medical theory is totally alien to them and is difficult to grasp. I hinted from time to time that within the Chinese cultural/linguistic setting Chinese medical theory was bound up with a specific mode of reasoning in such a way as to make conceptual access for people from Western culture difficult.3
To unearth the dominant mode of reasoning of the pre-modern Chinese intellectual tradition, the Yin-Yang doctrine is the best place to start. In Chinese philosophy, the Yin-Yang doctrine sounds very simple but its influence has been extensive. It is not an exaggeration to say that no aspect of Chinese civilization, whether metaphysics, natural sciences, social and political theories, or art, has escaped its influence. In simple terms, the doctrine claims that all things and events in the universe are produced and controlled by two forces or principles, namely, the yin and the yang. The yin, which represents the negative, passive, weak, and destructive side of the universe, is associated with softness, cold, cloud, rain, winter, femaleness, and that which is inside and dark. The yang, which represents the positive, active, strong, and constructive side of the universe, is associated with hardness, heat, sunshine, spring and summer, maleness, and that which is outside and bright. The Yin-Yang doctrine is associated with the doctrine of Five Agents or Elements (wu-hsing): Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth. They are not so much five sorts of matter but five sorts of processes. The Five Agents are not only an elaboration of the Yin-Yang idea, but actually add the important concept of rotation, i.e., things succeed one another as the Five Agents take their turns.
The concepts of the yin and the yang and Five Agents go far back to the Ch’un Ch’iu period (the Spring and Autumn period, 722 – 4481 BC) when the concepts were used in magic and divination. In their original forms, the concepts were employed to lay stress on the mutual influence supposed to exist between ‘the Way of Heaven’ (T’ien, both the Heaven of Will and the Heaven of Nature) and human affairs. During the Warring States period (403 – 222 BC), the ancient Yin-Yang School carried on the ancient Chinese tradition in its religious and scientific aspects, further elaborating these religious ideas, developing and transforming them into the first unified system of cosmology in Chinese civilization—a positive systematic explanation of the way of the operation of the world (Y. Fung, 1947, p. 116). The universe was conceived of as a well-coordinated system and a process of self-transformation in which everything is related to everything else.
The Yin-Yang School and its cosmology exerted a profound influence upon the succeeding development of the Chinese intellectual tradition. Turning to the Han dynasty (206 BC – AD 220), the Yin-Yang doctrine came to be almost completely amalgamated with Confucianism, which is called by historians Yin-Yang Confucianism, and became the mainstream of the pre-modern Chinese intellectual tradition (Fung, 1952 and 1953, pp. 7-87). Tung Chung-shu, one of the greatest Confucians, is the representative of Yin-Yang Confucianism. He was chiefly instrumental in making Confucianism the state ideology dominating China until 1905. In Tung Chung-shu’s hands, the two basic ideas of the ancient cosmology took a step forward. First, the universe is treated as an organic whole that is composed of ten parts: Heaven, Earth, the yin, the yang, wood, fire, soil, metal, water, and man.
According to this way of thinking, the universe is an organic structure, and the controlling power in the structure is Heaven. Heaven and earth are the boundary wall, whilst the Yin and Yang and the Five Forces are the framework of the structure. In terms of space, wood belongs to the east, fire to the south, metal to the west and water to the north, whilst soil occupies the central position. These five forces are very like pillars supporting the universe. In terms of time, four of the five forces control the four seasons, and each is the ch’i of one season, wood being that of spring, fire that of summer, metal that of autumn, and water that of winter. Soil has nothing particular which it controls, but it is the central authority of the four seasons. (Fung, 1947, p. 120)
Within this organic structure, everything undergoes constant transformation. The final cause of these transformations is the yin and the yang. The yin and the yang are of opposing natures. The yang is ‘the blessing of Heaven’ which is advantageous to birth and growth, while the yin is ‘the punishing of Heaven’ which is disadvantageous to birth and growth. Hence, if one flourishes, then the other declines. For example, the flourishing and the decline of the yin and the yang cause the changes in the seasons. When the yang flourishes, it helps wood to be dominant. When this happens, it is spring, and all things give birth (Fung, 1947, pp. 118-21).
In addition, according to Tung Chung-shu, not only are things related generally, but they also activate each other. Especially, things of the same kind energize one another. This mutual correlation among things presupposes a pre-established harmony. Actually, the idea that all forces and things in the universe are harmonized has become a typical Chinese traditional conception. The pre-established harmony manifests itself best in the correspondence or mutual influence between human affairs and Nature or in the unity of man and Nature. It is not just because there is a common law governing both man and Nature, but mainly because ‘Nature and man form one body’ and the same material forces of the yin and the yang create and control both of them (W. Chan, 1963, pp. 246, 271). Among the myriad things in the universe, man is the being imbued with the highest spiritual quality and stands the highest in the scale of values. Man’s superiority to ordinary things lies in his intimate association with Heaven and Earth. Actually, man and Heaven belong to the same kind of things. ‘Heaven also has a ch’i of pleasure and a ch’i of anger, a heart of sorrow and a heart of joy, just as happens in men’ (Fung, 1947, p. 121). On the other hand, man’s bodily structure is an edition of Heaven. ‘There is a tallying of Heaven and Earth and a reproduction of the Yin and the Yang permanently established in the human body’. More specifically, ‘In the body there are 366 small components parts, making the sum total of the days in the year, and twelve major parts, making the sum total of the months in the year. Within, there are five viscera, making the sum total of the Five Forces. Without, there are four limbs, making the sum total of the four seasons’ (Fung, 1947, p. 122). Thus, to Tung Chung-shu, man is the universe in miniature: man is the microcosm, Nature the macrocosm, and Heaven is a universe-man.
Man being thus, it follows that man stands along with Heaven and Earth, and the three of them make a perfect trinity. Man’s task is to be a complement to Heaven and Earth. This establishes the unique position of man in the universe. The relation between man and the universe being thus, it is natural to expect certain correlations in the yin or the yang operations of Heaven with events in human affairs. ‘When Heaven is about to make the yin rain fail, for example, people feel sleepy. The theory is that when the yin force in Heaven and Earth begins to dominate, the yin force in people responds by taking the lead’ (D. Wong, 1989, p. 149).
Now, we can identify four essential universal principles4 that constitute the core of the pre-modern Chinese yin-yang cosmology:
(CM1) |
The Yin-Yang doctrine: All things and events in the universe are produced and controlled by the yin and the yang. |
(CM2) |
The Five-Element doctrine: Everything is made of five different elements, namely, Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth. |
(CM3) |
The principle of pre-established harmony: There exist mutual correlations among things in general and the correspondence or mutual influence between human affairs and Nature in particular. |
(CM4) |
The doctrine of constant transformation: Within the organic structure of the universe, everything undergoes constant transformation. These four universal principles are factual beliefs about the existential state of the universe perceived by the Chinese in the pre-modern Chinese intellectual tradition. |
In the same historical process in which the pre-modern Chinese yin-yang cosmology rose and developed, the pre-modern Chinese mode of thinking evolved along the way. This mode of thinking can be best characterized by the specific way of understanding the world perceived within the pre-modern Chinese tradition. Shaped by the underlying cosmology, this mode of thinking involving both understanding and attunement has the following three formal features: the understanding of (a) the order of the world, and (b) the place of human beings in it, as well as (c) the attitude toward the world. According to this mode of thinking, in brief, the world is composed of and operated by the yin-yang and the Five Forces. Human beings, holding the most exalted position in it, become attuned to the world to such an extent that they became a shadow in brief of the universe, and are melted into it. Because of such a close relationship with the universe, the ancient Chinese did not treat the surrounding world as the object outside that human beings could love, rebel against, or control. They appreciate the blessing (associated with the yang part of the universe) and accept punishing (associated with the yin part of the universe) from Heaven and Earth. This attitude toward the world and the close correlation between the universe and human affairs shows that for the ancient Chinese, understanding the universe was intertwined with achieving attunement with it. Understanding and attunement are related so closely that attunement eventually became a necessary condition of understanding. Actually, the intertwining of attunement and understanding has been a persistent theme presented in almost all schools of pre-modern Chinese philosophies and recurring throughout the Chinese intellectual tradition (Wong, 1989, pp. 150-51).
Sinologists call the mode of thinking illustrated above ‘associated thinking’. J. Needham describes this pre-modern Chinese mode of thinking in the following way:
The symbolic correlations or correspondences all formed part of one colossal pattern. Things behaved in particular ways not necessarily because of prior actions or impulsions of other things, but because their position in the ever-moving cyclical universe was such that they were endowed with intrinsic natures which made that behavior inevitable for them. If they do not behave in those particular ways they would lose their relational positions in the whole (which made them what they were) and turn into something other than themselves. They were thus parts in existential dependence upon the whole world-organism. And they reacted upon one another not so much by mechanical impulsion or causation as by a kind of mysterious resonance. (Needham, 1956, p. 281)
We can see through this mode of ‘associated thinking’ a distinctive logical form of rational justification or the very form of reasoning. During the historical development of the mode of associated thinking, the association of attunement and understanding had been constantly evaluated highly and gradually incorporated into the mainstream values of the Chinese culture. Consequently, it eventually became institutionalized as a dominant rule of rational justification. The rule not only determines what facts count as evidence for justification (in what ways they count and the weight of evidence in support of propositions), but also determines what states of affairs count as permissible facts. For example, according to this form of reasoning, the states of affairs about the interaction between the yin-yang parts in the human body and the yin-yang forces in Heaven count as permissible facts. For the same reason, the interaction provides good evidence for the justification of the claim that sleepiness is caused by rainfall.
It should be clear by now that the pre-modern Chinese mode of reasoning was embedded within traditional Chinese medical theory. In fact, traditional Chinese medical theory was established based on the four basic assumptions of the pre-modern Chinese cosmology (the Yin-Yang doctrine, the Five-Element doctrine, the principle of pre-established harmony, the doctrine of constant transformation). We can see how heavily Chinese medicine has leaned on the Yin-Yang doctrine from a classical Chinese medical work, Huang-ti Nei-ching (Classic of Internal Medicine of the Yellow Emperor). As mentioned earlier, these four initial factual beliefs had operated constantly in the pre-modern Chinese intellectual tradition and were eventually internalized into the pre-modern Chinese way of thinking.
Embedded within this mode of reasoning, many sentences of traditional Chinese medical language are underlain by one or a few of the four universal principles of the corresponding pre-modern Chinese cosmology. For example, sentence (4) (‘The association of the yin rain from Heaven and the yin force in the human body makes one sleepy’) presupposes the Yin-Yang doctrine and the principle of pre-established harmony (here, the mutual correlation between Heaven and human beings). Since these presuppositions are held to be true within the context of the pre-modern Chinese intellectual tradition and medical community, the sentence is regarded as having a truth-value. Therefore, when I claim from time to time that the pre-modern Chinese mode of reasoning determines the truth-value status of many substantial sentences of Chinese medical language, what I really mean is that it is the basic universal principles of the associated cosmology, which function as state-of-affairs presuppositions, that determine the truth-value status of the sentences. Although I will still adopt the first way of speaking, my intention should not be misunderstood.
1 Some philosophers see the uncertainty principle as a metaphysical claim about the indeterminacy (nonexistence) of simultaneous values for position and momentum. Others see it as just an expression of epistemic limits of our knowledge. No matter whether we take it as a metaphysical or an epistemic principle, we can treat it as a universal principle as we define here.
2 Anne Hiskes has put her finger on this point in our discussion of a draft of this chapter.
3 The following part is inspired by D. Wong (1989) on the pre-modern Chinese style of reasoning.
4 I do not intend to give a complete list of the central doctrines of the pre-modern Chinese cosmology here.