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PHILOSOPHY IN ANCIENT CHINA
Philosophically, China's first emperor Shihuangdi (Qin Shi Huang) was a follower of the School of the Five Elements. Here was an attempt to analyze substance -- which Greek philosophers had been wrestling with.
The elements of the School of Five Elements were earth, wood, metal, fire and water. Like the Greeks, the Chinese school mixed spirit into their analysis. It was not a dualism with spirit separate from matter. It was not materialistic. And it was purely imagined -- not tied together with scientific discipline. That would come many centuries later.
The five elements were viewed as phases and involved interactions and relationships. It was believed that the old royal Zhou dynasty had been ruled by the power of fire, represented by the color red. The new Qin dynasty of Shihuangdi was seen as ruled by the next element on the list, which is water, represented by the color black. Thus black became the color for garments, flags and pennants.
The chaos that accompanied the decline of the first (Western) Han dynasty stimulated intellectual vitality. Confucianists tried to counter rival schools of thought by forming a more comprehensive view of humanity and the universe. Dong Zhongshu brought a variety of ideas into Confucian philosophy, including the concept of Yin and Yang -- an idea that had arisen to explain all change, physical and social.
It was an attempt to explain interconnectivity and interdependency in the natural world. Yin and Yang were viewed as two basic opposing forces -- complementary opposites within a greater whole. Everything was imagined to have both Yin and Yang aspects, which constantly interact.
Yin was female: the moon, cold, water, earth, nourishment, sustenance, recessives, autumn, winter, et cetera. Yang was male: the sun, fire, heat, heaven, creation, dominance, spring and summer. It was believed that if Yin reached an extreme it was transformed into Yang, and if Yang reached an extreme it was transformed into Yin -- a view of the world that would not be found useful by scientists centuries later.
Confucianists and others who believed in Yin and Yang continued to describe both heaven and earth as flat and the sun as revolving around the earth. The Confucianists believed the world consisted of five basic elements: fire, earth, metal, water and wood. They further tried to make the universe comprehensible by adopting ideas from the Book of Changes, or I-Ching, which saw the universe affected by the arrangement of numbers, seeing numbers not as mere human inventions for measurement but as having power themselves. They believed that by studying combinations from eight trigrams and sixty-four hexagrams one could uncover any possible activity in nature.
To round out their view of the universe, Confucianists adopted an explanation of the origins of the universe. They believed that in the beginning all was vague and amorphous, that this was followed by emptiness, and that emptiness had produced the universe. They believed that what was clear and light in weight had drifted upward to become heaven, and that what had been turbid and heavy had solidified and become earth. The combined essences of heaven and earth, they believed, became Yin and Yang and a great oneness.
Modern scientists would find Yin and Yang and the I-Ching as not useful in their attempt at a disciplined analysis of matter.
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Copyright © 2009 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.