Science and Chinese Philosophy

Article by Lisa Raphals

Is Chinese philosophy in some sense anti-science? Does its contribution to science make 'Chinese
science' different from modern science? Or is the history of science in China part of a universal
science?
This entry begins with Fung Yu-lan's argument that China lacks science because it doesn't need it. It
then considers Needham's history, which shows that several distinctively Chinese sciences did arise.
It next addresses Needham's views that Chinese science is specifically Daoist.
The next two sections try to reconcile Needham and Fung: Section Four focuses on concepts
scientists and philosophers shared; Section Five considers the divergences between generalist and
technical specialist knowledge in the Han shu. Section Six considers the social contexts of early
science and its relation to philosophy. Section Seven surveys the early sciences, particularly those
that closely relate to Chinese philosophy e.g. cosmology, astronomy, mathematics, medicine.
1 Fung Yu-lan's “Why China Has No Science”
Fung's 1922 paper argues that China lacked science because its own philosophies undervalue it. He
distinguishes the nature-oriented Daoists from the (scientific) art/human-oriented Mohists: the
Daoists thought nature perfect, the Mohists sought to improve it, hence their interest in logic and
definition. Confucianism is a middle ground, with Mencius somehow representing the nature-
orientation and the Xunzi somehow the art-orientation. Fung then develops a narrative showing
how, after Mohism declined, so too did the scientific orientation.
Buddhism, like Daoism, was an extreme 'nature' philosophy. Neo-Confucianism emphasised the
investigation of “things”, but generally took “things” to refer to the mind – hence why Europeans
developed techniques for understanding and controlling matter, while Neo-Confucians developed
techniques for understanding and controlling mind.
Europeans supposedly found two uses for science: certainty (Descartes) and power (Bacon). The
Chinese didn't need scientific certainty because they wanted to know themselves and no need of
scientific power because they wanted to conquer themselves [and because they preferred
“enjoyment to power”?].1
2 Joseph Needham's History of Science in China
Assessing the relationship between Chinese science and philosophy is complicated by the need to
define 'science' – its relationship to technology, what disciplines count, where they fit in Chinese
hierarchies of knowledge etc.
Unlike Fung, Needham answers his famous question by looking at the history of Chinese science
itself. His approach tried to fit Chinese science into modern western categories. This allowed him to
recognise Chinese scientific contributions, perhaps at the expense of anachronism and cultural
misrepresentation.
Sivin has argued that Chinese accounts focused on specific sciences. 2 His categories distinguish
qualitative ([i] astronomy or astrology, [ii] medicine, [iii] siting) from quantitative ([i] mathematics,
[ii] mathematical harmonics or acoustics, [iii] mathematical astronomy, considered related to
harmonics) sciences.
3 Chinese Science as “Daoist”?
Two distinct problems relate to Needham's. First, what is the Chinese philosophical attitude towards
nature? Lloyd and Sivin note that nature wasn't a conceptual category in early China [!]. Bodde,
who identified seven pre-modern Chinese attitudes towards nature ranging from antagonistic to
wholly receptive, identified several obstacles to Chinese scientific development: its written
language; attitudes towards space and time; the combination of authoritarian government,

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conservative scholars and philosophers obsessed with moral and burdened by 'organicist' thinking. 3
Yates notes the lack of a creator God and humanity's non-privileged status.
Second, how did Chinese science and philosophy interact? Sivin's quantitative sciences were largely
independent,4 astronomy/astrology and medicine interacted more thoroughly.
To reconcile Fung's account with western historiography, we must clarify the shared intellectual
contexts in the origins and then complete divergence of Chinese sciences.
Chinese philosophy is often identified with Confucianism , owing to its imperial patronage and the
biases of Anglophone Sinologists. Bodde and others often portrayed it as humanistic i.e. more
interested in ethics and society than nature. But there were other schools. The Mohists investigated
logic, optics and mechanics, and are widely recognised as the earliest Chinese scientists. Its early
death, however, makes it unimportant for answering our question.
Needham, unlike Fung, sees Daoism as both naturalistic and interested in natural phenomena. But
this picture has several problems: its emphasis on the schools and legendary authors of Daoist texts
is overly simplistic, and it problematically distinguishes philosophical from religious Daoism.5
True, many records of scientific innovation appear only in the Daoist Canon. However, Sivin points
out that most scientific and technical innovations arose from popular sources, not Daoist schools. 6
Daoist masters made use of, without improving upon, them, and their schools kept written records
that the innovative artisans didn't. Within the Daoist Canon (1477), most of the engagement with
post-Han science is classified as 'non-philosophical'.7
4 Shared Intellectual Contexts
There were important contextual differences between Chinese philosophy and science e.g.
philosophers were often unsuccessful politicians, astronomers and calendrists closely linked to
government patronage.
Chinese science seems to have originated in an amalgamation of philosophical and technical
specialist ideas: Sivin attributes a combination of Confucian philosophy and technical specialism in
yin-yang, Five Agents, and technical expertise traditions associated with “Recipes and Methods”
and “Numbers and Techniques”.
Key to this amalgam were several shared concepts, deployed in very different ways: early
cosmology depicts a cosmos composed of qi (the energy constituting and organising matter, and
causing growth and change), constantly changing based on interactions of yin-yang and the Five
Agents.
Philosophers deployed these ideas in the Yijing's yin-yang cosmology, theories of correlative
correspondence between Heaven, Earth and Humanity as a shared representation of cosmic order
and the idea of a jing. Scientists used them in models of the human body and of celestial motion.
Finally, both groups created textual lineages and accounts of textual authority. Scientific texts were
often attributed to culture heroes e.g. The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine. Other
masters seemingly created texts with apocryphal lineages, but didn't significantly debate
contemporaries or take self-consciously critical stances towards predecessors.8
5 Generalist versus Specialist Knowledge
6 Social Contexts of Practitioners
7 The Early Science(s)
Cosmology, mathematics and calendrics had important but slight overlap with philosophy, and
attracted study even under the Yanghsao and imperial interest under the Shang. Philosophers hardly
engaged with the details of astronomy, and historians have focused on the presence/absence of
proof in considering philosophy's links with mathematics.

3 Look this up.

4 Note.
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7 Note.
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The Huainanzi contains several chapters of astronomical interest. One passage describes Yu
ordering his officials to measure the earth by pacing the distance. The third chapter ends by
discussing shadow based measurements. It outlines Monthly Ordinance calendars using Five Agents
correlations to specify a season's social, ritual and agricultural activities. It offers the earliest
received linking between the twenty-eight Lunar Lodges and the months of the year. The calendric
tables list the days of the year in stem-branch sexagenary order.
Chinese ideas of body, state and “nature” (they had no such word until the 1800s) cannot be
separated. These ideas of cosmic order that applied yin-yang and the Five Agents appear in medical
texts, calendrics, observational astronomy, political astrology and Han dynasty “correlative
cosmologies”.
Philosophy was influenced by the medical theory and practice of yang sheng e.g. yang sheng
techniques in accounts of self-cultivation, potential influence of yang sheng on moral psychologies
of Mencius, Guodian and Mawangdui, Medicine was likewise influenced by yin-yang, qi and Five
Agents metaphysics e.g. the correlative cosmology of the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal
Medicine (a far cry from either modern cosmological speculation or empirical science). The
apparent androgyny of Huangdi's body complicated the application of yin-yang theory to medicine,
with women conceived as medically distinct only after the development of gynecology in the Sung
dynasty. Of more interest for science-philosophy interaction [why?] are medical and philosophical
analogies between yin and yang, female and male e.g. opposite pulse patterns. Finally, many
Daoists were practising physicians and wrote important medical texts.
Technical and divination traditions described in the Han shu were also incorporated into the
Daodejing, Zhuangzi, and Huainanzi as well as the Han cosmological and medical traditions.
8 Conclusions
Needham, Sivin and others have shown – contra Fung – that Chinese philosophy is not inherently
“anti-science”, but Confucianism probably did often stray it away from scientific concerns. It's
debatable whether philosophy's influence made Chinese science distinct from modern science.