The Imperial Style of Inquiry in Twentieth-Century China The Imperial Style of Inquiry in Twentieth-Century China The Emergence of New Approaches Donald J. Munro The University ofMichigan til CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ANN ARBOR Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/ Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. 1 / MICHIGAN MONOGRAPHS IN CHINESE STUDIES J-~ ISSN 1081-9053 \l r ? ' SERIES ESTABLISHED 1968 . ^ VOLUME 72 / Published by Center for Chinese Studies The University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1290 First Edition 1996 © 1996 Center for Chinese Studies The University of Michigan Printed and made in the United States of America @ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives ANSI/NISO/Z39.48—1992. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Munro, Donald J. The imperial style of inquiry in twentieth-century China : the emergence of new approaches / Donald J. Munro — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Michigan monographs in Chinese studies, ISSN 1081-9053 ; v. 72) Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 0-89264-120-7 (alk. paper) 1. Inquiry (Theory of knowledge) 2. Social epistemology—China. 3. China—Civilization—20th century. I. Title. II. Series. Michigan monographs in Chinese studies ; no. 72 BD183.M86 1996 181M1—dc20 96-256 ISBN 978-0-89264-120-8 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-472CI-03824-4P (paper) ISBN 978-0-472-12782-5 (ebook) ISBN 978-0-472-90178-4 (open access) The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Derived from the author's Distinguished Senior Faculty Lectures, presented in 1994 on the occasion of his receipt of the Warner G. Rice Humanities Award, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, The University of Michigan For Betty, Cynnie, and Ellie. Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xv Abbreviations xviii Chapter One The Imperial Style of Inquiry 2 Chapter Two Modern Exemplars of the Imperial Style 31 Chapter Three Three Modern Models 55 Chapter Four The Emergence of Objectivity in Modern Chinese Inquiry 73 Chapter Five The Emergence of Autonomy as a Chinese Social Value 87 Notes 209 Glossary 225 Works Cited 227 Index 235 vn Preface HPhis book examines the endurance in modern China of old philosophi- JL cal ideas about knowledge and inquiry. These ideas are rooted in Neo-Confucian doctrines. They coexist along with other, different ideas about and approaches to the project and process of inquiry. The book also examines the impact of those ideas on problem solving. This in- cludes the influence of philosophical ideas on proposing solutions to so- cial or technical problems. Such solutions often have political policy implications. If the tone of the first three chapters is critical of old ideas as obstructions to inquiry, the last two are optimistic. They focus on signs of departure that I suggest will facilitate the solving of social problems. Early in the book I describe Chinese totalism, a Confucian belief that there is an ordered structure integrating everything that exists; the same order runs through both the human and natural spheres. This belief jus- tifies imperial authority by making the emperor responsible for the har- mony of all the related parts. Totalism also supports a theory about the investigation of things that is highly authoritarian. It centers on copying antecedent models, whose ultimate legitimacy comes from the emperor. The models ensure that any particular situation under study will be un- derstood in terms of the officially recognized, integrated totality. This theory about the investigation of things also prizes clarifying the mind so it can intuit in itself the innate patterns that structure the world. Patterns in the human mind are believed to parallel in totality the actual patterns in nature, a belief that owes much to the Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi (1125-1200). These patterns provide information that is both de- scriptive and prescriptive, about how things predictably do and should behave. This is an aspect of what I call the fact-value fusion. I first dis- cussed this phenomenon in historical context in chapter 2 ("The Nature of Mind") of my book, The Concept of Man in Contemporary China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977). The idea of a fact-value fu- sion plays a significant role in the present book. I call this Confucian theory about the investigation of things the 'Imperial style of inquiry," because it had the imperial imprimatur from 1313 until 1911, embodied in the authority of the philosophy of Zhu Xi and the Four Books of Confucianism for civil service examination pur- poses. It also assumes the emperor's role in maintaining the harmony of the whole. Sometimes I will refer to it as the "Confucian style of inquiry." IX x Preface I will criticize those aspects of the belief in an integrated totality that lead investigators to seek in nature what are really only human traits and to expect to find in nature what are exclusively human values. I also criticize aspects of the reliance on antecedent models in inquiry. I want to prevent two dangerous but possible misunderstandings about the positions I take in this study. The first is that I affirm both the possibility and desirability of separating in every way the realms of hu- mans and of nature. In fact, I do not. Rather, I affirm the interdepen- dency of the two: what happens to one usually affects the other, and hu- mans can indeed act so as to improve the ecological health of living things. What I reject is the inference from interdependency that the so- called essential traits of humans and nature are the same. Doubtless some traits overlap, but humans are purposive, evaluating beings; we are conscious of hierarchy. I reject the attribution of hierarchy, purpose, and other value traits to nature and try to show that such attributions inhibit objective inquiry. My critique applies equally to China and to Europe. The other potential misunderstanding is that I advocate the elimi- nation of existing values from the process of inquiry in China and favor instead the substitution of liberal democratic American ones. In fact, I do not believe that it is desirable or possible to eliminate received values from the minds of those doing problem solving. What I favor is the in- corporation of epistemic values consistent with the goals of science into the problem-solving process. I reject political or social values imposed by those with political power. Sometimes there is overlap in the terminology or content used to describe the epistemic values and the liberal demo- cratic ones, but they are not identical. "Freedom" and "autonomy" are common to both. For example, the value of free and open communication and dissemination of information is consistent with scientific goals; so is individual autonomy in judging facts. In succeeding pages, I will try to make the case that developments in China fostering such autonomy are consistent with scientific inquiry. It is precisely on this matter of auton- omy that critics will think I am most vulnerable, and so it requires special attention here. A critic's potential misunderstanding will rest on the belief that I am advocating some value within Western individualistic ethics as a substi- tute for collectivist Confucian or Maoist values. This would mean that I am advocating individual autonomy as an intrinsic value, worth pursu- ing and prizing for its own sake. It might mean that I favor unconven- tional thinking or acting for its own sake. In fact, I advocate nothing of the kind. I am promoting individual autonomy as an instrumental value, worthwhile because it contributes to the social nature of inquiry. When a multitude of individuals feel free to put forth their own hypotheses Preface xi about a problem, this generates a variety of hypotheses rather than just a few. Individual autonomy provides the motivation for individuals to formulate and study powerful hypotheses. It is the necessary condition for variability in the theories put forth. Variability does not exist if there is one model or one authority that dictates or sponsors a single official hypothesis. With variability, if people are working on the same problem, they can learn from each other's perspectives. People today speak of the cognitive division of labor. Investigators compete, following different angles, and usually achieve some advancement of knowledge. In his book, The Advancement of Science,1 Philip Kitcher has a chapter entitled, "The Organization of Cognitive Labor/' He says, The general problem of social epistemology, as I conceive it, is to identify the properties of epistemically well-designed social systems, that is, to specify the conditions under which a group of individuals, operating ac- cording to various rules for moderating their individual practices, succeed, through their interactions, in generating a progressive sequence of consen- sus practices.2 Elsewhere he remarks that "... scientists' social involvement with one another does not interfere with the employment of epistemically virtuous individual reasonings."3 In short, inquiry is social as well as individual, with many people competing and learning from each other. The end product is usually a collective one. This collective process of inquiry is most robust when there is variability in the theories that compete. That variability depends on individual autonomy in inquiry and reasoning. In this sense, we can treat such autonomy as an instrumental good, a means to good inquiry. It is not the same as regarding self-governance or unconventional thinking as good in itself, as some liberals might propose.