Types of Chinese Categorical Thinking

Bibliographic Data

ID3962131
AuthorsDerk Bodde (corresponding author)
Year1939
Volume59
Issue2
Pages200
Publication date1939-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Oriental Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0279 • E-ISSN: 2169-2289
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/594062
OpenAlexW2330879506
LanguageEN
Citations received9

ONE OF THE criticisms levelled by westerners against Chinese philosophy is that it has failed to develop a system of logic. Like most sweeping criticisms, this is not absolutely true, for during the fourth and third centuries B. C., the followers of the Mohist school do appear to have experimented with methods of thinking in many ways comparable to our western logic.' The statement remains true, however, to the extent that this school did not long survive, and that it failed to leave a lasting impression on Chinese thought. We may grant, therefore, that the Chinese have made comparatively little use of the logical method, but this by no means implies that they, in their way, are not as orderly and logical, in the nontechnical sense of that word, as we are in ours. There is hardly a people on the face of the earth, in fact, which has tried more consistently to look for balance and harmony in the universe, and hence has striven more zealously to reduce all phenomena under sets of orderly, all-inclusive schemata. This characteristic of Chinese thinking I have elsewhere described as a part of the Chinese view of the universe, which tends to divide both the human and the physical worlds into a number of fixed categories, and which, in the human world, tries to classify each man under one of these categories. 2 For want of a better term, I should here like to define further this characteristic feature of Chinese thought as thinking, using the word categorical not in its logical sense of unconditional, absolute, etc., but in the sense of something that is classified or divided. Nowhere is this feeling of the Chinese for order and balance more apparent than in their classical written language itself, which to a

Categorical variable · Statistics · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Mathematics · Psychology

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub