The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology (Neo-Confucian studies)

•

Columbia University Press New York 1984

publis her gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of Louisiana State University in the publication of this book. The

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Copyright © 1 984 Columbia University Press All rights reserved . Printed in the United States of America Columbia University Press Guildford , Surrey New York

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Henderson, John B., 1948The development and decline

of

Chinese cosmology.

(Neo-Confucian studies)

B ibl io graphy: p.

Includes index. 1. Philosophy, Chinese-History.

I. Title.

II. Series.

B127.C68H46

1984

ISBN 0-231-05772-5

2 . Cosmology .

1 1 3' . 095 1 (alk. paper)

84-400

To the memory of my mother, Ruby Bryan Henderson, And to my father, John L Henderson

Neo-Confucian Studies Board of Editors Irene Bloom Wing-tsit Chan Wm. Theodore de Bary

Periods of Chinese History

ix

Acknowledgments

XI

xn1

Introduction 1. Correlative Thought in Early China 2. Geometrical Cosmography in Early China 3. Medieval Criticisms and Extensions of Correlative

Cosmology 4. Correlative Cosmology in the Neo-Confucian Tradition 5.

1 59 89 1 19

Early Ch' ing Scholars and the Seventeenth-Century Intellectual Transition 6. Intellectual Origins of Early Ch'ing Cosmological Criticism 7. Criticisms of Correlative Cosmology in Late-Traditional China 8. Criticisms of Geometrical Cosmography in Late-Traditional China 9. Ch'ing Scholars' Anticosmological World View

207 227

Notes

259

1 37 1 49 1 75

Glossary of Chinese Book and Chapter Titles Mentioned in the Text

29 1

Glossary of Chinese Personal Names and Mythical Figures Mentioned in the Text

293

Glossary of Chinese Terms Mentioned in the Text and Notes

297

Selected Bibliography

30 1

Index

32 1

A number of my teachers , friends , and colleagues have contributed to the development and improvement of this study . These include my mentors in Chinese history and the history of science at the Univer­ sity of California, Berkeley , John L. Heilbron , David N . Keightley , Tu Wei-ming , and particularly Frederic Wakeman , Jr. All these gentlemen generously offered expert guidance and constructive criti­ cisms on early drafts. Several of my fellow students at Berkeley and at the Inter-University Center for Chinese Language Studies in Tai­ wan, especially Alison B lack, Judith Whitbeck, and Ch'eng I-fan, provided me with insights OQ some of the major issues in the intel­ lectual history of late-traditional China. I am especially grateful to Professor Nathan Sivin of the University of Pennsylvania for his ex­ tensive comments , corrections, and helpful suggestions on several earlier drafts of this book. Professor Sivin' s support and encourage­ ment have been invaluable to me , as to many other students of the history of Chinese science . One of my colleagues at Louisiana State University , Stephen Farmer, contributed much to the comparative di­ mensions of this study through frequent conversations on the world history of correlative cosmology. I also benefited from Steve' s per­ ceptive comments on an earlier draft as well as from his bibliograph­ ical suggestions . Other colleagues , particularly Gary Crump , David Lindenfeld , and Karl Raider, generously responded to my requests for advice and comments on aspects of this study . Karen Mitchell of Columbia University Press deserves much credit for her, thorough and sensitive editing of the manuscript. Finally , I would like to thank the LSU Foundation for having provided a subvention to support publication of this book, and the

xii

Acknowledgments

chairman of the Department of History at Louisiana State University , Professor John L. Loos , for having secured that subvention . Much of the research and writing of this work was accomplished while visiting with my grandmother, Mrs. Hugh Henderson, during summer vaca­ tion periods . So I wish to thank her as well as other members of my family for their support and encouragement. Naturally , I alone am re­ sponsible for all of the shortcomings that remain in this book.

The term ' 'cosmos ' ' is often used today as an antiquarian synonym for ' ' universe . ' ' Moderns who employ the word seldom mean to im­ ply that any particular type of order or pattern prevails in the world, though they might believe that such an order exists . The Greek root of " cosmos , " however, is much more specific in its meaning, indi­ cating the existence of a certain harmony and proportion in the world, even a "consonance between ourselves and the universe. " 1 Most ancient peoples whose records have been preserved, in­ cluding the Chinese , formulated a view of the world that may be characterized as a " cosmos " in this stricter sense of the word. Some of these views resemble one another so closely that a number of prominent scholars have attempted to abstract a universal stage or mode of human thought from a comparative study of early cosmological ideas. Classic works in twentieth-century sociology , philosophy, psychol­ ogy, and anthropology such as Emile Durkheim' s Primitive Classifi­ cation, volume 2 of Ernst Cassirer' s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Carl Jung's studies of several oriental classics , and Claude Levi-Strauss' Savage Mind are partly devoted to this aim , to demonstrating that "primitive classification , " " mythical thought, " " synchronicity , "or ' ' savage thought' ' is a general stage of human intellectual develop­ ment which was not superseded until the era of the scientific revolu­ tion. But while these studies have revealed close parallels in the cos­ mological views of primitive and premodern people�, the pictures they present are generally static. Seldom do such works aim at describing how cosmological schemata develop or decline . Their principal con­ cern, rather, is with the structure or operation of those modes of thought which informed the premodern intellectual world.

xiv

Introduction

Historians , however, have understandably shown more inter­ est in the question of how premodern views of cosmic order were for­ mulated and superseded . Students of early Greek philosophy , for ex­ ample , have attempted to explain the origins of classical Western cosmology through their studies of Presocratic thought . Moreover, historians of Western science have long been concerned with the de­ mise of that cosmology and its medieval extensions in the seven­ teenth century . But they focus on issues that are particularly relevant for the history of science , such as the critique of Ptolemaic astronomy and Aristotelian cosmology . More general accounts of the decline and rejection of the larger sense of cosmos that ramified into medieval and Renaissance philosophy , religion , politics , literature , art , and popular culture , as well as science , are relatively rare. General studies of moments of cosmological transition , of the formulation and dissolution of world pictures , are also uncommon in sinological literature. However, historians of Chinese thought have long recognized the importance of cosmological ideas of harmony , pro­ portion , and correspondence in early China. Such classic studies as Marcel Granet' s Chinese Thought are devoted primarily to describing the articulations and ramifications of these notions in the Han (202 B . C . -A .D . 220) and later ages . More recently , several scholars have explored the origins and early development of particular aspects of Han cosmology , including the idea of cosmic resonance , the concept of the five phases , and the cosmography of the simple magic square . 2 But few studies have been devoted to explaining the development of early Chinese cosmology as a whole . Nor have many sinologists ex­ plored the possibility that the cosmological conceptions that domi­ nated the intellectual world of the Han era ever cmne to be generally superseded before modern times. 3 Not all maj or post-Han thinkers adhered to the cosmological schemata formulated in late classical times; but these conceptions ex­ ercised a pervasive influence throughout premodern Chinese thought and culture . Their impact is manifest in most of the arts and sciences , most conspicuously in medicine , alchemy, astrology, and the various divinatory sciences, but also in such impeccably orthodox branches of learning as official historiography , literary criticism, Neo-Confu­ cian philosophy, and mathematical astronomy . So great was the sig-

Introduction

XV

nificance and so wide the influence of what Joseph Needham has called "correlative tttiDkiug " -the heart of traditional Chinese cosmol­ ogy-that it might well be regarded as a sort of p �enJ.?:iaJ QJJihl�.,EhY in the history of Chinese civilization . Hence , the development of this mode of thought from the late classical era and its decline in the late traditional period , culminating in the seventeenth century , are matters of considerable import in the history of Chinese culture . The seventeenth century thus marked an epoch in the history of Chinese as well as European cosmological thought. For it saw the rejection of a sense of cosmos that was.··pervasive , in both high phi­ losophy and popular culture , through almost two thousand years of Chinese history . The cosmological reformation of the early Ch'ing era was not marked by the same drama that attended the overthrow of classi£�LQn���J!n�l..medieval.cosmology·iwseventeentlf-century Eu­ r��· Remnant��