The Fortunes of a Scholar: When the Yijing Challenged Modern Astronomy

Abstract

Liu Zihua arrived in France in 1919 as part of the Sino-French Work-Study Movement. In 1940, he completed a PhD thesis in which he combined modern astronomy and the Yijing through “analogical reasoning” to discover a planet. After Liu went back to China in 1945, his efforts to win recognition came up against nationalist and communist anti-traditionalism but were eventually integrated into the intellectual revival of the 1980s. This study relies on historical sources and anthropological fieldwork to show that Liu is an emblematic figure of the cultural upheaval caused by the introduction of modern Western categories of science, religion, and superstition at the beginning of the twentieth century. Liu's example reveals the changing status of the Yijing in Chinese society, the cross-cultural understanding of science and sacred literature as embodied in this classic, and the role of analogy in cultural assimilation. It also sheds light on the shaping of academic standards in China and on the connection between traditional literary scholars and contemporary “amateur scientists.”

Reflective Ontology and Intuitive Credibility in Chinese Six Lines Prediction

“…At the same time, the Yijing is widely considered 'profound' (shen'ao) by diviners and clients (Matthews 2017a: 179), embodying ancient wisdom that fits with scientific accounts in its own right. This should be understood in relation to a longer tradition of finding parallels between Chinese cosmologies, including Buddhism (Hammerstrom 2015), and science, traceable through the Republican era back to the nineteenth century and earlier (Elman 2005) and concerned at least in part with maintaining the legitimacy and authority of the former (Homola 2014;Lackner 2012).…”