Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.5, 2013

Unearthed Literature and a Reexamination of the Pre-Qin Natural Cosmology

(Abstract)

Wang Zhongjiang

Silk and bamboo excavations can offer important insights on ancient Chinese natural cosmology. Thus it is necessary for us to combine these excavations with the existing literature to reexamine the origin and basic forms of ancient Chinese natural cosmology. Ancient Chinese natural cosmology began to appear in the early Taoist ideas. As a cosmogony, it describes the primitive state of the cosmos and provides different modes of cosmic generation; its interpretation of the essence of all things and their diversity are manifested in a series of relationships between “Tao” and “things,” “unwrought material” and “vessel,” “one” and “many,” and “tao” and “morality”; it uses the ideological structure of nonaction (wuwei) of Tao and “naturalness” (ziran) of all things to explain the good order of the cosmos and all things; it uses the cosmic order to establish the world order characterized by “nonaction” of sages and “naturalness” of common people. All these demonstrate Chinese natural cosmology is a natural cosmology and world view with inherent systemic operations.