Introduction Part I. Astronomy and Cosmology in the Time of Dragons: 1. Astronomy begins at Taosi 2. Watching for dragons Part II. Aligning with Heaven: 3. Looking to the supernal lord 4. Bringing heaven down to earth 5. Astral revelation and the origins of writing Part III. Planetary Omens and Cosmic Ideology: 6. The cosmo-political mandate 7. The rhetoric of the supernal 8. Cosmology and the calendar Part IV. Warring States and Han Astral Portentology: 9. Astral prognostication and the battle of Chengpu 10. A new astrological paradigm Part V. One with the Sky: 11. Cosmic capitals 12. Temporality and the fabric of space-time 13. The sky river and cosmography 14. Planetary portentology east and west Epilogue Appendix. Astrology for an empire: the 'treatise on the celestial offices' in The Grand Scribe's Records (c.100 BCE) Glossary Index.

Astrology and Cosmology in Early China: Conforming Earth to Heaven

After Confucius is a collection of eight studies of Chinese philosophy from the time of Confucius to the formation of the empire in the second and third centuries B.C.E. As detailed in a masterful introduction, each essay serves as a concrete example of "thick description" - an approach invented by philosopher Gilbert Ryle - which aims to reveal the logic that informs an observable exchange among members of a community or society. To grasp the significance of such exchanges, it is necessary to investigate the networks of meaning on which they rely. Paul R. Goldin argues that the character of ancient Chinese philosophy can be appreciated only if we recognize the cultural codes underlying the circulation of ideas in that world. Thick description is the best preliminary method to determine how Chinese thinkers conceived of their own enterprise. Who were the ancient Chinese philosophers? What was their intended audience? What were they arguing about? How did they respond to earlier thinkers, and to each other? Why did those in power wish to hear from them, and what did they claim to offer in return for patronage? Goldin addresses these questions as he looks at several topics, including thetorical conventions of Chinese philosophical literature; the value of recently excavated manuscripts for the interpretation of the more familiar, received literature; and the duty of translators to convey the world of concerns of the original texts. Each of the cases investigated in this wide-ranging volume exemplifies the central conviction behind Goldin's plea for thick description: We do not do justice to classical Chinese philosophy unless we engage squarely the complex and ancient culture that engendered it.

After Confucius: Studies In Early Chinese Philosophy

My aim in this thesis is to show that there exists a fundamental ‘moral tension’ between the ostensible goals of environmental education on the one hand and the politicization of China’s ideology of power and obsession with global economic dominance on the other. This moral tension is particularly evident in the case of the Chinese Three Gorges Dam Project (TGDP), where the unresolved collision of these conflicting value presumptions has led to massive ecological degradation on the one hand and issues of social injustice associated with population dislocation on the other. Although considerable engineering planning by the government has gone into the construction of what is claimed to be the most energy productive and largest dam project in the world, its horrific legacy of decimation to the surrounding land and water environments has been catastrophic. Similarly, the forced dislocation of so huge a population of local people (now called ‘reservoir refugees’, at least 1.3 million people based on the official figures) makes clear that the humanitarian ramifications of the TGDP were hopelessly unanticipated, or based upon epistemological presumptions which served to marginalize their moral importance. The Three Gorges Dam (TGD) is politically applauded for several innovations, three of which I wish to draw to the reader’s attention. First, it is hailed as being the largest dam in the world, and second, it is touted as being capable of producing far more ‘safe’ energy than any of the other major dams scattered around the globe. Last but not least, it has unashamedly been exalted with pride as the most expensive construction project of any kind in the world. The question I pose is whether the price that has been paid and is still now being paid in terms of environmental destruction, humanitarian suffering, and ‘cultural genocide’ as I shall call it, are prices far too high to pay. Although the full environmental consequences and social justice issues raised by the TGDP have due to political reasons, not been teased out sufficiently in the Chinese public arena, I shall argue that the deleterious environmental and social impacts of the TGDP are incontestable and can better be understood as representing the inevitable outcome of a misguided epistemology of power and control driven by a political ideology within which values issues of social injustice, equity, and environmental stewardship have been irrevocably compromised. The main body of my thesis will be concerned to reflect critically on this moral tension between environmental education and the political epistemology and ideology of power which challenges it. Once this first major task has been completed, I will then propose a more comprehensive framework of theory and praxis grounded in an environmental pedagogy of ‘empathetic epistemology’ within which the moral issues raised can be treated with serious educational consideration and respect. This thesis thus endeavors to provide a new vision of our relationship to nature which is sponsored on the epistemic insight that the spiritual quality of our own existence cannot be defined independently of the moral integrity of our relationship to nature.

Philosophical reflections on the importance of a values-based program of environmental education, with special reference to the pedagogy of empathetic educaton

Sinology and the history of science have changed practically beyond recognition in the past half-century. Both have become academic specialisms, with their own departments, journals, and professional societies. Both have moved off in new directions, drawing on the tools and insights of several disciplines. Although some sinologists still honor no ambition beyond explicating primary texts, on many of the field's frontiers philology is no more than a tool. Similarly, many technical historians now explore issues for which anthropology or systems analysis is as indispensable as traditional historiography.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0021911800052311

Science and medicine in Imperial China--the state of the field.

Bronze Inscriptions of the Western Zhou period show how ritualists were once dedicated to maintaining the ritual apparatus supporting the divine authority of the royal Zhou lineage. Bronze and bamboo texts of the Eastern Zhou period reveal, on the other hand, that ritualists able to manipulate local rulers reliant on their knowledge subsequently subverted power into their own hands. Ritualists such as scribes, cooks, and artisans were involved in the transmission of Zhou “power” through the creation and use of inscribed bronze vessels during feasts. The expansion and bureaucratization of their roles in the Chu state provided economic and ultimately political control of the state. This was particularly the case as the Chu, like the Zhou before them, fled east to escape western invaders.

Scribes, Cooks, and Artisans: Breaking Zhou Tradition

The main theme that pervades this Festschrift, written by fellow-scholars and students of Bodde for his seventy-fifth birthday, is that of the proper ordering of the universe as it obtains in the Chinese tradition.

Charles Le Blanc

Papers

Chinese Ideas About Nature and Society: Studies in Honour of Derk Bodde