What Is the Chinese Conception of the Cosmos?
Any simple answer to that question, of course, merely confirms the biases assumed but not articulated by the question — that there is only one such authentically Chinese view, and that the cosmos as such, present unproblematically to all people, was a coherent topic of discussion in traditional China. Nevertheless, the answer to that question offered by one scholar of China, Joseph Needham, provides a helpful starting point for the analysis. In Needham’s opinion, the dominant strand of ancient Chinese thought is remarkable for the way it contrasts with European ideas. While the latter approach the world religiously as created by a transcendent deity or as a battleground between spirit and matter, or scientifically as a mechanism consisting of objects and their attributes, ancient Chinese thinkers viewed the world as a complete and complex “organism.” “Things behaved in particular ways,” writes Needham, “not necessarily because of prior actions or impulsions of other things, but becaus
