Charles Keyser Edmunds

“ Although a first impression of China and the Chinese may be that of deadening uniformity, it takes but a little closer observation to show that this is just the opposite of the truth. Along with the manifold divergencies in speech and customs, which play a paramount part in the life of the people, and which by a common saying do not run uniform for ten li together, there is a like diversity in those standards of quantity upon the absolute invariability of which so much of the comfort of life and the entire advance of science in western lands depend. ”

“ The Language.—Meager as our knowledge of the language is, we have yet had sufficient direct and indirect contact with the people to be convinced that the lack of inflection which would enable number, tense, gender and mood to be briefly expressed, operates to produce ambiguity and hence inaccuracy in the very places where definiteness may be most needed. To be precise requires a clumsy use of words and thus the character of the language has inhibited precise statements and so precluded accurate thinking, without which there can be no proper science. ”

“ But we see no just grounds for believing that they, or the Greeks, either, held any ideas comparable with the modern doctrines of vortex motion in the ether, of the conservation of energy, or of biological or cosmological evolution, for it does not seem to us that in the case of either the Greeks or the Chinese should their vague guesses be regarded as true anticipation of modern science. The method of modern science is its distinguishing characteristic, and this was almost completely lacking among the Chinese, and to a less extent among the Greeks also. ”

“ No such instrument as modern mathematical analysis, or even their stock of algebraic notions, has ever been used by Chinese philosophers or even conceived of as an instrument of research in their attempts to solve nature's riddles.
Besides the failure to adopt an inductive method of inquiry, the spirit of inaccuracy, and the lack of mathematical genius or training, there are other potent causes of China's scientific backwardness as compared with European nations, chief among which has been the character of the language and the method of instruction. ”

“ Western teachers of Chinese students are constantly impressed with their readiness to argue by illustration and to accept a single illustration as proof; not that they consider that a single exception to a rule invalidates its generality, but that from a single case a general law can be deduced. ”

“ Martin:
The primary matter in its evolutions hitherto, after one season of fullness has experienced one of decay; and after a period of decline it again flourishes, just as if things were going on in a circle. There never was a decay without a revival.
To be sure, here is the idea of transformation, but scarcely that of equivalence and conservation. Conservation implies quantitative relations, and such are certainly not expressed here or in the high-spun theories of the context, just as they are lacking in the common affairs of the people. ”

“ They tried to discover the origin and principle of the universe rather by vague suggestions and casual analogies than by any course of reasoning that would bear examination. The first students wished, as do many to-day, to divine at a single glance or guess the whole import of nature's great book. ”

“ Aristotle developed inductive logic, but William Gilbert of Colchester, the founder of the science of electricity and magnetism, first successfully applied the principles of inductive philosophy which later received such wide development under Francis Bacon. The ampliative inference of Gilbert and Bacon is to be distinguished as philosophical or real induction, in contradistinction to formal or logical induction. Philosophical induction has been the guiding star of all modern scientific effort and is responsible in no small measure for the remarkable progress thus far achieved. ”

“ The wide diffusion of Christianity in its best form will not suddenly introduce the millennium into China, for all intermediate stages must be passed through before the goal is reached, but it will for the first time in Chinese history, realize the motto of the ancient Tang repeated so impressively in these latter days by Chang Chi Tung: "Renovate, renovate the people." ”

“ Mere education in the science of the west, mere contact with western civilization, commerce, railways, telegraphs, mines, etc., can not be expected and are not calculated to regenerate China, because they have no direct moral or spiritual value, and the Chinese seem never to have been profoundly moved by other than moral and spiritual forces. ”

“ The speculations of their philosophers by their curious system of elementary correspondencies have led them away from carefully recording facts and processes, and they have gone on, as Williams says, "like a squirrel in a cage, making no progress toward real knowledge."
Even when more enlightened concepts of the realm of nature have been at hand and their acceptance even urged, Chinese officials have opposed their spread among the common people. There is not even yet an adequate government effort at popular education. ”

“ Education which deals only with coordinated physical or mental facts, conducted however thoroughly, does not prove adequate for the regulation of the conduct of mankind. It is so chiefly intellectual, that it leaves man's highest nature unsatisfied and almost untouched ”

“ So far from suffering any inconvenience in the existence of a double standard of any kind, the oriental seems keenly to enjoy it, and two kinds of weights, or two kinds of measures seem to him natural and normal, and modern education is only just beginning to open his eyes to the inherent objections. ”

“ The whole Chinese system of thinking is based on such a different line of assumptions from those to which we are accustomed, that they can ill comprehend the mania which seems to possess the occidental to ascertain everything with unerring accuracy. Curiously enough, concomitant with the early development of their system of weights and measures—a decimal system for the most part—the Chinese have become fixed in the habit of reckoning by tens, and frequently refuse to make a statement of number nearer to the truth than a multiple of ten. ”

“ Too often these Chinese philosophers (as did the Greeks) assumed innate tendency as the basis of their crude and vague speculations. But innate tendencies are not looked upon with as much favor in the philosophy of to-day as in that of past ages, and suggestions so incapable of verification have little or no value as scientific hypotheses. ”

“ It is not enough to find in an ancient writer a few or even a considerable number of sentences seemingly anticipatory of modern thought. Nor must we neglect the hundreds of other ideas embodied in the context which distinctly are not in accord with modern science. ”

“ The language is growing and becoming clearer in the hands of modern trained Chinese. The development of the language so as to be able adequately to express the content of modern knowledge presents a most tremendous problem, which only native scholars highly trained in modern thought and equally familiar with their native tongue and its previous development can solve. ”

“ Some of the major causes of China's backwardness in science become apparent when we compare her philosophical method with that which has characterized modern western inquiry, and to set this comparison in stronger relief let us glance at some of the salient aspects of modern scientific knowledge, both as to method and as to content. ”

“ There are to-day in some of the universities of America and Europe Chinese students who in laboratory work in physics and other natural sciences are distinguishing themselves even in comparison with western students. The Chinese have a power of application and patience and a capacity for detail that is destined to bring success in scientific inquiry when once they get the background, adopt the method and make the start. ”

“ The great extreme, a principle centered in nothing, and having an infinite extent, is the immaterial principle of the two powers, the four forms and the eight changes of nature; we can not say that it does not exist, and yet no form or coporeity can be ascribed to it. ”

“ At the same time care must be taken to avoid repetition of the unwarranted conflict between science and religion. Our instruction must be such that these two departments are not regarded as antagonistic, but as supplementary, not only in affecting daily life and conduct, but supplementary also as revelations of the character and purposes of God. We must also avoid the tendency to impose a system which is the outgrowth of western civilization without due regard for the oriental character and mode of thinking. ”

“ Because of its contact with the west in trade, religion and education, and chiefly under the influence of mission schools the Chinese government has altered its educational policy, and the changes in the method of instruction and the system of education are for the most part tending to develop a spirit of inquiry and an appreciation of the inductive method, which will after a while begin to yield due fruit. ”

“ When the influence of returned students who have been adequately trained in western countries and that of the graduates from first-class mission and government colleges becomes more potent, we can expect to see a much more rapid development of the educational system, but here again the magnitude of the undertaking and the difficulties as to efficient teaching force and adequate resources are such, that only natives can handle the ultimate solution. ”

“ Chinese" students of philosophy "have not troubled themselves to verify this or any other of the guesses of their predecessors. Chu remarks: "Heaven and earth, with all they contain, are nothing but transformations of one primitive force." ”

“ Even when aided in no small measure by Europeans, especially by the Jesuit missionaries, the Chinese have seemed unable to advance in astronomy when left to themselves, and still cling to superstitions against every evidence. ”

“ So long as this language difficulty remains so largely unsolved, it will be necessary to conduct the higher grades of instruction in the sciences with English as the medium—at least for those who are themselves to be leaders in this renaissance. To have a share in the preparation of men who will solve this problem is about as far as the foreigner can hope to go.
2. A more widespread contact with translations of western books is slowly but surely bringing the reading Chinese into a fuller appreciation of western or more scientific thinking. ”

“ Evolution.—Dr. Martin suggests that the fundamental idea of evolution was entertained by early Chinese sages. He quotes from Mencius:
The study of nature has for its object to get at the causes of things. In causes the ground principle is advantage. ”

“ And it is true that the honors, if there be any, of having made such guesses, must be awarded in part to the Chinese as well as to the Greeks with this great difference, that in many cases the Greeks were true students of nature and checked their speculations by observation—a course which, though entertained by some Chinese philosophers, was not sufficiently appreciated by either them or their disciples to be put into practise. ”

“ The immensity of space, though called the great void, is net void. It is filled with a subtle substance. In fact there is no such thing as a vacuum. . . . Within the immensity of space matter is alternately concentrated and dissipated, much as ice is congealed or dissolved in water. ”

“ They have set no value on abstract science, apart from some obvious and immediate end of utility. There has been no cultivation of knowledge for its own sake among the Chinese; their minds have not been broadened by the collection and investigation of facts ”

“ The Defect.—It may be admitted that Chinese philosophers entertained some general ideas concerning an all-pervading medium, that they assumed an original unity of matter in all their cosmological speculations, that they had clear ideas on mechanical action and reaction, and very crude ones concerning the transformations of energy, which vaguely suggest those held to-day by the foremost investigators. ”

“ Paper may be sold by the hundred sheets and yet by a desire to keep the stated cost per hundred uniform in spite of variations in quality, the dealer will "call" a less number of sheets a hundred sheets, so that when you request your servant to buy a hundred sheets of a certain paper, he returns with eighty and insists that "in that kind of paper a hundred sheets are only eighty!" ”

“ While of course the practical philosophy of this way of regarding distance is evident, it still is true that such failure to separate these factors from the geometrical factor in the form of statement operates to retard appreciation of accurate statement and accurate thinking. ”

“ The method by which the units were adopted and fixed is lost in antiquity, and the variations in the measures now used destroy any claim that there ever was a true standard recognized in any such way as the standard yard and meter are recognized and employed by western peoples to-day. ”

“ His neighbor remarked that the men who could devise and make use of such a line for the transmission of intelligence could do anything, but the old man replied that he did not think it was worth very much, because he had sat for some weeks watching the wire closely and he had not yet seen anything go by. ”