PHILOSOPHY OF LEARNING IN WANG YANGMING AND FRANCIS BACON

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1 bs_bs_banner xinzhong yao PHILOSOPHY OF LEARNING IN WANG YANGMING AND FRANCIS BACON Abstract This article is a comparative study of the philosophical views on learning and learning methods elaborated by Wang Yangming and Francis Bacon. It argues that as different criteria for the advancement of learning Bacon s empirical learning and Wang s learning of the heart-mind represent two different philosophical orientations, and are responsible, at least partially, for laying down the basis for the parting ways of China and Europe at the dawn of the modern era. It concludes that an appreciation of the mutual complementarity rather than opposition between these two philosophical approaches will be a sign for the new and real advancement of learning. The question why modern science did not develop in China in the same way as in Europe perplexes many intellectuals. This article is intended to answer this question by looking into two different philosophical orientations on learning methods elaborated respectively by Wang Yangming of China and by Francis Bacon of England, who although living almost a century apart from each other, marked a clear departing point between Chinese moral idealism and British scientific empiricism.wang brought the learning of the heart-mind (xin )toits apex and furthered the belief that the goal of learning was an inward journey which aimed at nothing but being a sage, while Bacon established, or significantly contributed to, a new philosophy that aimed to enable humans to be the master of nature and that subsequently underlay the modern worldview. Neither Wang nor Bacon was the initiator of their own philosophy, nor were they the sole representative of their age in developing distinct methodological approaches. This article will argue, however, that they were responsible, perhaps more than anyone else in their time, for laying down the basis for the later parting ways of China and Europe, and their learning methods illustrate, more vividly than any other two philosophical systems, the XINZHONG YAO, Professor, School of Philosophy, Renmin University of China; King s College London. Specialties: ethics, religious studies, comparative philosophy. xinzhong.yao@kcl.ac.uk Journal of Chinese Philosophy 40:3 4 (September December 2013) Journal of Chinese Philosophy

2 418 XINZHONG YAO divergence between the philosophy of learning in Europe and that in East Asia at the dawn of the modern age, and have therefore exerted a great impact on the distinctive features respectively of Euro- American culture and Chinese culture for more than five centuries. I. Two Experiments Toward the end of the fifteenth century, a young scholar in China, having been convinced of the philosophy that one could acquire true knowledge through external observation and investigation, did an interesting but futile experiment in his grandfather s garden. According to his own description, he proceeded to this investigation (of the principle of bamboo) ge zhu zhi li, working day and night without acquiring the so-called principle, until he fell ill of mental and physical exhaustion on the seventh day. 1 The failure of this experiment marked the beginning of this scholar s distrust of, and rebellion against, the teaching of the then orthodox Confucian learning, and led him to exploring a different way of understanding knowledge, the self, and the universe. In the early years of the seventeenth century thousands of miles to the west of China, an old English gentleman, having experienced the glory and disgrace of public life, once again threw himself into scientific experiments in order to demonstrate the new learning he advocated. One winter day, he went out to stuff a chicken with snow to find out how long the cold could preserve the flesh. Such was his concentration that it proved to be too late when he felt a serious chill. While as for the experiment itself, it succeeded excellently well, 2 this gentleman himself fell ill and never recovered from it. These were the experiences of Wang Yangming ( ) of China and Francis Bacon ( ) of England, who although living almost a century apart, provided a distinct case for the question of why China and Europe departed at the dawn of the modern era. In search of truth and in establishing human values in the universe, they started with the same wish but adopted different ways and thus ended in moving in different directions. Wang Yangming moved from investigating the external world to exploring the human heart-mind, which led to an idealistic humanism, while Francis Bacon began the course of English empiricism that gave priority to exploring the external world and paved the way to an empirical philosophy of science. These two different ways of learning reflected two different views of humanity and in turn resulted in two different types of philosophy. The former can be seen clearly in the moral dialogues of Chuanxi Lu (Records of Instructions for Practices of Learning, formed in 1518) 3

3 WANG YANGMING AND FRANCIS BACON 419 and Daxue Wen (Inquiries to the Great Learning), formed in 1527, while the latter is consummated in the philosophical discussions of The Advancement of Learning, first published in 1605, and Novum Organum, first published in Neither Wang nor Bacon was the initiator of his own philosophy, nor were they the only representative of their respective theories. Before Bacon, there were Aristotle ( bce) and Roger Bacon (ca ) whose philosophical discourses led Europeans to the path of empiricism, and after him there were Galileo Galilei ( ) and Isaac Newton ( ) whose scientific methods hallmarked the modern age in the West. However, it was Bacon who first synthesized this tradition into an Anglo-European philosophy of science, as David Cooper correctly points out that despite of many weaknesses and ignorances, Bacon is nevertheless the first outstanding philosopher of the early modern period to regard scientific inquiry as the best prospect for securing both knowledge and the commodity of human life. 5 In the long tradition of the learning of the heart-mind (xinxue ) stood such great philosophers as Mengzi (372? 289? bce) and Lu Xiangshan ce) as well as various thinkers in Buddhism and Daoism whose religious and philosophical idealism paved the way to the humanistic view of learning. However, it was Wang Yangming who developed this view into an embracing ideal of practical significance. In one sense, Wang represented an extreme of Chinese philosophy. In the other sense, the spirit embodied in his discourses penetrated the mainstream of Chinese culture, and significantly shaped the development of Chinese thought in the post Wang Yangming era. What is meant by learning (xue ) in Wang Yangming is not the same as the learning referred to in the writings of Francis Bacon, nor was the scientific experiment upheld in modern Europe the same as investigating things propagated by Neo-Confucians such as Zhu Xi ( ). 6 The difference between Wang s humanistic deliberation and Bacon s scientific methodology is, to some extent, the one between the humanistic pursuit of Confucians and the scientific spirit of modern Europeans that culminated in the advancement of Western science and the diminishing of Chinese civilization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After a long period during which the Western philosophy of learning to which Bacon made an initial contribution proved successful whilst Confucian idealistic philosophy that Wang Yangming so enthusiastically advocated seemed doomed, people living in the scientific world have started rethinking and reevaluating these two different philosophies of learning more critically than ever before, especially in face of the growing threat of modern problems ranging from ecological deterioration to misuses of technological power. To balance the sheer objectivity of science and

4 420 XINZHONG YAO technology, scholars both of the West and of the East pay particular attention to the value and significance of the idealistic humanism advocated by Wang Yangming and many other great thinkers in order to reestablish human dignity in a mechanic environment. A new advancement of learning is being accelerated by an integration of humanistic value and scientific spirit, and a new understanding of the world is being accepted in which humanity and nature, human knowledge and natural knowledge, the way of knowing human beings ourselves and the way of knowing the external world are increasingly seen to be dependent upon, and interact with, each other. II. Obstacles to Learning A new philosophy of learning need not be explored unless the old methods have become an obstacle to its further advancement, and the value and significance of this new learning cannot be fully appreciated until the obsoleteness of the old ideas has become intolerable. In different countries, of different cultural backgrounds, and to different directions, Wang and Bacon promulgated a similar revolt against old ideologies and made comparable progresses in promoting true knowledge. Both Wang and Bacon started with rethinking of the so-called orthodox learning when they were young. In China, this orthodoxy was supposedly represented by the teaching of the school of Cheng Yi ( ) and Zhu Xi, and in Europe it was represented by scholasticism of the Middle Ages. According to the Cheng-Zhu School, true knowledge (li ) is one but manifested in many (li yi fen shu ). The truth hidden in phenomena can be found only through manifestation. Hence the importance of investigating things for grasping the truth (ge wu zhi li ). As an epistemological tool, such an investigation of the principle of one thing and another was believed to be necessary for humans to understand the true nature of existing things and hence to acquire real knowledge of the world. From his own experience and observation, however, Wang questioned the possibility and justification of this learning method. First, there are unaccountably many things in the world; nobody can investigate all of them, being limited by one s energy and life span. Second, to investigate things one by one for principle is to divide truth into unrelated pieces, which is contrary to the holistic nature of real knowledge. Third, in concentrating on investigating things outside one s own self, one is inevitably led to the conviction that learning and morality, the heart-mind and principle, knowledge and action, the external and the internal, the beginning and the end are separable:

5 WANG YANGMING AND FRANCIS BACON 421 People fail to realize that the highest good [zhi shan ] is in their minds and seek it outside. As they believe that everything or every event has its own definite principle, they search for the utmost good in individual things. Consequently, the mind becomes fragmented, isolated, broken into pieces. Mixed and confused, it has no definite direction. 7 Fourth, the old learning starts with the external investigation and thus sees only the leaves and branches but not the trunk and the root. In Wang s words, the old way of learning reversed the proper order of learning, so that the student has no place to start. 8 Therefore, in the eyes of Wang Yangming, the philosophy of the Cheng-Zhu School is not only unproductive, but has also seriously obstructed the advancement of learning. Slightly less than a century later, Bacon experienced a similar disappointment over the traditional or obsolete philosophies of learning in England, of which the first was that of the orthodox Aristotelian tradition. 9 As early as when he studied at Cambridge, young Bacon showed deep disgust of this kind of scholasticism for its unfruitfulness of the way. 10 Later he developed his disapproval into a systematic criticism of its obstructiveness to the progress of learning. According to him, scholasticism has at least three defects. First, by confining people to the cells of monasteries and colleges, scholastic learning leads people to devoting much of their attention to supernatural subjects while reserving little for the study of history either of nature or of time; the traditional philosophy requires reading books only and therefore dismisses the importance of investigating nature. 11 Second, scholastic methodology corrupts natural philosophy by its logic and imposes innumerable arbitrary distinctions upon the nature of things without looking into their internal truth and the harmony of all sciences. 12 Third, scholastic philosophy pays too much respect for the system of antiquity and cannot provide a genuine motive for the advancement of learning in the modern world. For Bacon, antiquity deserves respect, but the more important thing is to use it as a basis and to discover the best way to advance scientific learning and knowledge. 13 Central to the criticisms of the old philosophies made by Wang and Bacon is that the then orthodox philosophies separated the goal of learning from its methods, which made all efforts in acquiring true knowledge futile. It is thus urgent and imperative for Wang and Bacon that a new way be explored to reunify the goal and the methods of learning so that true knowledge can be promoted, and wisdom acquired. However, as they differ significantly concerning what true knowledge is, why it should be pursued, and how it can be acquired, their further deliberations on learning diverge dramatically.

6 422 XINZHONG YAO III. Goal of Learning A philosophy of learning is a kind of methodology by which a particular goal for learning can be established and distinct ways to the goal are adequately explored. The methods of learning are primarily defined by its goal. Generally speaking, true learning is to help people understand reality correctly, seek truth efficiently, and live by the truth consistently. Personally speaking, it is to help one break through one s limitation in terms of intelligence and morality, fulfill the potentiality of life and harmonize what is internal and what is external. While both Wang and Bacon similarly set up an objective for learning, their concepts of the goal differ. The goal for Wang is to become an idealistic sage and the learning is therefore effectively defined as the sage learning, while for Bacon it is to help humanity achieve the mastery over nature. It has been a persistent conviction in Confucianism since the time of Mengzi that everybody is able to become a sage, but views concerning what sagehood is and how to achieve it differ from time to time and from one school to another. Neo-Confucianism of the Song Dynasty ( ), in general, campaigns for the universality of sagehood. However, according to Wang Yangming, the complicated ways and the externally oriented learning propagated by the Cheng- Zhu School actually end in confining sagehood to a very small number of people: It is impossible for an ordinary person to exhaust all the forms of investigation even if he intends to do so. Following Mengzi and under the influence of Chan Buddhism, Wang advocated universal sagehood by insisting that sagehood lies in the full realization of the originally good heart-mind rather than in the accumulation of book knowledge or sense experiences. The proposition that everyone can become a sage is justifiable because sagehood is innate in human nature. It is possible for a man to become a sage because he has already possessed within himself all the principles and knowledge necessary for so doing. A sage is, therefore, not a remote and impersonal goal, and the attainment of sagehood does not depend on one s external knowledge, nor on one s social circumstances. Rather, it is a fulfillment of self-realization, a revolution within one s heart-mind and a manifestation of one s originally good nature. Thus, a sage in Wang s philosophy is not a superhuman or a person born great and wise. He is an enlightened person who has fulfillled all his innate potential through learning. To learn is to learn how to be a sage, and to be a sage is both the goal and the process of true learning. As soon as one is engaged in the pursuit of the goal, one is realizing one s sagehood and manifesting one s sage-nature.

7 WANG YANGMING AND FRANCIS BACON 423 Natural endowments being different from person to person, one person may need more effort to make his innate virtue manifest than another. Wise or ignorant, noble or common, Wang argues, all human beings have the potentiality to become a sage and have the capacity of self-realization, because of the originally good heart-mind which allows human beings to attain sagehood like Yao and Shun, the classical exemplars of ancient sages. In his conception of sagehood and in the conviction that humans can reach the highest good by themselves, Wang is engaged in a humanistic discourse and advocates that transcendence comes from one s own insight, which is in turn the result of realizing one s innate nature. In this discourse, Wang attempts to establish a new concept of human dignity and equality that cannot be realized unless humans have gained mastery of themselves. For him, what is taught in the Great Learning (Da Xue ) about investigation, extension, being sincere, and rectifying is a correct exposition of the transmission from Yao and Shun and evincing the mind of Confucius. 14 In criticizing the old philosophies of learning, Bacon insists that the purpose of learning is to explore and control the world in which humans are placed, and is to give humans the power of relieving man s estate, which can become true only through investigating the natural world and making use of natural laws. In the eyes of Bacon, learning must lead to true knowledge that will eventually disclose, or bring light to, all that is hidden and secret in the phenomenon universe. Therefore, it is scientific knowledge that gives man mastery over nature, a mastery that would enable man to transform the quality of his life on earth, 15 by which man s happiness and dignity can be promoted and man s ideal, the Kingdom of Man Regnum Hominis the dominion of man over nature, will be realized. Bacon praises those masters of sciences such as Copernicus ( ) as the makers of the new world, and believes that the new world needs a new philosophy, and that a new philosophy will help humanity find the principles of the new art of interpreting nature, and therefore effectively give humans the mastery over the natural world. Like Wang who insists that it is within human ability to achieve the goal of learning, Bacon proudly announces that to hold the world in the palm of his hand is not beyond the power of man. 16 Humans have certain real and potentially fruitful intellectual capacities. Unfortunately, their capacities have been misused or ignored in old philosophies. Bacon passionately argues that by following the new way and guided by the new philosophy, man will be able to be on the path to the advancement of learning and will eventually reach his objective to become the true master of nature.

8 424 XINZHONG YAO Unlike Wang who is idealistically optimistic that everyone can reach the sublime goal by his own work on the heart-mind, however, Bacon is more realistic when he foresees the prospect of human learning. On the one hand, humans have, potentially, the ability to understand nature; on the other hand, nature is much more complicated than it is presumed. Nature is subtler than the mind. It is subtler than the senses because the forms (laws) governing it are not obviously and straightforwardly observable; it is subtler than the understanding and the understanding cannot work out on its own what the underlying order of nature is. Therefore, learning in Bacon s philosophy becomes a human adventure, and to realize the scientific goal we have to make continuous efforts to conquer the unknown world. This is said to be a recovery of human rights over the external world: Only let mankind regain their rights over nature, assigned to them by the gift of God, and obtain that power, whose exercise will be governed by right reason and true religion. 17 Taking sagehood as the goal of learning,wang attempts to integrate all kinds of learning into the learning of the heart-mind. In contrast, by taking the mastery of nature as the sole objective of learning, Bacon concludes that to achieve this goal, it is necessary to make distinctions between humans and nature, and to divide knowledge into different areas and subjects. According to Bacon, there are three areas of knowledge: divine philosophy, which aims to infer from natural facts that God exists; natural philosophy, which aims to investigate the laws that govern natural movements; and human philosophy, which aims to use and administrate learning wisely. Bacon did not deny the unity of these philosophies, and insisted that they were all the means to the mastery of nature. However, it seems apparent that he did not sufficiently emphasize this unity; instead he is convinced that the advancement of natural philosophy is the only measure of the progress of learning. The difference between Wang and Bacon in terms of integration of knowledge lies deeply in their different understandings of the goal of learning. The goal of learning for Wang is essentially a goal of self-realization or self-enlightenment, to be realized within introspective exploration, while for Bacon the mastery of nature is the result of the overall advancement of natural knowledge; and because the mastery of nature is a collective ideal, it can be realized only by means of organized institutions. This explains why Wang was concentrated on teaching his disciples how to look into their own heart-mind and nature, while Bacon enthusiastically appealed to the king to have an academy of sciences established. Central to the Confucian tradition is the belief in the oneness of humans and heaven (tian ), implying a metaphysical, religious, and ethical unity between humanity and the universe. As humans come

9 WANG YANGMING AND FRANCIS BACON 425 from heaven and human nature is the same as the nature of heaven, a sage is not primarily defined by his master of the natural world. One who has explored his own heart-mind and extended his own nature is the one who has understood heaven and has become oneness with heaven. One who has become oneness with heaven is thus able to assist heaven and earth (the world) in their production and reproduction and to become a triad with them. This is what is meant by the sage. Wang Yangming does not exclude the utilitarian merits from his concept of sagehood and following Confucius he takes it as an important manifestation of one s sagehood to bring benefits to the people. However, unlike in the philosophy of Bacon where the emphasis of the mastery of nature is laid upon its utilitarian content and function, the realization of sagehood in Wang s teaching depends upon one s own enlightenment more than anything else. In this sense, the sage in Wang s philosophy of learning is an ideal, both religious and ethical, but it is much less materialistically oriented. Wang s logical conclusion is that to be a sage, one must realize one s own self by which the universe can be fully manifested and knowledge fully integrated, 18 while the methodology of Bacon led him to the conclusion that to be a master of nature, one must transcend the nature to which one s self has been subject. Mastery over nature requires scientific knowledge to control nature for human purposes, grasping natural existences and employing natural laws. In this respect, Bacon s goal of learning is a utilitarian ideal which is to be realized in the process of materialistically exploring nature. IV. Ways to the Goal of Learning To achieve the goal of learning, one must have proper tools and follow correct ways. Philosophical discourses on learning are thus always carried out in the context of specific methods. After frustrations in his pursuit of sagehood through reading classics and investigating the principle of things, Wang came to believe that all these methods were not only inadequate for the progress of learning, but also harmful to the attainment of the goal of learning. As a personal ideal, sagehood must be achieved individually and independently. Whether one can realize the goal depends upon one s insight into one s own nature.the insight comes only when one has successfully internalized and integrated one s life experiences. Wang said that he gained this enlightenment when he was thirty-six years old, during his exile, and realized that human nature was where sagehood truly lay: The one night, in the year 1508, he awoke and shouted so loudly that people living nearby were startled. What caused his excitement was

10 426 XINZHONG YAO that upon awakening he had suddenly discovered that so-called things are not entities in the external world but objects of consciousness. 19 Wang was convinced that his previous failures had been due to his adopting of a wrong way to truth, seeking it in events, things, and books external to his own heart-mind, because there is really nothing in the things in the world to investigate. 20 It is apparent for Wang that true learning is not book reading or instruction receiving, nor an outward investigation. Rather, it is essentially an inward journey to one s own heart-mind, where truth or sagehood, all principles (li ), and virtues (de ) exist. Progress in learning cannot be made unless one has explored the fullness and richness of one s own heart-mind. The heart-mind for Wang is not only the source of virtues but also the ability to judge and determine. Its dual function enables him to equate the heart-mind with the innate knowledge of the good (liangzhi ), and the progress of learning with extending and realizing this knowledge (zhiliangzhi ). To reverse the empirical tendency of the Cheng-Zhu School that propagated that learning must start with the investigation of things (ge wu ), Wang reinterpreted ge wu in the light of his idealism. According to him, wu is not things outside our heart-mind, nor is ge to investigate externally. Wu refers primarily to affairs or events that aroused in the heart-mind, and ge is essentially to correct or rectify the heart-mind, or to eliminate what is incorrect in the mind so as to preserve the correctness of its original substance. 21 In fully developing and realizing one s innate knowledge and ability, Wang believes, one is able to transcend all divisions between the inner and the outer realm of life, between knowledge and action, and between activity and tranquillity, and there will be no danger of its becoming fragmented, isolated, broken into pieces, mixed, or confused. 22 Wang admits that sense-experiences like hearing and seeing can help extend one s knowledge, but they are not the substance of learning: Innate knowledge does not come from hearing and seeing, and yet all seeing and hearing are functions of innate knowledge. 23 Seeing, hearing, experiencing, and dealing with others are therefore only of marginal value compared with extending and realizing innate knowledge, and should never be allowed to impede one s realizing of what is innate, actualizing what remains potential and making manifest what is latent. The knowledge innate in the heart-mind is what one has to acquire, to extend and to manifest. It is both the starting point of learning and its end so that the process of learning is essentially taken to be a circular movement of which both the starting and ending points are in one s own self. The progress of learning thus is not a quantitative increase of sense experiences, but a qualitative

11 WANG YANGMING AND FRANCIS BACON 427 enlightenment. The former is not equal to, does not necessarily lead to, and by nature is inferior to, the latter. Just like that a great quantity of base metals does not make them gold, one is unable to become a sage by accumulating sense knowledge. Understood in this way, learning is more a practical (moral) action than a theoretical deliberation, and more a process of self-fulfilling the responsibilities toward family, state, and the universe, than a process of detaching oneself from the world in seeking objective knowledge of existence. Because true knowledge, or innate knowledge, is that by which one acts morally, and because moral action is that by which one obtains enlightenment, to know is to act: when a thought is aroused, it is already an action. For Wang, knowledge is the direction and beginning of action, while action is the effort and completion of knowledge. By the unity of knowledge and action, Wang comes to an extremely deontological conclusion that an immoral intention is equal to an immoral act. To learn is not only to refrain from acting wrongly; more importantly it is to have no evil thoughts and intentions at all. This is, says Wang, the fundamental value of his doctrine about the unity between knowledge and action. When we turn to Bacon s ideas on the methods of learning, we find that they have some metaphysical implications similar to those taught by Wang but differ dramatically from Wang in terms of moral application. Bacon had a firm belief in the progress of learning and knowledge: Bacon is the most confident, explicit and influential of the first exponents of the idea of progress ; his belief in progress comes from his more or less unprecedented notion of knowledge as cumulative and his insistence that knowledge is for practical use, specially for the relief of man s estate. 24 Therefore, Bacon s methods of learning are fundamentally scientific, empirical, materialistic, and utilitarian. As observed above, although having different views about learning and holding different concepts of the progress of learning, Bacon and Wang held the same aversion to the then orthodox way of learning in which too much attention was diverted to reading classics or scriptures, either Christian, Greek, or Confucian. However, unlike Wang who was possessed by his concept of the heart-mind, Bacon was much more interested in nature, not human nature, but the nature external to humans. According to his understanding, the aim of learning is to bring benefits to human beings, and the value of learning must be measured by its usefulness in increasing human power over nature. To relieve man s estate and to realize human values, humans first have to acquire natural knowledge, because only this kind of knowledge can produce wealth and power that enable humans to be the master of nature. Therefore, it is the study of nature rather than the study of human beings that is the basis of Bacon s philosophy of learning and

12 428 XINZHONG YAO is the driving force for exploring distinct ways to make progress in learning. Both Wang and Bacon believe that a sound mind is very important for the progress of learning. For Wang true learning cannot be achieved until selfish desires are wiped out, while for Bacon, to advance knowledge, we must first get rid of false notions or idols of the mind, that is, all the defects or errors that frustrate humans in their investigation of nature. However, unlike Wang who insists that the progress of learning comes from, and consists of, the realization of the good knowledge inherent in the heart-mind, Bacon emphasizes that the ultimate source of learning lies in natural laws embedded in the movement and operation of nature. Scientific studies of nature are to reveal its laws, or forms, or essence to us. In these studies, senseexperience is to provide us with the means to, and the materials of, all real knowledge. Because Bacon takes sense-experience as the basis of knowledge, the method of accumulating these experiences becomes essential.this method is what he describes as the most efficient way to help humans reach their goal. Medieval philosophy was confined to deductive logic that started from some axioms or first principles, while humanists in the time of Bacon believed that no knowledge could be secured due to the emptiness and merely formal nature of deductive logic. To counterattack both dogmatism and skepticism, Bacon rejected the unfruitful deductive logic, while remaining confident in the progress of learning because of the new tools such as inductive logic, by which knowledge of the universe is accumulated, human life improved and the goal of learning realized. In advocating his new tools, Bacon discusses the possible unity between the knowledge of man and the knowledge of nature, because he believes that both human sciences and natural sciences need apply the same method. Unfortunately, his insight into the unity of knowledge does not develop into the mainstream of his philosophy, and his views of the qualitative progress of learning and about the unity between humans and sciences are frequently overshadowed by his insistence on the quantitative criterion and on the opposition between humanity and nature. Like Wang, Bacon insists that real knowledge is operative or practical rather than speculative or theoretical. He criticizes Aristotle for preferring theory to practice. What is needed is not pure contemplation but a kind of knowledge that motivates action and activates real life. The following has thus become his motto: not an opinion to be held, but a work to be done. 25 When coming to the relation between knowledge and morality, Bacon advocates a kind of utilitarian ethics, and believes that the moral is desirable only when it increases

13 WANG YANGMING AND FRANCIS BACON 429 material benefits to human life and is conducive to human utility and happiness. He admits that people do not act as virtuously as they should, or even not as virtuously as they admit they should. Morality, religious faith and rituals are therefore needed to provide people with rules and norms, by which the course of learning can be guided: [L]et none be alarmed at the objection of the arts and science becoming depraved to malevolent or luxurious purposes and the like, for the same can be said of every worldly good; talent, courage, strength, beauty, riches, light itself, and the rest. 26 Generally speaking, the key methods of learning put forward by Wang and Bacon are essentially divergent, one based on the intuitive realization of the innate faculty and on the unity between knowledge and action, and the other on the accumulation of the experiences of external investigations. While both emphasize human value in the progress of learning, Wang gives priority to developing internal integrity of humanity, but Bacon takes empirical benefits as the best way to promote human dignity. Quoting from the Great Learning, one of the Confucian classics,wang teaches his students that the way of the great learning is first to make the illustrious virtue manifest, then to love people and finally to rest in the highest goodness. To summarize Bacon s deliberations on learning in a similar formula, we may say that the way of true learning for Bacon is first to know natural laws through one s experiences and experiments, then to use this knowledge to serve human interests and finally become the master of nature and society. V. The Parting of Ways Learning is a way of understanding humanity, comprehending the world, and then unifying them. Different methods of learning lead to different perceptions of the unity between humans and the world, which in turn lead to different courses of cultural development. The relationship between humanity and the universe perceived by Wang Yangming is essentially idealistic and humanistic; the root of the unity between humans and heaven is in the heart-mind, its laws are none other than moral principles, its essence is in moral virtues, and its apex is reached in sagehood. The heart-mind of humanity is also the heartmind of the universe (heaven and earth), and thus humans and the universe form one body or individuals are to be one with the mind of the Way. 27 Wang further argues that the unity or oneness must first be understood as a unity in the heart-mind, underlain by the innate knowledge to know good and innate capacity to do good. It is the

14 430 XINZHONG YAO heart-mind that provides the natural world with consciousness and activities, unity and diversities, goodness and virtues. The integrating heart-mind enables humans and nature to be the universe of harmony and unity, in which not only the sage and common people are related, but also the moral and the natural are harmonized. In this way, the universe is deemed to be one s heart-mind and one s heart-mind is identified with the universe, so that one can regard others as one s self, the country as one s family, and the universe (heaven, earth, and myriad things) as one s body. 28 Francis Bacon championed a different philosophy, and thus became one of the pioneers of the European worldview in the early modern period: He maps the character and programme of a genuinely natural science of nature, independent of religion, unencumbered by the authority of past speculation, unified by a method of eliminative induction that is set out in fairly thorough formal detail, to be carried on in a co-operative fashion for the material benefit of mankind... [his effort] constitutes as important a step forward as any toward the governing conception of the world of the modern epoch. 29 Bacon stimulated a passionate devotion to the understanding of nature and to the pursuit of natural knowledge which have been characteristic of European culture since his day. For him, nature exists outside humans, and natural laws or forms are that by which we can control it. In opposition to the conception of the universe created by the so-called idols of theatre, Bacon attempted to describe the universe as it actually and naturally is, and in so doing he laid down one of the most important cornerstones of English empiricism as well as of European modernity. With an objective and cool eye on nature, Bacon believed that in this scientific mechanism there was no original unity and harmony: beings distinguished from beings, things from things, and knowledge from action. To unify them, humans must employ scientific knowledge and make use of natural laws. Thus nature is essentially viewed as an opposition to human beings, and human relation to nature becomes the one in which active and rational humans endeavor to conquer the natural world. According to Wang s idealistic humanism, the basis of unity and the possibility of reconciliation already exist in the heart-mind, where contradictions between human morality and natural laws, which are prominent in an empirical philosophy of science, are idealistically excluded and eliminated. Scientific correctness is none other than ethical propriety, and the morally good is fully identical with the existentially natural. To realize the potential harmony between humans and nature, one should not search for utilitarian values in natural knowledge. Rather, it is crucial to be one s own master, to

15 WANG YANGMING AND FRANCIS BACON 431 fulfill human values in human existence and activities, and to extend one s humanity to the whole universe. In this process, knowledge and action, self and society, individuals and the world, humans and things are essentially unified, one s value as a human is established and one s ideal realized. Having experienced this unity personally and profoundly, Wang felt nothing pitiful even at the brink of death: My heart is full of brightness; what more can I say? 30 In establishing the scientific conception of human values, Bacon also searched, in the division and distinction, for the unity between humans and nature and even once attempted their unity on the basis of natural laws and inductive logic. He took it as his principle that the same empirical and inductive method should be applied to humanity, society, and nature, not only to natural sciences but also to poetry, ethics, and policy. He insisted that all forms of learning must help interpret nature and grasp the truth of the world, and that knowledge must be turned into action. However, by the logic of Bacon s philosophy, the human world is fundamentally differentiated from the natural world, and his emphasis is always on the latter, as far as learning is concerned. Contrary to Wang who deliberately harmonizes the natural world to humanity, Bacon attempts to achieve this harmony by subjecting humanity to the law of nature. For Bacon, scientific correctness is morally good, but the morally good is not necessarily scientifically correct. To fulfill human value in the world, the first thing we must do is to increase our knowledge of nature, and here comes his dictum: Knowledge is power! Scientific knowledge is revered like a king, who alone can confer ranks, titles, glory, and respect on people. In the urgent need to reveal the secrets of nature and to put this knowledge into practice to improve the quality of life, human conscience and virtues have to be of the secondary. Perhaps this explains, partly, why Bacon took the mastery of nature as manifestation of human value but was full of distrust of others and would rather study books than man. He earned reputation in his philosophical discourses and moral essays, but his own life was not always in line with the moral standards he set up for others, especially in his subservience, sometimes immoral, and always mean, to the great men of the day. 31 Human knowledge and natural knowledge demonstrate great significance for realizing human value and for promoting human dignity. However, as far as the integration between human value and scientific methods is concerned, neither of them alone is enough. If they are separated and made irrelevant to each other, true knowledge, harmony and happiness cannot be possibly achieved. Extreme idealism leads people to purely inner cultivation at the expense of external investigation: there is no learning at all outside of manifesting the

16 432 XINZHONG YAO good heart-mind.although Wang yearned for the progress of learning and for the unity between knowledge and action, his view of the world is one-sided, and his unity is purely idealistic. The tendency to overlook practical matters and natural knowledge in the Confucian tradition has found its extreme formula in Wang s philosophy of learning, which we may say were, at least partly, responsible for the rapid decline of Chinese civilization in modern times. 32 Based on the scientific understanding of humanity and nature, Bacon s way of learning tends to go to an extreme objectivism, where the interaction between humans and nature, and the interdependence between human knowledge and natural knowledge, are frequently overlooked, or have never been seriously emphasized. The only meaningful truth is in the objective knowledge of nature, the only right way to the truth is that of external investigations, and the only progress we can ever make in promoting learning is to increase our scientific knowledge and technological means to conquer nature. This philosophy inevitably leads to the view that the only goal of learning is to be the master of nature and of others. This philosophy of learning also presupposes objective knowledge. To guarantee the truth of natural knowledge, human factors must be precluded. Since the time of Bacon, objective and scientific philosophy of learning has helped bring one after another victory to humans in their fight against nature, in which human knowledge of nature is rapidly increased and human life is significantly improved. However, it has also led to the tension between humans and nature and the brutal conflict between the people who possess knowledge and the people who do not. Facing an increasing tension between humans and their natural environment, more and more people have come to realize that humanity is an inseparable part of the universe, and natural knowledge cannot be separated from human knowledge. Perceptions of how humans are related to nature may well differ from culture to culture, from philosophy to philosophy, even from person to person, which explains different patterns of attitude and behavior toward nature. However diverse it may be, the ability to integrate humans and nature, knowledge and action, science and conscience is crucial for us to live in harmony rather than in chaos and disaster. It is in this sense that both Wang Yangming and Francis Bacon are not only still relevant to our life, but also very important to our future. In search of the ways to enlightenment, Wang has brought humanistic idealism into our view of the world and of human existence, while in exploring the source of human power, Bacon has established or has helped establish empirical philosophy of learning from which modern science and technology develop and which enables humans to explore microcosm and macrocosm of nature and humans to a level never reached before.

17 WANG YANGMING AND FRANCIS BACON 433 Wang and Bacon left to us two different legacies. To an extent each of these legacies has been largely separated from the other and developed to an extreme. It is important for us now to rethink of them in mutual complementarity rather than in opposition. A synthesis of these two philosophical legacies will be a signal for the dawn of the new and real advancement of learning, by which harmony between human knowledge and natural knowledge, the outward learning and inward learning, and unity between the scientific, objective, and positive approach Bacon advocated and the moral, subjective, and intuitive approach Wang advocated will be enthusiastically sought after and maintained. RENMIN UNIVERSITY OF CHINA Beijing, China KING S COLLEGE LONDON London, UK Endnotes Acknowledgment of Rights and Credentials:The author wishes to thank the blind reviewer for his/her insightful comments and valuable suggestions, some of which I have used in revising this article. The same appreciation is also due to the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Chung-ying Cheng, for his guidance on how to further improve the article. I also would like to give my special thanks to Timothy Connolly for his devoting and excellent work. 1. Wang Yangming Quanji (The Complete Works of Wang Yangming) (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1992), vol. 1, 120; see Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings by Wang Yang-ming, trans. Wing-tsit Chan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), Aubrey: Brief Lines, quoted in Bacon, Francis, by J. L. M Intyre, in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. 11, ed. James Hastings (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1909), As this book is the primary source for us to know Wang Yangming s philosophy, a few words are needed here to explain the meaning of the title. Chuan means what is transmitted or to transmit [the Confucian tradition], xi means to learn and practice what has been taught or what has been transmitted, and lu means records. Thus the literal meaning of the title is Records of What Is Transmitted [by Wang Yangming] Concerning How to Practice What Has Been Learned. Wing-tsit Chan translates it as Instructions for Practical Living, which seems not to fully reflect the meaning of the Chinese title, or to reveal the fact that methodology of learning is an important dimension of this book. Wang Yangming denounced book learning and emphasized moral practice. However, he was not against learning itself. Rather, all his discourses developed from his distinctive understanding of learning. In this sense, it would be closer to the meaning of the three Chinese characters if we translate the title as Records of Instructions for Practices of Learning. 4. Bacon was a versatile writer and his discourses involved various aspects of human life. He laid emphasis not only on scientific methodology, but also on religious justification and moral pursuits. In one sense, he was, more than anybody else in his time, responsible for transforming the medieval tradition to the modern ideology in Europe, although he did not yet complete this transformation. This article is concerned mainly with his contribution to the philosophical methodology of learning at the dawn of modern Europe, which I believe helped shape the main characteristics of modern empiricism and scientism.

18 434 XINZHONG YAO 5. David E. Cooper, World Philosophies (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996), In his review article on Joseph Needham s History of Chinese Scientific Thought, Wing-tsit Chan (Philosophy East and West 6, no. 4 [1957]: ) claimed that Neo-Confucian philosophy is essentially harmonious with modern science (p. 326). He disagreed with Needham s view that Confucianism is a hindrance of science (p. 310). For him the statement that Only when things are investigated can knowledge be achieved established as the first step of an adult education in the Great Learning eventually became a key concept in Neo-Confucianism and represents the closest philosophy to modern science (p. 317). However, Chan failed to see that there is a fundamental inwardness within Confucian philosophy which was developed in the Lu-Wang School, and that this kind of inwardness hinders, in one way or another, the arising of real scientific methods. 7. Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom, comp., Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd ed., Vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), Wing-tsit Chan, Instructions for Practical Living, 14. The contrast between Wang Yangming and the Cheng-Zhu School is perhaps not as sharp as it was assumed by Wang. On the one hand, Wang Yangming did not totally reject the investigation of things outside of the heart-mind; on the other hand, the Cheng-Zhu School did not in any sense advocate a kind of scientific methodology that searched for the truth by means of modern scientific experiments and observation. Both took learning merely as a way to wisdom and the realization of sagehood, and they were different only in their emphases on different approaches to the goal. 9. His criticism is also directed to other philosophies of learning, such as the delicate learning, a kind of humanistic philosophy for its abstract and empty verbalism and for its indifference to the knowledge of nature. He also disapproved the fantastic learning for its promoting the pseudo-scientific knowledge such as magic, alchemy, and astrology. 10. Antony Quinton, Francis Bacon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Novum Organum, and New Atlantis, in Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 30, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins (London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), Ibid., Ibid., de Bary and Bloom, Sources of Chinese Tradition, Maurice Cranston, Bacon, Francis, in The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Vol. 1 2, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1976), Quinton, Francis Bacon, Aphorism 129, the Novum Organum, in Bacon, Advancement of Learning, In this leaning there is no distinction between self and other, internal and external; the mind is one with Heaven-and-Earth and all things (de Bary and Bloom, Sources of Chinese Tradition, 842). 19. Carsun Chang, Wang Yang-ming: Idealist Philosopher of Sixteenth-Century China (New York: St. John s University Press, 1962), Wing-tsit Chan, Instructions for Practical Living, Ibid., de Bary and Bloom, Sources of Chinese Tradition, Wing-tsit Chan, Instructions for Practical Living, Quinton, Francis Bacon, Ibid., Bacon, Advancement of Learning, de Bary and Bloom, Sources of Chinese Tradition, A forerunner of Wang Yangming, Lu Xiangshan ( ) developed Mengzi s idea that all things are already complete in me into a fundamental principle that the mind and the universe are naturally integrated: The universe is my mind, and my mind is the universe (A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, trans. and comp. Wing-tsit Chan [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963], 579). 29. Quinton, Francis Bacon, 69.