Mind and Body in Early China: Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of HolismMind and Body in Early China critiques Orientalist accounts of early China as the radical, "holistic" other. The idea that the early Chinese held the "strong" holist view, seeing no qualitative difference between mind and body, has long been contradicted by traditional archeological and qualitative textual evidence. New digital humanities methods, along with basic knowledge about human cognition, now make this position untenable. A large body of empirical evidence suggests that "weak" mind-body dualism is a psychological universal, and that human sociality would be fundamentally impossible without it. Edward Slingerland argues that the humanities need to move beyond social constructivist views of culture, and embrace instead a view of human cognition and culture that integrates the sciences and the humanities. Our interpretation of texts and artifacts from the past and from other cultures should be constrained by what we know about the species-specific, embodied commonalities shared by all humans. This book also attempts to broaden the scope of humanistic methodologies by employing team-based qualitative coding and computer-aided "distant reading" of texts, while also drawing upon our current best understanding of human cognition to transform our basic starting point. It has implications for anyone interested in comparative religion, early China, cultural studies, digital humanities, or science-humanities integration. |
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afterlife analysis animals appears archaeological argue assumptions basic behavior belief Cartesian chapter China Chinese conceptions Chudek claims classical Chinese Cognitive Science collocation common Confucian Confucius consciousness context contrasted corpus cross-culturally cultural Daodejing digital humanities discussion distinct early Chinese early Chinese thought embodied emotions evidence function Geaney Goldin Guodian holistic human cognition humanities scholars ical individual innate instance intuitive language linguistic linked locus Mencius mental metaphor mind and body mind-body dualism mind-body holism Mohist Mozi nature notes observes one's organs passage patterns person philosophical physical body portrayed pre-Qin psychological interiority qualitative quantitative radical reason refer Religion religious ritual Roger Ames role Rosemont semantically semantically related sense shen similarly Slingerland Slingerland 2008b social social constructivism soul soul-body spirit spirit-body studies suggests supernatural t-score textual theory things tion topic modeling tradition translation University Warring Western words xing Xunzi Zhuangzi Zuo Zhuan