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Thinking about the various religious superstitions that still exist today, we can't help but feel that the progress of mankind is actually not as great as imagined.
Wang Chong (27-97) was a famous thinker with a simple materialist thought, and "On Balance" is his representative work, an immortal atheist work in Chinese history. However, Wang's books are already nearly 2,000 years old, so why recommend him and his book to readers of Modern Physics? Because this can help us achieve the fusion of arts and sciences, but also let us know more about flickering and anti-flickering.
It is said that the famous physicist Dirac (p. a.m. dirac) argues that liberal arts and sciences are incompatible (in scientific research and in the writing of poetry), "Science is to make clear what no one has understood before in words that everyone can understand, but poetry is to express what everyone already knows in a way that no one can understand." And the British scientist and novelist C. Snow P. Snow) argued in a 1959 lecture that the division of intellectual life in Western society as a whole into two cultures (i.e., the natural sciences and the humanities) seriously prevents us from solving the world's problems.
With the rise of modern science and technology and the Industrial Revolution, coupled with the Enlightenment and the development of modern education, the influence of natural science on the world is obvious. Readers of "Modern Physics Knowledge" know a lot about the natural sciences, and their understanding of the social sciences may be somewhat insufficient, and reading some books on literature and history should be helpful. China's ancient Four Books and Five Classics and the Hundred Sons and Hundred Schools are not all suitable for modern society, and I think the main problem is that the spirit of doubt is not enough, but Wang Chong and his "On Balance" are an exception.
Wang Chong's era was an era when feudal superstition was extremely popular, and it was the government that took the lead in falsifying, And Han Wu Feng Zen, Wang Mang usurped the throne, and Guangwu revival, all with the help of the "heavenly induction" theory and all kinds of diagrams and charms, all kinds of strange forces and chaotic gods were all over the world. Moreover, at that time, educational resources were scarce, information was blocked, and people's ability and willingness to distinguish between true and false were also very low.
On the other hand, Wang Chong's era was also an era of great development of astronomy. Astronomical observation and calendar in the Han Dynasty have made great progress, and the Taichu calendar, the three-system calendar and the quaternary calendar have emerged successively, and comparing the lunar eclipse predicted by the calendar with the results of the actual observation is the key to determining which calendar to use. Therefore, astronomy in the Han Dynasty is very empirical. Wang Chong's concern for the problem of astronomy at that time was inevitably influenced by the scientific spirit of the time. Therefore, Hu Shi believes that "Wang Chong's philosophy is only the scientific spirit of the time applied to the problems of life." ”
"On Balance" consists of 30 volumes and 85 articles (of which "Incurrence" has only a title) and more than 200,000 words. In ancient times, there were already a lot of volumes (Sima Qian's "Records of History" recorded 3,000 years of history, only about 500,000 words), but by today's standards, it was not particularly numerous: in changchun publishing house's "Integration of The Sons", there were only about 240 pages; the "Commentary on Heng and Balance" published by the Zhonghua Book Company was two volumes, about 1200 pages, but it contained many notes and explanations, but it was easier to read.
Figure 1 Zhonghua Bookstore's "On Balance and Proofreading" and the commentary and even criticism of successive dynasties (with detailed annotations and explanations)
Figure 2 "On Balance" in Changchun Publishing House's "Integration of Sons" (only the original text)
Besides, you don't need to read every article carefully. The main theme of "On Balance" is "falsehood", that is, criticism of absurd heresy, and the 85 articles can be roughly divided into the following categories:
The reasons for writing the book are concentrated in the last two articles, both of which are worth a serious look. The "Dialogue" tells why ordinary people like to hear "falsehood", because "worldly nature, strange language, speaking false words." Why? The real thing can't be fast, and Hua Huan is shocked. "The Self-Discipline Chapter" holds a fair view when it talks about its own criticism, "Those who discuss balance, on the peace of the matter, the mouth is in the clear words, and the pen is in the luwen." ”
Articles on the problem of life (about 14 articles), the relationship between heaven and man (about 21 articles), and the relationship between man and ghost and various taboos (about 16 articles) account for a large part, even if the reader has only a secondary education, he will feel that Wang Chong's criticism is taken for granted, but you can pick a few to see how ordinary people two thousand years ago viewed the world. The "Nature Chapter" reflects Wang Chong's naturalistic View of Heavenly Taoism, and the "Encounter Chapter", as the first part of this book, is definitely to be read, "There are constant sages in conduct, and there is no impermanence in the encounter." Virtuous is not virtuous, only then; when not met, when not met. Such a worldview must come in part from his nostalgia. The phenomenon mentioned in the "Qi Shi Chapter", "the narrator is good from the ancient to the present, and what you hear and what you see" still exists even today, and it can be seen from this that Wang Chong is by no means thick in the past and thin in the present, but believes that the world is constantly advancing. However, seeing that he has repeatedly stated in many articles that people are ignorant, cannot be ghosts, and cannot cause misfortune to people, and think of the various religious superstitions that still exist, we can't help but feel that human progress is actually not as great as imagined.
Comment on the induction of heaven and falsehood in previous books (about 24 articles). The ancients had great respect for teachers and books, and easily did not dare to criticize, and Wang Chong's articles fully demonstrated his simple materialist epistemology and realistic spirit. The 12 articles of "Nine Falsehoods and Three Increases" can be read in a few parts, and the "Question of Confucius" and "Thorn Meng" must be read, because Confucius is the "Most Holy Ancestor" and Mencius is "Yasheng", but Wang Chong unceremoniously questions them, and he has also been criticized and insulted by the literati of all dynasties. "Talking about the Heavens" and "Talking about the Day" are also very important, and I will talk about it later.
The remaining articles (about 8) are mainly about the employment system, how to distinguish between gentlemen and gentlemen, talented and talentless, although it is now a cliché, and there is not much difference from other statements in the hundred families of the sons, but it can be seen from Wang Chong's evaluation of himself. "Cheng Material", "Don't Pass" and "Super Strange" can all be seen.
After all, the book "On Balance" is a work from two thousand years ago, and there are many fallacies in it. Even great thinkers like Wang Chong sometimes don't find the common sense we now take for granted. This shows that the progress of the natural sciences is by no means easy, and if there are only qualitative explanations and explanations, and there is no mathematical quantification (at least semi-quantitative) study, it is difficult to find the physical laws behind natural phenomena. Here are a few examples.
In "Talking about Heaven", Wang Chong realized that in two places far apart, the sun looked the same size: "From the East China Sea to see the sun, and from the land of quicksand to see the sun, Xiao Datongye." We now know that this is because the sun is far away from us, but Wang Chong can only deduce that "the distance is tens of thousands of miles, the small and the big are unchanged, and the land is wide and small today." He also came to the conclusion that the earth was 100,000 miles from east to west, south to north, and south, but did not doubt the statement that "the secret transmission or the word of heaven is more than 60,000 miles away from the world" (that is, the distance of the sun from the earth is more than 60,000 miles).
In the "Saying the Day", Wang Chong said, "Try to make a man walk the torch at night on the road, it is easy and risk-free, go to the people for ten miles, and the fire will be extinguished." On the plains, let a man walk in the night with a torch, and he walks out of the ten miles, and you will not see the torch. We now know that this is because the earth is round (the Greeks saw the ship returning from the sea first showing its mast, the same reason), and even deduced that the diameter of the earth is about 100,000 miles. However, Wang Chong did not recognize this, but took this as evidence of the "Gaitian Theory" and refuted (we now seem more reasonable) the "HunTian Theory".
Of course, we must not be harsh on the ancients, but pay more attention to their shining points. For example, Wang Chong foresaw the "jet lag". Or in the "Talking about heaven", in order to refute the claim that the sun comes from Fuso (the easternmost place in ancient times) and enters the small willow (the westernmost place), he says that when the sun is "in Fuso and the thin willow, the people of the fuso and the small willow are called the time of the day", because "all of them are in the middle of the upper one, and the side is the day, and Andrew enters the small willow from the fusang". He had also said earlier, "When the sun enters the West, its people will also be called the middle of the day." "The time of different locations depends on the position of the sun at that time, which is the time difference." Although the ancient Greeks had long discovered jet lag, China's understanding of jet lag did not wait until the time of Genghis Khan's Western Expedition (around 1220, Yelü Chucai proposed the concept of "rio"). In fact, in ancient China, there was almost no concept of jet lag, and everyone thought that everywhere was the same time: "The sea rises and the moon rises, and the end of the world is at this time." From this, we can see the greatness of Wang Chong even more.
Our era attached great importance to national education, nine-year compulsory education and relatively high school and university enrolment, so that most people received initial knowledge of nature and society. However, there is very little negative case and negative information, and the attitude of learning for the sake of exams makes many people regard the content of the textbook as dogma, which will only be rigid and cannot be flexibly applied.
There is also a big difference between our era and Wang Chong's era. In the past, useful knowledge was very little and difficult to obtain, and the cost of learning was very high; now there is a lot of useful knowledge, but there is more spam and the cost of search is high. An important skill that modern people need is how to judge the authenticity of information, which requires that the cases used to learn have both positive and negative information. The book "On Balance" provides many such cases, and it is still worth reading — of course, to read critically.
Finally, if you are only concerned with flickering and anti-flickering, I can also recommend another book: Lian Kuoru's "Jianghu Series", which objectively and comprehensively introduces the jianghu industry, jargon and insider information in the early 20th century, and exhorts people not to be greedy and deceived. Although what he exposed was the insider story and various deceptions that were popular from the end of the Qing Dynasty to the 1930s, it still has certain practical significance today, more than 80 years later.
This article is excerpted from Modern Physics Knowledge, No. 1, 2020
Further reading:
Researching High-Definition Maps to Help Historical Research – Ji Yang's Comments on Chen Jing's Articles and Chen Jing's Responses | Ji Yang
A glimpse of the plight of popular science is known to the whole leopard | Ji Yang
The words of the translator of "The Story of Semiconductors" | Ji Yang
The real Feynman, the eternal Feynman | Ji Yang
Background: Ji Yang, the author of this article, is a researcher at the Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The article was published on March 16, 2021 on the WeChat public account Modern Physics Knowledge Magazine ("On Balance": the first anti-flicker encyclopedia in history - Wang Chong's "Disease and Falsehood" and its modern significance), and the Voice of Fengyun is authorized to reprint.
Editor-in-Charge: Sun Yuan