Yin and Yang: the Nature of Scientific Explanation in a Culture Essays

Yin and Yang: the Nature of Scientific Explanation in a Culture ABSTRACT: I explore the nature of scientific explanation in a culture centering on the doctrine of yin and yang combined with that of five phrases, wu-hsing (YYFP). I note how YYFP functions as an alternative to the causal way of thinking, as well as the meaning of scientific explanation in a culture. I also consider whether a scientific concept becomes metaphorical when it is superseded by an alternative organizing concept. To a Western eye, or even to a contemporary Eastern eye, many explanations given under the doctrine of yin and yang combined with that of five phases (wu-hsing), apparently intended to be scientific, would seem either absurd or too arbitrary at first sight. An intriguing fact, however, is that the doctrine of yin and yang and that of five phases (hereafter YYFP) has prevailed until quite recently in almost all the areas of Far-Eastern cultures including medicine, astronomy, music, dance, architecture, geomancy. In this essay, I pay attention to the questions such as how YYFP functioned as an alternative to the causal way of thinking, and what it is to be a scientific or theoretical explanation in a culture. I also consider the question of whether a scientific concept becomes metaphorical when it is superseded by an alternative organizing concept. Let me begin with the development of the concept of YYFP, as you may not know in the first place what YYFP is. Until around the 4th century B.C., yin and yang were current words for "sunshine" and "shade" and were used separately from the five phases of change. Soon after, they came to be included in the six ch'i (six powers or forces) of Heaven. The six ch'i refer to wind, rain, dark, light,... .... Recent developments in quantum physics, biology and information science have put us in a position where we question the uniqueness of the causal-mechanical model of science. But these developments, even though sciences based on non-causal concepts might dominate in the culture, would not eradicate the causal way people have viewed the world and themselves, but only relegate the concept of cause to the realm of metaphor, a rhetorical way of putting things. The concept of cause then would no longer be a scientific concept, but would still be alive in the culture. What brings a change in the general worldview then? This would be the question I still have to ask. Notes (1) Tr.(in Korean)& ed. by Chung Young Ho (Jayou-Moongo, 1993), pp.22-23. English translation is mine. (2) Cf. Tung Chung-suh, Ch'un-ch'iu fan-lu (Luxurian Gems of the Spring and Autumn Annals).