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- W9525902 abstract "thinking especially is highly constructed by the concepts inherent in the language the thinker employs, a fact noted by linguist Alfred Bloom (1981: 33). For these reasons the importation of a Chinese concept into a social science theory which is developed in Europe or America and typically expressed in English, does not simply add what the concept denotes in only a linguistic sense but also introduces 213 a pattern of cognition that broadens, qualifies and transforms the intellectual scope of the theory. This effect will be indicated in different ways in chapters 5, 6 and 7. The observed linguistic difference between English and Chinese, as Bloom (1981: 29) says, „are not merely differences in linguistic form, but differences in linguistic form that reflect and may very well be highly responsible for important differences in the way English speakers, as opposed to Chinese speakers, categorize and operate cognitively with the world‟. Language labels and schemas, including concepts, make significant and distinctive contributions to the thinking of those who use the language in question. Languages as different in so many fundamental respects as Chinese and English, say, are therefore associated with radically different styles or forms of thinking. Bloom (1981: 83) reports that according to his research „distinct languages, by labelling certain perspectives on reality as opposed to others, act (i) to encourage their speakers to extend their repertories of cognitive schemas in language-specific ways and (ii) to define for their speakers that particular set of schemas they can make use of to mediate their linguistic acts and to establish explicit points of mental orientation for giving direction to their thoughts‟. It has been shown in this chapter that not only language but also social structure and even geography contribute in different ways to the distinctive nature of the Chinese intellectual heritage. Like all heritages the Chinese intellectual heritage operates as a framework in which incremental and sometimes radical change occurs, but through a strange form of continuity in which points of reference seem to have stability at the time that they are drawn upon but through careful consideration with hindsight can be shown to have a history of movement and transformation of their own. This process too has been indicated in the present chapter. 214 Conclusion The discussion in this chapter has indicated major features of what has been called here the Chinese intellectual heritage. In the discussion of the three preceding chapters the nature of asymmetric knowledge flows, especially as they relate to Chinese concepts in a globalised world, were discussed from different point of view, contemporary and historical. In that discussion the distinctive features of a Chinese intellectual heritage were frequently alluded to but not clearly specified. In the three chapters that will follow this one the Chinese concepts of face, xin and paradoxical integration respectively will be outlined and applied to particular problems of social analysis and theory development. Again, the discussion in these chapters assumes a distinctiveness of Chinese concepts that justifies their application to social theory in order to extend and enrich it. The present chapter bridges these two sets of chapters by providing a fuller discussion of the notion of a Chinese intellectual heritage and indicating what its content is. The chapter has also provided a discussion of the context, geographic, social and linguistic, in which the Chinese intellectual heritage operates and which provide it with characteristic cognitive elements. A demonstration of the manner in which the Chinese intellectual heritage operates, how it is changed and how it continues, providing a sense of persistence in spite of profound transformation, was given in the discussion of the sinicisation of Buddhism over a long period of historical time, from the second century BC to the ninth century AD. The role of intellectual entrepreneurs was indicated in the adaptation and transformation of Indian ideas in order to be accepted into a Chinese milieu, in a manner similar to the practices of intellectual entrepreneurs spelled out in chapter 3. Through this example of the making of Chinese Buddhism the 215 paradigmatic nature of an intellectual heritage was discussed, drawing on the work of the American historian and philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn. In a consideration of the principal strands of Chinese teachings or philosophies the elemental components of the Chinese intellectual heritage were identified. In order to highlight their distinctiveness certain features of this intellectual heritage were contrasted with aspects of Greek and European philosophical developments. This was neither to elucidate a general history of philosophy nor was it to offer a comparative perspective on Chinese and European thought. Rather it was to highlight aspects of Chinese distinctiveness through pertinent contrasts with dissimilar but comparable aspects of European philosophical concerns. The special qualities of an intellectual heritage, its provision of a framework within which alien ideas may be normalised and absorbed, its provision of a sense of continuity at the same time that through its operation it accepts and generates conceptual and intellectual change, its provision of a set of intellectual resources for understanding the cultural world of which it is itself an important component, all of these have been indicated in this chapter by argument, presentation of examples and recourse to the authority of relevant experts. These are also the means through which an intellectual heritage operates. Given the sense of transformation as well as continuity inherent in the idea of an intellectual heritage the context in which such heritages operate and through which they draw a sense of their own solidity has also to be identified. The geographic, social structural and linguistic context of the Chinese intellectual heritage was outlined in the present chapter. The geographic isolation of China, its agrarian economic base and its exclusion from an external vision by virtue of the significance of internal trade and the absence of a sea-born trade except for tribute 216 with the dominated states of South East and East Asia all encouraged a highly distinctive intellectual heritage. The social structure and language of China, which were formed early in its history and are operating still in a remarkably persistent way, are further elements which inform, support, refresh and inculcate the distinctiveness of the Chinese intellectual heritage in its focus on the concrete rather than the abstract, in its perception of wholeness and its sense that all things no matter how dissimilar or opposed nevertheless exist in some fundamental interrelationship through which all things develop and change. The Chinese intellectual heritage, it has been shown in this chapter, projects an image of the world which is also a selfimage of that heritage, of order in chaos and persistence in continuing transformation." @default.
- W9525902 created "2016-06-24" @default.
- W9525902 creator A5020957968 @default.
- W9525902 date "2011-01-01" @default.
- W9525902 modified "2023-09-27" @default.
- W9525902 title "Paradoxical integration : globalised knowledge flows and Chinese concepts in social theory" @default.
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