A preoccupation with cosmology and the correlation of celestial events with terrestrial activity dates back to the very beginnings of Chinese civilization. The existence of such a mindset is shown by archeo-logical discoveries from the Neolithic as well as the early Bronze Age. The belief in heaven-dwelling high gods like Shang Di and Tian also had antecedents in the pre-Shang period. In addition, analysis of scientifically verifiable accounts of planetary massings from the second millennium B.C. suggests that important cosmological and astrological notions took shape much earlier than previously thought. On the basis of this evidence it now appears likely that such conceptions are intimately connected both with influential later beliefs about a Mandate of Heaven, which asserted heavenly intervention as the cause of change in temporal governance, and with later Five Elements speculative schemes, which claimed to discern a preordained phenomenological pattern in the dynastic succession. The cosmicization of experience in the archaic period to which the evidence points and the vehement reassertion of Heaven's Mandate by the Zhou dynasty founders together confirm the epoch-making historical role of the Shang-Zhou transition in decisively reaffirming “patterning oneself in Heaven's image” (xiang tian 象天) as the fundamental metaphor in Chinese political legitimation.

對宇宙論的重視和把天命與人間事件相繋聯的傾向可以追溯到中國文明的早期.這種思想傾向的存在已爲新石器時代及靑銅器時代早期的考古發現所證實.對象״上帝״和״天״這種居住於天堂的神的信仰在商代以前就已存在.先民在公元前兩千年至一千年間已對一系列星聚現象作過觀測並加以記載,其中不少已爲現代科學所證實. 通過對這些記載所做的分析表明, 宇宙論和星占學之主要概念形成的時間比過去專家所假定的要早得多.基於這個事實,這些概念似乎與後來一些非常有影響的有關天命論和五行交替理論的信仰有密切的關係.天命論主張上天的干預是世俗統治改朝換代的原因, 而較晚的五行交替理論則聲稱能夠辨識王朝更替的某種冥中已定的現象模式.已爲事實所證明的中國古代用宇宙現象解釋人世經驗和周代統治者對天命論的不遺餘力的重申均進一歩證實了; 商周兩代王權的更替在强化中國古代政治立法中以״象天״爲其基本的比喩象徵中所起到的劃時代的歷史作用.