Liu Zihua 刘子华 (1899–1992) was one of the 1,500 Chinese students who were sent to France (liufa 留法) between 1919 and 1921 as part of the Diligent Work and Frugal Study Movement (qingong jianxue 勤工俭学). In 1940, Liu completed a PhD thesis at La Sorbonne on “The Cosmology of the Eight Trigrams and Modern Astronomy” (Liou Reference Liou and Liu1940) in which he stated the discovery of a tenth planet in the solar system using both modern astronomy and the numerology of the Book of Changes (Yijing 易经). He drew a parallel between the “modern Western scientific culture” (based on mathematics and applied to the natural realm) and an “ancient Chinese science,” based on the cosmology of the Yijing and which can explain both natural and human phenomena. French sinologist Henri Maspero, member of the board of examiners, put this work in the line of Confucian scholars who, in the seventeenth century and again in the middle of the nineteenth century, faced the challenge of Western science by claiming that it was already contained in the Chinese Classics.
This individual case study is based on historical sources and first aims at contributing to the study of the Work-Study Movement. Secondly, I also rely on anthropological fieldwork to show how Liu's project met issues that were raised by Chinese intellectuals in the early twentieth century and that are still relevant today. Liu is indeed an emblematic figure of the cultural upheaval caused by the introduction of modern Western categories of science, philosophy, religion, and superstition in China at the beginning of the twentieth century (Goossaert Reference Goossaert2007). The modernization process put into question the institutionalization and transmission of traditional knowledge, such as beliefs and practices based on the Yijing, as well as the social status of practitioners. In imperial China, Confucian scholars were devoted to Yijing studies (yixue 易学) and performed a kind of elitist divination. In the Republican political and administrative system, Confucianism lost its institutional structure and its religious dimension was silenced. Confucian scholars became politicians, intellectuals, university professors, or local scientists. Attempts to reevaluate the Chinese cultural heritage through the modern category of science were opposed to a more radical trend inspired by the May Fourth movement, which held traditional culture as a whole responsible for China's backwardness. Liu's project belonged to the first trend but, unfortunately, the second one prevailed and culminated in the communist Cultural Revolution. It was not until the Confucian revival of the 1980s and mostly the 2000s that Liu's fight for recognition would be voiced again.
Liu's story and its extension to this day shows how the Yijing has been appropriated and adapted to meet particular needs and interests in various places and times and how, in particular, it embodied different conceptions of science and literature. It also provides a concrete example of the changing status of knowledge and practices related to the Yijing in China itself. As they are at the crossroads of various disciplines, they emphasize the inadequacy of Western categories of knowledge and provide a relevant frame to call for genuine Chinese categories. Thus, they shed light on the shaping of scientific and academic standards in China and on the power relations that divide the intellectual field between academic and extra-academic disciplines.
I first learned of Liu Zihua in 2008, when I visited the historic site of Youli 羑里, located near Anyang City in Henan Province, where the future King Wen, founder of the Zhou dynasty, had been imprisoned for seven years. Tradition has it that during his stay in this prison, King Wen invented the famous arrangement of Fuxi's eight trigrams into a set of sixty-four hexagrams, which constitutes the original core of the Yijing. At the entrance, a stele presented Youli as the “birthplace of the Yijing, the origin of Chinese culture.” In a small exhibition hall, Liu Zihua was listed among other Yijing specialists, such as Song scholar Zhu Xi 朱熹, philosopher Feng Youlan 冯友兰, and famous contemporary fortune-teller Shao Weihua 邵伟华. A reproduction of a 1940 French newspaper article describing Liu's discovery drew my attention and prompted me to explore Liu Zihua's legacy through French newspapers and archives, Liu's own publications, documents on Liu in Chinese, and various archives kept by Liu's son.
In the first part of this article, I explain the historical and biographical background that can account for Liu's ambition to put his project in the line of Confucian scholars, despite a growing gap with the changing intellectual and political context in China. In the second part, I analyze Liu's argumentation in terms of “analogical reasoning” before exploring, in the third part, the cross-cultural understanding of science and sacred literature as embodied in the classic. The last part describes Liu's life in China from 1945 onwards, as his constant efforts to win recognition first came up against nationalist and communist anti-traditionalism and were eventually integrated in the intellectual and cultural revival of the 1980s.
From Rags to PhD
Biographical information about Liu Zihua mostly comes from a compilation featuring a biographical narrative and iconographic documents, published in 1999 to mark the centenary of Liu's birth (Liu Zihua Xueshu Yanjiuhui 1999). The story provides an idealized portrait of Liu as a man of humble origin who worked his way up to the position of scientist by dint of determination and sacrifice.
Liu was born in 1899 in a poor peasant family in the village of Luodai 洛带, located 20 kilometers east of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province. In his youth, he resented being despised because of his poverty, and hardships convinced him that only education would allow him to improve his lot and that of his family. At twelve, he started working as an apprentice in a silk-trading shop in Chengdu, where he underwent daily chores and bullying. One night, as he could not bear washing toilets anymore, he fled back to his parents' village, where he kept asking to go to school. Moved by his fate, his grandmother deprived herself to send him to a traditional private school (sishu 私塾), and then an educated uncle taught him English. In 1918, his good level in English enabled him to pass the entrance examination to the preparatory school that had just opened in Chengdu as part of the Work-Study Movement. Liu won a scholarship to go to France, where he planned to engage in medical studies, partly because he was hurt to hear foreigners call China the “sick man of Asia,” and partly to carry on the tradition of his grandfather, who used to practice Chinese medicine. Thus, Liu embarked in Shanghai in August 1919 and reached the harbor of Marseille in October 1919.
In France, Liu experienced the harsh existence of liufa. Waiting for a job in the western suburb of Paris, he shared a dormitory room with the future leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Li Weihan 李维汉, a relationship he would reactivate later in China. In postwar France, Chinese students were only granted the most strenuous jobs. Liu was placed at the car plant Saurer, where he worked ten hours a day, mostly at night, earning enough money to live but not to study. In the severe economic crisis that hit France in 1920, two-thirds of liufa lost their job, and many returned to China after the student demonstrations that led to the end of the Work-Study Movement in 1921. Liu joined a Belgian Catholic association, which provided a living and education to students who agreed to be baptized in Belgium. He worked as a handyman at the church but was soon reduced to housework when he refused to demonstrate for the defense of Catholicism, in which he did not believe. As he bitterly resented having to clean toilets again, Liu returned to Paris, where he worked at the Renault factory. Only foreigners were willing to work in such harsh conditions, but the Chinese also had to bear the insults of other workers who called them “filthy Chinese.”
The opportunity to study medicine came at last in 1923: while working at night as a nursing auxiliary in a hospital, Liu enrolled at the Faculty of Science of the University of Paris, where he obtained a “Certificate of Physical, Chemical and Natural Studies” in 1926. Unfortunately, he lost his job one year later and could not attend class anymore. Faced with growing rent arrears, he was forced to begin a hunger strike to move his landlord. But, as his biography points at, nothing could stop his resolution and he eventually found a job at a lacquer workshop. This free-scheduled and piecework job finally allowed him to realize the “work-study” ideal. From 1932 to 1934, he took free courses at the Centre National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM) in work organization and economics and attended conferences by great scholars of the time. Liu's biography, while featuring his integration in French intellectual life, underlines that he did not lose what were considered typical Chinese features: filial piety—Liu drew his determination from the desire to make his mother proud of him and sent her the scholarship granted by the Chinese government—and a deep sense of pride for his people that was exacerbated by the discrimination he experienced in France. In 1932, Liu took part in a competition organized by the Fédération Universitaire Internationale, and his article was awarded a special prize. To him, this achievement seemed like revenge against China's alleged inferiority. During various presentations of his article, Liu was invited, as a Chinese, to speak about the Yijing. Indeed, he had already been confronted with the questions of his French fellows and, as he had felt ashamed not to know the culture of his own ancestors, he had been studying the classic since the mid-1920s. Thus, he initiated a “predestined affinity” (yuan 缘) with the bagua 八卦 (eight trigrams) that would last his lifetime.
Although Liu was involved in a movement that was inspired by the nationalist ideology and that fueled the revolutionary ideals of the Chinese communists, he was a representative of imperial Confucian scholars. According to this ideal model, a modest but virtuous man could rely on intense studying to pass the civil service examination and achieve a high-ranking official position whose moral—and financial—prestige would benefit his entire lineage. For members of lower classes, imperial examination was indeed one of the only ways to rise in the social hierarchy. In line with Confucian ethics, Liu's life story dwells on his willingness to contribute to the development of humanity. He considered success and fame as duties, for they alone would prove his deep gratitude towards his parents and justify their sacrifices.
In some ways, Liu's aspirations seemed to be in line with the reformist ideology conveyed by the Work-Study Movement. His interest in modern science met the need for China to catch up in an area considered as the main reason for Western supremacy. Liu's intellectual curiosity and openness to foreign ideas were also in line with the objectives advocated by the program: “In contrast to the fears of Chinese officials in the 1870s and 1880s that those studying abroad might abandon Chinese customs and mores, frugal study in France [was promoted] precisely to allow Chinese students to be exposed to new values” (Bailey Reference Bailey1988, 447).
However, there was a deep discrepancy between Liu's yearnings and the founding principles of the movement. First, although they considered frugality as a highly moral way of life, Liu and many of his comrades were not concerned with the utopian combination of work and education. Work was only viewed as a means of subsistence, and they would rather study to the best of their ability to get out of factories and never have to go back. This reveals an inherent contradiction of the movement: on the one hand, it aimed at raising the educational level of the Chinese population and drew students from the working classes and inner provinces thanks to grants and low tuition fees; on the other hand, it aimed at fighting the idleness of the elitist graduates of the Chinese new modern schools by focusing on the social and moral functions of overseas studies, rather than on the acquisition of specialized knowledge. Thus, Liu's double refusal to clean toilets strikingly echoed the words of one of the founders of the program: “The more people who went on the scheme the better since ‘even if they do not study anything if at least they learn how to clean toilets it will be worth it.’” (Bailey Reference Bailey1988, 447). Mostly, in opposition to the objective of the movement to eliminate the traditional distinction between manual and mental labor, contempt for manual labor was an important driving force in Liu's personal history: he gave up his position as an apprentice, although it must have been a social promotion in the eyes of a poor peasant family and had been obtained through personal connections, and very early equated manual labor with the bondage and abuse of crude masters. Finally, although Chinese communist historiography later praised the heroic attempt of students to enter the laboring world, some students retained elitist attitudes, scorning the laziness of French workers or the dirtiness of Chinese and foreign workers. They resented being assimilated and mixed with the thousands of Chinese workers (huagong 化工) who had been sent to France to take part in the war effort. Liufa were indeed asked to teach Chinese workers and help reform their superstitious beliefs, lack of discipline, and bad habits to prevent the Chinese as a whole from being a target for Western ridicule.
These elements shed light on an anecdote describing Liu's bitter encounter with a French noble girl who scornfully ignored him as he greeted her in a public park: far from adhering to the reformists' ideals of equality, Liu yearned to be part of the aristocracy. This desire to belong to the elite may explain why his experience of workers' lot, social injustice, and racism did not trigger any political involvement. Thus, despite a particularly favorable environment, his interest in the laboring world, as reflected in the classes he attended at the CNAM, only resulted in a very general discourse about the necessity to work for the prosperity of China and humanity, and his craving to succeed in scientific research merely revealed a desire for personal revenge. This striking feature is still widespread among today's specialists of the Yijing and divinatory arts: their willingness to contribute to the common good does not result in collective commitment but relies solely on individual achievement. Moreover, Liu was grateful towards his host country and probably did not want to jeopardize the hard-won opportunity to study by engaging in revolutionary commitment.
Other factors, specific to the Orientalist ideology that prevailed in Europe at that time, reinforced Liu's fondness for traditional Chinese culture. First, the model of the Confucian scholar claimed by Liu was all the more in line with Europeans' Orientalist thought that it indirectly derived from it. Such Confucianism was precisely a reflection of Max Weber's (Reference Weber[1916] 1951) description, which was itself inspired by the Confucianism that was canonized as authentic Chinese culture by seventeenth-century Jesuits (Hung Reference Hung2003).Footnote 1 From the nineteenth century onwards, a romantic Orientalism spread a mystical vision of the Orient as the common origin of all European philosophy, languages, religions, and cultures. Starting in the 1880s, following the growing influence of Darwinian evolutionism, the romantic respect for the East gave way to scientific racism in the field of Oriental studies. In France in particular, racist writings by Arthur de Gobineau enjoyed great popularity: “De Gobineau coined the idea of ‘yellow peril’ and treated the ‘Chinese race’ as a disease of the world” (Hung Reference Hung2003, 270). Finally, whether they praised or denigrated the East, these intellectual networks conveyed a stereotyped image of an unchanging China, which also influenced the way Liu understood his own culture.
In such a context, Liu joined the romantic trend of Orientalism and adopted its positive view of China, as simplistic as it was. Thus, Liu gave a lecture in one of the many clubs that conceived a passion for Eastern spirituality: “At the Cercle Addéiste, Mr. Liou Tse Houa, Orientalist: Toward a universal religion” (Journal des débats du dimanche 1934). He also began a comparative study between Western medicine and Yijing trigrams and wrote an essay entitled “Towards the UNION of Science, Tradition and Facts, in order to know the problem of LIFE, SEX and initiatory or religious symbolism.” There is no doubt that this romantic and esoteric Orientalism reinforced (or taught him?) Liu's conception of the Yijing as the symbol of a so-called essence of Chinese mentality of which he, as a Chinese, would be a natural holder. The positive image of China fostered his ambition to stand as the representative of an ancient culture rooted in modernity, despite a growing gap with intellectual and political developments in China, where ancient knowledge and customs were precisely denounced as “old things.” It is thus not surprising that Liu's thesis conveyed the same ideas that arose from the confrontation between Confucian ideology and Western science in the seventeenth century and came up again vigorously in the second half of the nineteenth century.
How Liu Discovered a Planet through Analogical Reasoning
Liu's main objective was to show that the latest discoveries of Western modern science were consistent with the structure of the Yijing, and consequently to provide a synthesis of the two methods to analyze phenomena. After studying the “small universe” (the body), Liu turned to the “big universe” (the solar system). Considering the cosmology described in the Yijing as the symbolic expression of the structure and changes that govern the universe, he began to compare it with Western knowledge of the solar system. In 1930, the discovery of Pluto forced him to reconsider his calculations and put him on the track of a tenth planet. As astronomers from all over the world competed to discover new planets, Liu was eager to expose his theory to the scientific community and enrolled in a PhD program at the University of Paris in 1937.
Liu aimed at bringing together modern astronomy and what he called the “Cosmology of pa Koua” (bagua). This “traditional Chinese science” consisted of four steps: first, match the eight trigrams with the observed phenomenon through various analogies; second, apply the features and rules that govern the relations between the trigrams (as exposed in the Yijing) to the studied phenomenon; third, deduce the characteristics of the phenomenon and explain how it operates; and fourth, corroborate the results with the data of modern science so as to prove the scientific nature of the “Science of pa Koua.”
In the first chapter of his thesis, Liu defined the concepts and principles of the “Science of pa Koua.” This science analyzes all possible arrangements of two principles, negative yin and positive yang. Their interactions, as symbolized by the eight trigrams, are at the basis of all physical phenomena:
Each Koua represents a phenomenon, a character, an organism, a color etc. . . . [The meaning of gua] can perfectly be extended and developed, one only has to make correct interpretations when generalizing the texts of I Ching. (Liou Reference Liou and Liu1940, 44–45)
To combine a trigram with a phenomenon requires an interpretation that must be guided by two principles. The first one is called “Koua multiformism”: gua have a broader meaning than the phenomena they represent; therefore, matching a gua with a phenomenon requires selecting the features of the gua that correspond to the situation:
This choice is particularly difficult when it comes to forecast or deduction. This is one of the reasons why the science of pa Koua is easier in verification. This also explains why one can get different conclusions using the same Koua, although only one is right. (Liou Reference Liou and Liu1940, 48)
The second principle is “Koua interdependence.” To determine the characteristics of a gua,
it is not enough to look at its configuration, one must also take into account all the processes that led to its formation. It follows that Koua are not independent because they all have the same origin. Therefore, one must determine each time the process which corresponds to the case in question. (Liou Reference Liou and Liu1940, 49)
In the second chapter, Liu sought to establish a correspondence between the planets of the solar system and gua. First, he matched the planets of Chinese ancient astronomy with Western modern planets by comparing their orbital period. Thus, the “Seven Regulators” referred to the Sun, the Moon, Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Mercury, and Venus, and the “Planets of the Four Corners” were associated with Pluto, Uranus, Neptune, and an unknown planet. Secondly, he matched the Chinese celestial bodies with gua (the eight basic trigrams to which he added some double gua, i.e., hexagrams) by linking the properties of the celestial bodies and the features of the gua as described in the Yijing and in its numerous exegeses.Footnote 2 Lastly, through the medium of Chinese ancient celestial bodies, Liu associated the gua with the modern planets.
In the final chapter, Liu confirmed the “Cosmology of pa Koua” with data drawn from modern astronomical observations and concluded with the prediction of a new planet. First, he relied on a traditional association of gua by pairs to arrange the twelve celestial bodies in a set of six couples, one of which was formed by Uranus and the unknown planet. Secondly, he provided quantitative evidence to support this arrangement: the sum of the rotation speed of associated planets was constant. Having built a system of equations with a single unknown, Liu could calculate the rotation speed of the new planet. He followed a similar pattern to determine the density and the distance of the new planet, which he named Proserpina after the daughter of Jupiter in Roman mythology.
Although one cannot but praise Liu's sincere efforts to adopt the principles required in a formal academic work, his scientific pretense hid many specious arguments. However, it is interesting to analyze the logic that underlay this endeavor to bring together Western and Chinese sciences. Since Liu had to redo his calculations after the discovery of Pluto, one can imagine how he proceeded: coming up with the idea of a correspondence between the trigrams and the planets of the solar system, he juggled with the planets' physical data to find constant ratios that matched his theoretical framework, even if it entailed arranging not only mathematical ratios but also the symbolism of the trigrams. Then, the discovery of Pluto created an imbalance in the number of planets and led him on the track of a tenth planet to be discovered. One can understand that from his point of view, the two sciences were complementary. To go beyond contingency, experimental data had to be part of a general law: without the bagua theory, the approximate mathematical constants he highlighted would have appeared as the result of chance or biased manipulation. Conversely, the general and speculative bagua theory had to be validated by the experimental data of modern science: to “discover” this planet, that is, in the language of astronomy of that time, to express its rotation speed, density, and distance in mathematical terms, he had to confront the bagua science with modern astronomy.
We have here a striking example of “analogical reasoning,”Footnote 3 described by Alexei Volkov in his article “Analogical Reasoning in Ancient China” (Volkov Reference Volkov1992). It can be defined in a simple way as “a is to A what b is to B.” Volkov suggests a useful analysis in terms of “mapping.” Analogical reasoning depicts a source domain (in Liu's reasoning, the bagua) and a target domain (the solar system), each of them constituted of related objects or facts with certain properties. The mapping operation is an attempt to verify the facts alleged in the unknown target domain with the facts established in the familiar source domain.
The characteristics of this type of reasoning are particularly relevant to Liu's demonstration. First, the mapping process not only matches but actually builds the correspondence between the two domains: “the attempt to map the objects from the source domain will imply either a check in the target domain . . . or a process to find (or construct) such elements in the target domain to serve as images” (Volkov Reference Volkov1992, 22). One can understand how difficult Liu's task must have been. He did not have any arrangement of gua beforehand (as so many possibilities existed) and had to grope simultaneously in both domains for an arrangement of gua that justified some numerical relations between the planets. This process, which Volkov calls a “constructing proof”—to find or construct an object in a domain so that its properties or relations are verified in another (Volkov Reference Volkov1992, 23)—can explain why, as Liu put it, the science of bagua is easier in verification. Moreover, this type of reasoning has a strong symbolic resonance: the mapping process makes the source domain become “symbolic,” which means that all of its properties and relations must be kept in mind when dealing with the target domain. Again, this is what Liu expressed through the principle of “Koua interdependence.” Lastly, analogical reasoning can be applied to different levels: to demonstrate the existence of the new planet and to “prove” the scientific nature of the Science of bagua. This kind of demonstration, in which analogy is at the same time a mode and a result of argumentation (Chemla Reference Chemla1992, 11), suggests that all the purposes of the text should be considered. When Liu claimed that gua were to Chinese science what numbers were to modern science, he sought to extend the scientific property of modern science to Chinese science. Beyond the scientific discovery, Liu wished to prove that Chinese logic was not inferior to Western logic and to display, in the tradition of Joseph Needham, the value of Chinese traditional science.
However, as Liu artificially brought together two modes of reasoning that are embedded in different cultural contexts,Footnote 4 he ended up giving a counterproductive presentation of the two sciences. Instead of highlighting the complementarities of the two sciences, this clumsy combination revealed Liu's misunderstanding of modern science and Westerners' poor understanding of analogical reasoning. On the one hand, Liu reduced modern science to mere mathematical calculations that appeared as a kind of Western mania with which one had to comply to gain institutional recognition. Thus, while he had already discovered the similarity between the cosmology of bagua and the solar system, he had to keep calculating because he knew that “Western science cannot do without data, as one of their sayings goes: ‘Without numbers, there is no science.’” (Liu Zihua Xueshu Yanjiuhui 1999, 15). On the other hand, Liu introduced the French reader to a “Chinese science” that did not draw its legitimacy from the accuracy of measurements nor from the testability of hypotheses but from mere formal connections, correct generalizations, and proper interpretations of the Yijing. This science finally seemed to be based on fallacious arguments that disguised a rhetorical device as a mode of proof.
Thus, beyond this mode of reasoning, Liu's work incites exploration of the historical process through which the Yijing has become a source of scientific knowledge.
From Sacred Scripture to Science: Cross-Cultural Understanding of the Yijing
How did Liu obtain a doctoral degree from the board of examiners, eminent sinologist Henri Maspero among them? Liu enrolled in History of Science at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Paris under the direction of historian Abel Rey, who sought advice from Maspero. The report written by Maspero first caused Rey's refusal:
The thesis of Mr. Liou Tse Houa (The Cosmogony of Foshi and Modern Astronomy) is a singularity. As for the substance, it is nonexistent. Mr. Liou may have (I am not in a position to judge) some knowledge of modern astronomy; but he has no idea of ancient Astronomy and its history, even in China. All translations are tendentious: he does not only replace ancient Chinese philosophical terms by modern European scientific terms, which I can't blame him too much for because after all, it is in the alleged equivalence of each other that lies the basic idea of his thesis, but even out of this process, the texts are always distorted to make them say what Mr. Liou wants to see and does not find. Moreover, there is no criticism, texts of every period are mingled regardless of their date. But as the theories of Mr. Liou take us back over 2,000 years before any written document, this lack of criticism is less worrisome than the state of mind of an author who has been able to imagine and complete such a work.
This state of mind is the only interesting fact of the work. The author is a belated representative of a variety of Scholars which flourished in China in the second half of the 19th century, but, I thought, was extinct among the younger generation at least. The vanity of scholars consoled itself over the scientific inferiority of Chinese civilization with the assertion that the whole Western science was already virtually included (but not exposed) in the Yi-king, one of the Chinese Classics, and that it is where we must look for it rather than in the school of European scholars.
It is not very difficult to give an opinion on this thesis. When Mr. Liou introduced this subject to me two years ago (I do not remember exactly), I refused to take it: as I was external to the University, I could not afford to accept it and graduate what is in short a tissue of extravagances. But I already had the same impression as Mr. Abel Rey about the possible psychological interest of this work, and I advised (not seriously I admit) Mr. Liou to ask a professor of psychology or sociology. I was not surprised that he did not accept my suggestion. (Archives of the Paris Rectorate 1939)
After Liu corrected tendentious translations and added an introduction to his thesis, Maspero wrote a second report in which he explained the reasons that led him to allow the thesis defense:
He clearly states [in the introduction] that he does not intend to dissert on the history of science, but wants to give a concrete example of the application to astronomy of a process of interpretation of Chinese Classics to which we, in Europe, do not give the attention it deserves. There is indeed no doubt that at all times, a large number of Chinese scholars have believed that the sages of antiquity had possessed a superhuman science, and that all the Chinese and foreign discoveries of later centuries were already contained in principle in their writings, especially in the Yi-king, the most obscure of the classic books. This state of mind has been particularly strong in regard to astronomy since the Jesuits introduced the Ptolemaic astronomy in the 16th and 17th centuries, and has reappeared strongly in the late 19th century to justify the adoption of Western sciences in public education in China. It has thus been shown that in early antiquity the Chinese had known electricity, steam, airships, airplanes, that they knew the earth revolves around the sun, etc. These ideas are less conspicuous nowadays, but Mr. Liou's thesis proves that they still exist. . . . The fundamental thesis is not specifically Chinese: we also had similar attempts in Europe, such as efforts to match the seven days of the biblical Creation with geological epochs. What is curious is how the Chinese mind reaches these conclusions through processes which are quite different from ours and which Mr. Liou's discussions make us grasp in their functioning. It is perhaps even more curious that Mr. Liou, like most Chinese scholars, does not even realize that his work belongs to religious exegesis and Confucian apologetics and not, as he believes, to positive science. . . .
He recognizes that it can't be an experimental science and opposes this notion of a science which, like modern science, develops gradually by dint of hypothesis and theories which successively destroy each other after new experiments, that of an intuitive theoretical science which would have known directly the basic facts of the constitution of the world, regardless of any application to particular sciences. Here again, Mr. Liou expresses with a certain candor what think, but do not dare to say aloud, many of his countrymen (and Japanese on the top of all that) who believe in the superiority of this comprehensive “science” the ancient sages would have possessed, over our little specific sciences which are always being rebuilt, but that some human respect and the fear of ridicule restrain from speaking. I have known a Japanese botanist who assured me that the whole theory of evolution was contained in the Saddharma pundarika sutra, a book of mystical Buddhism translated into Chinese which is the main text of the Buddhist sect of which he was a devout member; but I never got him to write even a short article on what he expressed orally with great conviction. Mr. Liou has no such hesitation, and that is why his work is of interest. (Archives of the Paris Rectorate 1940)
Liu defended his thesis in November 1940 and published it in Paris (Liou Reference Liou and Liu1940). Although some newspapers echoed his discovery, it had little impact in the scientific community.
Maspero's comments on Liu's work shed light on the cross-cultural understanding of science and literature as embodied in the Yijing. As Maspero explained in the report, most Chinese intellectuals in the late nineteenth century considered the Yijing as a sacred scripture that could be used to interpret any natural phenomenon.Footnote 5 Similarly, Liu believed that the ancient sages had a “superior knowledge, even in science; in fact, their knowledge was not gained through the ordinary education of common people, but stemmed from their nature of Sage” (Liou Reference Liou and Liu1940, 137). Indeed, Maspero referred to the thesis known as “the Chinese origin of Western science” (xixue zhongyuan 西学中源) that developed in China in the seventeenth century in response to the introduction of Western science by the Jesuits (Elman Reference Elman2005, 169–77). According to this theory, Western knowledge, especially mathematics and astronomy, originated in the Chinese Classics from which they were transmitted to the West. Whereas it developed and was gradually improved in the West, this knowledge got lost in China, due to gradual decline or historic turmoil. It came back to China in the shape of Western science and stimulated, on the one hand, the rediscovery of Chinese ancient mathematics and justified, on the other hand, the study of Western science.
Such an argument was influenced by the policy of accommodation preached by the Jesuits. The Jesuits' efforts to prove that the Chinese Classics were compatible with the Christian doctrine were in line with the claim of the Chinese origin of all European knowledge in the fields of both religion and science. In particular, French Jesuit Joachim Bouvet (1656–1730) and other “Figurists”Footnote 6 in China analyzed the texts and symbols of the Yijing to find hidden messages of the biblical revelation. Like a distant echo to Liu's research, the Figurists tried to equate the Yijing's concepts with biblical terms and “thought the hexagrams and cosmic diagrams in the Change Classic contained the key to reducing all phenomena to quantitative elements” (Elman Reference Elman2005, 171). Indeed, in the long history of China's encounter with the West, the Yijing has been used on both sides as cross-cultural evidence of religious or scientific primacy. “The Chinese origin of Western science” was inspired by the Figurists' logic, whereas the Figurists themselves asserted that the Yijing had been brought to China by one of the sons of Noah after the Deluge. When Bouvet presented the Yijing to the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1676–1716), he, for his part, saw it as a confirmation of his binary system (Smith Reference Smith2012, 171–79).
Maspero's assessment also reflected common European academic discourse on the Yijing based on late nineteenth-century translations.Footnote 7 The Yijing was not considered as a sacred classic but as a historical text that was not an object of study for mathematicians or natural scientists but for philologists. In Maspero's words, Liu's work “belongs to religious exegesis and Confucian apologetics and not, as he believes, to positive science” (or even to history of science). In addition, many translators and scholars showed little respect for the classic. In particular, Albert Terrien de Lacouperie's low opinion of Chinese commentators echoes Maspero's words: “Their approach to analyzing the text is, he claims, ‘undeserving the attention of a man of common sense; it is a compilation of guesses and suggestions, a monument of nonsense.’ [Terrien] states scornfully that there are many educated Chinese who believe that ‘electricity, steam-power, astronomical laws, [the] sphericity of the earth, etc., are all . . . to be found in the Yh-King’” (Terrien de Lacouperie Reference Terrien de Lacouperie1883, quoted in Smith Reference Smith2012, 186). In China itself, the Classics lost a great deal of prestige after the civil service examination system was abolished in 1905. The Yijing was more and more considered as a mere historical artifact whose wisdom was of little use in the modernization of the country.
The conception of the Yijing as a source of scientific knowledge mainly relies on the scriptural authority and highly symbolic style of the classic. In the view of Western modern scientists, its analytical vocabulary provides mere rhetorical explanations and belongs to the realm of literature or philosophy. Needham has shown how the system of knowledge based on the Yijing's correlations did not lead to modern science. “Rather, the Yijing, with its great scriptural authority, became, in Needham's phrase, a universal filing system – a device for ‘pigeon-holing novelty and then doing nothing about it.’ It ‘tempted those who were interested in Nature to rest in explanations that were no real explanation at all’” (Smith Reference Smith1991, 127). Although Liu tried to make a positive contribution to science by discovering a planet, his work was but another attempt to put symbolic and literary evidence on the same level as direct observation and mathematical evidence, and his prediction remained on the side of divination.
The two-way movement that aims at relating the Yijing to the Bible or to modern science shows how the cross-cultural understanding of the Yijing is closely linked to the issue of translation. All translations—by Jesuits, late nineteenth-century European scholars, and later scholars—are guided by various motives and reflect the preoccupation of their time. Liu's research also reveals how translation works as a supplemental layer in correlative thinking. It allows the translator to virtually build the equivalence he or she wants to demonstrate. Liu linked trigrams and planets by matching his own—tendentious, in Maspero's phrase—translation of the Yijing's concepts with modern scientific concepts.
In 1924, Richard Wilhelm (1873–1930) published a German translation that changed the destiny of the Yijing in the Western world. With its famous introduction by C. G. Jung, the book enjoyed great popularity from the 1950s onwards, when it was gradually translated into European languages. It paved the way to a global craze in the 1960s and 1970s when the Chinese Classic became a source of inspiration in the fields of psychology, self-development, countercultural spiritualities, and art (Smith Reference Smith2012, 188–210). Liu's dissertation was thus republished in 1980 by Librairie de Médicis (Liou 1980). This publishing house had published the first French version of Wilhelm's translation by Etienne Perrot in 1968, and also published a French translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower by Liu (Liou Reference Liou and Liu1969), a Taoist text that Wilhelm had also translated into German and published in 1929 with an introduction by Jung. Even today, Liu's approach to the Yijing continues to arouse interest in the Western world. Many authors follow the logic that was once used by the Figurists to relate the Yijing with various scientific concepts or spiritual doctrines (Hacker, Moore, and Patsco Reference Hacker, Moore and Patsco2002; Smith Reference Smith2012, 192–93).
The modest but benevolent reception of Liu's discovery in France in the early 1940s did not prepare him for the difficulties he would encounter when returning to China in 1945. Indeed, his commitment to the Confucian ideal and to the Yijing as a symbol of traditional Chinese culture was in blatant contradiction with both the nationalist ideology and the communist revolution.
The Chinese Years and the Time of Controversies
Liu's biography disguises under the usual embellishments the fact that his work was not well received in China. Liu landed in Chongqing in October 1945 aboard a U.S. military aircraft. He met Zhang Daofan 张道藩, then a senior official at the Ministry of Education and a former student of the Work-Study Movement. To help him find a job, Zhang asked Liu to join the Kuomintang. But Liu, who devoted all his heart to science, refused to “eat the rice of politics.” He soon faced great difficulties, which, he said, were not unrelated to the academic environment of the country. Thus, he accused the intellectuals of the modern trend (xinpai zhishifenzi 新派知识分子), who, because China had been defeated by foreigners since the late Qing, rejected traditional Chinese culture as a whole, in particular in the field of technology. Indeed, although his work was popular abroad, some in China considered it as heresy (yiduan xieshuo 异端邪说) or a mere farce. Thus, to refute Liu's thesis, the famous Chinese astronomer Zhang Yuzhe 张钰哲 published an article entitled “Do you know how planets are discovered?” (Zhang 1945).
From 1949 to 1978, Liu's story is a sad testimony of the ideological turmoil that hit China and for which Scholar Liu seemed so ill-prepared. While Liu was already compelled to live on relatives' generosity and had begun to translate his thesis into Chinese, his situation deteriorated further after the Liberation, when he was labeled a dissident.Footnote 8 He resolved to contact Li Weihan, then a senior official, who appointed him counselor to the Government of Sichuan Province. When Liu learned that the council was a political body, he rejected the offer three times, but eventually accepted the position. As he came from a poor family and was outraged by social injustice, Liu quickly adopted the political views of the Communist Party and took part in the agrarian revolution and various campaigns that tracked down the enemies of the people. Liu was an inveterate researcher and, as he attended the mandatory courses on Marxist materialism, he began to apply the cosmology of bagua to Marxist theories. But he was accused of “heterodoxy” (zuodao pangmen 左道旁门). Bagua were indeed condemned as feudal superstition (fengjian mixin 封建迷信) and despised as a vulgar trick used by fortune-tellers to fool people. During the Cultural Revolution, Liu was accused of being a secret agent in the service of foreign powers, and the results of a lifetime of work were denounced as the fake goods of an imposter.Footnote 9 Red Guards searched his home several times and destroyed valuable documents.
This story depicts Liu's touching simplicity as he tried to fit in with the new ideology. But he could not give up the traditional social codes and lamented the perversion of a society that did not value the old ways of social recognition anymore. His three refusals of the counselor position cannot but remind one of the scholar-officials described in the Romance of Three Kingdoms whose prestige depended on how many times the prince had to beg them before they agreed to work for him. However, if the time of old Confucian scholars seemed definitely over, the gradual questioning of the intellectual categories inherited from nationalist and communist ideologies would allow long-standing issues to be expressed under new forms.
In the reform era from 1978 onwards, publications about Liu Zihua increased, including several dozen in the 2000s. Various controversies shed light on the different networks involving Liu's work, and on the arguments that were convened to accuse or defend it, depending on the changing intellectual context of Chinese society from the 1980s to the 2000s. Thus, Liu's research would be successively connected with the mid-1980s cultural fever, the yixue revival, the qigong fever, and the “popular science” movement (see Liu Zihua Xueshu Yanjiusuo and Yang 1997).
During the “cultural fever,” intellectuals questioned the nature of Chinese culture and its potential role in the modernization of the country. Liu's scheme, devoid of any critical dimension, was used to support the most opposed theses about the specificity of Chinese culture or about its responsibility in China's backwardness. To celebrate the “Science Spring” in 1978, Liu wrote an article in which he predicted that Proserpina would be observed in 1982. He sent it to the National Science Congress held in Beijing in March 1978, thus reviving the controversy. Confronted with new kinds of accusations, “pseudoscience” (weikexue 伪科学) or “spiritual pollution” (jingshen wuran 精神污染), Liu sought support from former academics and local officials. In 1987, General Zhang Zhenhuan 张震环, former head of the National Defense Scientific Committee, donated 3,000 yuan and made four recommendations: take care of Liu's health; dedicate staff to save and preserve Liu's academic work; edit Liu's book in Chinese; and record Liu's academic knowledge before it is too late. Such a program foreshadowed the preservation of Liu's heritage that would take place in the 1990s. When his thesis was published in Chinese at last in 1989, Liu sent a copy to Needham, who acknowledged his work (Liu Zihua 1989).Footnote 10 In the preface, Liu emphasized that his work differed both from divination and yixue. Liu mainly looked for official (academic and beyond, political) recognition, like imperial scholar-officials who put their knowledge of the Classics at the service of state administration.
However, various signs show that Liu was gradually integrated into other circles. References to his work shifted from academic to extra-academic science and from the scientific field to the field of “culture” and popular practices, such as divination. Thus, the Qigong kexue bao 气功科学报 (Journal of scientific qigong) published an article on Liu. Similarly, whereas Liu used to refuse to be associated with yixue, he took part in one of the first yixue conferences held in post-Maoist China, and his work drew the attention of famous yixue specialist and fortune-teller Tang Mingbang 唐明邦. Reviving religious and intellectual traditions claimed affiliation with an aging Liu, who increasingly appeared as the last remnant of a lost world.
After Liu died in 1992, the conversion of his heritage into patrimony gathered momentum. His wife and son created the Liu Zihua Research Association, and local gazetteers published articles about Liu (see, e.g., Bashu shizhi 1999).
Since the 2000s, Liu's legacy has been associated with another debate on the issues of categorization and legitimization of non-institutionalized knowledge. Defenders of “popular science” (minjian kexue 民间科学) gather around Song Zhenghai 宋正海, historian of science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who has been organizing “academic conferences on living in the universe (Tiandi shengren xueshu jiangzuo 天地生人学术讲座)” since 1990. Song invites academic researchers and extra-academic scientists (minjian kexuejia 民间科学家) to present their research on traditional Chinese culture, the development of modern science, and the comparison between Western and Eastern cultures. Detractors of pseudoscience are represented by Fang Zhouzi 方舟子, a U.S.-based Chinese nicknamed the “science cop,” who denounces scientific fraud and plagiarism in China on his website New Threads and has been attacking Song's conferences since 1998.
In 2005, Fang wrote an article in which he denounced flaws in Liu's theory and denied any connection between Proserpina and the dwarf planet Eris discovered by U.S. researchers in 2003 (Fang 2005). Liu's wife and son sued Fang for libel as well as four other media outlets, including the newspaper Beijing kejibao, which had ranked Liu's prediction among “2005 ten greatest scientific frauds in China” (Sina keji shidai 2006). In November 2006, the Beijing Court ruled that Fang went beyond academic criticisms and had defamed Liu by calling him a cheat. In this case, Song stood up for Liu's cause and organized a one-day conference in his honor at the Institute of the History of Natural Sciences in July 2006. Moreover, in response to accusations of pseudoscience towards Liu and to several attacks against the teaching of Chinese medicine at university, Song launched a petition to ask for the withdrawal of the word “pseudoscience” from the 2003 Law for the Popularization of Science (kepufa 科普法) so that it would not be used to denigrate Chinese traditional culture anymore (Song 2006).
The comparison with the history of the qigong movement shows how Liu's craving for institutional support has been embedded in a struggle between two sides of scientific ideology in China. The first one, still advocated by today's “popular science” movement, was a nationalist scientism: the formation of a new scientific discipline of qigong would result in the purification of Chinese tradition from superstitions, while propelling China to the forefront of science. The second one was a more fundamentalist trend directly inspired by the May Fourth movement ideology. It advocated absolute materialism, rejected paranormal phenomena, and despised tradition (Palmer Reference Palmer2002, 156–57). Indeed, by the 1950s, Liu's work could have been included, along with qigong, in the political project to use traditional culture for the purpose of the modern state. However, qigong was eventually repressed as a dangerous sect at the end of the 1990s. It was not until the 2000s that a Confucian revival favored the development of Liu's heritage, which I observed when I met Liu's son in Chengdu in 2010.
We visited Liu's birthplace, the town of Luodai, which is now a touristic site as the oldest Hakka city in western China. Liu, who was of Hakka origin, is exhibited at the Hakka Museum of Sichuan, together with Zhu De, Deng Xiaoping, and other celebrities of Hakka origin. This museumification goes along with the development of historical studies on the Work-Study Movement that focus on the regional origins of students (Xian and Tian 2006) and studies on clan genealogy that identify Liu Zihua among ancestors of the Luodai Liu clan (Zhonghua Liushi Zupu Wang 2009). We also went to the luxurious cemetery Changsongsi, built on the Longquan mountainsides well known for their fengshui (Bruun Reference Bruun2003, 114)Footnote 11 and where Liu's ashes were transferred in 1995. In a large memorial pavilion, a bust of Liu overlooks rows of graves hidden in the greenery. On the grave, Liu's name is framed with the engraved covers of his thesis in French and Chinese editions. Another particularity shows the sanctity of Liu's writings: the Chinese edition of his thesis was held at the head of the funeral procession along with the more usual picture of the deceased. The generous welcome of Liu's son, as well as the financial means and the energy he devotes to perpetuate the memory of his father, certainly reflect the high living standard he enjoys thanks to his activity in real estate. But it also shows the concern of a new economic elite about gaining a greater legitimacy by acquiring a cultural capital of which it feels deprived. Thus, Liu's son's commitment can be compared with the craze for the expensive guoxue 国学 (national studies) classes that various institutes provide to an audience of businessmen seeking to learn about the history of China and the Classics.
Conclusion
Liu's case is a striking example of how the understanding and reception of the Yijing evolved across space and time. From the 1920s onwards in France, Liu perpetuated the long-lasting Chinese conception of the Yijing as a sacred text with unchallenged authority. In particular in the realm of science, he reasserted the interpretation that had been pervasive under the Qing that the classic could explain virtually any natural phenomenon. Meanwhile, in China, the Yijing was more and more being considered as a mere historical artifact that was of no use in the modernization of the country. In France, Liu did not obtain the academic support he had wished for, as scholarship on the Yijing was influenced by the often contemptuous translations of the late nineteenth century and by positivist conceptions of science that rejected the scientific pretense of the classic. Liu's work mainly echoed the public vogue for religious syncretism and Oriental spirituality. From the 1950s onwards, Richard Wilhelm's translation became influential and paved the way to the worldwide success of the Yijing as a source of spiritual and psychological inspiration. Liu's dissertation was being republished in France but Liu, who was back in China at that time, was accused of spreading feudal superstitions and experienced the harsh destruction of the Cultural Revolution. Although Liu seems to have been fighting against the current all his life, his endeavor is not isolated anymore. The Yijing has become a source of cultural pride in China again and continues to be associated with scientific discoveries both in China and the Western world.
Indeed, Liu's example underlines the connection between the traditional figure of the literary scholar and the contemporary “amateur scientist” in China. In the context of the civil service examination system, unsuccessful applicants were far more numerous than successful candidates. They constituted the sociological basis of these educated but non-specialized individuals who were deprived of the official title of shidafu 士大夫 (literati, functionary) and contented themselves with the status of shiren士人 (educated man, scholar). At the time of the expansion of divination practices in the Song period (960–1279), these former students turned to divinatory arts as an alternative to official professional careers (Liu Xiangguang 2005). Today, amateur scientists include retired researchers from public institutions and educated amateurs who conduct intellectual activities outside academic institutions. They are subject to the power relations and divisions that characterize non-institutionalized knowledge, such as divination. In their lack of standards and official social structures, practitioners are torn between a commitment they undertake for the sake of the community and strictly individual practices that partly rely on charismatic authority. While they claim the positive value of divination for the entire society, they inevitably come to denigrate their competing colleagues and seem more interested in distinguishing themselves than in establishing common principles. As Liu put it: “It is unfortunate that these studies, by their very nature, are constantly renewed and that everyone, starting from the same principles but following one's own trend, comes necessarily to different results” (Liou Reference Liou and Liu1940, 140).
Lastly, Liu's story puts forward the role of analogy in intellectual and cultural assimilation. Despite its weakness as a mode of proof, analogical reasoning is a powerful teaching tool that exemplifies and explains the unknown through the known. Such is the educational virtue of rites that transmit the laws of the cosmos by reproducing them (Levi Reference Levi1992, 49–50). Analogy also helps establish communication between antagonistic domains: Liu was right to stress that his study would help people understand Chinese scholars' modes of reasoning. Mostly, it shows how the Yijing symbolizes the art of cultural assimilation so often celebrated in Chinese history. Liu sinicized modern science by expressing and interpreting it in terms of the Yijing. In his analysis of the shaping of academic disciplines in China, Thierry Meynard (Reference Meynard2008) qualifies the view that academic disciplines have accepted “science” as their final standard and radically broken with traditional forms of knowledge that are denigrated as “unscientific.”Footnote 12 In today's postmodern world, with its awareness of the historical and contingent character of modernity, it seems more difficult to assess whether Liu presented a mere rhetorical manipulation or another explanatory scheme different from the one that modern science regards as legitimate.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Liu Shaohua, who kindly welcomed me in Chengdu and showed me Liu Zihua's records. I also thank Lei Kang for introducing me to Chengdu's cultural scene.
