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Mind and Body in Early China critiques Orientalist accounts of early China as a radical "holistic" other, which saw no qualitative difference between mind and body. Drawing on knowledge and techniques from the sciences and digital humanities, Edward Slingerland demonstrates that seeing a difference between mind and body is a psychological universal, and that human sociality would be fundamentally impossible without it. This book has implications for anyoneinterested in comparative religion, early China, cultural studies, digital humanities, or science-humanities integration.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Chapter One: The Myth of Holism in Early China
- PART I: Qualitative Approaches to Concepts of Mind and Body
- Chapter Two: Soul and Body: Traditional Archeological and Textual Evidence for Soul-Body Dualism
- Chapter Three: Mind-Body Dualism in the Textual Record
- PART II: Quantitative Approaches to Concepts of Mind and Body
- Chapter Four: Embracing the Digital Humanities: New Methods for Analyzing Texts and Sharing Scholarly Knowledge
- PART III: Methodological Issues in the Interpretation of Textual Corpora
- Chapter Five: Hermeneutical Constraints: Minds in Our Bodies and Our Feet on the Ground
- Chapter Six: Hermeneutical Excesses: Interpretive Missteps and the Essentialist Trap
- Conclusion: Naturalistic Hermeneutics and the End of Orientalism
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Edward Slingerland is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. His research specialties and teaching interests include early Chinese thought, religious studies, cognitive linguistics, ethics, and the relationship between the humanities and the natural sciences.
Summary
Mind and Body in Early China critiques Orientalist accounts of early China as the radical, "holistic" other. The idea that the early Chinese held the "strong" holist view, seeing no qualitative difference between mind and body, has long been contradicted by traditional archeological and qualitative textual evidence. New digital humanities methods, along with basic knowledge about human cognition, now make this position untenable. A large body of empirical evidence suggests that "weak" mind-body dualism is a psychological universal, and that human sociality would be fundamentally impossible without it.
Edward Slingerland argues that the humanities need to move beyond social constructivist views of culture, and embrace instead a view of human cognition and culture that integrates the sciences and the humanities. Our interpretation of texts and artifacts from the past and from other cultures should be constrained by what we know about the species-specific, embodied commonalities shared by all humans. This book also attempts to broaden the scope of humanistic methodologies by employing team-based qualitative coding and computer-aided "distant reading" of texts, while also drawing upon our current best understanding of human cognition to transform our basic starting point. It has implications for anyone interested in comparative religion, early China, cultural studies, digital humanities, or science-humanities integration.
Additional text
Over the last two decades, Slingerland has established himself as one of the leading voices calling for a greater integration between the sciences and the humanities, and Mind and Body in Early China is an excellent example of an effective implementation of this aspiration.
