Body and Mind in Early China: An Integrated Humanities–Science Approach

This article argues against the strong “holist ” position that the early Chinese lacked any concept of mind–body dualism, and more broadly against a “neo-Orientalist ” trend that portrays Chinese thought as radi-cally different from Western thought. In the first half, it makes the case against strong mind–body holism by drawing upon traditional archeo-logical and textual evidence. In the second, it turns to resources from the sciences, arguing that large-scale quantitative–qualitative analyses of early Chinese texts suggest that they embrace a quite vigorous form of mind–body dualism, and further that a huge body of evidence coming out of the cognitive sciences suggests that this is not at all sur-prising. In this section, the role that deep humanistic knowledge can, and should, play in scientific approaches to culture is also explored. The article concludes by suggesting that a mutually informed, human-ities–scientific approach to religious studies is the best way for our field to move forward