Cosmic Order Changed, Human Order As Well:the Transformation Of Cosmology In Late Qing Period

An organic cosmology was the dominant cosmology in the long history of ideas and faith in traditional China. It claimed that since Tian (Tao, Li, Tai Chi, etc.) itself contained basic materials, driving force, rules and anima, the cosmos could be naturally generated, evolved, developed and self-operated without a transcendent personal God to create and maintain it. This organic cosmology was a common presupposition in traditional China, which was also the theoretical foundation of the Chinese religion.The personal and the impersonal objects of faith gave rise to two sub-systems in the Chinese religion:the first one was called polytheism, because there were more than one personal divine beings in a religious system; The second one was called pantheism, identifying the supreme divine being with the cosmos or the cosmic order instead of a personal God. No matter which kind of divine beings they were, the objects of faith in Chinese religion were not only immanent in the cosmos, but also based upon the traditional organic cosmology. Therefore, beliefs of the divine beings in Chinese religion were inevitably influenced by the transformation of cosmology.The challenge to the traditional organic cosmology mainly came from Christianity and modern science in late Qing Period. The natural theology made the Christians to take science as a tool for their missionary successfully. It believed that the cosmos was just like an extremely exquisite and complex machine, which could never be self-generated without the creation and maintenance of a transcendent personal God. Through this channel, the scientific explanations of comets, raining, earthquakes, geography, diseases and soul etc. entered into the Chinese world of knowledge, ideas and faith, changing Chinese understanding of the cosmos, and eventually persuaded Chinese to abandon their traditional theory of yin-yang and five elements. This scientific cosmology served as an evidence of the existence of the Christian God, but it also posed a serious challenge to Chinese religion built on the traditional organic cosmology.Under the pressure, Chinese intellectuals actively chose another scientific cosmology, the Cosmic Evolutionism, a modified version of the social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and Thomas Henry Huxley. It comprised the Kant-Laplace nebulas hypothesis, Darwin’s biological theory of evolution, but expressed totally in terms of traditional Chinese organic cosmology, it can also be seen as a modern version of traditional Chinese organic cosmology. The Cosmic Evolutionism also believed that the cosmos that originated from certain basic materials or a cosmic order was the result of cosmic self-evolution, rather than the creation of a transcendent personal God. As a scientific organic cosmology, The Cosmic Evolutionism was very persuasive and attractive to Chinese intellectuals who had taken the traditional organic cosmology for granted for thousands of years. With its significant popularization, the cosmology of Chinese intellectuals shifted in general from the traditional organic cosmology to this modern scientific organic cosmology.Nevertheless, the Cosmic Evolutionism was more similar to the Taoist cosmology than the Confucian one. The subtle and critical difference between them was that the former two cosmologies ascertained that the cosmos and the cosmic order had no moral attributes, but the Confucian cosmology was highly moralized. Therefore, Tian, the most important divine being in Chinese pantheism became no longer concerned about good and evil and it neither rewarded virtue nor punished vice. On the contrary, it encouraged people to actively take part in the struggle for life, to become stronger, to win, even with immoral means. Then Tian neither bring consolation to the poor, the weak and the unfortunate; nor to convince people that justice would be achieved eventually, no matter how late it was. To a large extent, Tian lost the qualifications to act as a divine being, an object of faith.The personal divine beings immanent in the cosmos in the Chinese religion suffered from the rejection of Christian monotheism and the challenge of modern scientific explanations, making their existence really doubtful. This made the sub-system of polytheism declined. And even more than this, the sub-system of pantheism suffered greatly from the transformation from the traditional moral organic cosmology to the two kinds of modern immoral scientific cosmology (mechanical cosmology; the Cosmic Evolutionism). With the objects of faith in Chinese religion undergoing such challenges and losses, the legitimacy of Chinese religion was greatly corroded in late Qing period: it almost disappeared in the public life of the upper classes of society.