An Academic Study Of Yizhi Fang’s Philosophy Of Nature

An important transition occurred during late Ming and early Qing periods in Chinese history, thus causing tremendous changes in politics, economy and ideology and culture. With the decline of Yang Ming Hsin Hsueh, practical academic trend came into being and an amount of ideologists who focused on natural science and natural history knowledge went to the front stage. Different from those who were keen on morality, these people distracted their attention to universal fundamentality and the existence and movement rules of objective things, thus conforming to history trend. There was a representative scientist and philosopher named Yizhi Fang during the time.His thoughts were not confined to concrete knowledge, but integrated tightly to philosophy thinking, namely revealing the principle during research and discussing the relationship between science and philosophy or science and philosophy effectively, showing a new atmosphere. Though he turned to idealism when he was old, his contribution to science philosophy should be confirmed and prized, so our research of Fang’s thoughts does have significance.This paper, based on Chinese ancient philosophy history and comprehensive acknowledgment natural science, physics and etc, analyses Fang’s philosophy theory with various study methods and supports of Chinese and foreign literature. It includes three parts as followed:The first part illustrates historic and cultural background of Fang’s philosophy views. His philosophy thought cannot be divided from his background. It begins with social change during late Ming and early Qing, and it further introduces the eastward transmission of western science and its impact on academy world, including Fang’s attitude towards this issue. Moreover, it comes to the cultural background of Fang’s thoughts. It also analyses the decline of Neo-Confucianism and the rise of real learning, so as to point out the circumstances of Fang’s philosophy and the development trend of ideology and culture.The second part is a systematic summary of Fang’s theory. Specifically, there are three parts. Firstly, it states Fang’s view of objective nature, his study on “Philosophy and Practical Learning Theory” and the dialectical contradiction theory. Secondly, it states the core understanding of Fang’s natural philosophy. Fang is an ideologist who has great interests in nature and philosophy. Different from others, he summarizes philosophy at the same time when doing research and this is Fang’s features. “Material measurement” and “Abstract reasoning” are crucial parts of his thinking. Thirdly, it states Fang’s methodology, and thus promotes the development of philosophy of science. This definitely improves the guidance function of Philosophy on our daily life.The last part is an objective comment on Fang. It concludes from both the contribution and limitation aspects of Fang’s philosophy and its impact on the academic world. The positive comment comes from his contribution to later scholars on their understanding and critical thinking on philosophy of science. All thoughts have two sides. No matter how progressive it is, the thought cannot be separated from its historical background, and defects cannot be avoided. And the negative side is about his tendency on particular thoughts. Also this paper gives some points of attention when study Yizhi Fang’s philosophy.