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WAN Zhaoyuan analyses how Chinese intellectuals conceived of the relationship between ‘science’ and ‘religion’ through in-depth examination of the writings of Kang Youwei, a prominent political reformer and radical Confucian thinker, often referred to by his disciples as the ‘Martin Luther of Confucianism’.
Confronted with the rise of scientism and challenged by the Conflict Thesis during his life among adversarial Chinese New Culture intellectuals, Kang maintains a holistic yet evolving conception of a compatible and complementary relationship between scientific knowledge and ‘true religion’ exemplified by his Confucian religion (kongjiao). This close analysis of Kang’s ideas contributes to a richer understanding of the history of science and religion in China and in a more global context.
Confronted with the rise of scientism and challenged by the Conflict Thesis during his life among adversarial Chinese New Culture intellectuals, Kang maintains a holistic yet evolving conception of a compatible and complementary relationship between scientific knowledge and ‘true religion’ exemplified by his Confucian religion (kongjiao). This close analysis of Kang’s ideas contributes to a richer understanding of the history of science and religion in China and in a more global context.
Price: $167.00
Pages: 280
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Ideas, History, and Modern China
Publication Date:
18 November 2021
ISBN: 9789004468214
Format: Hardcover
"Wan's book offers a tour de force study of Kang and his reform program, unique because it presents Kang mainly as a religious thinker. Wan develops his argument, facilitated by a highly accessible writing style, through a chronological narrative focused on five periods from the 1880s into the 1920s. The research is thorough, reflecting this book's origins in the author's 2019 doctoral dissertation completed at Oxford University. Readers interested in late-imperial and early Republican China's intellectual, political, social, and religious history will find much of value in
Wan's data and exhaustive bibliography, although Wan admits there is much left to do to properly understand Kang's thought."
- M. C. Brose, Indiana University, CHOICE, Vol. 60, No. 4 (December 2022)
"[A] very wide spectrum of the intellectual richness and problematique of the period of transition from Imperial to Republican China has been delineated in the book under review, which gives testimony to an in-depth study on the writings of Kang Youwei and his associates and disciples... I do agree with the author of the book under review that his monograph has added to the study on Kang Youwei in three main areas: Primarily, it represents another attempt to present a more comprehensive picture of Kang’s thought by focusing on the religious and scientific dimensions of his whole work (cf. p. 24). Secondly, this book reveals the profuse and multiplex nature of the relationship between science and religion during modern Chinese intellectual history (cf. p. 25). Thirdly, since the discourse presented in the book is conducted in the context of peculiar Chinese intellectual tradition, this study can also enhance the global discussion so popular today on the relationship between science and religion by offering a non-Western, i.e., the Confucian understanding of this relationship."
- Zbigniew Wesołowski, Monumenta Serica - Journal of Oriental Studies, (June 2023)
- M. C. Brose, Indiana University, CHOICE, Vol. 60, No. 4 (December 2022)
"[A] very wide spectrum of the intellectual richness and problematique of the period of transition from Imperial to Republican China has been delineated in the book under review, which gives testimony to an in-depth study on the writings of Kang Youwei and his associates and disciples... I do agree with the author of the book under review that his monograph has added to the study on Kang Youwei in three main areas: Primarily, it represents another attempt to present a more comprehensive picture of Kang’s thought by focusing on the religious and scientific dimensions of his whole work (cf. p. 24). Secondly, this book reveals the profuse and multiplex nature of the relationship between science and religion during modern Chinese intellectual history (cf. p. 25). Thirdly, since the discourse presented in the book is conducted in the context of peculiar Chinese intellectual tradition, this study can also enhance the global discussion so popular today on the relationship between science and religion by offering a non-Western, i.e., the Confucian understanding of this relationship."
- Zbigniew Wesołowski, Monumenta Serica - Journal of Oriental Studies, (June 2023)
WAN Zhaoyuan, D.Phil. (2019), Oxford University, is Associate Professor of the History of Science at Beijing Normal University. He has published translations and articles in the fields of religion, science and religion, Newton studies, and modern Chinese intellectual history.