East Asian Philosophies of Science
How can non-Western traditions help science overcome its pitfalls?
Modern science — transformative as it is — often inherits unexamined assumptions from Greco-Roman metaphysics and Enlightenment rationality. These include, for example:
The elevation of objectivity and control at the expense of interdependence and emergence
A preference for linear causality, closed systems, and reductionist models
The marginalization of other ways of knowing — especially those rooted in practice, embodiment, or cosmological attunement
Over time, this has contributed to a scientific monoculture: a powerful but constrained epistemic system, increasingly unable to grapple with the relational, plural, and existential dimensions of complex reality.
🔍 The Problem With Mainstream Scientific Epistemology
My critique — grounded in East Asian philosophical traditions, but resonant with thinkers like Adorno, Feyerabend, and Bhaskar — points to several blind spots in modern science:
Closed-system causality: isolating variables in lab-like settings, often unfit for open living systems
Flat ontology: collapsing stratified reality into empirical facts and events
Methodological singularity: favoring argumentation, quantification, and linear logic over narrative, attunement, or reflexivity
Epistemic monopoly: defending legitimacy through the internalization of scientific monoculture and academic gatekeeping
This isn’t a simplistic East vs. West critique — many Western thinkers have voiced similar concerns. But institutionally, dominant science continues to suppress epistemologies that don’t conform to its positivist architecture.
🌏 What East Asian Traditions Offer
East Asian philosophies do not reject inquiry, reason, or science — they reconfigure what it means to know. They offer a relational, dynamic, and cosmologically attuned paradigm that complements and expands modern scientific inquiry, especially where science confronts complexity, emergence, and existential uncertainty.
These traditions help us move beyond epistemologies rooted in control and fixity, toward modes of knowing that are situated, responsive, and transformative. Their value lies not in opposing science, but in broadening its ontological and epistemological ground.
1. Knowledge as Aspectual and Embodied
From Zhuangzi’s perspectivism to the Yijing’s cyclical transformations, knowledge is seen as:
Situated — shaped by one's positionality and context
Temporal — unfolding across time rather than fixed in timeless truth
Interdependent — emerging through relations, not separable entities
This stands in contrast to the modern ideal of the detached, objective observer. In Buddhism, cognition itself is understood as conditioned — a product of dependent co-arising. The goal is not to arrive at irrefutable conclusions, but to unlearn attachments to fixed constructs — a powerful antidote to epistemic arrogance in science.
2. Cognition as Practice, Not Mere Logic
Rather than constructing airtight arguments to reach a conclusion, Daoist and Buddhist texts often work through paradox, narrative, and existential resonance. Their aim is not explanation, but transformation.
Zhuangzi emphasizes attunement over control — the idea that one should be changed by relation, not seek to dominate it.
Fasting of the heart-mind (心齋) is a method of emptying preconceptions to become more attuned to the world’s flows.
These traditions offer alternative epistemologies for working with open systems, non-formalizable insights, and irreducible complexity — areas where conventional logic often falters.
3. Reality as Stratified, Emergent, and Open
East Asian traditions share an understanding of the world as layered, dynamic, and non-binary — ideas that resonate with and enrich complexity theory and critical realism:
Daoism views reality as inherently emergent and ungraspable in totality, offering metaphysical humility alongside systems insight.
Buddhism engages with cause at multiple levels — from surface events to deeper conditional patterns — aligning with critical realism’s retroduction and morphogenetic analysis.
The Yijing presents a fractal ontology of transformation (易). Through the simulation of complex emergence from interactions based on simple rules (i.e., yin–yang interplay and hexagram dynamics), it cultivates a “living literacy” for navigating complexity.
Together, they form a philosophy of open-system knowing — where truth is dynamic, layered, and relational.
4. Pluralism Without Relativism
Crucially, East Asian thought offers a path beyond binary truth claims. It holds that multiple paradigms can validly coexist, not as subjective opinions but as different manifestations or resonances with the Dao (道).
This non-dualist pluralism allows for deep dialogue across paradigms without collapsing into relativism or absolutism.
Rather than dismissing East Asian thought as “unscientific,” we might now recognize it as:
A complement to complexity science and systems theory
A framework for post-positivist, open-system epistemologies
A philosophical foundation for sustainability-oriented, ecologically embedded technoscientific development (e.g., appropriate technology, regenerative design)
These traditions invite us to shift from knowledge as possession to knowing as attunement — and from controlling systems to participating within them as ethical, situated agents.
⚠️ Caveats and Commitments
I resist romanticizing or essentializing East Asian traditions — they are not ancient tools to “fix” modernity
Their philosophical resources must be translated into methodologies that honor their inner logic, not flattened into Western frameworks
I reject evaluating non-Western epistemologies through the very positivist criteria that caused the problem in the first place (e.g., using only RCTs to judge Chinese medicine)
🌱 Toward an Enactive, Pluriversal Science
The goal is not to replace science, but to make it more plural, relational, and enactive — attuned to both the dynamics of complex systems and the depth of human consciousness. This vision aligns with a broader agenda to:
Revalue marginalized knowledge systems, including Indigenous, embodied, and experiential ways of knowing
Decenter Western epistemology without abandoning intellectual rigor
Inform post-positivist methodologies that acknowledge the limits of prediction and control
Enhance complexity-informed paradigms with ethical and existential reflexivity
Reconnect science with values like care, interdependence, and transformation
At its core, this approach calls for:
Ontological humility: recognizing that every framework reveals some aspects of reality while obscuring others
Epistemic responsibility: acknowledging the implications of how and why we know what we claim to know
Systemic transformation: reimagining science not as a tool for extraction or domination, but as a practice of care, resonance, and co-becoming
Rather than replacing or “Easternizing” science, I seek to expand it — to make it more alive, more response-able, and more deeply attuned to the relational, planetary, and existential conditions of our time.
Read more
📚[in Japanese] The Dominance of Modern Knowledge and Horizons of Change: A Synthetic Anthropological Analysis
📝[in Traditional Chinese] How Might East Asian Philosophy Help Address the Problems of Modern Science? Some Initial Explorations
📝[in Traditional Chinese] Is Mou Zongsan's "division of labor for truth" still valid after 100 years since the May 4th Movement? On the need and potential for East Asian philosophy's contribution to the development of the philosophy of science
See also
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