Along with acupuncture, the best known representative of Chinese science in the West today is fengshui. The term is often translated as “geomancy,” though the two graphs that comprise the term simply mean “wind” and “water.” The practices associated with fengshui have been informed by ambiguity since their early beginnings – between a practice encouraging charlatanry based on mystification and a set of practical recommendations grounded in sensitivity to the natural environment. This article will ignore the mantic and divinatory aspects of fengshui, and the associated panoply of arcane symbolism of colors and animals and planets and stars, all of which distract from its more down‐to‐earth applications. Footnote 1
It was not until the 1950s that Western scholars began serious investigation of Chinese sciences, as signaled by the first volumes of Joseph Needham's monumental Science and Civilization in China. Needham devotes large sections of his second volume to the philosophies of...
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Notes
- 1.
For a more detailed treatment of fengshui is its broader context, see Parkes (2003) and see Geomancy in China in this Encyclopaedia.
- 2.
The quote is cited from the article by H. Chatley in Samuel Couling's Encyclopaedia Sinica (1917).
- 3.
Cited from the Shiji (Records of the Historian), in the Cambridge History of China 1: 62.
- 4.
Western philosophy has generally devoted far more thought to abstract space than to live place: for a judicious restoration of this imbalance, see Casey (1997).
- 5.
For example, the Guanshi dili zhimeng (Mr. Guan's Geographical Indicator) attributed to the third‐century author Guan Lo, the Zhangshu (Book of Funerals) attributed to Guo Pu, and Wang Wei's Huangdi zhaijing (The Yellow Emperor's Siting Classic); see Needham (1956: 360).
- 6.
A comprehensive account of the practices of the Fujian School, with fascinating descriptions of the geomancer's compass, is to be found in Feuchtwang (1974: 18–95).
- 7.
- 8.
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Parkes, G. (2008). Fengshui. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_8590
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