Yang Quan Natural Philosophy New Exploration

Yang Quan, a philosopher in the period of Three-Kingdom and Western Jin and Eastern Jin dynasties, diligently pondered on nature and sought principles beneathit through the natural myriad things. He wrote a monograph entitled Wu Li Lun (i.e. the principles of objects), which discusses nature, life, and society. According to his monist"qi"theory, he sought the world myriad things behind that principle. However, due to misunderstanding to his work and limitation of the time, there had been no good-enough edition of Yang's Wu Li Lun so far. Naturally, there has been long-standing mistaken idea on the study of Yang Quan.This paper first makes effort in the textual criticism foundation accurately. Then, compared with the main-stream social concepts in Wei and Jin dynasties, it inspects Yang Quan's philosophical thoughts and the scientific ideas in the background of Chinese philosophy history, to sort out his philosophy.While trying to abandon possible preoccupied philosophical ideas, the paper advocates to return to the ancient people's real idea, to restore the original state of his thinking.The main questions are: Does Yang Quan propose a unique set of heaven body theory? What characteristics does his"qi'have? What kind of view does he hold as to"the relation between the heaven and man"? What are his real motive and the goal when he had infatuated in the research of universe?The paper has five chapters.The first chapter analyzes the social and astronomical background of Yang Quan's time. At that time, Wei-Jin metaphysics, featuring Way of Heaven (i.e. natural law), had begun to penetrate each aspect of social life, which began to produce negative influence. In astronomy, three schools of heavenly body theories had gained considerable development, esp in the Wu Kindom.In the second chapter, the author analyzes Yang Quan's monist"qi theory". The paper clearly defines the relation"qi"and"shui"(water) in Yang Quan's philosophy, pointing out that it is a typical qi monist theory. It explains that Yang Quan attempts to explain the generation and transformation of objects in the world in terms of yin and yang of qi. At the end of this chapter, the author claims that his monist qi theory is not only the origin of the material world but also the source of the inner mental world.In Chapter 3, the paper analyzes the Yang Quan's heavenly body theory. The author claims that Yang Quan attempted to construct his heavenly body theory by integrating three theories:"Xuan Ye Shuo","Hun Tian Shuo", and"Gai Tian shuo", in accordance to his monist"qi theory". The paper explains the relationship between astronomy and horoscope and futher points out the fact that the Heaven generally worshipped by Confucian scholars in ancient China is not only the heaven of the nature, but also the"heaven"of the religious significance. In the fourth chapter, tha author analyzs the relationship between Heaven and Earth in Yang Quan's thought. It is claimed that Yang Quan's philosophical pursuit is still refrained in the traditional Confucian philosophical paradigm of political belief, which is characterized as"sage king and virtuous ministers", with the chief aim to provide counseling aid for the king in governance.In the last chapter, the paper discusses the significance and influence of Yang Quan's philosophical theory. The paper believes that his theory was relatively initiative in his age. However, from the perspective of Chinese philosophy and the development of astronomy, Yang Quan is no more than a transitional figure..