On The Scientificity Of Chinese Traditional Folk Taboos

As a kind of widespread cultural phenomenon, the Chinese traditional folk taboo is a uniqueunderstanding of society, nature and human beings, forming in a particular historical period in a specialsocial environment. It has become the basic norms and behavior standards for the human ancestors dealingwith their relationship with the nature. The traditional folk taboos, of various kinds and forms, are widelypresent in all areas of humans’ life and production. With thousands of years of development, Chinesetraditional folk taboos have infiltrated people’s way of thinking and behaviors, of the features ofuniversality, originality, mystery, practicalness and historic significance. Till now, some taboos still play asignificant role in human’s life and has a certain scientificity.However, people’s narrow understanding and the worship of science has advanced the rapidexpansion of scientism, finally forming a hegemonic discourse of scientism in modern times. Nevertheless,the reasonable factors of taboos have been distorted and rejected. Some breakthroughs have been madewith the deepening of the academic research at home and abroad in recent years, but most researchersconsider taboos as feudal superstition and dismiss them as vulgar habits, ignoring the historical backgroundand geographical constraints from which taboos arose, making them increasingly marginalized andtransparent. Thankfully, with the emergence and development of postmodernism, people began to reflect onthe concept of modern science. With the Scientific concept of postmodernism, this paper interprets theChinese traditional folk taboos from the perspective of local knowledge, restoring their rationality andscientific content. Then it demonstrates the scientificity of taboos with the example of birth taboos. Finally,it reflects on the scientificity of taboos from the complementarity between taboos and morality, and taboosand laws.As the carrier of precocious science, the Chinese traditional folk taboo promoted the inheritanceand development of the scientific knowledge in ancient China, provided empirical guidance for earlyhumans’ life and production, created external conditions for the harmonious coexistence between humansand nature, initiated humans in awe of nature, and also acted as the supplement of the scientific knowledgein ancient China.