Project
title:
Daoism and Science: Past and Present.
Abstract:
As
the native religion of China, Daoism, together with Confucianism and
Buddhism, composes the main body of the traditional Chinese culture.
Daoists, in pursuit of the ideal of becoming immortals by practicing
“Dao”, made great efforts to transcend the usual outlooks
of life and knowledge on the basis of inheriting and developing ancient
science in China. This made it possible for Daoism to bring about
a great number of inventions.The ideal of Daoist religion of longevity
and immortality by human effort, its love of nature, and hence its
idea of treasuring human body and practical life, makes deep relations
between Daoism and science in China. Thus, the religious characteristics
of Daoism naturally lead it to use science as its ‘tool’.
Daoist idea played immanent roles in ancient Chinese science and contributed
very much to the development of science in history. And therefore
science in China is doomed to be controlled immanently by the ethos
of Daoism.
Short
biography:
Prof.
Jiang Sheng is the founder, director and presently professor at the
Institute of Religion, Science and Social Studies at Shandong University
and at the Center for the Study of Daoism and Science at Sichuan University.
He is a director of the Chinese Society of Religious Studies, director
of the Chinese Confucius Foundation, member of the Japanese Society
of Taoistic Research and a founding executive of the Hong Kong Taoist
Culture & Information Center. He is also the vice-dean of the
College of Oriental Culture Studies at Shandong University. In 1998
he was invited by China's National Social Sciences Foundation to lead
the project of "History of Science and Technology in Taoism"
and founded an international group for its purposes. Prof. Jiang has
won numerous academic prizes including the National Key Scholars Selected
to the New Century Talents Program of China (2004), first prize for
the Best Publication in the Social Sciences (Shandong Province, 2004),
and the best Doctoral Degree with Distinguished Academic Achievements
(Sichuan, 2000).
