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In the field of history of Chinese philosophy, the key points and difficulties in the research on Fang Yizhi (方以智, 1611-1671) are mainly reflected in two ideological lines: one is how the academic pattern of the transition from Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming Dynasties to the texturalism in the Qing Dynasty happened; the other is how the traditional Chinese humanities accepted the western modern natural sciences and technologies. Relatively speaking, in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, there were fewer academic discussions on the relationship between intellectual thought and natural science and technology, and no universally accepted explanatory paradigm has been put forward yet. To understand the relationship between science and humanities in late Ming and early Qing Dynasty, as well as that between modern western natural science and ancient Chinese traditional thought, Fang Yizhi is a precious object of study. Fang Yizhi's thinking and practice about "things" (wu 物) is a bridge linking the natural world and the human world. “Thing” in Chinese philosophy has both concrete and abstract attributes, including but not limited to the category of “matter” in Western philosophy. Fang Yizhi has always been regarded as an encyclopedic thinker, and his theory of things is extremely rich.The theory and practice of things are the core of Fang Yizhi's philosophy. Fang Yizhi believes that the three religions (including Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism) all hold that the ultimate noumenon itself is "unknowable" and at the same time is the fundamental basis of every single thing, so people can only "study its origin" from the "knowable", that is, the "thing". This train of thought lies in the base of Fang’s thinking when describing and analyzing the relationship between Dao and things, which includes both theories of the universe and the ontology. This paper holds that the basic idea of Fang Yizhi's philosophy on the theory of body (ti, 體) and function (yong, 用) is that ‘there is no body but there is function’, while on the theory of universe it is that what above Yin and Yang (隂陽) are unknowable. Because the Dao has no body, it has only the function. And because nothing above the Yin and Yang can be understood, people can only use what is below the Yin and Yang such as the principle (li, 理), qi 氣, image (xiang, 象) and number (shu, 數), to form the universal principle through the induction of the principle of “things”. Furthermore, Fang Yizhi ascribes the body (shen, 身), mind (xin, 心), nature (xing, 性) and destiny (ming, 命) to the concept of things, that is to say, he regards the self as the object of rational cognition. In this relationship, "I" is not only the subject of cognition, but also the object of cognition, thus realizing introspection inward. Thirdly, utensils and heaven and earth, that is, man-made objects and natural objects, are external to the self. Although Fang Yizhi also advocated "making" things external to human beings, under the social class system of scholars, peasants, workers and businessmen, he could only engage in the research of the theory of external things, that is, the so-called science of quality and measurement. On the whole, Fang Yizhi's physical research and practice did not go beyond the scope of Chinese traditional natural science, but he was good at summarizing research methods, actively absorbing the contents of western natural science, and put forward correct ideas on many specific natural science issues. Mou Zongsan's (牟宗三, 1909-1995) discussion on the relationship between existence and activity inspires the author to think about the significance of the theory of “round ∴”. Fang Yizhi drew a series of laws represented by the theory of “round∴” through the induction of the principle of being. Although these laws are derived from existing things, they themselves are not static, but show two levels of active states: one is the internal dynamics of the laws, that is, the constant rotation; the other is that the law derived from the existing things can be applied to the activities of people, considering eternity and change, the right timing and other variable factors. This paper tries to follow the essence of Fang Yizhi's thought to seek for communication and connection between objects and things, between being and activity, between natural science and moral and human ethics. From the perspective of the development of modern and contemporary Chinese philosophy, the study of mind (xin, 心) has always occupied an important position, and the corresponding philosophical research of “things” is relatively lacking. In theory, mind and thing are relative and inseparable aspects, and the thoughts on “things” in traditional Chinese thought resources are comparable to the study of mind in terms of diachronic, textual volume and theoretical depth. The rapid development of modern natural science and technology and its challenges to the human world have promoted the deep and lasting reflecting on the problem of things and the relationship between people and things in western philosophy. Scientific rationality invades every aspect of human's life. The transformation of knowledge to practical technology enhances human's ability to control and transform things. Instrumental rationality dominates human's understanding of things, and “things” fall from the meaning world of human's living situation and become the means to meet human's needs. A re-examination of this period in Chinese history, when pre-modern ideas and science and technology first collided, may be helpful to enlighten us to think about the relationship between science and technology and the world of human significance.

The roots of the practice of divination in Buddhism can be traced back to Ancient India. However, the engagements of medieval Chinese Buddhists with practices of divination did not only draw on traditions of India, but also experienced a strong influence from traditional Chinese forms of divination and the Chinese society’s great interest in various practices of divination. Such deep mutual engagements can be detected in many aspects, such as the appearance of an increasing number of “divination masters”, the translation—and sometimes the “creation” of—many Chinese Buddhist texts on divination. A thorough investigation of the relationship between medieval Chinese Buddhism and the practice of divination can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of how Buddhism developed and why attitudes toward Buddhism changed in China, the interaction between Buddhism and medieval Chinese society, the secularization and sinicization of Buddhism, and the important roles Buddhism played in the cultural exchanges between China and India. This dissertation will explore the relationship between medieval Chinese Buddhism and the practice of divination, based mainly on primary sources such as Chinese Buddhist translated texts, Buddhist texts produced in China, secular texts from the Han to the Song Dynasty, and Dunhuang manuscripts of the late Tang and early Song periods. Besides the introduction, the dissertation consists of six chapters. The first chapter addresses how, from a doctrinal perspective, Buddhism had changed its attitudes towards the practice of divination. Early Buddhism, Sectarian Buddhism, Mahāyāna Buddhism, Hīnayāna Buddhism and Esoteric Buddhism had markedly different approaches to the practice of divination. As such, a comparison of their texts is conducted, based on the different Chinese translations of Buddhist Indic texts. These include the four Āgamas, the five Vinaya-piṭakas, the texts of the Tāmraparṇīya, and several other texts that belong to Mahāyāna and Esoteric Buddhism. While the first chapter outlines how the different forms of Buddhism had changed their attitudes toward the practice of divination, the next two chapters examine how Chinese society, especially its intellectuals and elites, viewed the amalgamation between Buddhism and the practice of divination. In Chapter Two, the life stories of the divination monks found in the three hagiographical texts, the Liang Gaoseng zhuan, the Tang Gaozeng zhuan, and the Song Gaoseng zhuan, are carefully studied. The popularization of the practice of divination among the Buddhist monastics of medieval times is explored by identifying and investigating the bibliographical entries scattered in the contemporary history books and catalogues. This chapter also studies how the Chinese translations and responses to Buddhist doctrines and the Vinaya-piṭakas, the state-religion relationship, the relationships among Buddhism, Daoism and Confucius, and the laity-monastic relationship had influenced the practice of divination in Chinese Buddhism. Chapter Three focuses on the origin of the Buddhist apocryphal literature on the practice of divination and the response of Chinese society. After meticulously comparing five such texts in terms of how they view the relationship between Buddhism and the practice of divination, the reason for the long circulation history and the subsequent inclusion of two texts (Fantian shence jing and the Zhancha shan’e yebao jing) in the established body of Buddhist scriptures becomes abundantly clear—these two texts are able to accommodate the needs of the Chinese commoners and the elites concerning Buddhism. Chapter Four, taking the practice of astrology-divination as a case study, discusses the vital role Buddhism played in the introduction of foreign types of divination to China. In the medieval period, many new terminologies and exercises emerged in the practice of Chinese astrology-divination, such as the seven luminaries, the Navagraha, and the twelve zodiac houses. An analysis of the Buddhist texts on the practice of astrology-divination reveals that the spread of Buddhism, especially the Chinese translations of Buddhist texts, explains why the practice of foreign astrology-divination could enter China. In the next two chapters, an examination of the relationship between Buddhism and the practice of divination is done based on a selection of Dunhuang Manuscripts. Chapter Five begins by introducing the special characteristics of Dunhuang and Dunhuang Buddhism, followed by how these special characteristics led to the mutual engagements between Dunhuang Buddhism and the practice of divination, and how these differed from those of central China. The focus of the sixth chapter is solely on a specific Buddhist divination practice recorded in the Dunhuang manuscripts—the four-sides-dice divination. Through a thorough comparative analysis of the 12 four-sides-dice documents, this chapter traces the origin of the practice, the historical connections among the Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese four-sides-dice documents, and the process of how the practice became integrated in a Buddhist context.

Since at least Dai Zhen's time, the procedures contained in Chapter 2 of The Nine Chapters on mathematical procedures (Jiuzhang suanshu) and entitled “Directly lü-ing (jinglü)” have caused difficulties to the philologists, who regularly heavily modified the received text as well as that of the commentaries by Liu Hui and Li Chunfeng on it. One particular problem that these procedures raise is that their description does not exactly fit with the description of the main procedure of Chapter 2, in The Nine chapters, the procedure called “Suppose,” although they clearly depend on it. One of the commentaries stresses this point, whereas the other stresses the connection to the main procedure of the chapter, despite its actual formulation. The paper suggests that the newly excavated Book of mathematical procedures (Suanshushu) casts light on both these procedures and the commentaries. The Book of mathematical procedures contains procedures on the basis of which the procedures “Directly lü-ing (jinglü)” were clearly obtained by abstraction. This hence provides evidence showing why the procedures were described in a way that does not correspond to the procedure for the operation named “Suppose.” Moreover, these sources allow analyzing how abstraction was carried out within the framework of algorithms in ancient China. Lastly, the paper suggests a possible origin for the key concept of lü, which was so important for both The Nine chapters and the commentaries on it.