Abstract:
As the original character of 物,勿symbolized the action of cutting something with a knife, so that its original meaning was to divide something. A new character刎 was created later to refer to this meaning. In the thinking of ancient people, the concept of “全(quan, complete)” and “纯 (chun, pure)” were unified. The concept of “incomplete” which was caused by division could equal to “impure”. On the oracle bone inscriptions in Yin or Shang, 勿 had already borrowed from the character of negative adverb. However, 勿 had already implied “variegated” as a part of the compound character勿牛. Later, this compound character evolved into a new phonogram物, which means variegated cattle. As a result, 物 could also refer to the action of distinguishing something from mixed things, which means “物色 (wu se, to seek out)”. The essence of “物色 (wu se, to seek out)” is classification so that物 could also refer to “物类 (wu lei, categories of things)”.Actually, the essence of classification is to set up norms. The concept of “物 (wu, things)” in Chinese philosophy involves the idea of order intrinsically. There were two main routes to derive the concept of “物 (wu, thing)” for ancient thinkers. The first route lead to the study of名 (ming, names). In Mo Jing (The canons of the Mohists), 物 was considerd as “达名 (da ming, unrestricted names)”. The uniformity of epistemology and logic was reached in the three levels of 名 (ming, names): 达 (da, unrestricted) ,类 (lei, classifying),私 (si, private). The second route lead to the school of Tao. For Laozi and Zhuangzi, their interests in “物 (wu, things)” were restricted to a certain perspective, which was “物(wu, things)” related to Tao. Such a concept of “物(wu, things)” was not considered as individual, however, it was considered as type. The concept of “物(wu, things)” in early China should be regarded as a cornerstone for typological thinking in Chinese thoughts.
