Last Friday, Professor Wu gave a lecture titled “What Is Natural History?” As for the Chinese translation of natural history, Professor Wu and I had been debating it long ago. I argued that it should be translated as “ziran shi” (“natural history”). This dispute over terminology later opened out into more layers of meaning, especially our understanding of the origins of modern science. In this lecture, Professor Wu formally expressed a willingness to yield: he no longer insisted that “bowuxue” was the only correct translation, acknowledged that my view had merit, and ultimately supported using “ziran zhi” in academic contexts, while continuing to use “bowuxue” in popular contexts.
Of course, my argument was not about winning or losing. Even if Professor Wu had continued to insist on the translation “bowuxue,” as long as through discussion we both gained a deeper understanding and more thought about the relation between natural history and the history of science, then the debate would still have been meaningful.
Although Professor Wu has made some compromises, I do not think this dispute has completely ended. The key to his concession lies in his noticing that the word “ziran” really should be foregrounded, so as to highlight the relative relationship between “natural history” and “natural philosophy” as two “modes of cognition and types of knowledge,” which is also what I have emphasized. Yet setting aside “shi” and choosing “zhi” still does not fully satisfy me.
What Professor Wu means is to avoid the temporality implied by the character “shi,” but I think this implication of temporality does not need to be avoided at all; rather, this is precisely where the divergence between the historiographical tradition and the philosophical tradition lies. I said right then that one major difference between these two traditions is that the historical method from the very beginning did not exclude temporality, whereas the philosophical tradition from the start excluded temporality and sought timeless, imperishable things. This temporality is not merely the kind of chronological timeline history brought out only in modern times, but something at a more basic level. So history is bound to develop into historical study; natural history from the outset already contains a bias toward temporality.
Of course I agree that in many contexts one can use “zhi,” for example in a series of derivative terms such as animal zhi, plant zhi, bird zhi, and so on, which indeed make sense. But I still maintain that wherever “ziran zhi” can be used, “ziran shi” can also be used. “Natural history” is a general concept, within which both animal zhi and the history of animal development are included. Some works that mainly “collect information” by category are indeed more accurately called “XX zhi” than “XX shi,” but both “XX zhi” and “XX shi” belong to “natural history”; there is no need to add yet another term, “natural zhi.”
It should be noted here that when I say using “zhi” is more accurate, I do not mean because of whether it contains “temporality,” but because of differences in literary form.
Indeed, many people take temporality to be the key to distinguishing shi from zhi. For example, Professor Wu mentioned a saying: “shi links events through time, zhi links events through categories.” I could not find the exact source; I only found this sentence mentioned in an article titled “The Difference Between Shi and Zhi.” The perspective of that article is obviously modern (it brings in things like productive forces and production relations), and it is hard to say it has grasped the traditional meanings of the two words shi and zhi. Moreover, “shi vertical, zhi horizontal” is only one of the four differences the author mentions. The four differences he gives are:
1. Shi is remote, zhi is proximate — histories are compiled in later generations, gazetteers are compiled in the present generation
2. Shi is specialized, zhi is broad — history records historical development, whereas gazetteers encompass everything
3. Shi is vertical, zhi is horizontal — shi links events through time, zhi links events through categories
4. Shi narrates and discusses, zhi records without discussion — shi may combine narration and commentary, whereas zhi merely records and does not comment
These distinctions may all be only superficial tendencies, not the fundamental difference between shi and zhi. They often do not even fit the actual facts, especially the “shi vertical, zhi horizontal” point. Traditional Chinese historical writing takes “biographical annals” as the orthodox form, narrating according to persons rather than according to time. Of course, when one gets down to a specific person and describes his birth, aging, illness, and death, there is naturally a temporal sequence; but local gazetteers also tell you when a prefecture or county was established, when what events occurred, which famous people appeared, and so on—all of which also have a temporal sequence. From the perspective of overall arrangement, neither shi nor zhi necessarily requires adherence to chronological order or the reverse; but when it comes to writing about a particular person or event, both shi and zhi cannot avoid temporal sequence.
Some scholars have also specifically pointed out that “shi vertical, zhi horizontal” is a popular and harmful misconception (for instance, Chen Zehong: “An Elementary Analysis of the Stylistic Difference Between Shi and Zhi,” *China Local Gazetteers* 2000, issue 02), and argue that the fundamental difference between shi and zhi lies in function: shi is “to recount history,” while zhi is “to preserve history.” I am rather sympathetic to this kind of view.
As for “investigating the relationship between Heaven and humanity,” historiography in traditional Chinese culture is a kind of sacred undertaking that combines science and religion, seeking both truth and goodness. Thus historical works bear not only the mission of recording materials, but also the mission of recording and narrating truth and virtue. So historical works contain this transcendent dimension, whereas what is usually called zhi does not require this “theoretical sublimation”; the mission of zhi is simply to record and preserve.
Therefore, among the four distinctions quoted above, only the fourth is closer to the essence, while the earlier ones are derived from it. For example, why are official dynastic histories often compiled in later generations, whereas gazetteers can be compiled in the present generation? Because in traditional Chinese thought there is the idea that “one judges only after the coffin is closed”: a person’s right and wrong, good and evil, can only be judged after his death. Hence the saying that “one’s later years are not guaranteed” — if you do good all your life but fail to preserve your reputation at the end, then no good name will remain for you in the history books. For a dynasty or a person, historians must wait until it has “passed” before rendering judgment. But compiling a gazetteer has no requirement of “judgment”; the mission of zhi is to record all kinds of things and leave them for later generations to evaluate. “Preserving history” is the prerequisite and preparation for “recounting history,” so zhi is compiled in the present generation, whereas shi must be compiled in later generations.
Because shi is not only about recording various events but also about pursuing truth, about knowing not only that things are so but why they are so, one must pay attention to the “ins and outs” of events — why did a dynasty decline and perish? Because over the previous several years a foolish ruler had imposed tyranny. Of course, many historians do not state things so bluntly, and prefer to hide their judgments in the interstices of narrative through the *Spring and Autumn* style of writing. But in order to investigate these principles and causal relations, events naturally separate into before and after, and the thread of time naturally emerges. Zhi, by contrast, cares only about recording; it does not pursue causes and reasons. So there is naturally less need to place things within a temporal framework.
Western “natural history,” from the very beginning, was not merely a record of categories. In Pliny, nature meant “essence,” and history meant “inquiry”; “natural history” thus meant “inquiring into the essence of things.” Many later studies of natural history also aimed not merely to record information, but to try to reveal the mysteries of God’s creation, or the laws of nature, or the connections among all things, and so on. Since both sides are concerned with pursuing reasons, the Chinese have the “unity of Heaven and humanity,” and do not have a concept of “nature” opposed to human beings; thus historiography investigates “the relationship between Heaven and humanity.” But in Western historiography under the concept of “nature,” that is, natural history, one only needs to “investigate Heaven.” This is why ancient China perhaps had natural gazetteers, but did not have natural history.
Some people say that ancient China achieved many things in “natural history,” especially within the large tradition of local gazetteers, and that is true. At the level of zhi, ancient Chinese historiography and the Western natural history tradition both existed; both first of all needed to record various things by category. However, when zhi rises to shi, China and the West differ. China did not produce a tradition of “natural history,” because inquiry into things themselves had nothing to do with the “li” sought by historians. The truth historians pursued existed in “the relationship between Heaven and humanity”; flowers, birds, fish, and insects, and all sorts of other things, were only truly important when they were related to “human beings.” In the West, however, people sought truth in “things themselves,” that is, in “nature,” and did not need to return to human history. Thus in the West natural gazetteers automatically sublimate into natural history, whereas China has natural gazetteers but not natural history.
We know that the Western tradition of natural history eventually moved toward evolutionism, which in a sense was inevitable, because from the very beginning natural history was not just about describing natural things as they are, but about investigating why natural things are as they are. But the “causes” originally pursued were more teleological: natural things were arranged within a “great chain of being,” and the forms of things were explained in terms of their purposes. With the rise of modern science, however, teleological ways of thinking gradually disintegrated, and it became increasingly illegitimate to explain why things are as they are by appeal to “purpose.” On the other hand, linear conceptions of time and mechanistic notions of causality became increasingly popular. Under these new ideas, to continue investigating why things are as they are necessarily became a question of “how they formed.” One had to explain later things by earlier things in time. In this way, if natural history did not degenerate into natural gazetteers, then it could only develop into a “history of natural evolution.”
The term “natural history” reflects the tension between nature and the world of texts, and suggests the tension between nature and time. The rise and development of “natural history” is a highly distinctive and important juncture in Western scientific history. In terms of both accuracy and explanatory power, I still maintain that “natural history” is the best translation.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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