News Introduction Editorial Board Submission Table of Contents Table of Contents E-Journals Search
Humanitas Taiwanica, No. 72
Item
Title
Author

1

The Role of Paradigm Formation in Tao Yuanming’s Sense of Nostalgia


Two obvious aspects of the sense of nostalgia present in Tao Yuanming’s writings are exemplary models of character and images of paradise, both of which are significant in terms of paradigm formation. This deep implication is jointly conveyed through the use of history and of myth in his writing.

There are several parts to the argument presented in this paper. First of all there is an analysis of how Tao uses paradigmatic thinking to understand the meaning of history. Secondly, there follows an analysis and discussion of how, by threading together history and myth, he reveals and holds up paradigms of fighting spirit. Next, I will present an explanation of how Tao constructs a paradigm that fuses reclusion and impoverishment in order to find a home for his own spirit, which incorporates both these aspects. Following on from this I will compare the differences between paradise in myth and the paradise of the immortals in order to illustrate how Tao Yuanming combines the paradise of remote antiquity with historical culture and rural conditions and customs, and then bringing this image of paradise into the human realm, forms a brand new paradigm of paradise, the Peach Blossom Spring. To conclude I will summarize the significance to the times of the writer’s formation and use of exemplary models.
Tsai, Yu

2

Original Characters in Chinese Dialects and the Search for Pronunciations (2): Da(大)and Phonetic Correspondences between Literary and Vernacular Pronunciations

We start by noting the rule whereby the original character of particular word is already known for a dialect, the literary and vernacular pronunciations of that character evidence phonetic correspondence. Likewise, the basic assumption for determining the original character for a word in a particular dialect is that if the literary pronunciation and the original character are already known or determined, the phonetic position of the vernacular pronunciation and the original character will be identical. Next, we focus on one of the most basic words in Chinese – da – and its two historical pronunciations. Interestingly, the word dais an exception to the above rule insofar as its literary and vernacular pronunciations may be either, or neither, of the two readings given above. We continue by considering the fact that sometimes it is necessary to search for evidence for which character is best suited to represent a word either internally, through correspondences between literary and vernacular pronunciations, or externally, from words common to different dialects or from cognatic relations among related dialect words. Once this distinction is made, research into Chinese historical linguistics, the history of dialects, or the history of dialect regions will be able to provide valuable historical/cultural evidence that could also be of use in resolving the big problem of the word da.
Hsu, Fang-min

3

Aristotle’s Theory of Categories


This paper deals with Aristotle’s theory of categories. Aristotle’s categories not only represent different forms of predication, but also reflect different modes and the basic structure of beings. The paper analyzes the development of Aristotle’s theory of categories from its inception in the Topics as a linguistic theory of predications, then through the reformulation with the ontological theory of primary substance in the Categories, and to finally reach its ontological summit in the Metaphysics. The developed categories offer a framework for grasping not only the manifoldness of diversified beings, but also the dynamics of change in the empirical world. Moreover, the paper examines possible guiding principles behind Aristotle’s choice of categories, discussing whether and to what extent the ten categories can be understood as an inventory of questions or a system of the lexical categories of the ancient Greek. Although Aristotle does rely heavily on linguistic analysis, his choice of categories is not determined by the Greek language. Instead, linguistic analysis is taken only as a point of departure, from which Aristotle advances to explore the universal structure of thought and reality by philosophical reflection.
Lau, Chong-fuk

4

Mnemonics and Bacon

This essay is mainly to investigate the influence of mnemonics on the formation of the scientific method on the part of Bacon. The article proper is largely laid out in two main parts. The first part, by briefly surveying the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and Augustine, traces the genesis of mnemonics in the West, particularly the characteristic tendency in classical mnemonics to associate things to be memorized with specialized images and to position these images in a particular space. Based upon the conclusion reached in the first part, the ensuing part attempts to show that mnemonics, as being cognate with rhetoric, exercises an indirect but unmistakable influence on the scientific method in its budding stage. Bacon is not particularly interested in whether mnemonics can help people acquire dazzling memorization skills, and what really arrests his attention is the service mnemonics can possibly render: enhancing our ability in classification. This essay also adduces the example of Giordano Bruno, an older contemporary of Bacon and, more significantly, one of the precursors of modern science, to demonstrate that Bacon might not be an isolated case in his time in terms of the effort to generalize principles of classification from artificial memory. In trying to expound the extent of the prevalence of mnemonics around Bacon’s time, the second part also touches upon how Matteo Ricci and Giulio Aleni introduced classical mnemonics to seventeenth-century China.
Sung, Wei-ko

5

Genre, Narrative, and History in Timothy Findley’s The Wars

Timothy Findley’s The Wars (1977) started to investigate the underlying ideological assumptions about the writing of history before the rise of the postmodern epistemological and ontological questioning about history. Its problematization of realist presumptions of historical representation has been analysed by commentators, but the way Findley engages in genre transgression in order to unsettle history’s claims to authenticity and objectivity has not received adequate critical attention. This essay is concerned with how he employs the biographic form for his protagonist’s story but juxtaposes it with a nameless researcher’s collection of information about him and investigation into related historical documents as a metafictional device to problematize the writing of biography and history as mimetic representation. The focus will be on the narrative strategies used to achieve genre transgression and blur the distinction between biography and history.
Wang, Mei-chuen

6

Writing Natural History: Alexander Wilson’s Delineation of Early America’s “Lovely Face of Nature”

Alexander Wilson is an early voice in the tradition of American natural history writing. He composes many nature essays and poetic works of natural history, such as American Ornithology and The Forester. In his works, Wilson closely describes the beauty of the pristine environment and innumerable birds in America and was recognized as America’s foremost authority on birds in his time. However, it is surprising that for a long time Wilson played a significant but largely unexamined role in American literature and in American nature writing tradition. Today he is remembered only as the “Father of American Ornithology” by most people.

Exploring Wilson’s delineation of Early America’s “Lovely face of Nature,” this essay examines Wilson’s effectiveness as a writer of literary natural history. In this essay, I contend that Wilson’s works of natural history should be regarded as significant pieces of American literature because, introducing the scientific knowledge about America’s birds into American prose and poetry to educate the American public about their own land, these works define a uniquely American subject. Also, Wilson’s verses and nature essays should be deemed important pieces of American literature because they introduce many proto-ecological ideas, thereby initiating a tradition of proto-environmental ethics for early America.
Lu, Li-ru
Editing Committee Office of Humanitas Taiwanica,
College of Liberal Arts, National Taiwan University
No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei, 106319 Taiwan Tel: +886-2-33663820   Fax: +886-2-23632164   E-mail:
bcla@ntu.edu.tw