From the Cognition of the Sick at Heart to the Cognition of Ghosts: The Knowledge Transformation of Cognitive Psychology in the Late Qing/ Republican Era (1895-1949)

Abstract

In examining the historical changes in cognitive psychology from 1895 to 1949, it is necessary to transform cognitive psychology into cognitive practice. In the late Qing and early Republic era (1895-1919), cognitive practice mainly appeared as the cognition of the sick at heart. Against the background of the late Qing importation of Western learning aimed at securing national salvation, the intellectual class, represented by Tan Sitong, hastily dressed the wound to the traditional Chinese learning of Heaven and man inflicted by late nineteenth century scientific knowledge from Europe and America. They regarded cognition as the understanding gained in the practice of self-cultivation, as affording man a spiritual resting place between Heaven and Earth. By the time of the Republic of China (1920-1949), the main form of cognitive practice had become ghostly cognition. Under the banner of saving the country by means of science, higher education researchers, represented by Lu Zhiwei, explored cognition with the help of such intermediaries as physiological mechanisms and language structure. Men could easily become ghosts trapped in intermediaries when they plunged into the conceptual world in search of truth, as their cognitive practice evolved into the conceptual grasp of ghosts. This ghostly cognition continued into later information processing psychology and was disseminated among the mass of the public. A deeper level of the cognition of the sick at heart remains for future study, on the lengthy road home.