Integration and Reductionism in the Song Dynasty

Abstract

Neo-Confucianism and existing social and economic structures were simultaneously a confirmation of the old and an impulse for something new in the late Song era. Chinese and Greek antiquities were incomparable in politics, society, and the economy. Both civilizations had produced a new medicine in spite of these differences. The patterns of society were applied to nature and then to the explanation of the organism in both civilizations. The simultaneous periods of the Early Middle Ages in Europe and the Tang dynasty in China were also incomparable in politics, society, and the economy. The High and Late Middle Ages of Europe and the Song, Jin, and Yuan eras of China were also incomparable in politics, society, and economy in the eleventh century. The old three-step repeated itself in the Song dynasty that involved the new formation of society, a new connection with nature, and a changed medicine.