中西思维模式对比

Discussion on Difference between Chinese and Western
Thinking Mode
Abstract:
Influenced by different natural and cultural conditions, Chinese and Western thinking modes objectively differ from each other. The thinking way of Chinese, also called circular thinking, is affected greatly by Confucianism which is the dominance among all Chinese academic schools, use intuitional experience as the tool and emphasize the holistic. By contrast, Christianism as the mainstream, Western thinking pattern is linear, emphasizing analysis by logical reasoning. This paper tries to analyze the difference between thinking modes of Chinese and the West. It will be of great help to our English learning.
Keywords: difference, thinking modes, Chinese and Western
Ⅰ. Introduction
This paper will focus on the holistic and analytic, intuitive and logical, fuzzy and precise differences of the two thinking modes of Chinese and Westerners.
People’s way of expressing is greatly influenced by their own thinking mode and they use language to express their own thoughts, to communicate with each other and to explore and learn the world. Therefore, language not only embodies people’s concept on valuation, aesthetics, morality, etiquette and custom, but also embodies the way people think and what they think about the objective world. Different people have different thinking mode because of different environment, culture, custom and hereditary genes. And this kind of gap is more giant when it comes thinking modes of the whole Chinese and Westerners.
Thus, it is very important analyze the two different thinking modes deeply and completely, which will be of great help for students’ translation, writing, speech and even for all intercultural learning and communication.
This paper consists of 3 parts, respectively dealing with the holistic and analytic, intuitive and logical, and fuzzy and precise differences between Chinese and Western thinking modes.
Ⅱ. China “Holistic” and the West “Analytic”
In the basic intelligence operation, Chinese people prefer holistic comprehension while Westerners prefer analysis, resulting Chinese holistic priorities and Westerners’partial priority thinking. For example, in alphabetical order, in the Chinese surnames caste comes first, and then seniority, and the last are their names, highlighting the clan. But in Western countries, their own name comes first, and then the parent name, and then the family name, highlighting their own names. Another example: in the order of
writing time and address, the Chinese people are used to arrange year, month and day in decreasing order of sequence, and the address is arranged from provincial, city and county to house number sort, highlighting the precipitation of individual relationships, while the Westerners are in the opposite order, highlighting the synthesis of the individual.
Chinese people’s holistic and comprehensive thinking is also reflected in the traditional Chinese culture. For example, the traditional Chinese medicine theory proposes that the various organs are an organic whole, and use the Yinyang theory and the five-element doctrine to explain the interdependence between internal organs and mutual checks and balances. This is very different from Western medicine based on the body’s physical structure of nine systems to explain the pathological phenomena. From the concept, the Chinese medicine is the product of holistic thinking, while Western medicine is a product of analytical thinking. Another example is the Chinese art of painting. In the Chinese painting, there are not only pictures, but also poetry, calligraphy, seal carving and other various contents. But in western painting, there is no calligraphy.
In short, for Westerners, to clarify one thing, they must first split it and put things apart in order to analyze the internal structure. For Chinese, they take things as a whole, focus on the linkages with other things, and use experience dealing with other things to judge and speculate.
Ⅱ. China “Intuitive” and the West “Logical”
Imagery thinking refers to the psychological process of analyzing, synthesizing, processing and transforming memory image to form new image in the mind. It’s a special form of thinking, i.e. usual imagination. Thinking is famous in the world by virtue of intuitive wholeness and harmonious dialectic. Chinese people to a large extent depend on the intuition to work out natural secrets. Laotse considered the Tao which could be expressed was not invariable Tao. His views on “Tao” make people unable to understand. Such confused and stupefied “Tao”is also beyond comprehension as a kind of philosophy. We are not accustomed to explicitly defining the cognition of things through definitions. Laotse described “Tao” as “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.”“The morality, as a thing which can be felt in one’s heart, is just a transient mental image illuminating everything; for such transient mental image illuminating everything, people can observe its vivid image and experience its essence in their hearts.” The origin of Chinese culture is explained with “observation of astronomical phenomena to make tools”in the Book of Changes. Chinese characters are pictographs. Traditional Chinese medical science belongs to typical perceptual observation and experience judgment. During the Spring and Autumn, Four Diagnostic Methods (Inspection, olfaction, inquiry and palpation) invented by a famous doctor Bian Que belong to a theory of treating disease by experience. Chinese people usually rely greatly on the intuition, judge and measure a person by the intuition. This is also called “judge others by oneself”. Chinese people with concrete thinking are only content with summary of experience and description of phenomena in terms of cognition of things by traditional way of thinking
characterized by intuition and experience. They stress universal relation of things and repeatability of practices, and consider “it’s very happy to learn and review it from time to time”. Ancient Chinese people applied the concept of “practice”. Chinese thinking tends to concretization, regardless of verbal or writing. The application of pictograph develops Chinese imagery thinking. Chinese people are used to expressing virtual concept with concrete and visual words.
Westerners start with rational thinking with the purpose of pursuing ontology with pure knowledge and by the method of pure linguistic analysis. Such rational thinking was regarded as “captious and demanding vision” by Hellenes. Philosopher in ancient Greek regarded the exploration of the nature of things as the final study objective. Therefore, in their opinions, rational factors are in the leading position. They pay attention to the nature of things, while the image is often of little importance. Aristotle, a philosopher in ancient Greek, initiated formal logical and came up with three major basic laws of formal logic (the law of identity, law of contradiction and law of the excluded middle). Besides, he also established syllogism of deductive reasoning (major premise, minor premise and conclusion) and the whole formal logic system which produce far-reaching influence on human thinking. Western philosophy lays stress on the way of thinking of rational thinking and philosophical speculation. After proving basic reasons of all things, one can say he knows the things. Besides, “wisdom is the knowledge related to principles and causes.”In modern times, westerners’pursuit of reason and system has reached the summit such as transcendental idealism system created by Kant with “Three Critiques” and Hegelian objective idealism system. Hegel created general movement type of dialectic in a comprehensive and systematical way, and consciously applied such way of thinking to construct unprecedented magnificent philosophical system with rich contents. In Hegelian book of The Phenomenology of Mind, reason, spirit, religion and absolute knowledge are involved. “Absolute knowledge”is finally reached through investigation of stages of consciousness development. Humanism system of Feuerbach also expresses this point.
Ⅲ. China “Implicit” and the West “Direct”
Chinese thinking mode is like a spiral or waving curved line, and western thinking mode is like a straight line. This difference of thought mainly embodies in writing or speech. Chinese people like to say or writing something unimportant first, then initiate the topic to the thesis statement or expound the thesis statement fuzzily and implicitly. English people like to say something precisely and directly and do not like to talk nonsense or introduce a background for the thesis statement. For example, Chinese essay is characterized by “scrambled in appearance but united in spirit”, whose central statement is difficult to find. By contrast, in Western writings, topic sentences are usually placed at the beginning of the essay. In western countries, people look at each other in the eyes when talking. They regard the one who is not willing to keep eye contact as a suspicious or unreliable person. Just as what said in an English idiom, “Never trust a person who cannot look at you in the eye.”For
Chinese people this eye contact cannot be accepted because they think that it is impolite, and they are used to looking around while talking.
Ⅳ. Conclusion
Because of their different social and historical and cultural traditions, the Chinese and the Westerners have a distinctive way of thinking. These differences their thinking modes cause differences in the ways of expression and language, behavior and interactions and different outlook on life and values. Chinese mode of thinking is holistic, intuitive and implicit, while Western mode of thinking is analytic, logical and direct. Understanding the differences between the two thinking patterns is of great help for student’s foreign language learning.
Reference
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[3]连淑能. 英汉对比研究[M]. 北京：高等教育出版社，2010（9）。