Hostname: page-component-76c49bb84f-ckhzl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-10T01:01:42.083Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Modeling the Contested Relationship between Analects, Mencius, and Xunzi: Preliminary Evidence from a Machine-Learning Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

Ryan Nichols ,
Edward Slingerland ,
Kristoffer Nielbo ,
Uffe Bergeton ,
Carson Logan  and
Scott Kleinman
Ryan Nichols
Affiliation:
Ryan Nichols (rnichols@fullerton.edu) is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at California State University, Fullerton, and Research Affiliate of the University of British Columbia's Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition, and Culture.
Edward Slingerland
Affiliation:
Edward Slingerland (edward.slingerland@ubc.ca) is Professor in the Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia.
Kristoffer Nielbo
Affiliation:
Kristoffer Nielbo (kln@cas.au.dk) is History Researcher in the datakube, University of Southern Denmark, and Researcher at the Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University.
Uffe Bergeton
Affiliation:
Uffe Bergeton (bergeton@email.unc.edu) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Studies, University of North Carolina.
Carson Logan
Affiliation:
Carson Logan (carsonklogan@gmail.com) is Developer at Tuangru in Vancouver, Canada.
Scott Kleinman
Affiliation:
Scott Kleinman (scott.kleinman@csun.edu) is Professor in the Department of English, California State University, Northridge.
Get access

Abstract

This article presents preliminary findings from a multi-year, multi-disciplinary text analysis project using an ancient and medieval Chinese corpus of over five million characters in works that date from the earliest received texts to the Song dynasty. It describes “distant reading” methods in the humanities and the authors’ corpus; introduces topic-modeling procedures; answers questions about the authors’ data; discusses complementary relationships between machine learning and human expertise; explains topics represented in Analects, Mencius, and Xunzi that set each of those texts apart from the other two; and explains topics that intersect all three texts. The authors’ results confirm many scholarly opinions derived from close-reading methods, suggest a reappraisal of Xunzi’s shared semantic content with Analects, and yield several actionable research questions for traditional scholarship. The aim of this article is to initiate a new conversation about implications of machine learning for the study of Asian texts.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 19 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

List of References

Ames, Roger T. 2001. “New Confucianism: A Native Response to Western Philosophy.” In Chinese Political Culture: 1989–2000, ed. Hua, Shiping, 70–99. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Barbrook, Adrian C., Howe, Christopher J., Blake, Norman, and Robinson, Peter. 1998. “The Phylogeny of The Canterbury Tales .” Nature 394(6696):839–40.Google Scholar
Bergeton, Uffe. 2013. “From Pattern to ‘Culture’?: Emergence and Transformations of Metacultural Wén.” PhD diss., University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Blei, David M. 2012a. “Probabilistic Topic Models.” Communications of the ACM 55(4):77–84. doi:10.1145/2133806.2133826.Google Scholar
Blei, David M. 2012b. “Topic Modeling and Digital Humanities.” Journal of Digital Humanities 2(1). http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/2-1/topic-modeling-and-digital-humanities-by-david-m-blei/ (accessed September 24, 2017).Google Scholar
Blei, David M., Ng, Andrew Y., and Jordan, Michael I.. 2003. “Latent Dirichlet Allocation.” Journal of Machine Learning Research 3:993–1022.Google Scholar
Boltz, William G. 2007. “The Composite Nature of Early Chinese Texts.” In Text and Ritual in Early China, ed. Kern, Martin, 50–78. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Brindley, Erica. 2009. “‘Why Use an Ox-Cleaver to Carve a Chicken?’ The Sociology of the Junzi Ideal in the Lunyu .” Philosophy East and West 59(1):47–70. doi:10.1353/pew.0.0033.Google Scholar
Brooks, E. Bruce, and Brooks, A. Taeko, trans. 1998. The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Miranda, and Bergeton, Uffe. 2008. “‘Seeing’ Like a Sage: Three Takes on Identity and Perception in Early China.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 35:641–62.Google Scholar
Campany, Robert. 1992. “Xunzi and Durkheim as Theorists of Ritual Practice.” In Discourse and Practice, eds. Reynolds, Frank and Tracy, David, 197–231. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Chen, Jack W., Borovsky, Zoe, Kawano, Yoh, and Chen, Ryan. 2014. “The Shishuo Xinyu as Data Visualization.” Early Medieval China 20:23–59. doi:10.1179/1529910414Z.00000000013.Google Scholar
Cheng, Anne. 1993. “Lun yǚ” 論語 [Analects]. In Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, ed. Loewe, Michael, 313–23. Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California.Google Scholar
Ching, Julia. 1997. “Son of Heaven: Sacral Kingship in Ancient China.” T'oung Pao 83(1–2):3–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Kelly James, and Winslett, Justin T.. 2011. “The Evolutionary Psychology of Chinese Religion: Pre-Qin High Gods as Punishers and Rewarders.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79(4):928–60. doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfr018.Google Scholar
Csikszentmihalyi, Mark. 2002. “Traditional Taxonomies and Revealed Texts in the Han.” In Daoist Identity: History, Lineage, and Ritual, eds. Kohn, Livia and Roth, Harold David, 81–101. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Dietrich, Eric. 2011. “There Is No Progress in Philosophy.” Essays in Philosophy 12(2):329–44.Google Scholar
Draper, Paul, and Nichols, Ryan. 2013. “Diagnosing Bias in Philosophy of Religion.” Monist 96(3):420–46.Google Scholar
Eno, Robert. 1990a. The Confucian Creation of Heaven: Philosophy and the Defense of Ritual Mastery. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Eno, Robert. 1990b. “Was There a High God Ti in Shang Religion?” Early China 15:1–26.Google Scholar
Youlan, Feng (Yu-Lan, Fung). 1952–53. A History of Chinese Philosophy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Pèiróng, Fù 傅佩榮. 2011. Lúnyǔ sānbǎi jiǎng 論語三百講 [The Analects: Three hundred lectures]. Taipei: Liánjīng chūbǎn gōngsī.Google Scholar
Goldin, Paul R. 2011. “Persistent Misconceptions about Chinese ‘Legalism.’” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 38(1):88–104.Google Scholar
Goldstone, Andrew, and Underwood, Ted. 2014. “The Quiet Transformations of Literary Studies: What Thirteen Thousand Scholars Could Tell Us.” New Literary History 45(3):359–84. doi:10.1353/nlh.2014.0025.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, David L., and Ames, Roger T.. 1987. Thinking through Confucius. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Hou, Yufang, and Frank, Anette. 2015. “Analyzing Sentiment in Classical Chinese Poetry.” In Proceedings of the 9th SIGHUM Workshop on Language Technology for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, and Humanities, 15–24. Beijing: Association for Computational Linguistics and the Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing. http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W15-3703 (accessed July 15, 2016).Google Scholar
Hsu [Xu], Zhuoyun. 1977. Ancient China in Transition: An Analysis of Social Mobility, 722–222 B.C. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hunter, Michael. 2014. “Did Mencius Know the Analects?” T'oung Pao 100(1–3):33–79. doi:10.1163/15685322-10013p02.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutton, Eric L., trans. 2014. Xunzi: The Complete Text. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ihara, Craig K. 1991. “David Wong on Emotions in Mencius.” Philosophy East and West 41(1):45–53.Google Scholar
Ivanhoe, Philip J. [1993] 2000. Confucian Moral Self Cultivation. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Ivanhoe, Philip J. 2008. “The Shade of Confucius: Social Roles, Ethical Theory, and the Self.” In Polishing the Chinese Mirror: Essays in Honor of Henry Rosemont, Jr., eds. Littlejohn, Ronnie and Chandler, Marthe, 34–49. New York: Global Scholarly Publications.Google Scholar
Jockers, Matthew L. 2013. Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Kern, Martin. 2015. “Speaking of Poetry: Pattern and Argument in the ‘Kongzi Shilun.’” In Literary Forms of Argument in Early China, eds. Gentz, Joachim and Meyer, Dirk, 175–200. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kline, T. C. 2000. “Moral Agency and Motivation in the Xunzi .” In Virtue, Nature and Moral Agency in the Xunzi, eds. Kline, T. C. and Invahoe, Philip J., 155–75. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Lau, D. C., trans. [1970] 2005. Mencius. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Loewe, Michael, ed. 1993. Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide. Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California.Google Scholar
Makeham, John. 1996. “The Formation of Lunyu as a Book.” Monumenta Serica 44(1):1–24.Google Scholar
Marshall, Emily A. 2013. “Defining Population Problems: Using Topic Models for Cross-National Comparison of Disciplinary Development.” Poetics 41(6):701–24. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2013.08.001.Google Scholar
McCallum, Andrew Kachites. 2002. “MAchine Learning for LanguagE Toolkit (MALLET).” http://mallet.cs.umass.edu/ (accessed July 15, 2016).Google Scholar
Mohr, John W., and Bogdanov, Petko. 2013. “Introduction—Topic Models: What They Are and Why They Matter.” Poetics 41(6):545–69. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2013.10.001.Google Scholar
Moretti, Franco. 2000. “Conjectures on World Literature.” New Left Review 1:54–68.Google Scholar
Nelson, Robert K. 2015. “Mining the Dispatch.” http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/pages/home (accessed July 15, 2016).Google Scholar
Nichols, Ryan. 2015. “Early Confucianism Is a System for Social-Functional Influence and Probably Does Not Represent a Normative Ethical Theory.” Dao 14(4):499–520. doi:10.1007/s11712-015-9464-8.Google Scholar
Overmyer, Daniel L., Keightley, David N., Shaughnessy, Edward L., Cook, Constance A., and Harper, Donald. 1995. “Chinese Religions—The State of the Field Part I: Early Religious Traditions: The Neolithic Period through the Han Dynasty, ca. 4000 B.C.E. to 220 C.E.” Journal of Asian Studies 54(1):124–60.Google Scholar
Wanli, Qu. 1983. Shījīng quánshì 詩經詮釋 [Explanatory notes to the Book of odes]. Taipei: Guójiā túshūguǎn chūbǎnshè.Google Scholar
Rhody, Lisa M. 2012. “Topic Modeling and Figurative Language.” Journal of Digital Humanities 2(1). http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/2-1/topic-modeling-and-figurative-language-by-lisa-m-rhody/ (accessed July 15, 2016).Google Scholar
Schmidt, Benjamin M. 2012. “Words Alone: Dismantling Topic Models in the Humanities.” Journal of Digital Humanities 2(1). http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/2-1/words-alone-by-benjamin-m-schmidt/ (accessed July 15, 2016).Google Scholar
Slingerland, Edward. 2000. “Why Philosophy Is Not ‘Extra’ in Understanding the Analects .” Review of The Original Analects by E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks. Philosophy East and West 50(1):137–41.Google Scholar
Slingerland, Edward. 2003. Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Slingerland, Edward, and Chudek, Maciej. 2011. “The Prevalence of Mind-Body Dualism in Early China.” Cognitive Science 35(5):997–1007. doi:10.1111/j.1551-6709.2011.01186.x.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Slingerland, Edward, Nichols, Ryan, Nielbo, Kristoffer, and Logan, Carson. Forthcoming. “The Distant Reading of Religious Texts A ‘Big Data’ Approach to Mind-Body Concepts in Early China.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion.Google Scholar
Twitchett, Denis Crispin, and Lowe, Michael. 1986. The Cambridge History of China Volume 1: The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 BC–AD 220. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Underwood, Ted. 2012a. “Topic Modeling Made Just Simple Enough.” The Stone and the Shell, April 7. http://tedunderwood.com/2012/04/07/topic-modeling-made-just-simple-enough/ (accessed July 15, 2016).Google Scholar
Underwood, Ted. 2012b. “What Kinds of ‘Topics’ Does Topic Modeling Actually Produce?” The Stone and the Shell, April 1. http://tedunderwood.com/2012/04/01/what-kinds-of-topics-does-topic-modeling-actually-produce/ (accessed July 15, 2016).Google Scholar
Van Norden, Bryan W. 1992. “Mengzi and Xunzi: Two Views of Human Agency.” International Philosophical Quarterly 32(2):161–84. doi:10.5840/ipq199232212.Google Scholar
Van Norden, Bryan W. trans. 2008. Mengzi: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Xiānshèn, Wáng 王先慎, ed. 2006. Hánfēizi jíjiě 韓非子集解 [Collected commentaries on the Hanfeizi]. Beijing: Zhōnghuá shūjú.Google Scholar
Weingart, Scott. 2012. Topic Modeling for Humanists: A Guided Tour. http://www.scottbot.net/HIAL/?p=19113 (accessed July 15, 2016).Google Scholar
Wills, John Elliot. 2012. Mountain of Fame: Portraits in Chinese History. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Thomas. 2014. “Spirits and the Soul in Confucian Ritual Discourse.” Journal of Chinese Religions 42(2):185–212. doi:10.1179/0737769X14Z.00000000013.Google Scholar
Wong, David B. 1991. “Is There a Distinction between Reason and Emotion in Mencius?” Philosophy East and West 41(1):31–44. doi:10.2307/1399716.Google Scholar
Fuguan, Xú 徐復觀. 1969. Zhongguo renxing lun shi: Xian Qin pian [History of Chinese views on human nature: The pre-Qin period]. Taipei: Commercial Press.Google Scholar
Zhang, Longxi. 2012. The Concept of Humanity in an Age of Globalization. Göttingen: V&R Unipress.Google Scholar
Zipf, George Kingsley. 1949. Human Behaviour and the Principle of Least Effort. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar