Anthropocosmic vision, time, and nature: Reconnecting humanity and nature

Abstract

Having enjoyed remarkable economic success, China’s natural environment is being increasingly degraded, and with it, the quality of life. Researchers and environmentalists have responded by exploring whether cultural resources can provide a means of understanding ecological systems. This article reviews philosophical Chinese concepts of tian-ren-he-yi and ecological time, and ponders their implications for understanding current ecological challenges. A motif of ancient Chinese thought, tian-ren-he-yi perceives the cosmos as an organic, mutually reciprocal entity in which human beings coexist harmoniously with nature. This entity does not unfold by following a cyclical pattern, but rather through a process of transformative harmony with the flow of time. In contrast to the linear time constructed by community life, this view of ecological time can reveal the new dimension of rhythm. To enhance children’s awareness of their responsibility for caring for the environment, we must protect their rights to a safe and healthy place to live, ensure that they have free access to nature, and demonstrate the pedagogic value of an anthropocosmic worldview and ecological time.

Keywords:

• Confucianism
• tian-ren-he-yi
• ecological time
• ecological education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Anthropocosmic vision, time, and nature

Reconnecting humanity and nature

Chinese glossary

Table

Notes

1 Within this thought, human beings treat nature with a rational, self-interested, exploitive attitude, and maintain that human beings are superior to nature, and contemptuous of nature. Or, ‘man’s unnatural treatment of nature’ is essentially the expression of an anthropocentric worldview (Tucker, 1991; White, 1967).

2 Tu (1985) has elaborated on the ‘vital force’ in his book, Confucian thought: Selfhood as creative transformation.

3 The original Chinese text reads as follows: 敕天之命, 惟时惟几《书.益稷》.

4 The original reads as follows: “所以从中国哲人的时间观上着眼, 我们简直可以说时间之所流动的波浪, 即天地万物；或天地万物之变化流行下面的一股贯注之力就是时间” in Tang 1988, vol. 11, pp. 94–106.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by 13th Five-year National Education Science Program of China under Grant [No. CHA180265].

Notes on contributors

Hongyan Chen

Dr Hongyan Chen is currently working as a lecturer of Institute of International and Comparative Education at the East China Normal University, Shanghai China. She obtained her PhD in Pedagogical Anthropology from the Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin), Germany in 2016. She is involved as a committee member in conducting national and international conferences. She has also presented and published many essays in the international conferences (Germany, Korea and China) and journals including a book (Germany) and chapter papers in books (Springer, Beltz). Her research fields include reforms in elementary school, curriculum and teacher practical knowledge, ritual and mimetic learning in education, videography and picture interpretation as qualitative method.

Yuhua Bu

Dr. Yuhua Bu is Professor of General Education at the East China Normal University, Shanghai China. Since 2000, she has been working in the Institute of Schooling Reform and Development, East China Normal University, Shanghai. She is also an active member of Basic Education Reform and the Development of Innovative “Life/Practice” Educational Research Center in Shanghai. Her research fields include general education, reform in elementary school, curriculum and instruction, organizational learning.