送交者: apate 于 2005-1-12, 04:52:35:
回答: Gosh. we should respect the nature but not fear the nature 由 xj 于 2005-1-12, 00:54:57:
probably "awe" is a closer equivelant, since it indicates the sense of "wonder" (and "veneration"). in this sense, the rendering "fear of the Lord" in KJV is a bad word choice. also, speaking of wonder, it makes perfect sense to me that according to Aristotle at the very beginning of his _Metaphysics_, "All humans by nature desire to know." therefore, we may also infer that "the awe of nature" and its sibling notions in Chinese culture can be (re)interpreted as a metaphysical statement about human cognitive capacity. i have to admit that i don't know much about Chinese culture, but if we read Qu Yuan's "Questioning the Skies" (Tian Wen), we can get a sense of how his mythopoeic mode of thinking was mingled with a sense of wonder that might be regarded as less imaginative and more analytical. but unfortunately, Qu Yuan was no scientist at all, and thus may be a prime example to show how "the awe of nature" in Chinese traditional culture was the complication of different modes of knowing. (telling a myth about the creation of the earth and species is also a way of knowing, albeit a different one from Darwinism. but even Darwin was influeced by what was called "natural theology.")
much to the false impression induced by Prof. He's all-too-simplistic synopsis of the history of science (the third last paragraph), western science was in a sense developed in the violaiton of "respect for nature" but driven by "awe of nature." take Bacon, for example. do you call this remark of his "respectful" in either the Chinese tradition or the environmental ethics: "I am come in very truth leading to you [his son or any scientific man] Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make *her* your *slave*" (The Masculine Birth of Time. my emphasis)? i am not advocating that nowadays we still should treat Mother Nature as a slave, as i am indeed an environmentalist. interestingly and incidentally Prof. He may be partially right that humans indeed didn't have to respect (Jing) nature at all, but that was probably the price humans had to pay and did pay in the history of scientific advance.
but now is a different time.