ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

"Who Knows?" Fengshui's Epistemology of Uncertainty and the Plural Worlds of Rural China

• In Event: New Insights in the History of Chinese Science 2

English Abstract

This paper examines how contemporary rural Chinese navigate fengshui (Chinese geomancy) cosmology alongside modern scientific knowledge, revealing sophisticated epistemologies that resist binary categorizations of tradition versus modernity. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Shanxi Province, I analyze how villagers maintain spatial practices rooted in centuries-old cosmological principles while engaging with state-led modernization projects.

Central to my analysis is an epistemological stance that acknowledges fundamental uncertainty about cosmic mechanisms while maintaining practical engagement. When asked whether spatial arrangements actually influence fortune, practitioners—from ordinary villagers to specialist geomancers—consistently respond "who knows?" (shui zhidao) or "no one can say for certain." This is not skepticism or incomplete belief, but rather a mature cultural response to unknowability rooted in classical Confucian philosophy.
This productive uncertainty enables remarkable adaptability. Villagers creatively integrate modern infrastructure with cosmological concerns, repositioning buildings to preserve spatial hierarchies while accepting scientific rationales for change. Fengshui persists not despite modernization but through flexible techniques that accommodate both biomedical knowledge and cosmological principles without requiring systematic theological commitment.

The research challenges Max Weber's influential claim that Chinese "magical thinking" obstructed modernization, and contributes to understanding plural epistemologies by demonstrating how communities worldwide navigate precarity through maintaining multiple knowledge systems. Rather than linear progress from superstition to science, we find creative synthesis that creates meaningful order while accepting fundamental unpredictability.

Author

• Yuan zhang, University of Oxford