Master came in! In fact, it is a very interesting question: how to think analogously?

China people's analogical thinking mode

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Comprehensive understanding thinking takes analogy as the leading reasoning form. Compare various objects and connections by analogy. On the one hand, it may stimulate inspiration and produce effects that are difficult to achieve by logical reasoning. On the one hand, it may cause pure externalization, simplification and vulgarization. ?

In literary creation a long time ago, our ancestors adopted the methods of Fu, Bi and Xing, and gradually developed into a systematic theory. Fu, Bi and Xing can be said to be centered on Bi Xing, and both Fu and Xing contain the factor of Bi. Guan Ju, the first poem in The Book of Songs, said: "Guan Ju's dove is in Hezhou. My fair lady, a gentleman is good. " It is a typical "xing" method to induce love between men and women by courtship calls of birds, but there are also obvious "ratio" factors. ?

When the children were reading The Journey to the West, they saw the "Duh" of Bodhi's father, jumped off the platform, held a ruler and designated Wukong:' You monkey, what are you going to do if you don't learn like this?' He stepped forward, hit Wukong on the head three times, put his hand behind his back, went in and closed the middle door. "When everyone was in awe, the Monkey King realized from the analogy that he was told to go in through the back door at night to preach his way. China's children have been inspired by this analogy too much since childhood, so they have developed a clever intuitive understanding, and at the same time they have developed a weakness of not paying attention to concrete analysis and scientific abstraction to make it universal. ?

China people who are not good at analysis and abstraction seldom have abstract words in their language. Analogy begins with your own body. Such as: head is the way, top-heavy, anxious, far-sighted, supercilious, eye is superior, eyesore, eyesore, left ear goes in and right ear goes out, refreshing, stealing the clock, well-meaning, and well-meaning.

Thousands of years of history have left countless historical allusions. This is a big dictionary. China people's historical idioms, a Chinese Odyssey, all have analogical significance. ?

Analogy is of great significance in education, and a good analogy can be a basic condition for teachers. Education should use heuristics, one of which is to use analogy to inspire. Confucius regards "drawing inferences from others" as the basic requirement of education. He himself avoids making strict definitions of some of the most important concepts, but uses analogy as inspiration. ?

Many debates in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period relied on analogy. There are many similarities in the dialogue between Mencius and Liang, as do other theorists and debaters. "If the lips die, the teeth will be cold", "If the skin does not exist, the hair will not be attached", "Better late than never" and "Danger is like a pile of eggs" have played an important role in the debate. In the Warring States Policy, Jiang Yi's words to King Wang Xuan are a representative of popular metaphor.

King Xuan Jing said to his ministers, "I heard that the fear in the north is also sympathetic. How sincere is it? " Ministers are right. Jiang Yi said to him, "Tigers can eat all kinds of animals to get a fox. The fox said,' My son dare not eat me. God made me grow a hundred wild animals. It's against God's command for my son to eat me now. I don't believe you. I am your son first, and then you are your son. Do you dare not leave after seeing all the animals see me? "The tiger thought so, so the gang followed him, and all the animals saw him go. Tigers don't know that wild animals are afraid of themselves, but they think they are afraid of foxes. Today, the king's land is 5,000 miles, with a million dollars and his own Zhao Qian ball clothes. Therefore, the north is afraid of Xi T-shirts, but in fact, it is afraid of the king's soldiers.

This is the story of the famous Smith. Such a simple metaphor profoundly explains the complex problems that need careful analysis with biological analogy. ?

The establishment of China's traditional ethical and political theory comes almost entirely from analogy. This must be said to the Book of Changes. Yi is a model of analogical thinking. Sixty-four hexagrams, three hundred and eighty-four hexagrams and the change of hexagrams position all represent a certain state, law or relationship between the universe and human life. This is a highly flexible and all-encompassing huge analogy network, full of mysterious wisdom. Hegel said in the Lecture Notes on the History of Philosophy that the Book of Changes contains "... this is the original principle of all China people's wisdom and the basis of all China's knowledge." ?

That makes sense. Because it is the characteristic of China culture to derive various truths from the metaphor of Yi. The Book of Changes is a "axiom collection" of China culture, which contains the essence of the truth of all things in the world. ?

The basic category of Yi-ology is Yin and Yang. "Yang" is characterized by strength, while "Yin" is characterized by softness. "Simultaneous correspondence, born with the same gas; The water is wet and the fire is dry; Clouds rise from dragons and winds from tigers; Everything you do and see to people. People in the sky are close to each other, and people in the ground are close to each other. " It is clearly stated here, "each according to its type." From the metaphor of "Yang", heaven, horse, monarch, father, husband, auspicious … from the metaphor of "Yin", earth, ox, minister, wife, son, fierce … and then from the changes of various divinatory symbols and divinatory words, the transformation and correlation of various complex things are analogized, which contains China's wisdom as seen by Hegel. For example, there are six yang hexagrams, and the representative number of yang is nine. From the ninth day of Diyang to 92, 93 and 94, it rose one pole and one pole. The Ninth Five-Year Plan was regarded as "the flying dragon in the sky" and "the glory of the Ninth Five-Year Plan" became the code name of the emperor. Generally speaking, the Ninth Five-Year Plan should be more noble than the Ninth Five-Year Plan, but it is easy to think that the next step in the Ninth Five-Year Plan is to be transferred to a lower position, and the future is not good. "Kang Long has regrets, and poverty is also a curse." Things can't go to extremes, or they will go to the opposite side. Although the Ninth Five-Year Plan did not reach the summit, it had both momentum and development, so it was the best situation. This profound truth is not only valuable to life, but also to social politics and market economy (a commodity may fall into recession after it develops into the best-selling market; Only those who sell well and keep the upward trend are the most promising), which fully shows the power of China's wisdom. It is undeniable that analogical reasoning method has great value in a certain range?

Suspicious. ?

Dong Zhongshu, a great scholar in the Han Dynasty, never took the road of logical analysis like Greek philosophers when establishing the ethical system of the Three Cardinal Principles and the Five Permanent Principles, but directly started from the categories of heaven, earth, yin and yang in the Book of Changes and relied on analogy reasoning. ?

The righteousness of husband and wife, father, son and wife all adopt the way of yin and yang. The monarch is Yang, the minister is Yin, the father is Yang, the son is Yin, the husband is Yang, and the wife is Yin. (Dong Zhongshu: Spring and Autumn Stories and Basic Meaning). ?

The son of heaven commands the son of heaven, the vassal commands the son of heaven, the son commands the father, and the male and female servants command the king. (Dong Zhongshu: Spring and Autumn Story shun ming). )?

A generation of masters established the most basic ethical foundation with such a simple argument, which surprised the nations with developed logical thinking in the world. At first glance, they think China is weak in wisdom. In fact, this is possible, because the thinking mode of Yin-Yang and Five Elements has been deeply rooted in people's hearts, and the thinking mode of Yijing has been accepted by the broad masses of people, from the smartest people to the most common illiterate people. Analogical reasoning provides methodology for many important theories. ?

China people are particularly interested in the clever use of metaphors. Li Ao, a disciple of Han Yu in the Tang Dynasty, asked Master Wei Yan about the secrets of Buddhism. Did the master ask up and down? The master said, "The cloud is in the sky and the water is in the bottle." Li Ao suddenly realized and wrote a poem: "I was trained like a crane, and I learned two classics in one thousand years. Let me ask, saying that the cloud is in the sky and the water is in the bottle. " Li Ao learned from the analogy of blue sky, clouds, bottles and water that letting nature take its course is the essence of the master's theory. Another story says that someone asked Mazu. Mazu drew a circle on the ground. He was in the circle. Mazu hit him with a stick. He ran out of the circle, and Mazu hit him again ... The wise man finally understood that there is right and wrong inside and outside the circle, and there is a kind of persistence inside and outside the circle. If you want to get rid of everything, you can get this word This analogical way of thinking occupies a high position in China culture. ?

Fan Zhen was an outstanding philosopher during the Qi and Liang Dynasties in the Southern Dynasties. He advocated that "the existence of form means the existence of God, and the gratitude of form means the extinction of God". He used a famous metaphor in the history of China's philosophy: the blade is a sharp material foundation. Without a blade, there is no sharpness; By analogy, the existence of spiritual dependence on matter has left many Buddhist masters speechless. A long time later, a Buddhist master put forward the theory of "burning lamps", saying that fire can spread through different substances and human spirit can also spread through the body. This famous metaphor persuaded many wise men. These two famous analogies illustrate the great role of this reasoning method. The wonderful metaphor reflects the extraordinary wisdom of China people. ?

On the other hand, analogy often leads to many specious inferences. China's "Ba Mo", regarded as a god by the scholar-officials, is a theory with internal relations, such as respecting things, knowledge, integrity, sincerity, self-cultivation, keeping the family in order, governing the country and leveling the world. "Bamo" is neither eight causal categories, nor a category that must have internal relations. This is a bit mysterious, it depends on understanding. People who can understand things may not be sincere; People who can cultivate themselves and put their families in order may not be able to govern the country; However, these are all related to governing the country and leveling the world. This is the weakness of China's thinking. It is impossible to form a strict theoretical system by mixing analogy with causality. Shen Kuo, a famous scientist, compared "rainbow" with dragon, saying that "rainbow" can drink water from a stream like a dragon, and this idea is also widespread. As for the people, it is more of a "bad analogy." Many mysterious analogies have a great influence on China's figure. For example, in the zodiac, people's birthdays are initially arranged as rats, ugly cows, silver tigers, hairy rabbits and so on. It doesn't make sense, but there are many unscientific analogies among the people in China. If it is emphasized that dogs and sheep cannot be combined when choosing a spouse, pigs and sheep are very suitable. Be careful when the dog belongs to the sheep, it is easy to get into trouble and so on. Today, many knowledgeable and literate people in China still avoid "putting the lion in the lion's den" when they move, and avoid the Year of the Tiger when their children get married ... This shows that there are twelve students.

Shaw's analogy has a great influence. Traditional Chinese medicine divides people into various forms such as gold, wood, water, fire and earth. Wood-shaped people can't eat hot and dry food because wood is afraid of fire. As for correlators of various animals, it is common sense in China to supplement similar organs of human beings ...?

In contemporary China, while logical thinking rapidly enters people's minds, analogical reasoning still has great influence on a large scale. Without understanding this, it is difficult to understand China. This phenomenon can be seen everywhere. For example, the large-scale agricultural learning Dazhai movement, learning from Lei Feng movement, learning from Angang, learning from Zhangjiagang and learning from Kong Fansen ... It has become a basic working method to promote work with typical people and typical things-sample tables. This habit has both good and bad sides. On the positive side, experience is easily accepted and popularized by people with low education. Specific examples include not only "reason" but also "emotion", which can achieve the effect of "convincing people with reason and moving people with emotion" at the same time. However, the disadvantages are also obvious, often the abstract analysis of the typical is too weak, and many cadres and leaders focus on organizing inspections instead of analyzing the typical connotation. I don't know how much effort and money I have spent studying Dazhai, but there is no high-level book about Dazhai's experience, and there is no real scientific theoretical analysis of Dazhai's experience (in fact, Dazhai's experience can't stand scrutiny). This is very different from western thinking. In the west, to publicize and popularize an experience, we must first make a serious theoretical analysis and demonstration of the experience, then make a theoretical summary to clarify the fully convincing connotation, and then publish it in newspapers and magazines for others to refute and refute. Everyone agrees, and you will naturally follow suit. There is no need to visit and study. We have been shouting for years to learn from Dazhai. Has anyone seriously made a philosophical analysis of the image of Dazhai? This analogical thinking and working method is easy to cause blindness, waste manpower and material resources and produce formalism. In principle, we don't object to the method of setting an example to promote our work. We just want to emphasize that people's cultural level has been greatly improved in 2 1 century. When using examples, we should spend more energy on the analysis and research of examples, raise the experience of examples to the height of theory, and make clear the connotation of its regularity, rather than organizing unnecessary visits and studies. ?

Everything has a process. When our legal system is not perfect, people's legal quality is not high, and laws and regulations are not clear enough, judicial trial once relied on "cases" to a considerable extent, and "cases" used to be an indispensable and important factor in judicial work. But this is a backward way after all. Analogy can only be used as a reference, and it doesn't play much role. To reform the way of thinking, we should rely more on abstract laws than concrete case analogies. ?

We can't completely deny China people's deep-rooted thinking mode of attaching importance to analogy but not to abstract analysis. Analogy can often be reasonable and enlightening; There will be no western prejudice against abstract provisions. While affirming the above advantages, we should pay more attention to guiding people to develop logical thinking; In particular, we should accept historical lessons and not let "bad analogy" dominate people's thinking, because "bad analogy" does us too much harm. Mr. Lu Xun once sharply ridiculed this "bad metaphor": "Foreign slaves can speak foreign languages, and you advocate reading foreign books, which are foreign slaves ... You say that A has sores and A is from China, so you mean that China has sores." (Lu Xun: On the Differentiation of Soul, see Complete Works of Lu Xun, three volumes, 29 pages)?

Taking architecture as an example, we have had a large number of "big and complete" and "small and complete" architectural models. One province has established a bicycle factory, and other provinces have followed suit. One place has a TV factory, and other places will never "sit idly by" ... As a result, every province has almost the same steel factory, machine tool factory, cement factory, paper factory, bicycle factory, automobile factory, sewing machine factory, watch factory, TV factory, refrigerator factory and cigarette factory ... Under the seller's market conditions, the disadvantages of this construction model are not obvious, but when the market economy develops, it is obvious that every place has it. "Big and complete" and "small and complete" are outstanding manifestations of bad metaphor. "Bad analogy" itself is not only the product of low creativity, but also further stifles creativity. ?

This bad analogy has more serious consequences in building countries and institutions. At present, the institutional setup in China is basically the same from the central level to the county level, including military and diplomatic affairs. Governments at or above the county level have local armed forces departments and foreign affairs departments. A small county (in the border areas of China, some counties have a population of only 30,000 to 40,000) also has a huge system of "people's congresses", "CPPCC", "government" and "party committees" including many full-time staff. The government includes public security, justice, courts, procuratorates, armed police, personnel, civil affairs, planning commission, economic commission, finance, taxation, industry and commerce, education, culture, sports, family planning, science and technology commission, religion, overseas Chinese affairs, foreign affairs, tourism, personnel, prices, transportation, telecommunications, posts and telecommunications, water conservancy, agriculture, township enterprises, armed forces and so on. As far as the education department is concerned, the education administrative department in a place has "specialized" departments such as general education, adult education, vocational education, audio-visual education, higher education, ethnic education and ideological and moral education, as well as departments such as personnel, finance, discipline inspection, auditing, regulations, teaching and research, education newspapers, science and technology, party committees, supervision, research, educational television, instrument supply, language and statistics. In some counties, a bureau has reached the establishment of 20 or 30 people, but it still cannot meet the above requirements. According to the statistics of some county education departments, the number of meetings notified above can reach thousands every year, and it is enough to adjust four or five establishments just to cope with the meetings ... This is only the government system, and the personnel of the Party Committee, the People's Congress and the CPPCC system are also increasing, with huge regulations. ?

What is even more surprising is the analogical expansion of public institutions. There are many non-statutory and semi-official institutions, many of which have staff and funds. In foreign countries, the establishment of institutions in a place is often due to its special ability in this field, and there is no state expenditure, relying entirely on its own ideas. Whether there are conditions or not, we are carrying out similar construction in various places. All kinds of research institutes, newspapers and magazines, societies, associations and committees have certain establishment and state financial support. Take the education department as an example. There are teaching and research sections in all provinces, autonomous regions and counties, and the number is not small. Do you really need so many teaching and research sections? In many places, the teaching and research sections mainly compile supplementary teaching materials, and strive for their own income, which causes the students to be overburdened. Whenever it is decided to set up a new unit, it will give a green light to a new "system engineering" or "network engineering". Once a local organization is established, it is necessary to start work, hold meetings, issue documents, hold training courses, need offices, need personnel, and need funds ... This kind of thing is countless and dazzling in China; As long as a society, association, Committee or temporary organization is established throughout the country, the following work will be carried out immediately ... As a result, there are more and more organizations, which are getting bigger and bigger, and the people are unbearable. In some counties, full-time staff account for one-fifth of the county's population, and the county's fiscal revenue is not enough for cadres to pay wages, so they can only rely on state subsidies. Many redundant, redundant and unnecessary institutions will inevitably become parasitic by-products of the country's body, and at the same time become a cancer that stifles the nation's creative spiritual life. ?

Analogy construction has come to an end under the impact of market economy. Market competition, like a powerful storm, swept away redundant construction projects without competition and viability, and liberated people's imagination and creativity. However, the setting of simulation mechanism has not changed so far. After liberation, many streamlined institutions ended in failure, which can not but make people think deeply. Full-time workers eat not "imperial grain", but the blood and sweat of "taxpayers"; Without thorough reform, the whole country will pay a terrible and heavy price for the huge and bloated institutions. Both the 15th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the 9th National People's Congress have made decisions on institutional reform, and people are eager for success. However, it should be noted that it is not an easy task to compress the organization and establishment. It needs a great change in concept, the most determined and tenacious attitude and persistent efforts.