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Review of YAN FU AND KE XUE (SCIENCE), by SHEN Guowei.
Nanjing: Phoenix Publishing House, 2017
WU Lijing*		 As a lexical historian and expert on lexical semantics, Professor
SHEN Guowei traces the historical journey of how the English
word SCIENCE became the Chinese term KE XUE (科学 ) based onsolid textual analysis and an objective methodology. He also highlights for us the source of Yan Fu’s consistent scientific thought:
Francis Bacon. SHEN reinterprets Yan Fu and his works from thiscompletely new perspective. The methodology displayed in the bookis very insightful to Yan Fu studies as well as to the study of themodern history of concepts.
This book about Yan Fu and his adoptionof different Chinese terms to convey themeaning of SCIENCE consists of 6 chapters,
an introduction, a conclusion and 4 appendices. Each chapter deals with one of Yan
Fu’s translated works and the corresponding
terms used by Yan Fu for the English word
SCIENCE. The contents are as follows:
Introduction: Western Knowledge Went
Eastward: When SCIENCE Became
KAGAKU
Chapter 1: Evolution and Ethics andother Essays (1895–1898):
SCIENCE and GE ZHI（格致）Chapter 2: An Inquiry into the Natureand Causes of the Wealth ofNations: SCIENCE and KE XUE（科学）	  * WU Lijing 吴礼敬 is an associate professor of English Department of Hefei NormalUniversity.

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Chapter 3: The Study of Sociology: SCIENCE and KE XUE
Chapter 4: Yan Fu and the KE XUE Discourse in the Imperial
Examinations in the late Qing Dynasty
Chapter 5: A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: SCIENCE andKE XUE
Chapter 6: Political Science and the Science of WU LI (物理)
Conclusion: The System of Science and Art vs. the System of Discourse
Appendix 1: KE XUE in the Collected Works of Yan Fu and its
Supplements
Appendix 2: KE XUE in the Translated Works of Yan Fu
Appendix 3: Francis Bacon in the Translated Works of Yan Fu
Appendix 4: Selected Translations of NISHI Amane’s EncyclopediaPhilosophy
Professor SHEN Guowei is an expert with a specialization in the studyof modern lexicology, especially the history of lexical contact between thewest and the east, with a focus on lexical borrowing from Japanese toChinese. His recently published book Jindai zhongri cihui jiaoliu yanjiu:hanzi
xinci de chuangzhi, rongshou yu gongxiang (A Study of Modern Lexical
Communications Between Chinese and Japanese: The Invention, Acceptanceand Sharing of New Chinese Words, 2010, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju) has
already discussed the lexical contact and communication between modern
China and Japan, especially the borrowing of new words from the Japanese
language into Chinese. In the second part of the book, SHEN traced Yan Fu’s
translation process of Thomas H. Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics and otherEssays (1895–1898) and Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causesof the Wealth of Nations (1898–1902), in which three ways of transferring
meanings of western terms applied by Yan Fu are discussed respectively:
using existing terms, inventing new terms and borrowing terms fromJapanese. Nearly all of these terms reflect Yan Fu’s understanding of XI XUE(western knowledge) and his attempt to transplant new ideas through conventional forms. SHEN analyzed Yan Fu’s translation of ECONOMY, where heobserved that instead of choosing the existing JINGJI (经济) or LICAI (理财),Yan Fu coined a new term JIXUE (计学), which exhibits his intention ofconveying the essence of western knowledge (pp.170–179).
This research centric approach of reconstructing Yan Fu’s thought bytracing its roots within historical context and understanding the complicatedprocess from his application of new terms in translated works is again
employed in this book and named “keyword reading approach”, that is, toscrutinize and classify a keyword that conveys a core concept in a certain setof books so as to interpret the author’s (translator’s) intention of using theseBook Reviews111words, the development of their understanding and features of expression(p.3).
This time Professor SHEN focused on the word SCIENCE. He probed
into all of Yan Fu’s works and translations to find out the terms Yan Fu used
to express the meaning of SCIENCE, then listed them chronologically andprovided the original context if needed for convenience of analysis. Throughthis detailed investigation, Professor SHEN retraced the process of Yan Fu’stranslation of SCIENCE into KE XUE (科学) and the subsequent acceptance,and use of the term by the Chinese society. In this way he probed into thedepths of Yan Fu’s comprehension of western science and scientific thought.
Professor SHEN’s approach and findings remind us of Raymond Williams’
Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976), which aims at
sketching the transformation of culture and society by tracking the etymology
and changes in usage of some keywords. Interestingly Raymond also
discussed the word SCIENCE, which means knowledge or a particular bodyof knowledge when it first came into English in the 14th century. From the17th century onwards, SCIENCE began to be distinct from ART, the formerreferring to a skill requiring theoretical knowledge and the latter a skill
requiring only practice. When the distinction between experience and experiment became more and more evident with time, the conditions for the emergence of science as the theoretical and methodical study of nature werecomplete in the 18th century and concretized in the 19th century. “The terms‘scientific’, ‘scientific method’ and ‘scientific truth’ became specialized to thesuccessful methods of the natural sciences, primarily physics, chemistry andbiology.” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983: p. 279)
Raymond’s description reveals the gradual process of how the word
SCIENCE transitions from a general word into a specific term. In a similarmanner, Professor SHEN went into the etymology of SCIENCE and its
corresponding term KE XUE in Chinese. KE XUE is originally a waseikango, or Japanese-made Chinese word. Therefore, NISHI Amane’s bookabout the western disciplinary system is examined both at the beginning andin the appendix. Then the various terms Yan Fu used in different translated
works were explored and analyzed chronologically, as illustrated in theaforementioned contents. Professor SHEN examined Yan Fu’s view ofwestern science on the basis of an archeological analysis of this word. This is
one of the most comprehensive and in-depth study of Yan Fu’s thought basedon the detailed and expert analysis of his works, which lays a solid foundation for the future study of modern Chinese lexicology and lexicography.
The greatest contribution of this book is that Professor SHEN discovered
Yan Fu’s relation with English empiricism, primarily with Francis Bacon, andbrought to light his influence on Yan Fu, which has never been explored in112

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over a century of Yan Fu studies. In the beginning of his Tian Yan Lun (literally meaning the ‘Evolution of Nature’, which is the translation of Huxley’s
Evolution and Ethics and other Essays), Yan Fu said “Tao embodies itself inthe lowest things of heaven and earth, the lower the thing, the deeper the Tao,even in the meanest things. When its nature is revealed, the nature of allthings is revealed; when its reason is uncovered, the reason of all things isuncovered.” These words do not exist in Huxley’s original book. They are
Yan Fu’s additions based on Francis Bacon’s thought that science doesn’t
distinguish itself between the physical and metaphysical world, that “whatever is worthy of being is worthy also of scientific knowledge, which is theimage of being. And mean things exist as well as elegant things.”(The New
Organon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p.92)
Previous research on Yan Fu’s thought stressed too much on his search
for wealth and power, such as Benjamin Schwartz’s representative work In
Search of Wealth and Power: Yan Fu and the West (1983). After careful
textual analysis, Professor SHEN points out that in Yan Fu’s understanding,the major function of SCIENCE is to train the intellectual mind and modes ofthought, and through the learning of different disciplines, people can overcome what Bacon called “idols” and avoid what Spencer named “bias”. YanFu said that “sociology is the end of all science”, that the study of mathematics, physics and chemistry is only the preparation for the study of sociology (pp.105–123).
From this we can see what Yan Fu understands as QUN XUE, itsconnotations are much broader than SOCIOLOGY. Yan Fu said “only byunderstanding QUN XUE can we understand the cause of turmoil and peace,and thus contribute to the governance of the world.” Professor SHEN tells us
what Yan Fu wanted is metaphysically-oriented governance. So Bacon’sempiricism combined with the Great Learning of ancient Chinese sages is thesource of Yan Fu’s scientific view.
The significance of this book also lies in the fact that it initiates a newapproach towards understanding Yan Fu. The previous studies of Yan Fu’s
thought constantly focus on the isolated analysis of Yan Fu’s translations, andthose who study Yan Fu’s translations pay less attention to Yan Fu’s politicalessays. Professor SHEN’s book shows us the best way to study Yan Fu is tograsp his discourse along with the timeline, with a comprehensive understanding of the east and the west, instead of analyzing his discourse out of thehistorical context.