Sentence:  Scholars made numbered sets of as many things as possible in Nature , or assigned arbitrary numbers to individual things , in a fashion that <WSD>seems</WSD> to the modern scientific mind as downright nonsensical , and philosophical ideas based upon all this tended to stifle speculative thought in China for many centuries . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  give a certain impression or have a certain outward aspect