Reply To: October 6: Science and Potery

Reflection, by Yaqi Fu

In today’s seminar, I find the trial of combining the course literature and self-selected literature is quite interesting and rewarding, from which I saw different poems in the depicting of nature. In most of the time, poems are inclusive of nature, and beyond nature, presenting the highest reason of human. Human’s reason, in science shows human’s power in, to, against nature; while in poem, power becomes shaded in human itself, but mostly lies in nature. The power of nature let fantasy, let poem, and let philosophy sprout.

The power of nature is like the goodness of human, while human’s power is the guilt to nature. Nature’s power gives vitality and makes everything in order and rarely disturbed: born in spring, grown in summer, harvested in autumn and buried in winter. But human’s power in most of the case causes disasters, wars and robberies. Atrocity and enormity! The feat or the power of a general, if one has, is due to thousands of dead bones but with thousands of applause.

In return, the goodness of human, if one wants could be discovered in nature. In Chinese education, what I say is the traditional one, pupils were taught as “Human’s nature is good.”（人之初，性本善）at the beginning when they started to learn words. And almost all Chinese philosophy pointed to the way that human should learn from nature, instead of controlling nature. I am still thinking such education is good, of the goodness.