What do Chinese do when they encounter anomalous materials?

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What do Chinese do when they encounter anomalous materials?
« on: February 02, 2021, 01:28:46 PM »
Analysis is some process of breaking material into constituent parts and determining how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose. This is not especially controversial as a claim. We'll also say the process of breaking material down and determining relationship will be principled. This too is probably not especially controversial. It means just that we use principles to identify constituent parts and relations. However, this also means the process of analysis includes some kind of claim as to the fundamental nature of the material we are attending to, and therefore what kind of analytical principle is appropriate. We therefore run into a bit of a bind when we find anomalies.

Suppose the material we are inspecting contains an anomaly, some novel entity or aspect that is not adequately identified or related by our chosen analytical principle. If the material we are inspected genuinely falls within the purview of whichever subject area we are drawing our analytical principles from, anomalous material suggests our depth of inspection is too shallow. Whatever principles we are using are inadequate to the task and should be replaced by whichever individual principle or group of principles forms the more fundamental description of the material we are attending to. These more fundamental principles will either further divide the anomaly into more adequately recognizable parts or remove the anomaly from problematic status by finding some more fundamental classification for it. It is possible the whole subject area in question is too shallowly conceived and is in need of revision, but this too is the task of seeking out the more fundamentally descriptive analytical principle.

So, question: in teaching the subject area, when do we begin promoting awareness of this more fundamentally descriptive analytical principle? In some subject areas these more fundamentally descriptive analytical principles are going to amount to worldviews. For example, how do we know “cause and effect” is a fundamental principle in, say, business and economics? Well, we do because we understand the macro world to be described in terms of cause and effect. We don’t need that assertion to exist in any economics textbook as if it were problematic, do we? We don’t need Economics 101 to put a lesson on cause and effect before the introduction to supply and demand, do we? We just know it, don't we?


What do Chinese do when they encounter anomalous materials?
when ur a roamin', do as the settled do o_0