A penniless Han scholar argued that ghosts would outnumber the living
In first-century China, omens, ghosts and deified sages were everywhere. Wang Chong, too poor to buy books, read them standing at market stalls and then took the whole system apart. If the dead became ghosts, he asked, why only humans, and why are the streets not jammed with them?
Wang Chong was born in 27 AD to a poor family in what is now Shangyu, Zhejiang, and was praised locally for devotion to his father. Encouraged by his parents, he went to study at the Imperial University in Luoyang, where he got to know the historian Ban Biao and his son Ban Gu, both contributors to the Book of Han. Lacking money for texts, he relied on a formidable memory and long hours in bookshops. The experience left him resentful of officials admired for wealth and rank rather than learning.
His temper undid his career. Back home he taught, won promotion as an Officer of Merit and quit; later he took and left another post. When a friend recommended him to Emperor Zhang as a senior scholar, he pleaded illness and stayed home. In retirement he wrote essays, about eighty of which were gathered into the Lunheng, often translated as Discourses Weighed in the Balance.
His target was a culture in which Confucius and Laozi were worshipped as gods and feng shui was starting to govern daily life. Heaven, he argued, has no purpose for humanity at all; claiming it feeds and clothes us would make it our farmer or tailor. People are specks in a vast universe, and it is arrogant to think it bends for us. Thunder comes from fire or heat, not divine anger, and claims of divine will should face repeated experience and experiment first. Even revered sages, he said, contradict themselves and must be read critically.
He also did early science, describing the water cycle accurately and giving the first Chinese mention of the square-pallet chain pump later used widely for irrigation. Largely ignored in life, his work was admired by the scholar Cai Yong, and as New Text Confucianism fell out of favour his rationalism gained ground.
Source: Wang Chong
