Qian Wang

In the May Fourth era of the 1910s and 1920s, Confucius' image was associated closely with the conservative political forces that were increasingly regarded by many as the cause of the challenges the newly founded Republic was facing. With respect to Confucius, Hu Shi believed that the critical attitude engendered in the May Fourth era had brought Confucius down from a high pedestal and put him on a par with the contemporaries of his time. Hu Shi's main assessment of Confucius as an ancient philosopher was shown in his doctoral dissertation and the later published A History of Ancient Chinese Philosophy, both appeared in the May Fourth era. During the May Fourth era, the interest in distinguishing “historical Confucius” from “iconic Confucius” was conducive to the emergence of the National Studies Movement, led by Zhang Taiyan, Hu Shi, Liang Qichao, and others.

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited All rights reserved. Genome-wide gene expression measurements have enabled comprehensive studies that integrate the changes of gene expression and phenotypic information to uncover their novel associations. Here we reported the association analysis between psychophysical phenotypes and genome-wide gene expression changes in human adaptation to one of the most extreme climates on Earth, the Antarctic Dome Argus. Dome A is the highest ice feature in Antarctica, and may be the coldest, driest and windiest location on earth. It is considered unapproachable due to its hostile environment. In 2007, a Chinese team of 17 male explorers made the expedition to Dome A for scientific investigation. Overall, 133 psychophysical phenotypes were recorded, and genome-wide gene expression profiles from the blood samples of the explorers were measured before their departure and upon their arrival at Dome A. We found that mood disturbances, including tension, depression, anger and fatigue, had a strong, positive, linear relationship with the level of a male sex hormone, testosterone, using the Pearson correlation coefficient analysis. We also demonstrated that significantly lowest-level Gene Ontology groups in changes of gene expression in blood cells with erythrocyte removal were consistent with the adaptation of the psychophysical characteristics. Interestingly, we discovered a list of genes that were strongly related to significant phenotypes using phenotype and gene expression PCC analysis. Importantly, among the 70 genes that were identified, most were significantly related to mood disturbances, where 42 genes have been reported in the literature mining, suggesting that the other 28 genes were likely novel genes involved in the mood disturbance mechanism. Taken together, our association analysis provides a reliable method to uncover novel genes and mechanisms related to phenotypes, although further studies are needed.

Objectives: The main objective of this dissertation is to provide an interpretation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s idea of embodiment, which identifies two different understandings of the body, and to apply this interpretation in order to analyse the issue of temporality within contemporary sport. Accordingly, the dissertation aims to demonstrate the ontological significance of the body and to investigate the concept of time within the human embodiment, establishing a shift in our understanding of the body from ‘I use my body’ to ‘I am the body’. Subsequently, it aims to illustrate participants’ existential state of being in relation to time in contemporary sport and to examine traditional Chinese and Japanese movement practices to demonstrate the different existential state that is cultivated through those practices. Methodology: This is a desk-based study employing two traditions in philosophy as its methodology: phenomenology and analytical philosophy. The phenomenological method takes a first-person perspective on human experiencing, reflecting on how things appear to us in a primordial way. The experience is not of an individual and particular subject but rather the universal experience of being a human. Specifically, the thesis draws mainly upon Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work, Phenomenology of Perception, to demonstrate the ontological significance of the body and time. The method of analytical philosophy includes conceptual analysis and logical reasoning, which are employed for clarifying and construing the meaning of the concepts and formulating arguments presented in the thesis, and especially the concept of sport competition. Further, this dissertation analyses the issues identified in contemporary sport in a comparative manner. It introduces Eastern movement practices – Chinese Daoyinshu 导引术, and Japanese Zen meditative practices, Shikantaza 只管打坐 – as a counterexample to contemporary sport, for a better elucidation of the issues. Results: The thesis concludes that the over-competitive sport environment stimulates an existential state of ‘being toward the future’ in participants. The concept of sport competition itself does not necessarily lead to this conclusion, but rather it is the milieu where sport competitions occur. The overemphasis on results, the prioritising constituted time over athletes’ experiencing of time, and an imbalance between training and playing sports throughout athletes’ careers – these factors jointly form a sport environment stimulating an existential state of being toward the future. As a counterexample, two Eastern movement practices, Daoyinshu 导引术, and Shikantaza 只管打坐, cultivate a state of ‘being in the present’. These two practices can be interpreted as one application of the understanding of ‘I am the body’, given the resonance between the Daoist philosophy and Merleau-Ponty’s idea of embodiment, despite their distinct cultural origins and ontologies. While being in the present, the future is perceived as open, and the potentiality of bodily movement is recognised, leading to richer experiencing. In contrast, while being toward the future, there is a perceived narrowness attributed to the future, and the potentiality of bodily movements is constrained, leading to limited experiencing.

This paper explores what is understood by the phrase ‘spontaneous movement’. We discern five different understandings of spontaneity in the usage of the phrase: 1) spontaneous movement as automatic machine-like mechanistic, 2) spontaneous movement as free, 3) spontaneous movement as primal animateness of the body, 4) spontaneous movement as embodied responsive dealing in the world, 5) spontaneous movement as a force of nature. The first two understandings are rooted in a dualistic view, with the dichotomies of voluntary/involuntary and mind/body in the Western philosophical tradition. The next two arise from a phenomenological reflection on the body, drawn from Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, while the last comes from a holistic Eastern view of the body, human beings and nature. We argue that the latter three understandings of spontaneity demonstrate three aspects of a more comprehensive picture of the spontaneity of human movement.

In this article, I will present Merleau-Ponty’s idea of embodiment and apply it to demonstrate two attributes of the on-screen virtual world, which suggest that the videogaming situation is projected in a contextual sense and flattened in a spatial sense. According to Merleau-Ponty, humans are primordially situated body subjects taking up the world in and through movement. He views bodily movements as correlated and solicited by situations that the body subject encounters. Building on this, I argue that, because of the projected and flattened videogaming situation, playing video games always involves an abstract attitude; and it always involves a determined and constrained pattern of bodily movements in the present, as well as limited possibilities for future movement development.