science

School of Naturalists

School of Naturalists is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand School of Naturalists rather than just read about it. In short: The School of Naturalists or the School of Yin-Yang (simplified Chinese: 阴阳家; traditional Chinese: 陰陽家; pinyin: Yīnyángjiā; Wade–Giles: Yin-yang-chia; lit. 'School of Yin-Yang') was a Warring States-era philosophy that synthesized the concepts of yin-yang and the Five Elements. It was one of the Nine Schools of Thought.

Key takeaways

School of Naturalists belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect School of Naturalists to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of School of Naturalists from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The School of Naturalists or the School of Yin-Yang (simplified Chinese: 阴阳家; traditional Chinese: 陰陽家; pinyin: Yīnyángjiā; Wade–Giles: Yin-yang-chia; lit. 'School of Yin-Yang') was a Warring States-era philosophy that synthesized the concepts of yin-yang and the Five Elements. It was one of the Nine Schools of Thought.

History The School of Naturalists did not have any one ethos and came from separate schools. K.C. Hsiao believed that they were an off-shoot of Confucianism, but the discovery of the Mawangdui Silk Texts includes various Daoistic texts.

Overview Chinese philosopher Zou Yan (鄒衍; 305 – 240 BCE) is considered the founder of the school, and is the best known as the representative thinker of the Yin and Yang School (or School of Naturalists) during the Hundred Schools of Thought era in Chinese philosophy. Zou Yan was a noted scholar of the Jixia Academy in the state of Qi. Joseph Needham, a British biochemist and sinologist, describes Zou as "The real founder of all Chinese scientific thought." His teachings combined and systematized two current theories during the Warring States period: Yin-Yang and the Five Elements/Phases (metal, wood, water, fire, and earth). His theory attempted to explain the universe in terms of basic forces in nature: the complementary agents of yin (dark, cold, female, negative) and yang (light, hot, male, positive) and the Five Elements or Five Phases (metal, wood, water, fire, and earth). In its early days, this theory was most strongly associated with the states of Yan and Qi. In later periods, these epistemological theories came to hold significance in both philosophy and popular belief. This school was absorbed into the alchemic and magical dimensions of Taoism as well as into the Chinese medical framework. The earliest surviving recordings of this are in the Ma Wang Dui texts and Huang Di Nei Jing. During the Han dynasty, the concepts of the school were integrated into Confucian ideology, with Zhang Cang (253–152 BCE) and Dong Zhongshu (179–104 BCE) being the chief instrumental figures behind this process.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with School of Naturalists

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what School of Naturalists claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to School of Naturalists before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about School of Naturalists ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of School of Naturalists

In research: School of Naturalists appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses School of Naturalists in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: School of Naturalists is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Natural philosophy, Onmyōdō, Schools and traditions in ancient Chinese philosophy, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for School of Naturalists outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study School of Naturalists in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what School of Naturalists means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain School of Naturalists out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is School of Naturalists in simple terms?

Why does School of Naturalists matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study School of Naturalists?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on School of Naturalists.