Chapter 41

Chapter 41

When a superior person hears of the Tao,
She diligently puts it into practice.
When an average person hears of the Tao,
he believes half of it, and doubts the other half.
When a foolish person hears of the Tao,
he laughs out loud at the very idea.
If he didn’t laugh,
it wouldn’t be the Tao.

Thus it is said:
The brightness of the Tao seems like darkness,
the advancement of the Tao seems like retreat,
the level path seems rough,
the superior path seem empty,
the pure seems to be tarnished,
and true virtue doesn’t seem to be enough.
The virtue of caution seems like cowardice,
the pure seems to be polluted,
the true square seems to have no corners,
the best vessels take the most time to finish,
the greatest sounds cannot be heard,
and the greatest image has no form.

The Tao hides in the unnamed,
Yet it alone nourishes and completes all things.

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My brother’s response to the content of the above chapter was, how could it be true that the tao sounds silly to people when most people in Asia would have at least heard of Lao Tzu’s name and usually revere him as one of the major thinkers in Eastern history. I do not know how to answer that question, but this chapter reminds me of one point concerning Karl Popper’s “falsificationism.”

If somebody laughing at the significance of the tao is a silly person as written in the above chapter – which means that none of us should ridicule the tao if we don’t want to be seen as unintelligent – how could we have a constructively critical viewpoint of the tao? 

Before getting into details, I think it is imperative to define the exact nature of the tao that may be an object of ridicule from silly people in this chapter.  

Laozi was most likely referring to the practice of Laozian virtue such as humility, rather than some metaphysical subject matters of the tao. Nevertheless, I will discuss both types of tao in regard to falsificationism.

Tao as metaphysical essence in Chapter 41

If I remember correctly, both Wittgenstein and Popper were initially dazzled by the explanatory power of Freud’s psychoanalysis. However, Popper later rejected psychoanalysis and condemned it as pseudoscience. According to his falsificationism, neither psychoanalysis nor Marxism is science because it blocks and exterminates every constructive criticism from within. Whereas science allows rebuttals and thus allows room to improve in matters of truths – i.e., natural science is “falsifiable” – psychoanalysis and communism have no such room to grow.

This leads me to ask whether the tao or the book of the tao te ching is falsifiable. As several Western scholars rightfully note, the core concept of Chinese philosophy majorly features something that is “NOT.” The tao, for example, is “NOT” the tao that is named. This is like, instead of defining who God really is, theologians continue to evade making a concrete definition of the identity of God. God does not belong in space and time, God is an immaterial being, God is not who you think… and so on. As such, because the exact nature of the tao is unknown, it is difficult to answer this question. Is the tao falsifiable? Probably not, even though it can be argued that it is YOUR definition of the tao that is falsifiable. The tao itself is concrete and self-sufficient (by the way, this enunciation in itself may also be potentially falsified because I verbally characterized its nature).

For simplicity, let us match the tao with the intrinsic purpose of natural science (because falsificationism concerns making way to science). If the purpose of physics is, for example, to provide a consistent unified theory of everything regarding our universe, than their target object can be considered to be the tao. However, no scientific theory such as relativity theory or string theory has been able to perfectly describe the known phenomena of the universe. Therefore, the tao itself is not an object to be falsified. Rather, it is our aim. If there is anything that we may have to attempt to falsify, it is the contents of the chapters of the tao te ching. Throughout my writings, I have provided persistent critical analyses of the individual chapters. It can be said that my critical perspectives of the tao te ching are based on the belief that we have the freedom to scrutinize the validity of each of the teachings in the book. Therefore, I embrace Popper’s falsificationism when analyzing Lao Tzu.

Therefore, the right question to ask may be whether the first enunciation – that is, “the tao that can be described is not the eternal tao” – allows falsifiability regarding our approach to the tao; whether it is subject to falsifiability; or concerns a radically different subject matter than falsifiability.

Physics, above all sciences, purports to provide an exact theory describing every observable phenomenon of the universe. No physicist says that their ideal eventual aim is to provide a theory that is intrinsically incomplete and is going to be replaced by another new paradigm-shifting theory. However, they do admit that their current theories are only temporarily true and accept, however painstaking it may be, newer theories if they explain and predict things better than the conventional ones do. They admit they need a better theory than the astounding theory of relativity by Einstein.

When Laozi said that the described tao cannot refer to the eternal tao, he probably meant that our verbal descriptions of the tao are necessarily incomplete. When he said this, however, he did not have in mind the future rise of natural science and how much it could unravel the hidden mysteries of the universe. He had no concept of mathematics, although he knew arithmetic calculation. The optimistic scientists and mathematicians of the modern era, especially in the early 20th century, had hoped to establish solid foundations for both science and mathematics. However, it did not take long enough to realize that our foundation of knowledge is basically incomplete and uncertain. Godel’s incompleteness theorem and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle are the two leading examples. It is purely coincidental that there is a parallel between the first chapter of the tao te ching and the feeble nature of the ground of human knowledge. Indeed, I argue, Laozi did not foresee that science would fail. He had no concept of science during those times. Again, I emphasize, regarding our discovery of the parallel between the tao teching and quantum mechanics, that this parallel is purely coincidental.

Nevertheless, I wish to extend the first verse of the first chapter to natural science. Based on this extension, what are we going to make of it in relation to falsificationism? If we adopt the principle that the tao being described is not the eternal tao, this would entail that any scientific theory is necessarily flawed because it cannot match the eternal tao. When Laozi says that it is “NOT” the eternal tao, we should note what it is NOT. He simply says it cannot be the ETERNAL tao. In other words, he does not say that the described tao is, as a transient tao, is totally useless. What I mean is, that we may not be able to expect our transient tao to match the eternal tao. However, we can make use of the transient tao as a temporary basis for looking further. Based on this understanding, we can harmonize the first principle of the tao te ching with falsificationism. Therefore, I argue that the first verse of the first chapter (hereinafter, “the First Tao Principle”) does not disallow falsificationism. Rather, it allows room for falsification of theories or ideas other than the first principle itself.

(Based on the above notion, we can even go further to say that a sage also learns through trials and errors precisely as scientists learn through trials and errors. The tao as a virtue is not acquired at once. Likewise, you cannot learn a technique immediately by relying on the mystical tao. You discover or invent the tao in yourself only through repeated practice (like the brain absorbs knowledge and firsthand experience and is thus transformed). When you enter this eventual “mastery” stage, everything will play out by itself spontaneously – which indicates the idea of wu-wei. The tao te ching overall suggests that you should practice absolute non-action in regard to all matters and thereby come to the point of realization, that is, through non-action only. This is obviously wrong. Therefore, I reject the old conventional Laozi. Based on the freedom allowed under the First Tao Principle, I will resort to my newly invented Laozi. This new Laozi also embraces Confucius-like substantial efforts to achieve a result. When it is obvious in the end that there is no further thing that can be done, then we revert to Laozian non-action. This is similar to Edward Slingerland’s strategy of employing both Lao Tzu and Confucius)

Also, regarding the second question I asked above, I would say that it is possible to question the validity of the First Tao Principle. Yes, indeed, it is possible to ask whether it is always right. The first principle will most likely be rattled by a discovery of a theory of physics providing a definitive account of everything in the universe.  Nevertheless, it cannot be said that such a theory would successfully explain everything about our experience. Furthermore, we cannot expect physicists to reduce biology into physics. In that regard, it is most unlikely or even impossible to expect that the first principle will be negated. I can assure you that falsificationism does not have to target the first principle because it is de facto impossible to be falsified.

Tao as virtue in Chapter 41

When Laozi says that unintelligent people takes a derisive attitude to the tao, he makes himself a target of attack from Popperian falsificationists. Let us reduce the scope of the tao as a virtue to the characteristic of humility for convenience’s sake. In that case, you cannot condemn somebody as silly when he ridicules the value of humility. It doesn’t seem that a humble person will easily condemn somebody denigrating the value of humility. Instead, a humble person will be patient. The humble person may recognize that he was previously a silly person himself. Therefore, it would have been better for Laozi to say that people laughing at the tao should think twice.