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Socrates Learns Tai Chi: Cross-cultural communication and what China and the
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Adapted version published as Richards, C. (2013). What can China and the West still learn from
the other in new times? Towards a social psychology of comparative knowledge systems,
Zhang, J. Yang Y., Lui, L. & Zhou, M. (eds), Towards social harmony: A new mission of Asian
Social Psychology, Educational Science Publishing House

Socrates Learns Tai Chi: Cross-cultural communication and what China and the West can
learn from the other in the 21st Century

Professor Cameron Richards, University of Technology Malaysia

Abstract: Few would dispute that there has long been significant obstacles in different forms and
modes of cross-cultural communication between China and the West involving general macro level
divergences in knowledge, world views and social values as well as specific micro or intercultural
competence aspects of misunderstanding and miscommunication. Such obstacles may not be
decreasing at the start of the 21st Century as China renegotiates its place in the world. From the
Chinese perspective, few in the West seem to sufficiently understand, appreciate or respect the
mixed combination of local enduring and globally relevant values and practices of Chinese culture
and traditional knowledge systems - not just the increasingly impressive economic, social and
technological development taking place in China. Conversely, Chinese academics often fail to
appreciate that an important and fundamental distinction can be made between: (a) the privileged
individualism, rampant consumerism and blind doctrine of ‘progress-for-progresses sake’ which
are some of the values characteristic of a Western-influenced but ultimately distinct notion of
modern society; and (b) the still globally relevant aspects of ethical, innovative, and disciplinary
knowledge and associated practices which derive from the person often regarded as the ‘father of
Western knowledge’ (Socrates). This paper proposes to recognize and explore the convergent and
not just conflicting roles that different knowledge systems may play in assisting more effective
cross-cultural communication between particular communities and societies as well as between
individuals from different backgrounds. It will do so with particular reference to how such a
framework might be developed from some of the more global and still timely aspects of human
‘knowledge building’ common to both the inheritors of Socrates and also those who practice,
admire and try to understand the traditional wisdom, power and insight of a discipline like Tai
Chi Chuan.

Introduction: Residual obstacles to cross-cultural communication in the 21st Century

Many aspects of the dialogue between men point to the common structure of understanding and
playing: risking a word or ‘keeping it to oneself’… So we adapt ourselves to each other in a
preliminary way until the game of giving and taking – the real dialogue – begins…
- Hans Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics (1977: 56-57)

Just as it has been throughout human history, even in an increasingly ‘globalised’ world the factor
of cultural difference often still provides an impenetrable obstacle to human communication and
knowledge sharing across different social and cultural contexts. As modern, western societies
have long demonstrated in their interactions with the rest of the world, an ethnocentric us versus
them mentality often operates or is imposed. This is even so when the factors of cultural difference
or diversity are ignored or dismissed. Such is often the case not just in the ‘real world’ realms of

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travel and political diplomacy, but also in much modern communication theory, cultural studies,
and related models of human knowledge in the modern university. At the beginning of the 21st
Century, the challenges but also opportunities of cross-cultural communication are particularly
exemplified on a global stage by the uneasy relationship between China and ‘the West’. For our
present purposes of discussion, the West will initially include the concept of modern society or
‘modernity’ as much it does the notion of ‘European’ cultures of past and present (e.g.,
Huntingdon, 1996; Fukuyama, 2009).

There are two very different ways one might presently approach the challenge and opportunity of
seeking a more effective intercultural foundation for better understanding, communication and
knowledge sharing between China and the West – indeed, between any two different social groups
or cultural contexts. One way is to assume that the futuristic forces of globalization will simply
over-ride and make irrelevant local cultural contexts and past differences. Advocates of this
approach might point to: (a) how the youth of China as elsewhere are increasingly interested in the
endless fashions and attractions of global sub-cultures accessible in various media of new digital
telecommunications as well as new opportunities to travel, or even (b) how the most potent
influences are no longer coming from the West (e.g. Friedman, 2005, Zakariah, 2008). There is no
doubt that such developments provide useful indicators of change and antidotes for cultural
colonization (i.e. delineations of ‘superiority’ and ‘inferiority’) in the past. However, there is a
danger that if taken too literally such perspectives may provide an excuse to ignore, dismiss or
override the factor of cultural difference in context (as distinct from diversity for its own sake). In
short, even if well-intended, such an emphasis or perspective in isolation may well reinforce new
forms of misunderstanding, ethnocentrism, and the domination of rather than effective
communication with ‘others’.

A second perhaps more sustainable approach might aim to achieve cross-cultural mutual respect
and recognize common or even universal aspects of the human condition in terms of the very
specific aspects of cultural difference which a merely ‘top-down’ globalised perspective rejects or
ignores (e.g. Stiglitz, 2006, Saul 2009). Instead of either directly ‘essentialising’ an ethnocentric
assumption of cultural superiority or indirectly reinforcing this under the pretext of a relativistic
‘diversity for its own sake’, such an approach would encourage the kind of dialogical perspective
which can ‘build bridges’ between individuals and between groups, which can provide a
framework for appreciating as well as distinguishing particular differences from common elements
of humanity, and which can redeem the historical human tendency to ambivalently delineate
various forms of self/other or us/them relations (e.g. Ricoeur, 2004). As outlined by Ricoeur and
many other like-minded thinkers, a dialogical perspective of some kind is needed to more fully
appreciate the interdependence of all human individuals, social groups and cultures grounded in
as well as reflecting the ecology of nature or life itself. Such a perspective can only be built on a
fundamental motive of open-minded humility rather than various forms of close-minded
arrogance, but at the same time in concrete contexts of reality not in naïve idealism. Such a motive
for communication and knowledge sharing in cross-cultural contexts perhaps may only be
achieved within a framework for recognizing that whatever their existing knowledge paradigm and
technological achievement, every person and culture on the planet has potentially something
valuable to learn from or through interacting with ‘others’. As Ricoeur points out, at the very least
we can learn something about ‘oneself from another’.

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In other words, in the emerging 21st Century would China and the West find it easier to overcome
mutual suspicions and achieve greater cross-cultural understanding if there was greater recognition
that each still has much to learn from the other? The three sections of this paper will thus explore
the potential for a more constructive dialogical relationship between China and the West as an
example of the irreducibly important role of various notions of inter-related macro and micro
aspects of cross-cultural communication in a larger global context. This will be on the basis also
that there are different but also convergent notions of ‘knowledge’ by which people from different
social and cultural contexts can learn much from others.

As typified by Huntingdon’s (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World
Order, those who tend to compare in isolation the different forms and traditions of human religion,
social values, and political systems as merely ideology or different cultural worlds will indeed only
see a ‘clash of civilizations’. But if we approach all such systems including modern science as
‘systems of knowledge’ which link the universal and specific in local contexts of human
experience and memory mediated inevitably by the distortions of natural human languages, then
we might be able to recognize and discuss the potential convergence of a global pool of different
forms of knowledge. In this way one might talk of specific local and cultural differences as
variations of human commonality, and a grounded rather than rationalised or idealized notion of
universals in human thinking and doing. The model of the data-information-knowledge-wisdom
(DIWK) pyramid (e.g. Fricke, 2009) provides a useful framework for the complementary
convergence and not just divergence between traditional and modern notions of knowledge-
building. In other words, an accumulation of empirically derived or rationalized data and
information is not sufficient to explain or achieve the applied levels of knowledge, understanding
and even cross-cultural wisdom achieved across a diverse range of social systems and different
contexts of human experience.

Thus, the first section of the paper will explore the question: what can China and the West still
learn from ‘the other’? This section will also explore how stereotypes of cultural difference not
only reflect often superficial and changing habits, styles or even shared values, but also on closer
inspection often reveal significant aspects of cross-cultural commonality and convergence. The
second section will discuss some of the global knowledge-building implications of possible
complementary convergences between seminal and ancient philosophical influences which
continue to substantially shape and inform the wider social and cultural contexts of both China and
the West. The third and concluding section will summarize some of the implications and
possibilities of developing a more effective framework of intercultural communication in light of
various challenges and opportunities at work in the 21st Century global community.

What Can China and the West still learn from ‘the other’ in the 21st Century

Whilst many of his critics accused him of exaggeration, the British academic Needham (1969) was
instrumental in the West recognizing that China not only had a substantial history of scientific,
technology and general ‘knowledge’ achievement worth studying. Also Needham pointed out how
in earlier stages of history China may well have lead the world in such terms as the four great
inventions of its ancient past (the compass, gunpowder, papermaking and printing). The great
dilemma which concerned not only Needham but many others in both contemporary China and

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the West was the question of why did China not carry on to develop the kind of modern legacy of
science and technology achieved in the West. Many have blamed the Taoist and Confucian cultural
influences for reinforcing the historical failure of China to ‘progress’ in the manner of the West,
and its general lack of interest for a long time in either the knowledge of the West or in the very
concept of an emerging global modernity. Yet Needham acknowledged in particular the Taoist
foundation of Chinese knowledge as a productive basis for a characteristically diffusionist
approach of Chinese science and technology (compared to the more individualistically inventive
style of Western science).

To put this another way, many people in the West have long been interested in China as a potential
and now actual market in the global economy (e.g. Studwell, 2003) but perhaps not so many think
that there is much else they can learn anything other than maybe some quaint customs from the
past. Conversely, the delayed interest of China in the West has perhaps remained focused quite
exclusively on the areas of modern science and technology in recent times. This begs the timely
question that when China generally ‘catches up’ to the West in terms of accelerated knowledge
transfer and exemplary aspects of modern technology development, then maybe China will think
it has nothing more to learn from the West or any ‘other’ cultural contexts. Perhaps ‘China’ is
already asking this question in light of recent global developments. But perhaps also, both cultural
contexts may still have much to learn from not only each other as well as from ‘other’ contexts
from around the world? Perhaps people from all different cultural contexts often forget and confuse
exemplary principles of traditional knowledge and wisdom of derived through, and not just despite,
the diverse accumulations of human experience over time in a range of different cultures, histories,
and other forms of knowledge reproduction? So, how to better recognize potential aspects of
common interest or knowledge building convergence?

What can the West (and the world) still learn from China?

In contrast to the primary interest of traditional Chinese science in ‘natural’ patterns of order and
cohesion as described at least by Needham, modern Western science has rather tended to focus on
individual objects and events in isolation or in terms of descriptive surface aspects. Westerners
will therefore need to learn to go below the surface of appearances to better understand and
appreciate the achievement of Chinese knowledge systems. This is typified by how particular areas
of interest in Chinese traditional knowledge systems tend to be seen superficially or selectively
mystified in isolation (Clarke, 2000). There are many Western mathematicians besides Leibnitz,
the co-inventor of calculus and the inventor of symbolic logic, who have been fascinated by the
binary code principles (a basic foundation of computer programming in the digital age) and the
dynamically universal claims of the ancient Chinese Book of Changes (I Ching). Likewise, there
are many others besides the psychologist Jung who have been fascinated by how the Yin-Yang
concept in Chinese thought exemplified their own view of complementary opposites in the human
psyche and in nature more widely. In recent decades there have been pockets of interest or global
fascination also in various elements of Chinese martial arts (e.g. ‘Kung Fu’ otherwise known as
Wushu), Traditional Chinese Medicine (including acupuncture), and aesthetic arts (e.g. the
principles of Feng Shui and calligraphy).

There are several areas of particular interest from a ‘knowledge-building’ perspective. Although
educators from Chinese and other ‘neo-Confucian’ cultures are increasingly interested in the

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constructivist methods of learning in the West, conversely many western educators have sought to
discover the secrets of how schools in these same neo-Confucian cultures seem to retain a sense
of discipline, respect for teachers, and study technique lost or lacking in the West (de Barry &
Chaffee, 1989). In recent times with many Western schools doing so poorly comparatively and
perceived to be in a perpetual crisis of one kind or another (e.g. CLMS, 2009), there has been
renewed interest in how school students in neo-Confucian cultures regularly top international
ranking schemes such as PISA and TIMMS (Bray & Jiang, 2007). Yet such selective interest often
ignores how educational methods in such countries are part of a larger cultural context (one in
which there are significant negatives as well as positives) which are beyond the scope of the present
discussion. An even more fascinating example lies in the appropriation of Sun Tse’sThe Art of
War by modern business management theory (e.g. Gagliardi, 2003). It is no doubt significant that
this western appropriation has been largely informed in turn by a Japanese militaristic
appropriation carried over into the modern corporate sector. However, Sun Tse’s ancient text is a
classic statement of Taoist principles which can be read at many levels and not just as in terms of
military or management strategy. As the informed commentary of R.W. Wing’s (1980) excellent
modern translation outlines so well, this is a manual for effectively dealing with various kinds of
individual and group internal conflicts as well as external conflicts with others.

There has also a great deal of selective interest in acupuncture, which of course is just one of
various methods of Traditional Chinese Medicine for manipulating the energy meridians of the
body. Acupuncture continues to represent a massive conundrum for not only Western medicine
but modern concepts of knowledge more generally. In other words, if acupuncture really does
work and the ‘chi’ meridians of the body do exist in some yet to be understood form, then this has
paradigm-altering implications for western science and modern technology. There have been many
efforts using every kind of new technology such as magnetic resonance imaging to simply dismiss
acupuncture as merely superstitious nonsense or at the very least some kind of placebo effect and
superstitious ‘anti-science’ nonsense (e.g. Fratkin, 2004).Yet overall, studies which focus on the
efficacy of acupuncture not in isolation but in context - or in relation to a possible framework for
complementing and supporting rather than replacing Western medical knowledge and treatments
- generally support the proposition that it ‘works’. For example, in addition to the reported 59%
of all American doctors who view acupuncture as a useful adjunct to their own practices (Business
Wire, 2005), the American National Institute of Health commissioned a report which concluded:
‘There is sufficient evidence of acupuncture’s value to expand its use into conventional medicine
and to encourage further studies of its physiology and clinical value’ (NIH Consensus, 1997).
Indeed the acknowledgement that this and other Traditional Chinese Medicine methods indeed do
have at least a useful preventative role in human health suggests that such methods are future-
orientated in terms of how they address the causes of ill health. This contrasts with how Western
medical knowledge and treatment often tend to view symptoms in isolation and retrospect (Reid,
1993).

Tai Chi Chuan – the unlikely great exemplar of traditional Chinese knowledge systems?

Truly to be hard and rigid is the way of death. To be soft and flexible is the way of life
– From the Tao Te Ching(Chapter 43)

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Western observers viewing the slow motion exercise of Tai Chi Chuan practice for the first time
might well struggle to imagine any kind of human activity more apparently useless and
meaningless. Appearances can be deceptive. Various research studies confirm that even debased
forms of the practice practiced as a kind of slow motion dance or exercise by the ever increasing
numbers of elderly westerners who are taking up the practice show a significant level and variety
of health benefits (e.g. Hackckneya & Earhart, 2008). Tai Chi Chuan can also be approached as a
powerful as well as very accessible exemplar of all the inter-linked or corresponding traditional
Chinese knowledge systems deriving from classical Taoist texts attributed to the legendary Yellow
Emperor such as the Nei Ching (Veith translation, 1997). Although it only became widely popular
in China early last century at various levels of society it remains so even today.

Indeed, the term Tai Chi Chuan also refers to the physical practice of harmoniously cultivating the
‘three treasures’ of essence (Jing), energy (Chi) and consciousness (Shen) by the ‘microcosmic’
recapitulation by any individual of the evolution of the universe (Tai Chi) from a primordial
nothingness (Wu Chi). This process of knowledge cultivation or ‘inner alchemy’ is framed in terms
of the complementary interplay of the opposing principles Yin and Yang (e.g. female and male,
negative and positive, expanding and contracting) in all corresponding aspects of nature (Chia,
1985). In more simple terms, it is a practice for optimizing health, performance and concentration
by integrating body, breath and mind. For this purpose, practitioners aim to develop a series of
exercise forms as a flowing pattern of harmonious order as a means of harnessing seemingly
endless sources of physical and also psychological energy (Fu, 1995). As well as being an exercise
or health system (Chi Gung) using breathing techniques to generate the flow of ‘internal energy’
(Jin) and the active direction of flexible, muscular power (Li), Tai Chi Chuan also is equally a
form of both martial arts and meditative arts. Additionally it is an inspiration for many forms of
Chinese aesthetic arts (calligraphy, etc.) and an indirect support for traditional Chinese medicine.
How then could it be all these things and much more without being a watered down version of
each? This is perhaps the sort of question a typical modern westerner prone to breaking a whole
down into the mere sum of its parts might ask – thus struggling to recognize the value-added power
of multiple convergence in different knowledge systems.

In the same way that Sun Tse’sThe Art of War is perhaps really a generic method for dealing with
all kinds of conflict so too Tai Chi Chuan is well-known to many of the most proficient and
experienced Wushu or Kung Fu masters as a ‘soft’ style of martial arts (Wong K.K., 2002; Wong
C.C, 2002). That is, Tai Chi Chuan is most effective for achieving good health and longevity but
also the highest forms of both instinctive strategizing and ‘explosive power’ (Fa-Jin) aspired to in
all the ‘hard’ styles of martial arts (Fu, 1995; Francis, 1998). In Yang style Tai Chi Chuan circles
there is a saying that if a person does the long form (85 movements) version once a day they will
achieve good health, but if they do this three times a day they will become a martial arts master.
Similarly, Tai Chi Chuan exemplifies the Chi Gung soft style of exercise similar to yoga. This
compares with the hard style or more direct approach to physical exercise in the West which
generally aims to exhaust not harness energy. The underestimated power of such a soft style
approach is also like yoga being increasingly appreciated by professional modern athletes in the
West as well as elsewhere as a means of developing flexibility, strength, rhythm, concentration
and a range of overall health benefits. It has also been approached as an effective method of
achieving ‘optimal performance’ in the learning process generally (Waitzen, 2008).

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As a meditative art, Tai Chi Chuan serves to relax the body (to refine essence), calm the mind (to
refine energy) and focus attention (to refine consciousness) (Reid, 1993).In short, it is a practice
which instills the ability to focus, to endure, and to concentrate in a graceful, flowing, and balanced
way. In contrast to the discrete exercises of Chi Gung, Tai Chi Chuan is a choreographed holistic
sequence which: (a) incorporates a full range of martial arts moves and at the same time a series
of exercises for a range of health benefits; and (b) does so as exemplary means of achieving the
‘flow’ experience of optimal learning identified by the psychologist Csikszentmihalyi. Like the
Taoists, he used a water metaphor to describe this experience. If the sequences of Tai Chi Chuan
are memorized properly and practiced regularly, then a ‘thread’ of intrinsic purpose is developed
such that is then not so easy to lose one’s way or self in life. And if this were to happen in times
of confusion, then there is a recognizable ‘way’ back. But perhaps its most immediately useful
aspect for typical modern peoples is as a preventative remedy to either avoid or ameliorate various
psychological disturbances ranging from insomnia to depression to conditions of ‘egoism’. Thus,
‘slow, soft and smooth’ movements are linked to a ‘calm, cool and clear’ focus which over time
helps to achieve a more developed sense of equanimity. For any practitioner perhaps the most
surprising aspect about Tai Chi Chuan is that a bit like golf the more one practices it the more one
becomes aware of the endless subtlety and infinite connections with various body-mind functions.
As many practitioners point out, one could spend a lifetime repeating the forms several times a
day and still find further nuances of subtlety and room for improvement (e.g. Fu, 1995).

With all their focus on intrinsic and symbolic correspondences many think that the traditional
Chinese knowledge-systems are not very ‘empirical’. However, closer inspection reveals that they
are generally based on an extensive and systematic observations of the forces and forms of nature.
A good case in point is the extensive classification and medicinal use of herbs within Traditional
Chinese Medicine. Also, like other forms of Chinese martial arts, some of the key moves of Tai
Chi Chuan are also based on the observation of animal movements. For instance, a central practice
is Mao-Xing or ‘cat walking’ which is based on the balance, softness and surety of step
demonstrated by a tiger stalking its prey. Indeed, the origin of Tai Chi Chuan is often credited to
Chang San-Feng, a Taoist monk who was thought to have developed a set of thirteen exercises
that imitate the movements of a variety of animals.

In sum, what the West can especially learn from these related generic Chinese knowledge systems
is the patience, subtlety and strategy to view, harness and apply (as well as appreciate) the
underlying patterns which ever inform the events and entities of the natural world. In contrast to
not just Western medical knowledge and treatments but every aspect of other Western knowledge
systems, the kinds of knowledge systems referred to above do not view the mind and body in a
dualistic, fixed oppositional way that translates into the kind of either/or logic and rear-view mirror
or reductionist tendencies which are no longer particular helpful when it comes to the needs and
challenges of 21st Century knowledge building. Epitomizing a convergence of different kinds of
knowledge, the Chinese University of Hong Kong has twin schools of both Western medicine and
traditional Chinese medicine.

What Can China (and the world) still learn from the West

As China continues to modernize and achieve a substantial level of ‘science and technology’
transfer and even innovation, it would be understandable if there was a growing view that there

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was little more to ‘learn’ from the West or that only selective forms of knowledge can or should
be learnt from the West in isolation. With some exceptions such as the voyages of Admiral Zheng
He centuries ago, China traditionally had no great interest in the cultural or knowledge aspects of
the West or the modern world. Following the Opium Wars in particular in the Nineteenth Century,
European colonialism influenced early efforts of China to better understand and respond to
challenges represented by the distinct if related concepts of the West and modernity. It was the
colonizing Christian missionaries at that time who provided access to foreign books and ideas and,
at the same time, assisted in developing the modern Chinese library as well as encouraging the
somewhat ambivalent interest of Chinese intellectuals in the West (Jing, 2006).

In the 21st Century global knowledge economy, residual interest in Western knowledge systems
lie mainly or centrally focused on educational methods in schools but also in higher education to
encourage innovation, active learning and the kind of ‘independent inventiveness’ which Joseph
Needham long ago identified as the missing element in Chinese science and technology compared
to that in the West. The selective interest of ‘neo-Confucian cultures’ in Western theories of
constructivist, active, and independent learning perhaps represent the most useful starting point to
discuss the question of what China might still learn from the West. At the same, such a starting
point may also assist in distinguishing some of the more positive and enduringly useful aspects of
western thought. However, as mentioned earlier, many schools and universities in ‘neo-Confucian
cultures’ tend to take a selective interest in such methods and approaches as problem-based
learning, inquiry-based leaning and ‘lateral thinking’ techniques. For example, Singapore, Hong
Kong and Taiwon typically baulk at changing traditional (i.e. the ‘memory’ orientations of an
exam-based curriculum) assessment methods to sufficiently support and harness the power of new
imported methods and approaches (Watson & Biggs, 2002; Tan & Mok, 2004). Likewise,
adaptations of such methods and approaches often fail because of a similar baulking at the required
practical and not just theoretical stages of uncertainty or creative ‘chaos’ in the process of
innovative knowledge building associated with the constructivist learning approach. This is
reinforced by other elements of the language-culture connection. For instance, Hannas (2003)
articulates the view of a number of Asian educators that ‘Asian orthography curbs creativity’ (Cf.
also Ong, 1982; Mahbubani, 2004).

Western knowledge-systems would need to undergo a significant paradigm change to genuinely

or dialogically recognize what they can learn from China or other cultures. Likewise, much more
substantial cultural change and not simply a selective, de-contextualized borrowing is needed to
effectively implement the kind of residual western and modern knowledge assumptions which
inform constructivist approaches or learner-centred methods of creative or critical thinking. Of
course, the seductions and abuses of modernity (Berman, 1988) already represent a kind of cultural
change which many non-western cultures would like to avoid and inaccurately see as synonymous
with the West. As Bond (1991:112) suggests, this is a case of confusing process with origin. In
short, the greatest strength (but also weakness) of western thought is the ‘openness’ which comes
from recognizing the performative power of individual agency to innovate and transform social
knowledge structures. On the other hand, enduring values of disciplined ‘objectivity’ and critical
rigor in thinking were the foundation for a related commitment in inner-directed cultures to the
concept of standards and benchmarks as well as aspirations of improvement in quality and not just
in quantity. Of course, this is exemplified by the western concept of the ‘rule of law’ which can be
difficult to reconcile with societies still adhering to traditional ‘honor-shame’ systems in more

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tradition-directed cultures (Kim et al, 1994). One of the greatest challenges of the emerging 21st
Century global community will be to reconcile the constructive aspects of both systems, in a way
that somehow overcomes in practice the alternately related abuses of bureaucratic literalism on
one hand, and privileged interests on the other which have the potential to lead to different forms
or practices of corruption.

As is conversely the case, a better appreciation of what can be still usefully ‘learnt’ from the West
entails not just a distinction between western and modern thinking, but also between the more
transitory or superficial aspects and some residually universal aspects. For instance, such a
distinction might be made between notions of ‘science and technology’ as a developing pool of
cumulative or emergent knowledge on one hand, and on the other as a particular ideology of
reductionism operating more at the level of data and information than knowledge and wisdom
within the DIKW framework. In order to make such distinctions we might turn to the example of
Socrates. The enduringly relevant method of human knowledge-building conceived by Socrates
has important convergences with as well as differences to the Taoist foundations of Chinese
knowledge systems.

Socrates – a key to distinguishing between what is ‘universal’ and what is not in Western
knowledge systems

‘An intelligent word is accompanied by wisdom and, being “graven in the soul of the learner”,
can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent’. ‘You mean’ Phaedrus asked,
‘the living word of knowledge has a soul, and of which the written word is properly no more than
an image?’, ‘Yes’, replied Socrates, ‘Of course that is what I mean -From Plato’s Phaedrus,
cited in Ricoeur (1991:130)

It is in many ways appropriate that Socrates is often portrayed as the ‘father of western thought’
(e.g. Vlastos, 1991). However he also had much in common with ancient Taoist sages – especially
Lao Tzu who reportedly lived around the same time. As discussed, Taoist principles of emergent
learning and knowledge-building generally revolved around harnessing and meaningfully
transforming the power of natural energy systems and processes. Likewise, Socrates recognized
and applied similar principles in terms of the general concept of ‘critical thinking’ grounded in the
power of words and the disciplines of rhetoric. In turn this was linked to the inevitably dialogical
aspects of the interaction between specific cultural contexts in human communication. In similar
fashion to Lao Tzu, Socrates generally took the view that all humans are potentially wise and
virtuous with the right balance of knowledge and humility. The main difference between the two
perhaps lies in how Chinese knowledge systems have generally aspired to indirectly blending in
with external models of order in nature whereas Western knowledge systems generally refer in a
more direct way to an internal reference point for thinking, ethics, and more ‘objective’ standards
or social values. Thus whereas Lao Tzu like other Taoist sages was interested in the unity of
opposites in nature (yin and yang) and the mind-body harmonizing of ‘essence, energy and
consciousness’, Socrates stressed the importance of inner-referenced self-knowledge achieved
through meaningful dialogue with an either internal or external concept of ‘other’. Both aspired to
symbolic notions of ‘immortality’ through a somewhat similar process of grounded detachment
from everyday human fears, habits and uncertainties as the basis for a cultivated self-development
of some kind. For Lao Tzu ‘the way’ was aimed at more fully harmonising with underlying orders

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of nature. However for Socrates, immortal ‘virtue’ is linked to his reported comment that ‘the
highest form of human excellence is to question oneself and others.

By the example of his own life as well as the methods he developed for thinking and learning,
Socrates was an exemplar of the ‘virtue’ and possibilities of universal human wisdom linked as
they are to the requirement of humility as the basis for the most effective understanding and
dialogue. Plato recounts in The Phaedo how his teacher Socrates approached his last day alive and
the acceptance of an avoidable death with a fearless courage and typically relaxed demeanor as he
continued to engage his students in discussion in a normal manner. Ironically his last dialogues
involved two Pythagoreans, a group founded by perhaps the most famous ancient mathematician
of all with similar views to the Taoists about the underlying patterns of nature (e.g. the
corresponding ‘harmony of spheres’ in nature, in mathematics, and in human conduct). Ironically
also, that he was sentenced to death for being a clever and confusing Sophist. In contrast to his
contemporaries the Sophists, the rhetoricians of cleverness who, by various accounts such as The
Phaedrus and The Phaedo were more interested in monological persuasion rather than in
dialogical communication. As Plato exposed, they like their successors were not particularly
interested in motives or standards of truth, beauty and justice. Yet these same methods and
examples also became a key foundation for the development of Western science and technology
in terms of a confused mixture of universality and various culturally specific ideologies such as
‘progress for its own’ sake in terms of humans dominating the natural world rather than living in
harmony it.

Many in the history of Western Philosophy besides his student Plato defer to Socrates as the father
of logic and modern science as well as rhetoric and ethics in occidental or Western thought. A key
basis for this was Socrates’ particular method of critical thinking. The particular connection to
logic and modern science is assumed in terms of his central elenchus method being a ‘negative
method of hypothesis elimination’ (e.g. Benson, 2003). Indeed, it clearly was a systematically
rigorous and sustained method of thinking and reasoning using the power of words to adequately
represent or not ‘reality’, and also to identify and eliminate contradictions or fallacies in
propositions or argument. Yet that was only half the story. The Western traditions of logic and
scientific inquiry formally founded by Plato’s own student Aristotle (based as they were around
such pivotal concepts as ‘the either/or principle of the excluded middle’ and on rationally
dissecting and formally describing the parts of nature) selectively left out the concept and reference
of self-knowledge as the convergent basis of human knowledge-building. Not that this was fully
ignored or forgotten. Both Plato and Aristotle selectively appropriated this as a basis for
recognizing Socrates as the ‘father’ of their own selective efforts which became defining models
of not only rhetoric, ethics, and logic in the western tradition, but a general model of reflective or
rational ‘thinking’. In short, they split Socrates’ dialogical concept into not only Plato’s idealism
and Aristotle’s realism but every other manner of related dualistic opposition which have informed
Western knowledge system (in addition to the original or defining Socratic values and generic
patterns) ever since – rationalism-empiricism, positivism-subjectivism, objectivism-relativism,
formalism-romanticism, modernism-postmodernism, etc.

To appreciate more fully Socrates’ contribution we might turn to the defining metaphor used by
Socrates’ himself and others to describe the organizing method at work in his range of rhetorical,
logical and critical thinking techniques. The mid-wife metaphor accurately depicts the dialogical
strategy and pedagogical motive of Socrates to assist his respondents as learners with a whole

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process of opening up, engaging and – above all else - assisting the ‘emergence’ of critically
evaluated and constructed knowledge and meaning. As Gadamer points out (1976:5), whatever
else it is or specific techniques are employed as part of it, Socrates’ general method must be always
fundamentally approached as dialogue through verbal language use in context. In this way we can
appreciate that Socrates’ essential tool of knowledge-building is rhetoric. Indeed Socrates’
employs many of the same rhetorical techniques as the Sophists and every other type of rhetorician.
But additionally his unique contribution was that all such forms and techniques are circumscribed
by a larger organizing strategy, motive, and key reference point to do with an aspiration to Virtue
through the related processes of human self- knowledge and understanding. There are those
throughout western history (including modern notables such as Nietzsche and Derrida) who argue
that Socrates was still really at the end of the day a kind of Sophist who used techniques such as
paradox, reversal and contrarianism to confuse and baffle his students. However, as Ricoeur (1988)
systematically demonstrates, so-called aporia (or unsolvable or impossible problems) can be
transformed through dialogical engagement and an emergent, interpretative process of reframing
in time both the problem and the perspective taken on it. Gadamer (1980:11) thus concludes that
the Socratic process was one focused on assisting learners in ‘emerging’ out of their confusion to
achieve substantial not illusory knowledge.

Socrates was not only a master of critical thinking through his various techniques of questioning.
He was also a master of metaphor and irony. As methods of linking language to the thinking
strategies of exemplification and reversal, these were key rhetorical tools serving to dismantle
pretention and invalidity in argument on one hand, as well as on the other to foster emergent
knowledge, understanding and nascent wisdom through dialogue and communication. Whereas
the typical irony of both the Sophists and many modern Westerners is clever and tends to look
down on the ‘other’, Socrates employed various rhetorical technique motivated by what the great
rhetorican of motives Kenneth Burke has called ‘consubstantial irony’. This is the ability, motive,
and perspective of viewing oneself and any ‘other’ as potentially interchangeable and therefore
naturally equal in dialogue and communication. One of the reasons why Socrates instinctively did
not trust the written word was that he was perhaps instinctively aware that formal logic tends to
look down on rhetoric and view metaphor as a mere decoration in processes of human thinking,
communication and knowledge building (Ong, 1982). Lakoff and Johnson (1988) have inspired a
linguistic revolution of sorts by their role in turning this view upside down to recognize that
metaphor is actually a constitutive element of not only everyday or colloquial human
communication in cross cultural contexts but also a basis for all conceptual thinking and scientific
modeling (e.g. Hesse, 1970). As Ricoeur (1978) has more systematically demonstrated, metaphor
should be understood not just as a particular form but a general function of all human
communication in context and thus knowledge-building. Lao-Tzu’s likening of the knowledge
process to the element of water has some convergences with Socrates use of a wind metaphor to
describe more effective thinking for achieving clarity in relation in relation to the ‘invisible’
elements of both nature and knowledge.

Gadamer (1980) pays tribute to how Socrates’ dialogical method is a model of constructive
knowledge-building. In his work Truth and Method (2002) this identified in terms of the dynamic
connection between what he calls the universal ‘infinity of the unsaid’and the inevitable but
specific ‘finiteness’ of language and culture. But it is Arendt who explores more fully the
exemplary role of Socrates as a pivotal figure between traditional hierarchy and myth (e.g. the
immortality of heroic deeds) and what she calls his modern reversal of discovering a sense of the

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‘eternal’ not in nature or in ideology but both within the ‘timelessly’ convergent verbal, reflective,
and active intersections between self and the world. Arendt (1958:20) honors this achievement in
terms of how Socrates ‘alone among the great thinkers – unique in this as in many other respects
– never cared to write down his thoughts’. In other words, in similar fashion to Ricoeur somewhere
describing how the concept of ethics is best exemplified by the person who anonymously
undertakes a good deed with no thought to recognition, Socrates recognized that core and universal
element in any particular human communication and knowledge-building are the distinct but
related notions of motive, intention, and ‘good faith’. This is epitomized by his insight that the
nature of our good faith or personal conscience in interacting with others is inevitably linked to
the degree of good faith we have with ourselves through reflection or self-dialogue (Arendt,
1978:188).

So, what might China and others learn from the Socratic heartland of Western thought? Socratic
models of critical thinking, (internal) ethical reference, and individual agency still provide an
enduring basis for sustainable ‘standards’ or reference points of human thought and action.
Likewise, Socrates’ pedagogical as well as rhetorical models of dialogue and communication –
grounded as they in local yet open contexts of language-use– suggest the important transformative
functions of ‘self-knowledge’, ‘personal growth’ and innovative knowledge-building in turn
needed for the most effective social development and historical ‘progress’ on a global as well as
local scale.

The global project of human knowledge-building: the convergent lessons of Socrates and Tai
Chi Chuan

Those who know what Nature does live naturally. Those who know what humanity does should use
what their knowledge knows to nurture what their knowledge does not know.
– Chuang Tzu (S.6 – Cleary 1994:86 translation)

At the outset of the 21st Century, many people talk about how a global knowledge society or
economy and associated information revolution is somehow the way of the future (e.g. Friedman,
2005). Yet people around the world suffering from ‘information overload’ inevitably have a vague
awareness at least that surely it is the interpreted quality not the described quantity of information
or knowledge which should really count. In such a context as well as the many other senses of
impending global crisis, there may well be an increasingly greater readiness to reconsider some of
the dominating assumptions about: Just what really is ‘knowledge’ in the most integrated sense of
the word? How it might be more effectively constructed or developed? And, what kind of cross-
cultural communication framework might allow a more inclusive, more egalitarian, and indeed
wiser global convergence?

There have been a number of convergent lessons derived from our short comparative discussion
about the respective knowledge systems represented by Socrates and Tai Chi Chuan. A central
lesson has been that wisdom and understanding should not be seen as merely an unachievable by-
product somehow of data and information accumulation in time. Rather ‘wisdom’ is a basic human
condition and responsibility ever accessible and able to be personally harnessed or collectively
developed through a range of both enduring and provisional techniques of understanding requiring
just a prerequisite degree of humility and integrity on one hand, and honesty and courage on the

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other. A closer analysis of both the generic Taoist elements which endure in Chinese cultural
contexts and the Socratic framework of Western thinking reveal distinctive but also often
convergent interests in how universal aspects of human knowledge and the specific variations of
habit, style and content are in constant interaction in and across any particular cultural contexts.
Just as we have had to turn the DIKW pyramid (corresponding to both the ‘scientific’ and neo-
Confucian hierarchies of knowledge) on its head to generally make sense of this convergence, so
too with several key aspects of a more integrated model of human knowledge-building which
might usefully expand upon the convergent lessons of Socrates and Tai Chi Chuan.

A useful metaphor for appreciating the convergence between the knowledge-building philosophies
of Socrates and Taoist sages such as Lao Tzu is the notion of a similar soft style. There are various
accounts of reluctant Tai Chi Chuan masters finding themselves unable to avoid a challenge to a
fight by proficient younger ‘hard style’ Kung Fu exponents (e.g. Wong CC, 2002). Typically the
fight proceeds with the hard style attacker barely able to lay a hand on the master – to be ended
through the unexpected and yet deceptively explosive power of the latter. Plato’s account of
Socrates of being challenged to philosophical duels by Sophists and others tends to reflect a similar
trajectory. With clever students who took a righteous, superior or arbitrary position about some
idea or topic of knowledge, Socrates used his critical questioning and related rhetorical techniques
to progressively disarm and dismantle ‘opponents’ until a transformative point of understanding
is achieved one way or another (i.e. the exposure of arrogance and/or the‘opening up’ of a
prerequisite humility to be ready to learn). Socrates was famous in history for such an ability, and
his regular insistence that he himself knew ‘nothing’. Yet as indicated above there is sufficient
evidence that Socrates was really more interested in emergent thinking and assisting with learning.
In other words, the Socratic method also works with people who are lacking in confidence and
who really do think they are ignorant or know ‘nothing’. Like Lao-Tzu and other Taoist sages,
Socrates’ was also well-known as an egalitarian who thought that just about anyone can and,
indeed, should try to achieve the wisdom of self-knowledge. Thus his method with people ready
to learn and ‘build knowledge’ involved a strategy to firstly draw out of them an awareness that
they actually know a lot more than they think they do, and then to proceed to develop a potential
thread of further inquiry and the development of self knowledge.

The aim of Socrates’ method was to achieve a state of virtue which has some interesting
convergences with as well as differences to the Taoist goal of harmonizing with The Way. Indeed,
as exemplified by Section 5 of the Chuang Tzu, the Tao was also often referred to as the
‘fulfillment of virtue’. Both schools of thinking associated their respects with a kind symbolic
immortality achieved through the embodiment of an aspiration for universal values (truth, beauty,
etc.). Following on from this, Socrates’ rhetorical claim that humble ignorance is a stage as well
as source of wisdom is similar to the Taoist emphasis on cultivating or achieving ‘emptiness’. Just
as Socrates distinguished between wise ignorance and the true ignorance of arrogance, so too the
Taoists similarly distinguished between the confused emptiness of being out of touch with the
natural order and the universal emptiness which is really an energetic plenum and the very
foundation of the natural order.

Thus the Taoist concept of emptiness (Wu Chi) corresponds to the Socratic gap between ‘what we
know’ and ‘what we don’t know’. Both universal ‘emptiness’ and wise ‘ignorance’ are not only
potential sources of redemption for real ignorance, true arrogance, and a general knowledge

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‘blindness’. They are regarded by Socrates and the Taoist sages such as Lao Tzu and Chuang Chou
(author of the Chuang Tzu) as the very basis of human knowledge-building. For Socrates this is
the basis of dialogue with both self and other (communication) just as for the Taoists ‘emptiness’
and the related concept of ‘non-doing’ are indirectly active notions of the basis for the interaction
of self and nature. In his classic work Chuang Tzu, Chuang Chou outlines much more fully the
model of the venerable sage as a teacher and leader who reminds learners of the way to navigate
the vicissitudes of life by a looking beyond the transitory finiteness of everyday life to the infinity
of nature. In addition to often similar metaphors, many of the rhetorical techniques employed by
Socrates to generate new insights in learners and transformations of their understanding of a
concept or issue are also strategically employed by Taoists thinkers such as Lao Tzu, Chuang Chou
and Sung Tse. In particular, the reversal or inversion of preconceptions or expectations is
convergently a pivotal technique for transforming negative self-fulfilling prophecies of ignorance
or arrogance in relation to a particular concept or context into positive engagements with aporia,
paradox, and any kind of obstacles faced in life. Tai Chi Chuan as a form of martial arts deploys
similar principles of alternately yielding and adhering to an opponent to produce strategic
confusion: “When your opponent is confused, this is the time to attack using fajin” (Yu, 1995:47).

Socrates’ suspicion of the written word corresponds to the cautioning first line of the Tao-Te-
Ching (‘The Tao that can be named is not the universal Tao’). However, Socrates’ recognized the
dialogical word as a way to open up not just human thinking but also language itself. As Ricoeur
(1991) developed this notion, the act of intentional meaning-making through any kind of
meaningful act in context – semantic, textual or even physically performative – opens up all kinds
of knowledge systems to potential innovation and transformation in terms of what he referred to
as generated surplus of meaning. The Taoists were correspondingly interested in how disciplined
regimes might potentially assist practitioners to generate their own personal surplus of energy. On
this basis Ricoeur (1986) outlined the exemplary framework of knowledge construction in history
as an endless dialogue or interaction between forces of sedimentation and innovation. Instead of
viewing language as some kind of ‘prison-house’ meaning – along with ‘mirrors’ a common
metaphor of the dualism between objectivism and subjectivism projected by many modern
language models and theories – Ricoeur’s work identifies the process by which human hierarchies
of concepts are both translated and transformed by the use of metaphor in particular contexts of
dialogue. In short, the renewed recognition of the function of metaphor in communication and
knowledge by such people as Lakoff and Johnson (1980) suggests that a metaphorical realm of
human meanings ever precedes and underlies various hierarchical tendencies of formal
classification or literal representation. This is in the same way natural patterns and energy fields
are held to underly the world of discrete entities and events in a range of increasingly influential
models such as Chaos theory. A core foundation of modern science, Heisenberg’s indeterminancy
principle indicates that not only is all scientific knowledge ‘constructed’ but that so-called
observers of nature inevitably interact with and transform any phenomena they come across (Cf.
also Bohm, 1980).

In other words, humans generally live in two distinct although inter-related worlds. Those from
‘inner-directed’ cultures tend to see a largely meaningless and empty world of disconnected parts
despite overarching ideologies of economic, technological and cultural ‘progress’. Those who still
strongly identify with traditional cultures tend to see or believe in an underlying energetic world
of interconnectedness and natural laws of dynamic equilibrium at work. Both are ‘right’ but only

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know half the full story. If we put the two parts together we get the essential scaffold of ‘21st
Century knowledge convergence’. Yet the key to knowledge is how these two worlds interact in
different ways, and how they do so especially in terms of sometimes volatile and challenging but
ever emergent principles of change and transformation. Some commentators focus in isolation on
the ‘tipping points’ across often invisible but nevertheless real thresholds of social or natural
change. Indeed whilst ‘emergent process’ can be manipulated or simply unfold in destructive ways,
as Gladwell (2000:259) concludes this ultimately means “a reaffirmation of the potential for
change and the power of intelligent action’. Thus, for instance, human hopes and fears may
ultimately inform sometimes volatile ebbs and flows in global equity markets but do so as an
emergent interplay of alternately specific accumulations of memory and underlying ‘fractal’
principles or patterns of both equilibrium and variation (Mandelbrot, 2005).

As well as these two alternate perspectives also exemplifying the historical clash of tradition and
modernity, they also represent the alternate poles of naïve understanding (which can also be belief
or even superstition) and the critical deconstruction which can be interpreted as not inevitably an
opposition. As Ricoeur (1991) outlined as his version of a dialogical methodology, the trajectory
of a modern hermeneutics of suspicion and deconstruction (i.e. wholes reduced to their parts)
should not be seen in isolation but in relation to what he characterised as the reconstructive arc of
interpreting any particular aspects of knowledge within a relevant ‘whole’ context – the more
inclusive and dialogical assumption of a hermeneutics of restoration. Together these two distinct
but complementary knowledge trajectories represent a framework for global knowledge
convergence as well as better cross-cultural communication.

Socrates and the Taoists further complement the other in terms of their alternate ‘energy’ and
‘information’ perspectives on possible convergent notion of knowledge-building. Hierarchical
western systems of information organisation and subject classification (as reflected in modern
library systems, encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc.) have provided a knowledge foundation as well
as counterpoint for the development of modern technologies. This has been at the price of ignoring
the ecology of nature in terms of a generally self-fulfilling prophecy or ideology that the energy
and order of the world is ‘running down’ and descending in to chaos ostensibly confirmed at the
universal level by the 2nd law of thermodynamics in physics. Yet, just as Socrates’ model of
knowledge-building suggests that humans can transform or order the function of explanation
through the pivotal role of human understanding, so too the Taoist principles underlying traditional
Chinese medicine and related health arts also assume that humans can cultivate and harness
potentially unlimited or universal energies and emergent patterns of order. Such a view is
supported by more constructive interpretations of the models of intrinsically transformative
patterns of nature outlined in so-called Chaos theory and in the transformative systems theory of
Prigogine and others.

Perhaps the central difference between the dominant knowledge-systems of China and the West
lies in how alternate universal metaphors or principles of being-non-being (equilibrium) and being-
becoming (growth or development) metaphors are so often varied but somehow still common to
all cultures. As Nisbert’s (1970) important study of social change in western society identified, the
organizing metaphors of organic growth (or being-becoming) in ancient Greek times gradually
evolved into historical or literal ideologies of ‘open-ended’ progress on one hand, and of the
‘mechanistic’ reduction of any natural as well as human-made ‘whole’ into the mere the sum of

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its parts on the other. In contrast the later hierarchical formations of neo-Confucianism tended to
remain informed by the Taoist principle of prioritizing a universal principle of equilibrium over
that of ‘growth’. From a western perspective, this was an approach somewhat ‘closed off’ to
inclusive and democratic notions of knowledge-building.

What is also useful about Nisbert’s study is that it represents a powerful analysis of how
‘organising metaphors’ function in the West as they do in all cultures as both selective or specific
distortion on one hand, and as ‘universal’ principles on the other. Similarly other thinkers have
focused on the metaphorical aspects and functions of analogies, models and paradigms in scientific
theorising (e.g. Kuhn, 1975; Hesse, 1970). ‘Organising metaphors’ alternately point to or mediate
between the specific variations of surface analogies or comparisons which disrupt literal meanings
(i.e. the decorative or illustrative function of verbal or visual metaphors) and the more universal
functions of change and transformation in both culture and nature. For instance, the Chinese five
elements (metal, water, wood, fire, and earth) describe both constructive and destructive cycles
and patterns which exemplify similar transformations of substances in nature to that described in
such established concepts as the periodic table of elements and the electro-magnetic substrates of
matter as well high frequency energies. Thus, the literalistic and historicist growth metaphors of
the West and the traditional tendencies for equilibrium in Chinese knowledge systems represent
somewhat exclusive alternate tendencies for the natural dynamic tension between specificity and
universality in human knowledge building.

The convergent lessons of both the generic knowledge systems represented by Socrates and Tai
Chi Chuan respectively here is that a general global knowledge convergence – as well as particular
knowledge sharing - requires a complementary and dialogical view of the relation between specific
and more universal aspects of human knowledge. As Chuang Chou put it at the outset of section 3
of the Chuang Tzu, ‘our lives are finite, but knowledge is infinite’. Building on a convergently
similar insight also in the West, dialogical thinkers such as Gadamer (1982, 1986) who follow in
the footsteps of Socrates recognize how both the basic metaphoric functions of language
construction and also the ‘infinity of the unsaid’ ever at work in human dialogue word are able to
redeem or transform the both the related prison-house and mirror metaphors of linguistic and
cultural finitude in every instance potentially - including literate or digital communications. Such
is the convergent ‘way’ in which the related challenge of cross-cultural communication might be
addressed. That is, not in terms of the mistaken assumption that human thinking and language use
can somehow escape, rationalize or deconstruct particular local contexts of cultural difference, but
rather in terms of the knowledge-building capacity of recognizing and reconciling the
transformative interaction between specific forms and contexts and what Gadamer calls the
‘common structure’ of human communication.

Conclusion

This paper has proposed that both China and the West still have much to learn from the other in
the 21st Century. Such a recognition of the importance of ‘global knowledge convergence’ by all
societies and their individual remains a crucial precondition for the achievement of more effective
cross-cultural communication at the macro level. On this basis the paper has further explored the
possibility that such a framework might be developed in terms of some of the more universal and
still timely aspects of human ‘knowledge building’ also common to both the inheritors of Socrates

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and also those who practice, admire and try to understand the traditional wisdom, power and
insight of a discipline like Tai Chi Chuan. One of the common assumptions of Socrates and the
ancient Taoists is that in principle anyone can and should strive to achieve greater self-
understanding and wisdom – a view contrary to the data-information-knowledge-pyramid model
which views this rather as an overly-complicated and indeed unlikely individual or social
development.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to effective cross-cultural communication is the common blindness
that ‘our’ culture, group or system of knowledge (including cultural relativism) is universal and
those of ‘others’ are not. Such a blindness is often reinforced as a form of closed-mindedness by a
tendency to condescension or the looking down upon others which effectively short-circuits a
communication process of dialogue and mutual exchange or learning. All forms of human
communication inevitably involve underlying knowledge systems which inform both the macro or
general and micro or specific dimensions of cultural miscommunication and misunderstanding. In
other words, all forms of human knowledge and culture ranging from traditional cultural contexts
through to either general or specific notions of Western modernity involve a mixture or confusion
of that which is universally common in human experience and values and those specific variations
which link to different local contexts. Recognising that underlying knowledge systems are the
platform for any particular interactions between people from different local or specific contexts of
shared meaning allows us to better recognize the commonalities or convergences as well as
divergences and differences in the social contexts of all forms of human interaction ranging from
the general to the particular.

The question of how to achieve better cross-cultural communication between China and the West
at the macro as well as at micro levels has provided an exemplary basis to explore Gadamer’s
contention that there is a ‘common structure’ of human understanding implicit and yet achievable
in the interaction between diverse local contexts of language and culture. In this way the paper has
further developed proposals that: (a) cross-cultural communication for common understanding is
not really possible where people look down upon others or monologically project self/other or
us/them relations, (b) the key to establishing a more egalitarian and respectful (as distinct from
hierarchical and condescending) approach is that all humans in a fundamental sense inevitably
remain ‘learners’ ever navigating the related knowledge gaps between past and future, specificity
and universality, and ignorance and arrogance; and (c) whilst it may be common sense that
respectful and friendly attitudes are a key to good cross-cultural communication, nevertheless a
more explicit framework is needed to appreciate how we can all ‘learn’ from ‘other’ social and
cultural contexts. In this way also, the paper has explored the requirements and possibilities for an
emerging global community to go beyond various oppositional tensions – such as that exemplified
in the 21st Century by the uneasy relationship between China and the West.

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