§101. The Birth of Measurement
There are no classics of metallurgy, hydrology, or ceramics, technologies in which the Chinese led the world for centuries. Of all their technical arts, the art of war was probably the most written up, with several classics of strategy in a textual lineage going back to the Warring States period (fourth to third century bce).
A notable feature of Chinese strategy is the priority placed on empirical inquiry. The strategist seeks knowledge of powers latent in a given situation, potentials that strategy manipulates to advantage. Military value does not inhere in some situations more than others; instead every situation contains potential transformations. The problem and the art is to discern and deploy them.The Sunzi bingfa, the most venerable of these classics, emphasizes the need for a detailed assessment of the strategic situation, tactical options, and military capability before a campaign. The recommendation probably formalizes older practice, where rulers contemplating war would withdraw to the ancestral temple for a planning exercise based on a quantified assessment of variables material to success. By Warring States times they were using maps and three-dimensional models of terrain. “Terrain” Sunzi says, “gives birth to measurement”19
Taken to its logical conclusion, this principle leads to the science of geodesy, the measurement of the earth itself, a problem Chinese researchers energetically pursued. A seventh-century scholar appealed to the emperor to authorize a geodetic survey of a meridian arc. “Thus the heavens and the earth will not be able to conceal their form, and the celestial bodies will be obliged to yield up to us their measurements. We shall excel the glorious sages of old and resolve our remaining doubts [about the universe]. We beg your Majesty not to give credence to the worn-out theories of former times, and not to use them.” The appeal was unsuccessful, but a century later, a 2,500-kilometer meridian arc survey was carried out under the direction of the royal astronomer.20
The school-o f-laws tradition, reaching back nearly to the time of Confucius, develops a line of philosophical thinking that ignores the Confucians but draws widely from the military philosophy, which these “legalists” reinterpret for use in government.
They acknowledge the value of investigation, and turn it back on the state itself. Guanzi, a relatively early text, recalls the military concept before applying it to administration. Prior to military action, “The situation of the whole world should be well mastered. Investigations should be made five times a day, because it is wise to know the situation in detail even though there must be a considerable expenditure for doing so. So, those who are good at tactics prefer spies to moats and forts.” The same sort of investigation should be directed on the home front. The state must know itself, its resources, at least as well as it knows those of its enemies. In words from the Book of Lord Shang, a classic of the administrative philosophy, “One with knowledge of the way finds power in numbers, evaluations, and statistics (shu)”21The argument runs throughout Guanzi; for example, “Examine the situation of the bad harvest, enumerate the active army, inspect the platforms and pavilions, and calculate the expenditure of the state, and the actual conditions of a state will be clear.” Again: “Make inspection tours through each prefecture to collect information such as how much land it has, how many people live there, how many people have fields but cannot produce enough grain to support themselves... and how much surplus grain can be left after the total consumption of each year. This kind of information must be recorded clearly.”22
In The Yellow Emperor’s Four Canons, the emperor orders an emissary to travel secretly around the districts in all directions to investigate (guan) how they formulate their policies according to their practical situation. In the Spring and Autumn of Lu Buwei it is said that sovereigns “should investigate the things they do not know, and they should learn to enrich their knowledge.” They should examine “the alternations of the hot and cold seasons, the movement of the sun and the moon” A strain of this administrative philosophy even appears in the otherwise profoundly Daoist Huainanzi, or Book of the Huainan Masters, where we learn that when ancient sage king Shen Nong ruled the world “he inquired monthly and investigated seasonally; when the harvest ended, he reported the achievements [to the ancestors]”23
A chapter in Huainanzi entitled “The Ruler's Techniques” develops a second argument from the administrative philosophy.
The best way for a sage king to see and hear all that should be seen and heard is to stop relying on his eyes and ears, which are comically inadequate. He must learn how not to use them, so that he can effortlessly rely on the eyes and ears of everyone else. “The eye cannot see beyond ten li, the ear cannot hear more than a hundred paces away. Nevertheless, there is nothing in the world that [the ruler] does not perceive, [because] his sources of information are rich” His ears and eyes “penetrate everywhere and will not be blocked.” Such a ruler “has attained the dao of making use of people and does not rely merely on his own qualities.” This may borrow from Mozi, which attributes the effectiveness of the ancient kings to their “ability to use others' ears and eyes to help their own hearing and sight.... When those who help one's listening and looking are many, then one can hear and see far”24A ruler cannot be too vigilant. “A sovereign good at governing his state is somewhat like people traveling on the sea, because he also needs to watch the direction of the winds vigilantly” Vigilance is in order because the signs are there for one who can see them. “At the crux of chaos and order, there are signs that can be observed.” Vigilance connotes the values of alertness and discernment, and hence a kind of empiricism, an intelligent, experienced deployment of observation. “If we can differentiate the subtlest sounds, we can manage to master as much information as possible. If we can discern the newly developed things, we can make the right judgment even before some events take place.” Memory is crucial to the right use of the senses because perceptions must be attended to, and attention to perception brings memory and experience to bear.25