The Core Argument of the Theory of Taiji Evolutionism (Modified)
来源:The speech draft on the Philosophical meeting in Shanghai in 2020 | 作者:Yong Duan | 发布时间: 2023-08-15 | 9535 次浏览 | 分享到:

I. Overview

The theory of Taiji Evolutionism consists of three parts: philosophy, social science and system theory. The philosophical part includes ontology, epistemology and meta-ethics. The social sciences section focuses on the origin and nature of life, the nature of people and human culture, history view of generalized evolution, and social organization theory and futurology.

The book "Taiji Evolutionism" is divided into eight chapters. The idea of feedback runs through the content of these eight chapters. Feedback can be represented by the interaction of Yin and Yang of Taiji picture, Yin and Yang can also represent the unity of opposites in contradiction. I write an "e" in the middle of Yin Yang picture to stands for evolution.

The philosophical part of Taiji Evolutionism expounds a relatively complete theory of world view and outlook on life. To establish a scientific world view and outlook on life, we must first understand what is the essence of human beings. Human being is special creature. Human has the common characteristics of creatures, but is different from ordinary creatures. Therefore, to understand the nature of human, we must first understand the nature of life. What is life? Life is complex systems that can survive, so before talking about life, Taiji Evolutionism first establishes a new theory of systems.

2. System Theory

In the system theory, Yong Duan put forward a groundbreaking idea called "feedback creates the world". Feedback includes positive feedback and negative feedback. Negative feedback is the core concept of cybernetics. For example, a missile shoots a plane, and constantly adjusting the direction of flight during the flight of the missile is a negative feedback process. The body's constant temperature control system, immune system and so on are playing a negative feedback function. Negative feedback systems are everywhere.

However, the role of positive feedback has long been neglected in system theory. Atomic bomb explosion is a kind of positive feedback, in the process of nuclear fission, a neutron bombards a uranium-235 atomic nucleus, making it fission, releasing energy and releasing multiple neutrons, which can bombard more nuclei and release more neutrons, then these neutrons bombard more nucleus, so as to form a positive feedback. In fact, all explosions are caused by positive feedback, even explosions without nuclear fission have positive feedback. Because the faster the fuel radiates heat, the higher the temperature; And the higher the temperature, the faster the heat release rate, so that is a positive feedback.

Because all explosions are caused by positive feedback, Yong Duan is convinced that the Big Bang was also the result of positive feedback. Although we do not yet know the exact mechanism of this positive feedback, we can say that positive feedback created the universe.

There are many positive feedback in life, for example, the stock market booms suddenly and busts suddenly, stress concentration causes metal to break, a thousand miles of dikes to break because of the nest, the city effect, and so on. More importantly, positive feedback creates life.

3. Philosophy of creature

3.1The essence of life

The mystery of life is a difficult problem that has troubled mankind for a long time. In fact, this problem is very easy. Living things are alive and have all sorts of magical functions because of their complex and orderly structure, and nothing else. All that soul stuff, all that living element, it's nonsense.

Many of the most important concepts we talk about are essentially refer to structures. For example, the nature of information is structure, the nature of time is structure, and the so-called "order" also refers to structure. By "ordered" we mean a structure that has some special function.

If we have the ability to change the structure of non-living things at will, including the position of every molecule and atom, then non-living things can live as long as they are properly designed. On the contrary, change the structure of the creature, and it may die immediately.

The reason why we can't bring non-living things to life now is because we don't have the ability to make very complex structures, the structures of living things are too complex. How complicated is it? Even the most advanced science and technology can't make a leaf of a tree. Complex structure will inevitably produce all kinds of magical functions.

The structure of living things is on the one hand very complex, on the other hand very ordered. Whether the structure is ordered depends on the function, if a system adds a new function due to the structure change, then it means that its degree of order has increased. The ordered structure comes from variation and natural selection. It might need 10,000 variations for an orderly structure to emerge.

The magical function of living things is due to its complex and orderly structure, and there is no other reason. The only mystery is how such a complex structure came into being and how it survived billions of years.

Complex things are fragile, a mosquito, put in the hand a pinch will die. What do you mean dead? Death is the destruction of a complex and orderly structure. First, it becomes a disordered structure, then it rots and deteriorates, and finally it turns into simple substances like water and carbon dioxide. A mountain fire, a radius of tens of kilometers of living things are burned to death. So why after billions of years of wind and rain baptism, countless catastrophes and disasters, living things can survive and not become extinct?

The reason is simple, because of self-replication or self-reproduction. Self-replication is a positive feedback, why is it a positive feedback? Because the larger the base, the more products are copied, and the more products are copied, the larger the base of the next round of replication, this is a positive feedback. Positive feedback inevitably leads to sudden mutation, which means that the number of living things increases exponentially. It's like swarms of locusts, cockroaches and rats. Because there are so many of them, they can survive and not go extinct.

While variation and natural selection are essential, they are not scarce resources. There is variation and natural selection in non-living things, just as there is in living things.

Because non-living things cannot replicate themselves, non-living things under natural conditions are simple and have no complex structures. Because complex structures, once created, quickly become extinct, the evolutionary process always starts from beginning. This is the essential difference between living things and non-living things.

Like the race between tortoise and the hare, the tortoise runs slowly, but keeps running. Organisms evolve slowly at first, but after billions of years of continuous evolution, they are completely different from non-living things.

Therefore, the essential difference between living things and non-living things is self-replication, and those that can self-replicate are living things, and those that cannot self-replicate are non-living things. In Chinese, “to live”is called “Sheng Huo(生活)”. “Sheng”means giving birth to children, which is self-reproduction. "Huo" means to be alive. Just because we can give birth, then we are alive, if we can't give birth, then we are not alive. This is “Sheng Huo(生活)”. 

3.2 The Essence of Human

The secret of human civilization is also replication, because the rich ideas of mankind are constantly accumulated on the basis of replication. People are more advanced than animals, because the human brain is more complex and ordered, so the human mind is more complex and ordered.

Many people think that creativity is an essential characteristic of human beings, which is wrong. Animals can be creative, too. Chimpanzees, for example, make simple tools by stripping leaves off branches and sticking branch into holes to bring ants out. It's even possible to make more complex tools.

We can imagine that a monkey once discovered how to use fire, how to keep fire. In the course of millions of years of evolution, this kind of thing is entirely possible. But when this monkey died, this skill was lost. Because this ability is an acquired trait, it cannot be inherited through biological genes. So civilizations created by animals always started from scratch, and it could take hundreds of years for the monkey's descendants to recapture the discovery, found it, and then quickly lost it and started all over again. Hundreds of thousands of years later, their civilization was still at its origin, while human civilization had taken off.

Why could human civilization take off? The fundamental difference between human and animal is that human acquired traits can be inherited. How to inherit? It is to inherit the wisdom of predecessors through acquired learning. So human civilization can accumulate from generation to generation. Not afraid of slow, afraid of standing, after hundreds of thousands of years of continuous evolution, people and animals have a world of difference.

Therefore, human being is an animal that lives mainly on inherited acquired traits. Words and symbols are memes or cultural genes.

The acquired traits of human include human rationality, logical thinking, sociality, creating and using tools and so on. These are acquired human traits. What's more, memes are copied so fast -- newspapers can make millions of copies a day -- that humans evolve much faster than animals.

4.Generalized Evolution

The evolution of living things and human being is part of the evolution of whole universe. The whole evolutionary process from the Big Bang to the present is a unified process to get complicated and orderly. Generalized evolution is divided into four stages: abiotic evolution; Biological evolution; Evolution of human society and evolution of artificial intelligence. The world is not only evolving, it is accelerating.

Aristotle asked the question, "Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?" Only a broad history view of generalized evolutionary can best answer this question.

There are those who oppose that evolution is progress. But billions of years of progress of evolution is an undeniable fact, a general trend. There's nothing to argue about.

In addition, some people believe that evolution will lead to the extinction of human beings, so they advocate degradation. Mr. Wang Dongyue, for example. The advocation of degradation is wrong. Where do you want to retreat to? A return to World War II? Or back to World War I? Would you rather face the massacres of the Mongols, or relive the Black Death of the Middle Ages? Degradation is no way out, Wang Dongyue himself admitted that he did not find a way out. So where is the way out? There is only one way, which is to continue to evolve and solve the problems of development in the process of development. Don't be intimidated by development problems.

5. Futurology of Cosmism

The concept of cosmism was developed by Hugo de Garis, who was once known as the father of artificial intelligence. Cosmism is to support the development of AI. The opposite is earthism, which is opposed to the unrestricted development of AI, because they believe that such development will threaten the survival of mankind. In another 20 or 30 years, artificial intelligence may comprehensively surpass human intelligence, and then in a few decades, it will exceed human beings by thousands of times, millions of times, trillions of times. We have no control. That's why Earthism people advocates putting the brakes on now.

Yong Duan agrees with the cosmism view for the following reasons. First of all, artificial intelligence has the potential to threaten the survival of humanity, but the possibility of human extinction is very small. We are now in danger of extinction, too, there is always the danger of nuclear war, and there are environmental pollution and other threats that could wipe out the human race. AI can help us eliminate these threats, and it may be our only hope. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States became the world's sole superpower, but the United States did not sign a treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear weapons. In terms of environmental pollution, the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement has exposed the weakness of human pollution control and ecological protection.

Second, if we stop researching AI, we will destroy our Great Wall. We stop, no one else stops. Even if all countries stop, terrorist groups will not stop. Humans don't have enough capability to control themselves. Human evolution is a train without a brake device, evolution is a kind of helplessness.

The most important thing is that human is a complex and ordered system, and AI is also a complex and ordered system, essentially the same. It is logical that artificial intelligence will rule the world instead of human beings, no surprise. Human beings have no privileges. Why do the world have to be ruled by humans?

Robots are made by us, like our children. Whether they honor their parents depends first of all on our education. If they end up being unfilial, that's normal. We see it all the time. The future is theirs, and we may take it as using parents' death to fulfill our children.

After AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol in 2016, the future development of AI and the fate of human beings have become a topic of heated debate among Silicon Valley scientists. This has been discussed in detail with a clear conclusion in Yong Duan's book "Self-organizing Life Philosophy" written in 2009. And Yong Duan is standing at the height of generalized evolution to analyze this problem. Until today, few people can stand at this height to analyze the problem of artificial intelligence.

6. Epistemology

The epistemological part of the book "Taiji Evolutionism" studies the problems such as epistemological methods and truth standards in detail. Put forward a set of truth criteria. It includes practical standard, predictability standard, logic unity standard, stability standard and simplicity standard.

Western philosophers have been trying to find an objective basis for knowledge, but have failed in the end. No knowledge is absolutely objective, but all kinds of knowledge have different values, and we should choose the most valuable knowledge as the truth. Therefore, the most fundamental standard of truth is not objective, but useful, which is called the practical standard.

The greatest value of truth is to help us foresee the future. We have to make decisions every day, for example, who you decide to marry, how you invest, how you fight and so on. Before making a decision, the first thing is to predict, for example, how much I can earn from this investment, how much I can earn from that investment, whether I will live happily married to this person, these are predictions. Truth can help us to make correct predictions, wrong understanding will bring wrong predictions. So the truth is useful.

The practical standard is the most fundamental standard, and other standards are substitute standards. Because whether my prediction is right, it may take me a long time to know, so what do I do now if I have to decide at once? Only some alternative criteria can be used, mainly the criterion of logical unity and the criterion of simplicity.

The ultimate criterion of truth is usefulness, but what exactly the word "useful" means? It is not an epistemological question, but an ethical one. Useful is valuable. Useful is good. The question of values is the core of ethics, and this part of ethics is called meta-ethics.

Epistemology is the basis of ontology, while meta-ethics is the basis of epistemology, and the history view of generalized evolution is the basis of meta-ethics. Ancient Greek philosophers were keen on studying ontology, but since Descartes, the focus of philosophical research has shifted from ontology to epistemology. Then the epistemological research finally found that the core problem is the ethical problem. So Confucius' theory is also philosophy. Hegel said that Confucius did not understand philosophy, in fact, Hegel did not understand philosophy.

7. Meta-ethics

The theory of Taiji Evolutionism believes that there are three fundamental value standards: individualism, humanism and evolutionism.

7.1 Individualism

Many ancient and modern thinkers of China and abroad have discussed the private interest, but the depth of the discussion is very different. The depth of understanding of self-interest can be divided into eight levels.

(1) Admit that everyone has private interests. Don't just see the goodwill, a lot of goodwill is hypocrisy.

(2) To see that self-interest comes from the nature of animals.

(3) See the contradiction between profit and justice.

(4) Seeing the Restraint is needed when contradiction between interests and justice. Zhu Xi said," We must obey the law of God, and destroy human desire." Most religions are based on the principle of restraining one's desires. Most of the ancient ethics stayed at this level.

(5) The recognition of private interest as justice. Epicurus said, "Happiness is the highest good we are born with."

(6) To see the unity of interest and justice. Adam Smith said that the market system ensures that the businessman increase the social benefit while he maximizes his own interests, which is better than that when businessman take the initiative to do.

(7) Recognize the importance of private interests to social development. Since the Renaissance, humanism and liberalism have always advocated the liberation of human nature, Freud discussed the influence of sexual desire on society, Marx believed that the economic base determines the superstructure, and the economic base is the activity to satisfy people's selfish desires.

(8) Scientific meta-ethics. It is to take individualism, humanism and evolutionism as the ultimate standard of value, fully understand the unity of opposites of the three, and take meta-ethics as the basis of epistemology and ontology.

7.2 Humanism

Humanism is people-oriented, not animal-oriented. People and animals are not equal. It's one person, one vote. You can't say one chicken, one vote, one duck, one vote.. Man can kill pigs, pigs can't kill people. But every person is equal, and it is unjust to harm the interests of other people.

Everyone wants to be around people who are kind and helpful so that we can get help ourselves. Therefore, everyone praises the act of helping others, so that the social fashion of helping others can be formed. The fundamental driving force behind this social trend is individualism. This is called basing Yin and holding Yang(负阴而抱阳), Yin is individualism, Yang is humanism. Whether a society is made up of model workers or prisoners, after a period of development, there will be a social trend of helping others. Because its fundamental driving force is individualism.

At the same time, human beings also have a good nature. At the beginning human nature is inherently evil, and at the same time, their nature is inherently kind. This good nature, if encouraged, may develop the acquired character of the adult.

7.3 Evolutionism

Freedom, democracy and fraternity are the core of Western values, freedom is basically equal to individualism, democracy and fraternity are basically equal to humanism. But individualism and humanism alone are not complete; evolutionism is also needed. Prosperity, civilization, justice, rule of law, patriotism, dedication, integrity, rationality, science and innovation all belong to evolutionism. Such qualities or changes would make the world more complex and orderly, so they should have the same status as freedom, democracy, and fraternity.

For human society, the three value standards of individualism, humanism and evolutionism are the equal and unified of opposites relationship. Which standard to use in practice should be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. But for the evolution of the whole world, evolutionism is the most basic and ultimate standard of value. Because man is a product of evolution, his domination of the world was not from the beginning nor will it last forever. It's just a blip in the whole history. It can be seen from this that the worldview of generalized evolution is the basis of meta-ethics.

Deng Xiaoping said, Development is the hard truth. That is, humanism should be subordinate to evolutionism. Heidegger also believed that humanism should be subordinate to evolutionism, and he hoped that Germany would be strong and prosperous. Heidegger believed that the national heroes he praised belong to the authentic Dasein, and the Dasein that deviated from the national mission and ordinary people belonged to the non-authentic Dasein. Heidegger believed that Hitler could realize his dream of evolutionism, so he supported Hitler, and in 1933 accepted the appointment of the Nazi regime as rector of the University of Freiburg. After World War II, Heidegger came under scrutiny for this matter, but he did not change his evolutionist thought, and he combined evolutionism with the problem of environmental pollution and wrote many works. He has been called the most influential philosopher of the post-war era.

8. Ontology of Dialectical Dualism

8.1 What is philosophical ontology

Science is the theory or wisdom with many branches, including mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and many other subjects. And philosophical ontology is the theory without branches, with all subjects. Philosophical ontology is the most abstract theory, and the object of study is the commonality of all things and all aspects.

If we can find a reason to solve all problems, such a reason is called the arche. The arche is the most fundamental cause of all problems. Like geometry, philosophers hoped to first find the arche, and then start from the arche, establish a theorems system from top to bottom, and use this system to deduce all the necessary conclusions, establish the most complete world view, so as to solve all the problems of understanding the world and transforming the world.

Philosophers believed that the source from which all conclusions can be derived is a most abstract entity, and the theory of this entity is called ontology. However, philosophy has developed for two thousand years, and various theories have been arguing about the arche and the abstract entity, and philosophical theories have not solved any problems. Science, on the other hand, thrives on case-by-case analysis. Of course, philosophy is not completely useless, philosophy and other disciplines are equal. The main function of philosophy is to provide people with a whole world view, to give people rational belief, to provide people with the ultimate standard of value and the ultimate standard of truth.

Many people think that only the true, the kind and the beautiful things are good, in fact, many times fake, cruel and ugly things can better meet people's needs. Toy cars are fake, and for children, fake cars can meet their needs better than real cars. Fake flowers and rockeries are all good things, and artistic images and plots are almost all fake. The heliocentric theory is also false, but in Bruno's day, it played a role in advancing history. All drawings and models are fake, they are essential for all kinds of engineering projects. Kindness to the enemy is a crime against the people; the profession of a doctor is to save people; the profession of a soldier is to kill people; those who kill the most are called heroes and brave warriors. Clowns on the stage can bring us joy and artistic enjoyment, there are plenty of beautiful women and handsome men, but many people like Song Dandan and Wang Baoqiang who are not beautiful. The ultimate standard of value is the interests and needs of people, individualism, humanism and evolutionism, not necessarily the truth, the kind and the beautiful. The ultimate standard of truth is not truth and objectivity, but usefulness.

If the physical world view of science is the objective and true world view, then philosophical metaphysics must establish a false and more valuable world view. Of course, the objective and true world view is not completely worthless, but it is far from satisfying people's needs. The vast universe is of little value to human beings. What is most valuable to human beings is our daily life, our interests and needs, and the culture and civilization we have created.

The scientific world view is incomplete, and only the metaphysical world view provided by philosophical ontology is a complete world view. Why do I say that? Scientists only want to give us an objective and true view of the world, but there are many important and valuable things that are not objective and true. Existence is not equal to objective existence, existence includes objective existence and subjective existence. What exists in the subjective world may not be objective, but it is also a kind of existence.

Therefore we can come to a conclusion that if we ignore the existence of these false things, it only shows that our world view is incomplete. If we say that everything in the objective world is objective and true, then these false things do not belong to the objective world, but to the subjective world. So the objective world is only a part of the world. The world view provided by science only describes the objective world, so the world view provided by science is not the complete world view, only the metaphysical world view provided by philosophy is the complete world view, which embraces everything, especially those things that may be not objectively real but have great value.

8.2The world view of Dialectical Dualism 

The world view of Dialectical Dualism is a new world outlook of metaphysics, which believes that the existence of the world includes two parts: the subjective world and the objective world, and they are dialectical and unified relation that contain each other. 

Dialectical Dualism believes that the objective world includes Material(Wu物), Event(Shi事), Law(Dao道), Commonness(Li理) and relations. The event is the movement or change of material and relations. The relation includes the same relation, the similarity relation, the space structure relation, the time relation, the gravity relation, the magnetic force relation, the authority relation and so on.

Plato believes that the human soul is composed of reason, passion and desire, which is not comprehensive. The existence of subjective world includes Xin(心), Xing(性), Qing(情), Yi(意) and Thought Products.


Figure 1. Composition of the World.

In Chinese, Xin means the heart, here it refers to the thought in the brain. The thought includes perceptual thinking and rational thinking. Xing refers to human nature, needs and interests. Nature includes human temper, disposition, habits, character, cultivation, sentiment and spirit. Qing includes emotion, feeling and vision. Feeling includes bitterness, joy, happy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, evil, surprise, worry and so on. Feeling is the main driving force to produce the will of behavior. When people’s feelings develop into passions, it will produce the biggest driving force to behavior, and people will burst out with great creativity, fighting power or destructive power. Emotion is relatively short feeling, including anxiety, excitement, panic, satisfaction, pride, etc. Vision is relatively rational feeling with a certain moral concept or belief value orientation, such as wish, dream, ideal, yearning, and so on. Yi means the direct power that governs people’s behavior, including people’s attitude, will, perseverance and decision-making. Moral ideas belong to attitude or will. Decisions include concrete decisions and abstract decisions. All normative theories are abstract decisions, including technology, principles, laws, regulations, systems, ethics, customs, etc.

Thought products include knowledge, hypotheses, assumptions, fantasy, myths, fairy tale, lies, arts, religion, prejudice, and so on. Among them, knowledge includes experience, ideas and theories. Experience includes both direct experience and indirect experience. Direct experience includes direct experience of external things and experience of subjective world of one’s own body and mind, in which there are many illusions. Ideas include opinions, prejudices, hypotheses, assumptions, impressions, and half-baked ideas. Theories include scientific theories, philosophical theories, and all kinds of fallacies. Experience, idea and theory describe abstract material, events, laws and commonnesses. Knowledge is the most objective consciousness, all other consciousness are less objective or no objective. Knowledge creates an objective world, which can be called objective world 2, knowledge is the content of objective world 2.

In the subjective world, the Xing of people (nature, needs, interests) and emotion are the id; the feeling, thought, attitude, will, decision, experience and idea are the ego; the vision and science, art, religion of thought products are the superego.

8.3 Dialectical Relation of Two Worlds

There are the sun, the moon, the stars, tables, chairs and human society in the objective world, and there is the human brain, the movement of brain and the consciousness generated by brain movement. Human consciousness produces the 

subjective world, in which there is what I see and think. I see tables and chairs, I see people and their behaviors, I see the sun, the moon and the stars, I think of the Big Bang, I think of the wave-particle duality of light and so on. These things constitute the objective world, which is inside the subjective world. This objective world is objective world 2. The real objective world is objective world 1.


Figure 2. Dialectical Relation of the Two World.

The objective world we think and talk about is not the real objective world, but is made of our experience, ideas and theories. Now let’s look at the objective world 1. Is the objective world 1 really objective? The objective world 1 we’re talking about here is also something we’re thinking about. I wouldn’t be able to say it if I hadn’t thought about it. Now that I’m thinking and talking about the objective world 1, it is also part of the subjective world, essentially it is objective world 2. That is to say, there is a subjective world outside the objective world 1, and there is an objective world outside the subjective world. And so on, layer upon layer nesting, endless loop. The relation between the subjective world and the objective world belongs to the dialectical unity relation, or the relation between matter and consciousness is the dialectical unity relation. Laozi said, "Tao is a Yin and a Yang." This is the world view of dialectical dualism, the most fundamental and overall world view that metaphysics of philosophy should present to the public.

The person in the picture below is holding an image. In the image there is a person, herself, who is holding the same image, in which there are smaller images, and so on and so on. This also happens when looking at a mirror, with another mirror placed opposite. You can see an infinite number of mirrors reflecting off each other. This is called the Droste effect, a visual form of recursion.


Figure 3. Droste Effect.

Dialectical logic does not conform to the rules of formal logic, but it is the commonness of many things, which is a logical relationship that we have to admit. Phenomena such as Droste effect, Klein bottle and Mobius belt all provide visual images of dialectical unity relations. The upper and lower sides of the Mobius belt are connected, and the inner and outer sides of the Klein bottle are connected. 


Figure 4. Klein Bottle, Mobius Belt, Yin Yang Diagram of Taiji Theory.

This relation of dialectical unity is not new to us, and many people are aware of its profound philosophical significance. But what it means, no one has been able to describe clearly. This dialectical view of the world did not become the most fundamental overall view of the world that metaphysics of philosophy should present to the public. The Chinese ancient idea of Taiji Yin Yang is similar to this world view, but it did not said that the Yin and Yang represent the subjective world and objective world.

8.4 Colored Glasses

Why are the subjective world and the objective world dialectically united? Because we wear a pair of colored glasses. We have to rely on our senses and brains to do science and to understand the world, our senses and brains have limitations like a pair of colored glasses.

Scientists don’t realize that they are wearing colored glasses when they see the world. If they see everything red, they assume that the physical world is made up of red elements. They don’t believe that the red color comes from their own glasses. Philosophers are aware of this, which is the Copernican Revolution of Kant: not that our understanding conforms to the object, but that the object conforms to our understanding.

Why did Kant say that the object must conform to our understanding? The main reason is that we have to use abstract method of understanding. This abstract method is a pair of colored glasses that we have to wear.

What is a chicken plus a dog? Is it equal to two chickens or two dogs? Obviously neither. But we can say that one plus one equals two, because we have made abstraction first before we do this calculation. What does it mean when we say “one”? It is an abstraction of a chicken, a dog, a person, an earth, everything. Scientific research cannot do without formal logic, and the premise of formal logic is abstraction. So scientific research can never do without abstraction. The abstract process can only take place in the subjective world. In the objective world there are only concrete things, there are no abstract things. In the concrete objective world, no two leaves are the same, and one is never equal to one. In the abstract subjective world, one can be equal to one. So scientific research can never jump out of the subjective world.

Materialism, subjective idealism and objective idealism are all wrong theories. Materialists only saw the subjective world as part of the objective world, but they did not see that objective world is a part of the subjective world. Although subjective idealism sees that the objective world is a part of the subjective world, it denies the existence of the objective world. Objective idealism regards the content of the subjective world as the content of the objective world.