Sir

The attempt by P.-L. Chau and W. Y. Chau (Nature 386 754 754; 1997) to refute Audrey Wells' observation of the dearth of individuality in Asian cultures as a consequence of Confucianism (Nature 386 14 14; 1997) fails completely. They question whether it is "statistically significant to generalize from Western musical education in Korea and Japan in the past 30 years or so to arrive at a general conclusion about a complex 2,500-year-old philosophy that has deeply influenced the whole of East Asia”. They then proceed to produce the same generalizations for which they so eagerly criticized Wells, by attempting to extrapolate present-day Asian culture from traditional Confucian philosophy.

Lacking any understanding of Joseph Needham and his writings, Chau and Chau question whether dualism or "paradoxes" have ever been connected to Taoism. Duality and paradox are intimately connected with Taoist philosophy, as any casual perusal of early Taoist texts would confirm. Furthermore, in Science and Civilization in China, Needham raises the point clearly and succinctly that, in fact, one of the possible reasons for the lack of a scientific revolution in China was the possibility that Confucianism imposed a collective stranglehold on Chinese intellectual advancement. In addition, one critical point that is studiously not addressed by Chau and Chau is Needham's observations regarding the culturally defined roles of science in Chinese society, in which practitioners of science (in the broadest sense) traditionally served the authoritarian needs of the state (royal court), particularly in close conjunction with well-defined élite classes that promulgated the systematic abuse of the predominantly submissive agrarian population.

To confound matters further, Chau and Chau seem not to understand that the concept of individualism has radically different meanings within the broader contexts of Asian and Western societies. They are also incorrect in stating that authoritarianism was unknown in the original writings of Confucian philosophers. On the contrary, Confucianism developed out of a society with a highly regimented social structure with little internal mobility; thus, virtue as a putatively beneficial quality was, and is, traditionally imposed from above in Chinese society. To the extent that moral courage existed in Chinese society, particularly during the Tang and Qing dynasties, it was a consequence of individual behaviour (and varied from person to person), not Confucianism. It was certainly not an idealistic consequence of well-travelled paths having been trodden in the search for greater meanings. Filial piety, therefore, is necessary for maintaining social harmony in Asian society. Confucian philosophers and scholars were hardly the only ones to have understood this point. Mao reformated this concept, and then used it to great ill-effect in his egotistical attempt to dominate Chinese society. Mao understood the Confucian Analects as well as any Chinese — probably more than most — and evidently to a much greater extent than the authors of the recent correspondence.