From Claremont to China, with Hope

As the Beijing Olympics wrap up this week, I took note of an interesting article about China that came across my desk recently. The piece, from NYU’s Scienceline newsletter, is misleadingly entitled “Why China’s Environmental Future May Depend on Reclaiming Some of Its Past.”

I say the title is “misleading” because the article talks as much about how process thought – the same process thought that emanates from Claremont – is a vital and future force for growing environmental movements in contemporary China. The article explains that process thought builds on themes found in traditional Chinese philosophies that affirm humans as part of nature, not outside of the ecosystem as often presumed in the West. The article explains,

By combining the value-based Chinese philosophies with a more fact-based Western philosophy, process thought provides a hybrid approach that the Chinese government is beginning to consider as a step towards remedying China’s environment.

The piece cites John Cobb as being pivotal in making these connections possible, as well as the work of Zhihe Wang, director of the China Project of the Center for Process Studies, in making concrete organizational connections between Claremont and China. To date, over 20 conferences on process thought have been held in China since 2002, and 18 centers on process thought have been created at Chinese universities.

For many folks, “process thought” represents a high-minded philosophical tradition that seems disconnected from the practicalities of the world. But as this article shows, process thought has very real and lasting impacts on the world when those who have been transformed by it participate in its continuation and application.