He developed a rational, secular, naturalistic and mechanistic account of the world and of human beings and gave a materialistic explanation of the origin of the universe.
This book contained many theories involving early sciences of astronomy and meteorology, and Wang Chong was even the first in Chinese history to mention the use of the square-pallet chain pump, which became common in irrigation and public works in China thereafter.
He eventually reached the rank of District Secretary, a post he soon lost as a result of his combative and anti-authoritarian nature.
[1] Born a son of Wang Song, he was admired in his local community for his filial piety and devotion to his father.
[1] With the urging of his parents, Wang travelled to the Eastern Han capital at Luoyang to study at the Imperial University.
Since he was poor and lacked enough money to purchase proper texts of study, Wang had to resort to frequent visits to bookshops to acquire knowledge.
[1] Rafe de Crespigny writes that during his studies Wang was most likely influenced by contemporary Old Text realists such as Huan Tan (d.
[4] Due to his humble origins, Wang became resentful of officials who were admired simply because of their wealth and power and not for any scholarly abilities.
[1] He was elevated as an Officer of Merit, but due to his critical and quarrelsome nature he decided to resign from this position.
[1] Following this was a period of isolated retirement when Wang composed essays on philosophy, his Jisu ("On Common Morality"), Jeiyi ("Censures"), Zheng wu ("On Government"), and Yangxing shu ("On Macrobiotics").
Daoism had long ago changed into a religious and magic way, and Confucianism had been the state religion for some 150 years.
Confucius and Laozi were worshipped as gods, omens were seen everywhere, belief in ghosts was almost universal, and fengshui had begun to rule people's lives.
Wang derided all this and made a vocation of giving a rational, naturalistic account of the world and the human place in it.
Wang insisted that the words of previous sages should be treated critically, and that they were often contradictory or inconsistent.
He never, however, explicitly denies the existence of ghosts (gui 鬼) or spirits (shen 神), he simply separates them from the notion that they are the souls of the dead.
The Swedish linguist and sinologist Bernhard Karlgren called his style straightforward and without literary pretensions; in general, modern Western writers have noted that Wang was one of the most original thinkers of his time, even iconoclastic in his opinions.
He had an effect on what Karlgren called, the 'neo-Daoism'—a reformed Daoist philosophy with a more rational, naturalistic metaphysics, without much of the superstition and mysticism into which Daoism had fallen.
For example, much like Greek polymath Aristotle's 4th century BC Meteorology portrayed the water cycle, Wang Chong wrote the following passage about clouds and rain: The Confucians also maintain that the expression that the rain comes down from heaven means that it actually does fall from the heavens (where the stars are).
What he means is that from Mount Tai rain clouds can spread all over the empire, but from small mountains only over a single province—the distance depends on the height.
The British biochemist, historian, and sinologist Joseph Needham asserts that: "As to the seasonal lunar and stellar connections, the thought of Wang Chong (about 83 AD) is that in some way or other the cyclical behavior of the qi on earth, where water is distilled into mountain clouds, is correlated with the behavior of the qi in the heavens, which brings the moon near to the Hyades at certain times.
"[10] Thus, Wang Chong was uniting classical Chinese thought with radically modern ways of scientific thinking in his day.
The former masters regarded the sun as round like a crossbow bullet, and they thought the moon had the nature of a mirror.
[12]Zhang Heng wrote in his Ling Xian (Mystical Laws) of 120 AD: The sun is like fire and the moon like water.
The light pouring forth from the sun does not always reach the moon owing to the obstruction of the earth itself—this is called 'anxu', a lunar eclipse.
When (a similar effect) happens with a planet (we call it) an occultation (xingwei); when the moon passes across (the sun's path) then there is a solar eclipse (shi).
[13]Going against the grain of the accepted theory, and thinking more along the lines of the 1st century BC Roman philosopher Lucretius,[14] Wang Chong wrote: According to the scholars, solar eclipses are brought about by the moon.
[15]Now in such an abnormal event the Yang would have to be weak and the Yin strong, but (this is not in accord with) what happens on earth, where the stronger subdue the weaker.
How can these facts be explained (by astronomers who believe that the moon covers the light of the sun in solar eclipse).
Although there were some figures like Liu Chi, writing in his Lun Tian (Discourse on the Heavens) of 274 AD that supported Wang's theory by arguing the inferior Yin (Moon) could never obstruct the superior Yang (Sun),[18] Liu was still outside of the mainstream accepted Confucian tradition.
[20] Although Wang Chong was right about the water cycle and other aspects of early science, his stern opposition to mainstream Confucian thought at the time made him a skeptic of all their theories, including eclipses (the Confucian-accepted model being correct).