metaphysical level in many fewer generations than in the Indian network. The
cosmological part of the Greek sequence does not thereby come to an end, but
continues alongside the metaphysical level. Part of the philosophical commu-
nity is no longer concerned with cosmology, such as the Sophists; but their
contemporaries, Anaxagoras and more influentially Empedocles, with his four-
element scheme, successfully keep up the focus of attention on the lineage of
cosmological issues. Plato’s generation attains more abstract conceptions, giv-
ing a standpoint from which to revise cosmological heritages. Aristotle coor-
dinates metaphysical and cosmological levels; he is rivaled by the atomism of
Democratus, which is institutionalized into a long-standing position by the
Epicurean school. The Stoics too have a strong cosmological component. As
in India, the Greek cosmological sequence continues for a long time alongside
other philosophical discussions. In one branch it is concretized, both de-my-
thologized and de-metaphysicized in empirical science, such as in the various
systems of the medical schools; in another direction, abstract ontology fuses
with magical occultism in Middle Platonism, the occultist numerologies, and
late Neoplatonism. In both sequences, Indian and Greek alike, we find not
merely a linear trajectory of cosmological abstraction finally sublated into
metaphysics, but branching sequences expanding into niches on the interme-
diate levels of concreteness and abstraction.
In China the earliest sequence of philosophical argument is not cosmologi-
cal but political. The first issue on which the attention space divides is the
character of human nature; the chief rival positions are Confucian familistic-
hierarchical obligation, Yang Chu’s selfishness, and Mohist universal altruism;
a few generations later they are Mencius’ human-heartedness, Hsun Tzu’s
innate evil, and the political repressiveness advocated by the Legalists. The
Chinese route into philosophical abstraction proceeds not by competition
among cosmological alternatives, but by the growth of procedural logic and
conceptual investigation; this is visible in the sixth and seventh generations of
the argumentative community, with Hui Shih’s paradoxes and Kung-sun Lung’s
“School of Names.”
The Chinese cosmological sequence takes off when the materials of primi-
tive religion are drawn into this argumentative community. Around 270 b.c.e.
in the generation of Kung-sun Lung, just when the core network is at the
transition point to the metaphysical level of debate, the Yin-Yang scheme and
Tsou Yen’s Five Processes cosmology enter the field and rapidly take the center
of attention. Both are divination schemes, presumably nurtured in provincial
places and drawing on the mythological stratum of popular magical practice.
Tsou Yen makes a great success by systematizing the Five Agents (water, fire,
wood, metal, earth) in such a way that they line up with current philosophical
debates, as well as appealing to lay interests in political prediction and dynastic
Sequence and Branch in the Social Production of Ideas^ •^803