country_of_citizenship dai zhen
Neo - Confucianism ( often shortened to " lixue "  ) is a moral , ethical , and metaphysical Chinese philosophy influenced by Confucianism , and originated with Han Yu and Li Ao ( 772 - 841 ) in the ___MASK74___ , and became prominent during the Song and Ming dynasties . The ___MASK71___ , officially the Great Qing , also called the Qing Empire or the Manchu dynasty , was the last imperial dynasty of ___MASK100___ , ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief , abortive restoration in 1917 . It was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of ___MASK100___ . The Qing multi - cultural empire lasted almost three centuries and formed the territorial base for the modern Chinese state . Pythagoras of Samos ( or simply ;  in Ionian Greek ) was an Ionian Greek philosopher , mathematician , and the putative founder of the movement called Pythagoreanism . Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived , so very little reliable information is known about him . He was born on the island of Samos , and travelled , visiting ___MASK62___ and ___MASK28___ , and maybe India . Around 530 BC , he moved to Croton , in Magna Graecia , and there established some kind of school or guild . In 520 BC , he returned to Samos . Dai Zhen ( Chinese :  ; pinyin : Dài Zhèn ; Wade -- Giles : Tai Chen , January 19 , 1724 -- July 1 , 1777 ) was a prominent Chinese scholar of the ___MASK71___ from Xiuning , Anhui . A versatile scholar , he made great contributions to mathematics , geography , phonology and philosophy . His philosophical and philological critiques of Neo - Confucianism continue to be influential . Dai ' s philosophical contributions included contributions to the Han Learning school of Evidential Learning ( Evidentialism ) which criticized the Song Learning school of Neo - Confucianism . In particular , two criticisms that Dai made was that Neo - Confucianism focused too much on introspective self - examination whereas truth was to be found in investigation of the external world . Second , he criticized the Neo - Confucian drive to eliminate human desire as an obstacle to rational investigation . Dai argued that human desire was a good and integral part of the human experience , and that eliminating human desire from philosophy had the bad effect of making it difficult to understand and control one ' s emotions as well as making it impossible to establish empathy with others . Geography ( from Greek , " geographia ", literally " ___MASK19___ description ") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands , the features , the inhabitants , and the phenomena of ___MASK19___ . The first person to use the word "  " was Eratosthenes ( 276  194 BC ). Geography is an all - encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of the ___MASK19___ and its human and natural complexities  not merely where objects are , but how they have changed and come to be . It is often defined in terms of the two branches of human geography and physical geography . The four historical traditions in geographical research are : spatial analyses of natural and the human phenomena , area studies of places and regions , studies of human - land relationships , and the ___MASK19___ sciences . Geography has been called " the world discipline " and " the bridge between the human and the physical sciences ". ___MASK100___ , officially the People ' s Republic of ___MASK100___ ( PRC ), is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia . With a population of over 1 . 381 billion , it is the world ' s most populous country . The state is governed by the Communist Party of ___MASK100___ , and its capital is Beijing . It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces , five autonomous regions , four direct - controlled municipalities ( Beijing , Tianjin , Shanghai , and Chongqing ), and two mostly self - governing special administrative regions ( Hong Kong and Macau ), and claims sovereignty over Taiwan . The country ' s major urban areas include Shanghai , Guangzhou , Beijing , Chongqing , Shenzhen , Tianjin and Hong Kong . ___MASK100___ is a great power and a major regional power within Asia , and has been characterized as a potential superpower . Philosophy ( from Greek , " philosophia ", literally " love of wisdom ") is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence , knowledge , values , reason , mind , and language . The term was probably coined by Pythagoras ( c . 570  c . 495 BC ). Philosophical methods include questioning , critical discussion , rational argument and systematic presentation . Classic philosophical questions include : Is it possible to know anything and to prove it ? What is most real ? However , philosophers might also pose more practical and concrete questions such as : Is there a best way to live ? Is it better to be just or unjust ( if one can get away with it )? Do humans have free will ? Eratosthenes of ___MASK40___ (;  ) was a Greek mathematician , geographer , poet , astronomer , and music theorist . He was a man of learning , becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria . He invented the discipline of geography , including the terminology used today . Chinese philosophy originates in the Spring and Autumn period and Warring States period , during a period known as the " Hundred Schools of Thought ", which was characterized by significant intellectual and cultural developments . Although much of Chinese philosophy begins in the Warring States period , elements of Chinese philosophy have existed for several thousand years ; some can be found in the Yi Jing ( the " Book of Changes "), an ancient compendium of divination , which dates back to at least 672 BCE . It was during the Warring States era that what Sima Tan termed the major philosophical schools of ___MASK100___ , Confucianism , Legalism , and Daoism , arose , along with philosophies that later fell into obscurity , like Agriculturalism , Mohism , Chinese Naturalism , and the Logicians . The ___MASK91___ was the ruling dynasty of ___MASK100___  then known as the  for 276 years ( 1368  1644 ) following the collapse of the Mongol - led Yuan dynasty . The Ming , described by some as " one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history ," was the last imperial dynasty in ___MASK100___ ruled by ethnic Han Chinese . Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng ( who established the Shun dynasty , soon replaced by the Manchu - led Qing dynasty ), regimes loyal to the Ming throne  collectively called the Southern Ming  survived until 1683 . Han Yu ( 768  824 ) was an essayist and poet from the ___MASK74___ who had a strong influence on the development of Neo - Confucianism . He has been described as " comparable in stature to Dante , Shakespeare or Goethe " for his influence on the Chinese literary tradition . He stood for strong central authority in politics and orthodoxy in cultural matters . He was considered by many to be among ___MASK100___ ' s finest prose writers , second only to Sima Qian . He was also ranked first among the " Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song " in a list compiled by Ming Dynasty scholar Mao Kun (  ). The ___MASK74___ was an imperial dynasty of ___MASK100___ preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period . It is generally regarded as a high point in Chinese civilization , and a golden age of cosmopolitan culture . Its territory , acquired through the military campaigns of its early rulers , rivaled that of the Han dynasty , and the Tang capital at Chang ' an ( present - day Xi ' an ) was the most populous city in the world . Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication , particularly the human ability to do so , and a language is any specific example of such a system . The scientific study of language is called linguistics . Questions concerning the philosophy of language , such as whether words can represent experience , have been debated since Gorgias and Plato in Ancient ___MASK28___ . Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought . 20th - century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language . Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky . ___MASK19___ science or geoscience is a widely embraced term for the fields of science related to the planet ___MASK19___ . ___MASK19___ science can be considered to be a branch of planetary science , but with a much older history . There are both reductionist and holistic approaches to ___MASK19___ sciences . The ___MASK19___ sciences can include the study of geology , the lithosphere , and the large - scale structure of the ___MASK19___ ' s interior , as well as the atmosphere , hydrosphere , and biosphere . Typically , ___MASK19___ scientists use tools from geography , chronology , physics , chemistry , biology , and mathematics to build a quantitative understanding of how the ___MASK19___ system works and evolves . Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in languages . It has traditionally focused largely on the study of the systems of phonemes in particular languages ( and therefore used to be also called " phonemics ", or " phonematics "), but it may also cover any linguistic analysis either at a level beneath the word ( including syllable , onset and rime , articulatory gestures , articulatory features , mora , etc .) or at all levels of language where sound is considered to be structured for conveying linguistic meaning . ___MASK19___ , otherwise known as the world , is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life . It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets . Confucianism , also known as Ruism , is described as tradition , a philosophy , a religion , a humanistic or rationalistic religion , a way of governing , or simply a way of life . Confucianism developed from what was later called the Hundred Schools of Thought from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius ( 551  479 BCE ), who considered himself a retransmitter of the values of the Zhou dynasty golden age of several centuries before . In the ___MASK50___ ( 206 BCE  220 CE ), Confucian approaches edged out the " proto - Taoist " Huang - Lao , as the official ideology while the emperors mixed both with the realist techniques of Legalism . The disintegration of the Han political order in the second century CE opened the way for the doctrines of Buddhism and Neo - Taoism , which offered spiritual explanations lacking in Confucianism .