Is Feng Shui a Science?

Translator's note. The argument here turns on a definition the author supplies himself, and it is not the academic one. What he calls the “humanities” is any body of knowledge that can be read two ways and still sound right — a field with no test it can fail. Whether or not one accepts the label, the test he proposes is usable: name one question about a house that has exactly one correct answer, and see whether the tradition can answer it twice, in opposite directions, and be paid both times.

The Yijing itself is a work of philosophy — a humanity, a social science, call it what you like. That much is uncontroversial.

But the prediction systems that grew out of it are not. They claim to describe how the physical world acts on a person, and a claim of that kind is either true or false. Feng shui, on this account, belongs with the natural sciences. It is not a branch of the humanities, and it is not a social science.

What the distinction actually means

Stated bluntly: a humanity is a body of knowledge that can be used to talk people into things, because it has no standard of right and wrong, and therefore can be interpreted however the speaker needs it interpreted.

A natural science has three marks:

1. You cannot bluff with it. If I hand you a hundred, it is a hundred. I cannot tell you it is a hundred million and be believed.
2. It has strict criteria for judgment. Not preferences — criteria.
3. It cannot be read at will. A hundred is a hundred. It does not become something else because the reading would suit me better.

Feng shui should work the same way. Is a door facing another door auspicious or not? There ought to be one answer. If I can call it auspicious when it suits me and inauspicious when it does not, then the sentence is not a claim about the world. It is sales copy.

The door that proves the point

Traditional practitioners have a standard routine for this situation. Your door is large, your neighbour's door is small, and the two face each other.

If your household prospers, the master says: the large door has been eating the small door.

If your neighbour prospers, the same master says: all the energy of the large door has flowed into the small one.

Both outcomes, one theory, no possibility of being wrong. That is what a humanity looks like in practice — and it is why the reading costs nothing to produce. A natural science cannot do this. Before the fact, it has to say which way it will go.

The real question about a facing door has three parts: what kind of door faces what kind of door, which direction faces which direction, and — the one that decides it — whether the energy between them circulates. Answer those and you have an answer. Skip them and you have a story.

The hallway screen

The most expensive consequence of the humanities approach is the entrance screen — the panel that goes up inside the front door in almost every new southern Chinese apartment, on the reasoning that a door opening straight into a room is bad.

Sometimes the screen is correct. Most of the time it is wrong.

Think about what a screen does physically. It blocks a passage. If the passage was carrying good energy into the house and bad energy out, then blocking it is exactly the same as holding your nose and mouth shut while telling yourself you are breathing more carefully. Households like this needed the corridor's circulation; they have sealed the only opening they had.

The rule is not “screens are good” or “screens are bad.” The rule is directional:

• If auspicious energy flows in from that direction and the house's own bad energy flows out, a screen is actively harmful. Do not build one.
• If inauspicious energy flows in and the house's good energy flows out, a screen is necessary. Build one.

Same door, same room, opposite prescriptions — because the answer depends on a measurement, not on a saying.

Why this matters beyond one hallway

The point of the example is not the hallway. It is that without this distinction you have no way to judge which of the inherited schools is right and which is wrong, because every school can be defended in the same unfalsifiable way. The moment you accept that feng shui is a natural science, the test becomes available: ask what the claim predicts, then go and look.

And the converse holds. Anyone who tells you that feng shui is a social science, or a humanity, or a matter of cultural feeling, is telling you in advance that his statements cannot be checked. That is a convenient position for the person making the statements. It is not a convenient position for the person paying for them.