“On one world view, if a particle of matter occupied a particular point in space-time, it was because another particle had pushed it there; on the other, it was because it was taking up its place in a field of force alongside other particles similarly responsive. Causation was thus not ‘particulate’ but ‘circumambient’.”

“… quite a different mode of thought from the simpler ‘particulate’ or ‘billiard-ball’ view of causality, in which the prior impact of one thing is the sole cause of the motion of another. ‘The conviction that the universe, and each of the wholes composing it have a cyclical nature, undergoing alternations, so dominated (Chinese) thought that the idea of succession was always subordinated to that of interdependence.

Thus retrospective explanations were not felt to involve any difficulty. Such and such a lord, in his lifetime, was not able to obtain the hegemony, because, after his death, human victims were sacrificed to him.’ Both facts were simply part of one timeless pattern.^f

 ^f It would be right here to point out that this kind of retrospective causality has some similarity with the final cause of Aristotle. But it would be necessary to add that one of the greatest efforts of Renaissance science was directed (successfully) to ridding itself of final causes (e.g. in Francis Bacon). The final cause may be considered an anomaly in European thought, due to the individual genius of Aristotle.”

“Bruno’s world-conception approached almost more closely than that of any other European thinker to the ‘organic causality’ which we have seen ... was characteristic of classical Chinese thought.

Bruno ascribes all motion, and indeed all change of state, to the inevitable reaction of a body to its environment. He does not conceive the action of the environment as taking place mechanically, but rather regards the onset of change in a given body as a function of the nature of that body itself, a nature so constituted as to necessitate that particular reaction to that particular set of environmental circumstances.

He thus visualised the phenomena of the universe of Nature as a synthesis of freely developing innate forces impelling to eternal growth and change.

Bruno spoke of the heavenly bodies as animalia pursuing their courses through space, believing that inorganic as well as organic entities were in some sense animated. The anima constitutes the raggione or inherent law which, in contradistinction to any outward force or constraint, is responsible for all phenomena and above all for all motion

The thought is extremely Chinese, even if vitiated by the characteristic animism of Europe.”