Awkward Shuffling, Einstein, and Zhuangzi

It is said that once, along the dusty roads of ancient China, there walked a young traveller. On his back he carried nothing but a roll of blank paper, and within himself a single question: is there a place from which all movement under heaven could be measured? For a long time he searched for such a place. He climbed high mountains, watched the stars above the desert, sailed broad rivers, and listened to sages, yet each pointed him in a different direction. The higher he climbed, the more the centre of the world seemed to recede.

One day, by a river, he met an old Daoist. The Daoist did not speak of heaven, stars, or the laws of nature. He quietly watched the water as it effortlessly flowed around every stone, never asking which path it should take.

The traveller revealed his question to him. He wished to find a place that never moved, so that from there he could understand everything else. The sage did not reject him. Instead of answering, he asked him where north disappears when a person falls asleep. Does the mountain move when we turn away? Does the river move when a boat sails upon it, or does the boat move while the bank remains in its place? Each question was simple, yet each loosened the traveller’s certainty a little.

At last, the old man scooped water into a wooden bowl. Clouds were reflected on its surface. He tilted the bowl slightly, and the reflection swayed. “Have I moved the sky?” he asked.

The traveller wanted to answer, but he no longer knew what had actually moved. Only then did he first sense that perhaps the question was not what is at rest and what is in motion, but from where we are looking in the first place.

Many years later, that same traveller, named Einstein, told the world that there is no privileged space and no privileged time from which all motion could be described. The observer is not the master of the world, but a participant in it. Motion cannot be determined without the relationship between the one who observes and that which is observed. Thus Newton’s absolute space disappeared, along with the idea that there is a single point of departure from which everything could be measured.

If Zhuangzi had heard this, he would probably have smiled. Not because he would have opposed Einstein, but because in his discovery he would have recognised a great step along a path he himself also knew. Centuries earlier, in the chapter Qiwu lun 齐物论 (Discussion on Making All Things Equal), he reflected that no viewpoint is final, and that “this” and “that,” “right” and “wrong,” “large” and “small” arise from one another. What appears to one person as a beginning is an end to another; what seems still to one is in motion to another. The sage therefore does not seek a position from which to judge everything else once and for all, but frees himself from attachment to a single perspective.

Yet it is precisely here that the paths of the two thinkers would begin to diverge.

Einstein removed the privileged frame of reference, but he still sought something that remains the same for all observers — the laws of nature, which apply regardless of the chosen system. His aim was not relativism, but a deeper invariance. Zhuangzi, however, would ask something even more unusual: why does a person wish in the first place to find that final viewpoint from which everything would be understood? Is not the search for a universal description still an expression of the same tendency for the mind to find a fixed point on which it can come to rest?

In this difference there is no opposition, but a difference in the direction of the question. Physics investigates how the world appears to all possible observers and seeks the patterns that remain unchanged through all their perspectives. Daoism, however, investigates the observer himself. It is not primarily concerned with how the sky moves, but with how the thought arises that a person must step outside the sky in order to understand it.

For this reason, Zhuangzi would probably have said of Einstein’s theory that humanity had taken an extraordinary step: it had let go of absolute space and absolute time. But then he would quietly invite him one step further. He would invite him, for a moment, to let go also of the need for a final description of the world.

Not because the laws of nature are unimportant, but because no law can replace the direct experience of being in the flow of life. Understanding is precious, like a boat that carries a person safely to the other shore. But if one continues to carry it on one’s back long after the river has been crossed, it becomes a burden.

Perhaps this is why the most beautiful image of their meeting is the river. Einstein would observe it and seek the law that explains its movement. Zhuangzi would sit on its bank and watch how it flows effortlessly past the stones. Neither of them would be mistaken. One would reveal the order of the phenomenal world, while the other would point out that life is not exhausted by any description, however complete it may be.

When their gazes met, they would probably simply smile at one another. Einstein would acknowledge that there is no privileged observer. Zhuangzi would quietly add that there is also no privileged viewpoint from which the Dao could be definitively encompassed. For the Dao is not a place, not a time, and not a law. It is the ceaseless arising of relationships through which the world can reveal itself at all.

The river therefore flows without knowing its equation. The wind blows without understanding its direction. The sage observes them without the desire to capture them in a final definition. Perhaps it is here that the deepest meeting between early Daoism and Einstein’s thought is hidden: both abandoned the search for the absolute centre of the world. One did so in order to find the universal laws of nature, the other in order to free human beings from the need for a centre.

Although separated by more than two thousand years, Zhuangzi (c. 369–286 BCE) and Albert Einstein (1879–1955) meet at a surprisingly similar question. Zhuangzi asks whether there is ever a privileged perspective from which one could make a final judgment about the world, while Einstein asks whether there exists in nature a privileged reference frame from which absolute motion could be determined. Their paths approach one another at this point, yet then diverge.

Einstein, as a physicist, demonstrates that absolute space and absolute time have no place in the description of nature, while at the same time searching for universal laws that remain valid for all observers. Zhuangzi, however, takes the question one step further: he challenges the very human desire to discover a final standpoint from which everything could be understood. The former reveals the invariance of the laws of nature; the latter invites us to transcend attachment to any single perspective.

Therefore, their encounter is not a meeting of identical teachings, but rather a dialogue between two extraordinary modes of thought. Each, along his own path, moves away from the idea of an absolute center of the world. Einstein removes the privileged position of the observer in the physical description of reality; Zhuangzi removes the privileged position of the mind that seeks to stand above all perspectives.

In this sense, the question of Zhuangzi is:

“Does there exist a privileged perspective from which the world could be judged once and for all?”

And the question of Einstein is:

“Does there exist in nature a privileged reference frame from which absolute motion could be determined?”

The first question belongs to the realm of philosophy and the understanding of human perception; the second belongs to physics and the structure of the universe. Yet both reveal a profound transformation: the realization that reality does not revolve around a single fixed point from which everything else must be measured.

Rector of SDT, Yuan Weiqi