# Metaphysics ## As encountered when (machine) translating Chinese to English [[2025-0315. 'I’ve long known that the Chinese word for metaphysics is xíng’érshàngxué 形而上学, but it always seemed to me to be a strange concoction to match up with the Western term.'|’I’ve long known that the Chinese word for “metaphysics” is xíng’érshàngxué 形而上学, but it always seemed to me to be a strange concoction to match up with the Western term:  “learning of form and above”.’]][^1] [[2025-0315. 'I’ve long known that the Chinese word for metaphysics is xíng’érshàngxué 形而上学, but it always seemed to me to be a strange concoction to match up with the Western term.'|’ The phrase xíng'érshàng 形而上 ("form and above") comes from the first part of the "Great Treatise" (Xì cí 系辞) which is appended to the _Yi jing_:  "Xíng'érshàng zhě wèi zhī dào, xíng'érxià zhě wèi zhī qì 形而上者谓之道，形而下者谓之器".  James Legge's venerable rendering of this passage reads:  "…that which is antecedent to the material form exists, we say, as an ideal method, and that which is subsequent to the material form exists, we say, as a definite thing."  A more literal translation would be something like this:  "that which is above form is called the Way / Tao; that which is beneath form is called a thing."]][^2] [^1]: Victor Mair, ‘Metaphysics has ruined Chinese’, *Language Log*, 27 May 2015, https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=19194. [^2]: Victor Mair, ‘Metaphysics has ruined Chinese’, *Language Log*, 27 May 2015, https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=19194.