The method blends careful reading with AI-assisted annotation and statistical modeling, so patterns emerge from many voices rather than a few famous essays. Readers who care about how societies shift from one dominant epistemology to another will find the approach useful: it traces rhetorical moves, the rise of psychological explanations, and the varied responses that ranged from condemnation to cautious tolerance.
This topic matters for anyone interested in human potential and inclusion because debates over what counts as legitimate knowledge affect who gets to speak, teach, and belong. The study opens questions about how contemporary institutions continue to privilege certain reasoning styles and what that means for marginalized ways of knowing. Follow the link to see how these historical debates illuminate ongoing tensions in how knowledge, belief, and power interact.
Abstract
This study presents the first large-scale empirical analysis of how ghosts and spirits were debated during China’s early twentieth-century secular transformation. Using a novel dataset of over 2000 digitized texts—including newspapers, periodicals, and essays from 1890 to 1949—we combine close reading, AI-assisted annotation, and statistical modeling to examine rhetorical strategies surrounding supernatural belief. We find a clear asymmetry: critics emphasized theoretical arguments (e.g., science, rationality, education), while defenders relied more on empirical or anecdotal evidence. These patterns reflect broader institutional and cognitive shifts, including the rise of science as a dominant epistemology and the increasing use of psychological explanations to pathologize belief. While reformist elites often cast ghost belief as superstition, we also identify agnostic, cautious, and reconciliatory positions. By situating these debates within the broader context of Chinese cultural modernization, the study sheds new light on how supernatural belief became a contested domain and offers fresh tools for studying the cultural evolution of religious cognition.
