estations which make up the human being. When the individual dies, thought the Chinese, the grosser material would return to the earth, to yin, while the spiritual would ascent to heaven, which is yang:
Although there seems to be a dualism in the human constitution, it thus differs from the dualism of body and soul that has plagued the Western philosophers. Perhaps the human constitution in the Chinese concept could be likened to a mixture in a test tube. During life it is kept in stable solution by vigorous activity, but with the cessation of activity due to death, it separates out, the coarser components settling to the bottom, leaving the pure liquid above (Thompson 11).
Different cultures produce their own particular way of structuring the world they see around them. They use religion and ritual to explain, to gain control, and to express their own sense of connectedness to their environment. Pre-scientific societies develop their own mythologies to explain the origin of the universe and of human life. Capra notes the development of different cosmologies and finds ways to link them to show how our scientific view of the universe might strengthen views offered by other cultures. He notes the cosmological views in Chinese and Japanese Buddhist societies, for instance, and links the limitations of any given model to the limitations of language. This is something that scientific societies have noted, but it is also something the mystics have realized:
The Eastern Mystics, too, are well aware of the fact that all verbal descriptions of reality are inaccurate and incomplete. The direct experience of reality transcends the realm of thought and language and, since all mysticism is based on such a direct experience, everything that is said about it can only be partly true (Capra 42).
In physics this approximate nature is quantified, and
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