Sharron Gu
I am an independent scholar, published author, and world traveler. My original research includes many disciplines in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. I completed my bachelor's degree in Beijing (in Arabic language and literature) and upon graduation was posted to the Middle East. I had a successful diplomatic career as a project manager of overseas economic development. I worked for years with various international government agencies and managed multinational teams of professionals.
I returned to my academic interests in Philadelphia and earned my MA and PhD in world history at Temple University. My disser. was on early modern European and Middle Eastern history. When I was teaching in Temple as a post-doctoral fellow, I began to develop my unique theory of cultural development that challenged the theoretical foundation of academic establishment and criticized its then unresponsive attitude to interdisciplinary and cross cultural studies. I left academia because of its restraint on my creative thinking and writing, the same reason that I had departed China decades ago.
I have enjoyed my freedom ever since and succeeded as an independent researcher. I continue to travel the world and passionately pursue my writing. I am the author of:
THE BOUNDARIES OF MEANING AND THE FORMATION OF LAW
LAW AND POLITICS IN MODERN CHINA
CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE CHINESE LANGUAGE
LANGUAGE AND CULTURE IN THE GROWTH OF IMPERIALISM
A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE ARABIC LANGUAGE
I also completed several manuscripts of world history that are currently read and edited by American and European publishers. They are:
"Beyond the Boundaries of Meaning: A World History of Law and its Languages"
"A World History of Economic Development: A Contribution to the Theory of Economics"
"Prism of Words: A Global History of Science"
"God and his Worshipers: A History of Language, Religion, and Self-image"
"Word Prophet: A History of Poetry and Politics"
"A Cultural History of the Semitic Languages"
"A Cultural History of the English Language"
My biography, BROWN EYES, written by Norman A. Christie, a Canadian literary writer, will soon be published. It portrays my life from China to the Middle East, the United States, Canada, and around world.
I am currently very busy to launch my own publishing company that is specialized in presenting cutting edge research in the arts, humanities and social sciences. My company will also publish collections of original and translated works of world history, literature, poetry, and medicine.
Address: xrgu2@msn.com
I returned to my academic interests in Philadelphia and earned my MA and PhD in world history at Temple University. My disser. was on early modern European and Middle Eastern history. When I was teaching in Temple as a post-doctoral fellow, I began to develop my unique theory of cultural development that challenged the theoretical foundation of academic establishment and criticized its then unresponsive attitude to interdisciplinary and cross cultural studies. I left academia because of its restraint on my creative thinking and writing, the same reason that I had departed China decades ago.
I have enjoyed my freedom ever since and succeeded as an independent researcher. I continue to travel the world and passionately pursue my writing. I am the author of:
THE BOUNDARIES OF MEANING AND THE FORMATION OF LAW
LAW AND POLITICS IN MODERN CHINA
CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE CHINESE LANGUAGE
LANGUAGE AND CULTURE IN THE GROWTH OF IMPERIALISM
A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE ARABIC LANGUAGE
I also completed several manuscripts of world history that are currently read and edited by American and European publishers. They are:
"Beyond the Boundaries of Meaning: A World History of Law and its Languages"
"A World History of Economic Development: A Contribution to the Theory of Economics"
"Prism of Words: A Global History of Science"
"God and his Worshipers: A History of Language, Religion, and Self-image"
"Word Prophet: A History of Poetry and Politics"
"A Cultural History of the Semitic Languages"
"A Cultural History of the English Language"
My biography, BROWN EYES, written by Norman A. Christie, a Canadian literary writer, will soon be published. It portrays my life from China to the Middle East, the United States, Canada, and around world.
I am currently very busy to launch my own publishing company that is specialized in presenting cutting edge research in the arts, humanities and social sciences. My company will also publish collections of original and translated works of world history, literature, poetry, and medicine.
Address: xrgu2@msn.com
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Books by Sharron Gu
Words are a prism, through which, man sees, observes, and imagines the world around him. The same sky appears differently to the people of different culture at different times. The same sun and moon inspires different imagery, sentiment, and dreams; the same natural phenomena activate different emotions, and convey different meanings and connotations. Human culture does not possess a naked eye that can see a pure vision. The eyes and minds behind the prism (words) are essentially the same, but the image that they see is distorted as it is filtered, magnified, and crystallized by the unique words (prism) of the viewer. What transforms worldview is not scientific invention or technology, but the evolution of language, through which the natural world is perceived and understood.
The Boundaries of Meaning is a comparative study of the relationship between language and the formation of legal ideas and practice. It challenges the sociological and philosophical theories of law by arguing that a given society’s cultural communication plays an important, if not a determinate, role in the formation of legal tradition and its development. Different forms of justice and legality are based less on static principles, rational reasoning, or social relations than on the language through which principles are defined, reason is cultivated, and social distribution is justified. On the one hand, language conceptualizes both legal ideas and legal practice by making acceptable and disputable meanings possible. On the other hand, it constantly generates novel meanings of fairness and new concepts of justice; it expands the vision of established legal ideas and refines their connotations. In this sense, language refers less to isolated texts or to originally intended meanings than to a continued communication, or negotiation, whose boundary expands as language evolves over time. This expansion of linguistic meanings shapes and transforms the institutions of law. As the source of legal innovation, increasingly sophisticated language specifies the dimensions and constraints according to which established principles are selected, interpreted, justified, and applied.
This line of argument is demonstrated by a comparative study of the formation of three legal traditions: English Common Law, Chinese Imperial law, and Islamic law. The comparison undertakes an investigation on two levels: the theoretical and the historical. On the theoretical level, it demonstrates how the forms of meaning (abstract or concrete, with or without definite boundary) and conceptual association (exclusive or juxtaposed) determine the certainty and uncertainty of legal rulings. It shows how the binding power of a given language at a particular time shapes and transforms the nature of the law, be it case law, statute law, or book law.3 Specifically, it is noted (1) that during various periods, the English, Arabic, and Chinese languages articulated different concepts of fairness and justice that determined the basic characteristics of their legal traditions and (2) that the linguistic and literary structure of each language conceptualized unique modes of legal reasoning and elaborated distinct hierarchies of rules and structures of legislation.4 The relationship between language and law is illustrated by a reconstruction of the formation of the basic concepts of justice and by an overview of the development of legal ideas in the three traditions. While each tradition featured distinct concepts, principles, and reasoning, it also shared with the others a historic pattern of development, as each constantly clarified and specified principles in order to refine the law’s capacity for discrimination. Inflated rules and rights, which expanded the scope of the principles, violated established conceptual boundaries, leading to conflict and even to crises of legal language. Increasingly sophisticated language introduced new difficulties as well as potentialities into the legal system. The degree to which the language of law classifies, rather than excludes, connotations and thus juxtaposes opposite principles determines how a legal system balances its certainty and uncertainty, be it through constitutional, interpretive, or legislative authorities.
From this cross-cultural perspective, the study also elaborates some novel interpretations of each tradition’s legal history. It points out that the trilingual environment of medieval England comprised the most important, yet least investigated, condition under which English Common Law was formulated. The Romanization of legal English created a conceptual gap between abstract rights and concrete justice.5 The absolute binding power of legal words (through Latin classification) provided the foundation for the abstract legality of the Common Law, which was never codified but nevertheless generated and controlled the enactment of concrete rules and judicial practice. The juristic nature of Islamic law was derived from the fluidity and ambiguity of legal Arabic. Islamic law, inscribed in a language unable to establish absolute bounds, sought legal certainty in its juristic authorities. This interpretive creativity maintained the vitality of the fixed words of the divine law by enabling it to adapt to an ever-changing legal practice. Legal Chinese has a longer history and showed a greater capacity for both preciseness and mutability, resulting in the formulation of a law based on centralized legislation. Through constant re-codification over the centuries, it framed a hierarchy of legal categories dealing not only with rules and implications, but also with analogical interpretations and codified cases. Comprised of extremely specific yet conflicting rules, Chinese law depended upon the discretion of the legislators and judges for its authority.6
Part 1 of this study is an investigation of the formation of the legal conceptions distinguishing the three traditions. It compares and analyzes the historical transmission of the basic concepts of law and justice in Old, Middle, and early Modern English, ancient and classical Arabic, and ancient and classical Chinese. Instead of comprising a conventional textual investigation, it focuses on the general tendencies of legal reconceptualization in the larger linguistic and literary environment. The analysis emphasizes two aspects of each legal language: conceptual clarification and association. The clarification of legal meanings began when the written mode replaced the oral mode as the form of legal language. This transformation took distinct forms within each tradition, giving rise to differences in how each legal language clarified and specified the meanings of the law and justice. Romanized legal English, which emerged from a trilingual environment, was clarified by means of a conceptual division between abstract and concrete rights. Legal Arabic, which was codified from a rich oral language characterized by diverse variations, was clarified by creating a supreme realm of divine authority, the precepts of which could be expressed via general and transmutable doctrines. Legal Chinese, which developed from a long written tradition, was clarified by means of a verbal hierarchy of ranked rules.
If the finality of legal rules was first secured by specifying the boundaries of meaning, these rules gradually lost their ground of certainty after the legal language expanded levels of meaning, inflating the law with rulings that qualified one another. In response, conceptual association became an additional means of controlling the location and movement of linguistically demarcated legal boundaries. The nature of each language in a given time gave rise to distinct types of conceptual association and sanction. The technically defined rules were absolutely delimited by establishing a linear relationship between the abstract and the concrete, the general and the particular, the principles and the cases. The fluid and transmutable meanings, although constantly redefined, were controlled by interpretations derived from the juxtaposition and interpenetration of levels of connotation. Specific yet contradictory rules were sanctioned by legal authorities at various levels, their rankings being determined by constant re-codification. Distinct forms of legal hierarchy determined the different characteristics of the three legal traditions at various times. When justice was oral, and thus undistinguished and vague, law was practiced without a hierarchy of legislation. This was the case for each of the oral English, Arabic, and ancient Chinese traditions. As written rules flourished, legal hierarchies were created whose forms were shaped by the nature of the given languages. While the absolute division of abstract and concrete law determined the “legal” character of English Common Law, the lack of an abstract concept of law and the transmutable boundaries of original meanings produced the administrative feature of Islamic and Chinese law.
"
Every culture evolves an increasing number of images, which become more varied, clear, and refined, with the growth of its language. As they accumulate, this collection of images gradually forms a pyramid. Depending on the language in which these images are drawn, there are three ways to build this pyramid: from the top, from the bottom, and from both ends at the same time. Men call their first ideal images gods, to differentiate from themselves. Gods represent men’s hopes and dreams. In a concrete language, words and stories invent many gods; they fill the pyramid from the bottom up. When an emerging culture borrows a God from a foreign language, God comes in at the top waiting for the host language to create images, which can reach up to him. When an old language borrows a God, he comes on the top reaching down to lead the existing lesser gods.
As they accumulate, words constantly repaint the face of God. A primitive language paints a faceless God (a God with a name but without a face). As more words add lines and colors to God’s face, the divine image becomes clearer. As language becomes sharp and colorful enough to paint many images of the same God, God has different masks. He shows different faces to different worshipers.
Words build a staircase between God and his worshipers. As more words and stories accumulate, it becomes easier for worshipers to approach God or for God to descend to them. As words, imageries, and connotations accumulate, the imagination of the worshipers becomes sharper and more focused. They can see more images of God, and hear various connotations of his words. The established stairs can be used to approach different Gods, and worshipers can always repaint the face of their God or/and change his name. Change language of God requires abolishment of the stairs, which will keep God in distance until the worshipers build new stairs.
"
In short, this book explores the history of social change in terms of the evolution of language that transforms the collective consciousness. It focuses on the episodes where poetry inspires and enlightens social reformers with novel ideas.
The main origins of this linguistic flexibility lie in the age long discrepancy (or inconsistency including periodical temporary unity) between written and oral language and between the conventionalized symbols and the actual sound of language. This discrepancy drove a continuous cycle of birth and death of a stream of languages in the Middle East. Although Semitic language was the original inventor of alphabetic script, the alphabet form of writing did not come easily within the Semitic language group because of this inherited discrepancy. During the third Millennium BC, most ancient Semitic languages adopted cuneiform, a highly conservative and logographic script. It was not until 1100 BC that a semi-alphabetic script was created. Several alphabetic scripts emerged and became extinct during the next fifteen centuries because an important part of the Semitic languages, the vowels that defined meaning and grammatical structure, were not fully presented. As a result, only spelling (not the way to be read) of the written language was standardized; thus the pronunciation of the written language remained unregulated and fluid. Consequently, local languages and dialects disappeared as quickly as they appeared. The authority of written languages was often challenged by active and innovative oral languages and quickly branched out after every minor phonetic shift.
Papers by Sharron Gu
Words are a prism, through which, man sees, observes, and imagines the world around him. The same sky appears differently to the people of different culture at different times. The same sun and moon inspires different imagery, sentiment, and dreams; the same natural phenomena activate different emotions, and convey different meanings and connotations. Human culture does not possess a naked eye that can see a pure vision. The eyes and minds behind the prism (words) are essentially the same, but the image that they see is distorted as it is filtered, magnified, and crystallized by the unique words (prism) of the viewer. What transforms worldview is not scientific invention or technology, but the evolution of language, through which the natural world is perceived and understood.
The Boundaries of Meaning is a comparative study of the relationship between language and the formation of legal ideas and practice. It challenges the sociological and philosophical theories of law by arguing that a given society’s cultural communication plays an important, if not a determinate, role in the formation of legal tradition and its development. Different forms of justice and legality are based less on static principles, rational reasoning, or social relations than on the language through which principles are defined, reason is cultivated, and social distribution is justified. On the one hand, language conceptualizes both legal ideas and legal practice by making acceptable and disputable meanings possible. On the other hand, it constantly generates novel meanings of fairness and new concepts of justice; it expands the vision of established legal ideas and refines their connotations. In this sense, language refers less to isolated texts or to originally intended meanings than to a continued communication, or negotiation, whose boundary expands as language evolves over time. This expansion of linguistic meanings shapes and transforms the institutions of law. As the source of legal innovation, increasingly sophisticated language specifies the dimensions and constraints according to which established principles are selected, interpreted, justified, and applied.
This line of argument is demonstrated by a comparative study of the formation of three legal traditions: English Common Law, Chinese Imperial law, and Islamic law. The comparison undertakes an investigation on two levels: the theoretical and the historical. On the theoretical level, it demonstrates how the forms of meaning (abstract or concrete, with or without definite boundary) and conceptual association (exclusive or juxtaposed) determine the certainty and uncertainty of legal rulings. It shows how the binding power of a given language at a particular time shapes and transforms the nature of the law, be it case law, statute law, or book law.3 Specifically, it is noted (1) that during various periods, the English, Arabic, and Chinese languages articulated different concepts of fairness and justice that determined the basic characteristics of their legal traditions and (2) that the linguistic and literary structure of each language conceptualized unique modes of legal reasoning and elaborated distinct hierarchies of rules and structures of legislation.4 The relationship between language and law is illustrated by a reconstruction of the formation of the basic concepts of justice and by an overview of the development of legal ideas in the three traditions. While each tradition featured distinct concepts, principles, and reasoning, it also shared with the others a historic pattern of development, as each constantly clarified and specified principles in order to refine the law’s capacity for discrimination. Inflated rules and rights, which expanded the scope of the principles, violated established conceptual boundaries, leading to conflict and even to crises of legal language. Increasingly sophisticated language introduced new difficulties as well as potentialities into the legal system. The degree to which the language of law classifies, rather than excludes, connotations and thus juxtaposes opposite principles determines how a legal system balances its certainty and uncertainty, be it through constitutional, interpretive, or legislative authorities.
From this cross-cultural perspective, the study also elaborates some novel interpretations of each tradition’s legal history. It points out that the trilingual environment of medieval England comprised the most important, yet least investigated, condition under which English Common Law was formulated. The Romanization of legal English created a conceptual gap between abstract rights and concrete justice.5 The absolute binding power of legal words (through Latin classification) provided the foundation for the abstract legality of the Common Law, which was never codified but nevertheless generated and controlled the enactment of concrete rules and judicial practice. The juristic nature of Islamic law was derived from the fluidity and ambiguity of legal Arabic. Islamic law, inscribed in a language unable to establish absolute bounds, sought legal certainty in its juristic authorities. This interpretive creativity maintained the vitality of the fixed words of the divine law by enabling it to adapt to an ever-changing legal practice. Legal Chinese has a longer history and showed a greater capacity for both preciseness and mutability, resulting in the formulation of a law based on centralized legislation. Through constant re-codification over the centuries, it framed a hierarchy of legal categories dealing not only with rules and implications, but also with analogical interpretations and codified cases. Comprised of extremely specific yet conflicting rules, Chinese law depended upon the discretion of the legislators and judges for its authority.6
Part 1 of this study is an investigation of the formation of the legal conceptions distinguishing the three traditions. It compares and analyzes the historical transmission of the basic concepts of law and justice in Old, Middle, and early Modern English, ancient and classical Arabic, and ancient and classical Chinese. Instead of comprising a conventional textual investigation, it focuses on the general tendencies of legal reconceptualization in the larger linguistic and literary environment. The analysis emphasizes two aspects of each legal language: conceptual clarification and association. The clarification of legal meanings began when the written mode replaced the oral mode as the form of legal language. This transformation took distinct forms within each tradition, giving rise to differences in how each legal language clarified and specified the meanings of the law and justice. Romanized legal English, which emerged from a trilingual environment, was clarified by means of a conceptual division between abstract and concrete rights. Legal Arabic, which was codified from a rich oral language characterized by diverse variations, was clarified by creating a supreme realm of divine authority, the precepts of which could be expressed via general and transmutable doctrines. Legal Chinese, which developed from a long written tradition, was clarified by means of a verbal hierarchy of ranked rules.
If the finality of legal rules was first secured by specifying the boundaries of meaning, these rules gradually lost their ground of certainty after the legal language expanded levels of meaning, inflating the law with rulings that qualified one another. In response, conceptual association became an additional means of controlling the location and movement of linguistically demarcated legal boundaries. The nature of each language in a given time gave rise to distinct types of conceptual association and sanction. The technically defined rules were absolutely delimited by establishing a linear relationship between the abstract and the concrete, the general and the particular, the principles and the cases. The fluid and transmutable meanings, although constantly redefined, were controlled by interpretations derived from the juxtaposition and interpenetration of levels of connotation. Specific yet contradictory rules were sanctioned by legal authorities at various levels, their rankings being determined by constant re-codification. Distinct forms of legal hierarchy determined the different characteristics of the three legal traditions at various times. When justice was oral, and thus undistinguished and vague, law was practiced without a hierarchy of legislation. This was the case for each of the oral English, Arabic, and ancient Chinese traditions. As written rules flourished, legal hierarchies were created whose forms were shaped by the nature of the given languages. While the absolute division of abstract and concrete law determined the “legal” character of English Common Law, the lack of an abstract concept of law and the transmutable boundaries of original meanings produced the administrative feature of Islamic and Chinese law.
"
Every culture evolves an increasing number of images, which become more varied, clear, and refined, with the growth of its language. As they accumulate, this collection of images gradually forms a pyramid. Depending on the language in which these images are drawn, there are three ways to build this pyramid: from the top, from the bottom, and from both ends at the same time. Men call their first ideal images gods, to differentiate from themselves. Gods represent men’s hopes and dreams. In a concrete language, words and stories invent many gods; they fill the pyramid from the bottom up. When an emerging culture borrows a God from a foreign language, God comes in at the top waiting for the host language to create images, which can reach up to him. When an old language borrows a God, he comes on the top reaching down to lead the existing lesser gods.
As they accumulate, words constantly repaint the face of God. A primitive language paints a faceless God (a God with a name but without a face). As more words add lines and colors to God’s face, the divine image becomes clearer. As language becomes sharp and colorful enough to paint many images of the same God, God has different masks. He shows different faces to different worshipers.
Words build a staircase between God and his worshipers. As more words and stories accumulate, it becomes easier for worshipers to approach God or for God to descend to them. As words, imageries, and connotations accumulate, the imagination of the worshipers becomes sharper and more focused. They can see more images of God, and hear various connotations of his words. The established stairs can be used to approach different Gods, and worshipers can always repaint the face of their God or/and change his name. Change language of God requires abolishment of the stairs, which will keep God in distance until the worshipers build new stairs.
"
In short, this book explores the history of social change in terms of the evolution of language that transforms the collective consciousness. It focuses on the episodes where poetry inspires and enlightens social reformers with novel ideas.
The main origins of this linguistic flexibility lie in the age long discrepancy (or inconsistency including periodical temporary unity) between written and oral language and between the conventionalized symbols and the actual sound of language. This discrepancy drove a continuous cycle of birth and death of a stream of languages in the Middle East. Although Semitic language was the original inventor of alphabetic script, the alphabet form of writing did not come easily within the Semitic language group because of this inherited discrepancy. During the third Millennium BC, most ancient Semitic languages adopted cuneiform, a highly conservative and logographic script. It was not until 1100 BC that a semi-alphabetic script was created. Several alphabetic scripts emerged and became extinct during the next fifteen centuries because an important part of the Semitic languages, the vowels that defined meaning and grammatical structure, were not fully presented. As a result, only spelling (not the way to be read) of the written language was standardized; thus the pronunciation of the written language remained unregulated and fluid. Consequently, local languages and dialects disappeared as quickly as they appeared. The authority of written languages was often challenged by active and innovative oral languages and quickly branched out after every minor phonetic shift.