Chapter 1: The Syllogism and the Tao

Reading the first chapter, I was a bit overwhelmed by the various concepts and theories that were being introduced from the Ancient Greek and Ancient Chinese cultures. I had to go back many times to read over and understand each one, but now that I think about it, I might have tried too hard to understand them as individual concepts instead of reading them as a whole to see the big message. However, I found it interesting to see how completely opposite were the ideals of the Ancient Chinese and Ancient Greeks in topics such as the role of an individual and freedom of opinion. Furthermore, by showing how these attitudes affected other aspects of their cultures, such as language or academic fields in which they are skilled at, made it convincing to see that there is a difference in thought between Westerners and East Asians. Despite it being a difficult chapter, I do feel more curious about how Nisbett is going to support and develop his argument from this chapter on. There is one thing that makes me unsure if this book is totally objective though. I was reading the introduction and as Nisbett begins to explain how he launched his research on the difference of thought processes between Westerners and East Asians he mentions:

"I began a series of comparative studies, working with students at the University of Michigan and eventually with colleagues at Beijing University, Kyoto University, Seoul National University, and the Chinese Institute of Psychology" (xviii).

Maybe he is just abbreviating all the people he worked with in his research, but to me, it sounds as if he worked with only his colleagues, and no students, at these Asian universities. Since colleagues and students would fall into different age groups, I'm wondering if his result would have stayed the same had he compared Western students with (more) East Asian students. Especially since countries such as Japan have become more Westernized over the years, the difference in thought processes may be not that drastic, for example. However, he does include his inspirational experience with a brilliant Chinese student at the beginning and so, it may just be that he didn't mention his studies with Asian students in that particular sentence.