Prof. Dr. Ryan Nichols 

What makes China Chinese? What features played significant causal roles in making China what it is? My research project is directed at creating evidence-based understanding in readers about the causal origins of cultural and non-cultural features that, taken together, individuate Chinese society. This is carried out within the dual inheritance explanatory paradigm in which nature and culture interact bidirectionally over time.

I have researched this issue for 21 years and collaborate with world-leading experts in a wide range of subjects (religion, data science, psychology, mathematics, and genetics among them). I will use my residential fellowship at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg to support research activities involved in finishing a book on what made China Chinese. The book aims for a balance between theoretical clarity and novelty; innovative methodological robustness across diverse fields; subtlety in conjunction with rootedness in the philosophy of science; disciplined curiosity; and firsthand accounts of Chinese culture that benefit from constructive input from authorities in the field.