Gǎnyìng or yìng is a Chinese cultural keyword meaning a "correlative resonance" pulsating throughout the purported force field of qi that infuses the cosmos. When the idea of ganying first appeared in Chinese classics from the late Warring States period (475-221 BCE), it referred to a cosmological principle of "stimulus and response" between things of the same kind, analogous with vibratory sympathetic resonance. Early schools of Chinese philosophy adapted ganying into different folk theories of causality, such as universal resonance influencing all interrelated things in Daoism, and ethical resonance between Heaven and humans in Confucianism. G
Ganying resonance was later used to mean miraculous "moral retribution" in Chinese folk religion, and the resonance between the power of the Buddha and the individual practitioner in Chinese Buddhism, especially in Pure Land Buddhism. In Japanese Buddhism, the term kannō 感應 was used for the same idea.
In the modern period, Chinese ganying "stimulus and response" was used to translate some Western scientific loanwords (such as diàncí gǎnyìng 電磁感應 "electromagnetic induction").
Terminology
The Chinese collocation gǎnyìng combines gǎn 感 "feel, sense; move, touch; (traditional Chinese medicine) be affected (by cold)" and yìng traditional 應 or simplified 应 "respond; consent, comply; adapt to; cope/deal with; apply, applied", which is also pronounced yīng "promise/agree (to do something); answer; respond; (auxiliary) should; ought to".
Several early texts (below) use an interchangeable synonym of ying < Old Chinese *[q](r)əәŋ 應 "respond; resonate" : dòng < *[Cəә-m-]tˤoŋʔ 動 "move; shake; set in motion". Dong can mean ganying, for instance, gǎndòng 感動 "move; touch (somebody)" and dòngrén 動人 "arouse interest/feelings". Sharf says interpreting the Chinese philosophical term gan "stimulus; affect; etc." is rendered problematic by the modern distinction between ontology and epistemology. The ontological range of meanings, insofar as to gan someone is to effect the mind of another person, as evident in the (c. 121 CE) Shuowen jiezi dictionary definition of gan as 動人心也 "to move a person's mind", suggesting English translation equivalents such as "incite," "agitate," "rouse," and "stimulate". The epistemological range of gan meanings, insofar as it implies an inner experience or cognition that may or may not correlate with an event in the external world, is translatable as to "feel," "experience," "sense," or "become aware of."
Both the logographs gǎn 感 and yìng 應 are classified as radical-phonetic characters written with the "heart-mind radical" 心 (typically used to write words for feelings and thoughts) and phonetic indicators of xián 咸 "all; Hexagram 31" and yīng 鷹 "hawk; eagle" minus the "bird radical" 鳥.
Bilingual Chinese-English dictionaries give a variety of translation equivalents for Modern Standard Chinese ganying. moved to response through the feelings and affections; induction ① to feel and respond ② (physics) induction reaction or response to some outer stimuli ① response; reaction; interaction ② [biology] irritability ③ [electricity] induction ① response ② [electricity] induction ① response; reaction; interaction ② [biology] irritability ③ [electricity] induction ① induction; process through which an object or electromagnetic body becomes magnetized when in a magnetic field or in the magnetic flux set up by a magnetmotive force ② response; reaction; feeling or act of response caused by an outside influence ① [philosophy] response; reaction; interaction ② [biology] irritability ③ [electricity] induction ④ [religion] the prayers being listened to (A) respond (B) [electricity] induction The most commonly given (and copied) meanings are "respond; response" and "electromagnetic induction".
History
The history of ganying spans over two millennia, going from an ancient cosmological theory to modern scientific terminology.