Tianyan is a fundamental concept for understanding Yan Fu’s (1854–1921) distinctive approach to modernization. Departing from the pragmatic focus of earlier reformers, he envisioned a path of spiritual and ethical renewal informed by evolutionary science. This paper examines how Yan Fu manipulated the evolutionary ideas of Thomas Huxley (1825–1895) and Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) and integrated them with traditional Chinese metaphysics to conceptualize a new cultural ideology, or the new Way (Dao), against a historical backdrop defined by shifting dynamics between diverse (...) philosophies and worldviews. By examining his tianyan cosmology, the study illuminates Yan’s development of a modern ethical paradigm focused on individual and national character-building amidst historical transformations and cultural dialogues. Yan’s work reveals pathways for cultivating a modern identity and ethical structure within a globalizing context, making his intellectual legacy especially relevant to contemporary reflections on modernity and cross-cultural ethical evolution. (shrink)

Anticipation is a crucial perceptual-cognitive skill in fast-ball sports, and the effect of high anxiety on performance has attracted more attention from sports psychologists. Related studies mainly focus on the effect of anxiety on influencing processing efficiency and attentional control during information processing in sport. Attentional Control Theory has been supported by several studies. However, these studies have been criticized by the low ecological validity of task design, such as neglecting the dynamic process of anticipation, and inadequate performance analysis, such (...) as analyzing response accuracy and time separately. Using temporal occlusion paradigm, we tested ACT in a dynamic anticipation process. Eighteen skilled and eighteen less-skilled table tennis players were required to anticipate the serves of opponents under dynamic task constraints and anxiety conditions. High cognitive state anxiety decreased processing efficiency for both groups whereas performance effectiveness did not differ. In addition, it negatively affected processing efficiency in early anticipation compared with late anticipation tasks, suggesting that high cognitive state anxiety may have a greater impact on top-down attentional control. Our findings provide support for ACT and show that anxiety impairs anticipation efficiency and performance, possibly due to an ineffectively attentional shift from external kinematic cues to internal long-term working memory. Findings also have implications for the adaptation of attentional strategies and anxiolytic training. (shrink)