Why 胡適 Missed Metaphysics—and Why Instancology Will Be Misunderstood, For Now

It is not a coincidence that someone like Hu Shi—praised as a pioneer of Chinese modern thought, decorated with 32 honorary doctorates, and trained directly under John Dewey—still never grasped the essence of Western metaphysics. Despite his extensive education, his work remained at the surface of philosophy: literary reform, pragmatic application, historical criticism. But the depth—that ontological depth from Parmenides to Kant, from Hegel to Heidegger—was never truly touched.

Why? Because borrowing terms and attending lectures is not the same as crossing into the paradigm where thought transcends culture and grasps the Whole.

This is why Instancology, though born from someone fluent in both East and West, remains utterly unrecognizable to most Chinese intellectuals today—and even to many in the West. It does not echo the familiar. It does not stay within the comfort zone of political critique, moral aphorisms, or linguistic games. It does what no other system has done: it closes the arc of metaphysics by introducing the final element—the Absolute Absolute (AA)—as the background that grounds all existence, all meaning, and all knowledge.

Some Facebook readers mockingly noted that Instancology hasn’t even received a book review in over a decade. But this silence isn’t a shame on the book—it is a mirror to a society unprepared for serious metaphysical labor. The truth is not late; the world is slow.

Every paradigm shift is misunderstood at first. Instancology will not be popular—until the world matures enough to realize what it missed.

And when that day comes, it will not need to shout. Like the truth it reveals, it will simply be.