📖 Meaning
To investigate things thoroughly in order to reach the very bottom of their underlying principles and truth. It embodies the Neo-Confucian ideal of pursuing knowledge by studying the world and exhausting the reasons behind phenomena. The idiom urges deep, systematic inquiry rather than superficial understanding.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase appears in 'Reply to Zheng Zhongbian' (答郑仲辩), an essay by the Ming-dynasty scholar Fang Xiaoru, who wrote of 'broadening oneself through investigating things and exhausting principles.' It draws on the classical concept of gewu zhizhi ('the investigation of things to extend knowledge') from the 'Great Learning' (大学), a core text of Confucian education. Fang Xiaoru, a celebrated Confucian scholar and martyr of the Ming court, used the expression to advocate rigorous study as the path to moral and intellectual fulfillment. Over time it became a standard term in Confucian learning for exhaustive inquiry into the principles of things.
💡 Example Usage
做学问须有格物穷理的精神，方能探求事物之本质。
One must approach scholarship with the spirit of investigating things to exhaust their principles; only then can one probe the true essence of things.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 格物穷理
- Pinyin: gé wù qióng lǐ
- Literal Translation: investigate, things, exhaust, principle
- Category: Learning
- Characters: 4