 Zhu Xi’s working concepts and thought were typified by immanental patterns (li) rather than by transcendental principles. He regarded reality, the world, not in terms of logical order, but as manifesting aesthetic order. Reality for him was not composed of independent atoms operating under general laws; rather it formed a field in which particulars appeared as foci determined in context. To Zhu, ours is not an absolute, objective universe in which particular individuals are subsumed under generalities and behave according to universal laws; rather, the world unfolds before us in light of our increasing, expanding perception of the arrays of particular phenomena around us. The world we experience is a function of, a field manifested as, the tapestry formed through the resonance among the foci making up that field. Consequently, the task of investigating things is a process of unfolding (rather than an inductive process), an exhausting of the li constituting particular things and events, from their gestalt forms, such as the symmetrical bilateral forms of most biological entities, to their identifying forms to their functions and typical patterns of interaction. Proceeding in this way, we seek not the most general laws or principles governing particular atomic individuals, but rather the most basic or common patterns of interaction and formation among particulars as foci in fields. Consequently, for example, the ultimate pattern in Zhu’s thought, taiji, the supreme polarity, is not an abstract ideal like a platonic form or a law of nature; it is an immanental pattern that is realized ubiquitously but distributively, not overarchingly or generally. Zhu was not working toward a scientific conception of the world, of reality, as constituted on general principles and abstract equations; he was traversing an alternative route by eliciting the formations of things and events in ecological context in a way that would open one’s mind to the intimate resonance and intercourse among particulars as foci in fields. At the same time, by stressing the expression “gewu qiongli” (investigate things to exhaust their li), Zhu maintained a measure of analyticity in his insights to ensure that the knowledge people gleaned was nuanced and textured enough to contribute to life understanding and appropriate conduct.