 But the truth is quite a bit more complicated, and more philosophically interesting. From the Song dynasty all the way through the Qing, the Neo-Confucians counted among their ranks many thinkers interested in “statecraft (jingshi)”. By the late Ming dynasty and thereafter, “statecraft” came to describe almost any method or techniques that could be used for the practical operations of the state, construed so expansively as to include mathematics and history. But in the narrower sense common among earlier Neo-Confucians, it refers to a philosophical position that aims to address social problems through institutional reform rather than through dramatic transformations of character. Scholars sometimes describe these thinkers as belonging to a “Statecraft School” which includes Song philosophers like Chen Liang (1143–1194) and Ye Shi (1150–1223), and the Ming Neo-Confucian Wang Tingxiang (1474–1544) (Niu 1998; Tillman 1982; Ong 2006). It also includes reform-minded Neo-Confucians who lived through the downfall of the Ming and the rise of the Qing dynasty, such as Gu Yanwu (1613–1682) and Huang Zongxi (1610–1695). Even for more character-centered Confucians, what it meant to say that people’s character is more fundamental than institutions was open to debate.