From Particularity to Universality and from Universality to Particularity

The law of cognition development expounded by Mao Zedong. For every objective thing contains both the particularity of contradiction and the universality of contradiction, the universality exists in the particularity, so when people understand certain things, they should find the particularity and universality of things and their mutual connection.

As regards the sequence in the movement of human knowledge, there is always a gradual growth from the knowledge of individual and particular things to the knowledge of things in general. Only after human knows the particular essence of many different things can he proceed to generalization and know the common essence of things. When the human attains the knowledge of this common essence, he uses it as a guide and proceeds to study various concrete things, and to discover the particular essence of each, and then he becomes able to supplement, enrich and develop his knowledge of their common essence.

Mao Zedong pointed out: "These are the two processes of cognition: one, from the particular to the general, and the other, from the general to the particular. Human cognition always moves in cycles and (so long as scientific method is strictly adhered to) each cycle advances human knowledge a step higher and so makes it more and more profound.”

Cognition is always carried out in such a cycle, and each cycle (as long as it is strictly in accordance with scientific methods) may make human understanding a step higher and deeper.

Mao Zedong analyzed the errors of dogmatism in depth by using this law of cognitive development. Dogmatists do not understand that we have to know the particular essence of individual things before we can adequately know the universality of contradiction and that after knowing the common essence of things, we must go further and study the concrete things. They regard general truths as emerging out of the void, they turn them into purely abstract unfathomable formulas, and thereby completely deny and reverse the normal sequence from the particular to the general and then from the general to the particular by which man comes to know truth.

The principles established by Mao Zedong under the leadership of the CPC to combine the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete reality of China, and the scientific methods of leadership which he expounded in combination with the general and the particular embodied the law of development from the particular to the general and then from the general to the particular.