The following essay is a somewhat preliminary effort to construct a vocabulary of Chinese gardens. To this end we shall focus upon some very general notions which characterize the ‘cosmological’ setting within which the Chinese garden perforce must find its place. These remarks will presume that there are illumining relationships between gardens as aesthetic creations and their cosmological setting. And, though we shall not be concerned to detail these relationships in every case, more than enough evidence for these relationships may be found in the companion essays in this present issue. In any case, our speculative venture is intended to be justified solely on pragmatic grounds. If resort to the considerations provided in the following paragraphs allows those involved in the investigation of Chinese gardens to understand their subject better, and to express that understanding in a more coherent fashion, we shall have succeeded in our primary task.
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Hall et al. (1998) studied this question.