An nice little piece in the NYT The Stone philosophy blog by Tim Crane (no relation) about the difference between scientific and religious knowledge and belief.   Upon reading it, my first impression (which holds as my continuing impression) is that Daoist knowledge is more like religion than science (and I mean this in terms of philosophical Daoism…).  Take these lines for instance:

….Religion is an attempt to make sense of the world, but it does not try and do
this in the way science does. Science makes sense of the world by showing how
things conform to its hypotheses. The characteristic mode of scientific
explanation is showing how events fit into a general pattern.

Religion, on the other hand, attempts to make sense of the world by seeing a
kind of meaning or significance in things. This kind of significance does not
need laws or generalizations, but just the sense that the everyday world we
experience is not all there is, and that behind it all is the mystery of God’s
presence. The believer is already convinced that God is present in everything,
even if they cannot explain this or support it with evidence. But it makes sense
of their life by suffusing it with meaning….

First, it is rather easy, I think, to assert that Daoism is not like science.  There is, in both the Daodejing and Zhuangzi, a skepticism about the capacities of human rationality and cognition to apprehend the fullness and complexity of Dao (meant here in its sense as the totality of all things, being and nonbeing).   Hence lines like: "If you give up learning, troubles end." (DDJ, 20).  

Harder, perhaps, is to argue that Daoist understanding is like religious belief (I took up this issue three years ago in this post: "Is Tao Like Logos?").  Let's state the obvious objection right up front: Daoism does not require a God-like figure, external to the universe of being, as a source of creation or meaning.  But if we change the wording of the lines above a bit, we can see a similarity:    

….Daoism is an attempt to make sense of the world, but it does not try and do
this in the way science does. Science makes sense of the world by showing how
things conform to its hypotheses. The characteristic mode of scientific
explanation is showing how events fit into a general pattern.

Daoism, on the other hand, attempts to make sense of the world by seeing a
kind of meaning or significance in things. This kind of significance does not
need laws or generalizations, but just the sense that the everyday world we
experience is not all there is, and that behind it all is the mystery of Dao. The believer is already convinced that Dao is present in everything,
even if they cannot explain this or support it with evidence. But it makes sense
of their life by suffusing it with meaning….

The idea that understanding, or meaning (I know there is a distinction here but there is an overlap as well), does not need laws or generalizations is in keeping with the epistemology of Daoism.  Generalizations take us away from seeing the broader context, and the interrelationship of things within a give moment, of Dao.  Also, there is always something beyond our knowledge: we cannot "know" Dao in some complete and comprehensive manner.  We can only experience one part of it, and from that part gain a sense of the totality of Dao.  Of course, what is beyond our knowledge is not defined, by Daoists, in terms of a God or deity or the supernatural.  Rather, Dao itself is just too vast to fit into any human understanding.  Finally, Dao is present in everything, just as everything is present in Dao.  That does not mean we can "know" the fullness in Dao by experiencing one part of it.  Or, as Ames and Hall put it in their translation of the DDJ:

A corollary to this radical perspectivism is that each particular element in our experience is holographic in the sense that it has implicated within in it the entire field of experience.  This single flower has leaves and roots that take their nourishment from the environing soil and air.  And the soil contains the distilled nutrients of past growth and decay that constitute the living ecological system in which all of its participants are organically interdependent.  The sun enables the flower to process these nutrients, while the atmosphere that caresses the flower also nourishes and protects it.  By the time we have "cashed out" the complex of conditions that conspire to produce and conserve this particular flower, one ripple after another in the ever-extending series of radial circles, we have implicated the entire cosmos within it without remainder.  For the Daoist, there is an intoxicating bottomlessness to any particular event in our experience.  The entire cosmos resides happily in the smile on the dirty face of this one little child. (18)

An organic totality without reference to God…

Notice, too, how religion seeks a kind of significance.  It provides meaning, normative as well as empirical, for particular lives.  My first reaction here is that Daoism resists this move.  At least in the sense that it produces a template of Meaning to which we can all turn for solace.  Rather, the DDJ and Zhuangzi both, at times, seem to be telling us that there is no Meaning beyond our particular experience – and we should accept and celebrate that.  We make our meaning in our everyday experience.  We do not have to search elsewhere, up in Heaven or in some church, for some sort of externally-granted meaning.  It is right there in front of us.  Zhuangzi, in particular, seems to suggest a kind of liberation in all of this.  We do not have to worry about social standards or the expectations of others, but only live our life as it unfolds before us and that is fine:

If you serve your own mind, joy and sorrow rarely appear.  If you know what's beyond your control, if you know it follows its own inevitable nature and you live at peace – that in Integrity perfected.  Children and ministers inevitably find that much is beyond them.  But if you forget about yourself and always do what circumstances require of you, there's no time to cherish life and despise death.  Then you do what you can, and whatever happens is fine. (54)

But, of course, there is a kind of significance-making in all of that.  When we give up the conscious Search For Meaning we discover a different sort of meaning, which is why Ames and Hall sub-title their translation of the DDJ, "Making This Life Significant."

So philosophical Daoism is more like religion than science in its ways of knowing and living.