structural:summarization
Integration of Knowledge and Action

Wang's rejection of the pure investigation of knowledge comes from the then traditional view of Chinese belief that once one gained knowledge, one had a duty to put that knowledge into action. This presupposed two possibilities:That one can have knowledge without/prior to corresponding action or that one can know what is the proper action, but still fail to act.

Wang rejected both of these which allowed him to develop his philosophy of action. Wang believed that only through spontaneous action could one gain knowledge and denied all other ways of gaining it. To him, there was no way to use knowledge after gaining it because he believed that knowledge and action were unified as one. Any knowledge that had been gained then put into action was considered delusion or false.