A
Review of the Past Century in the Context of the Past Millennium:
Science
& Society in China and the West
Professor,
CAS Institute for the History of Natural Sciences
[Abstracts] In order to understand
the significance and future of science, we must make clear the interaction
between science and society. Although a consensus on this understanding has
reached among scholars specializing in this field and even in the public, so far
an explicit analytic framework for related scientific research and social
research is unavailable. Based on the outlook of cultural evolutionism, this
article tries to tentatively put forward an analytic framework as the
theoretical foundation for this article’s exposition. In addition, based on
the discussion of Chinese and Western sciences and their societies, a commentary
is given on the Chinese science in the 20th century. The principal
conclusion obtained from the discussion is: without a system of modern
democracy, it is impossible to make science prosperous and without a system of
modernized market technological progress is out of the question. Similarly,
without our deserved contributions to the world’s science and technology, the
Chinese nation is not able to get a foot-hold of equality among other nations in
today’s world.
In its strict sense, modern science came into being in the 17th century
Europe and very rapidly it grew into the cornerstone of worldwide civilization
during the last century. Only in the stage of science’s burgeoning
development, however, did China start accepting the science deep-rooted from
Europe and to our regret, China’s contributions to world science so far is
quite insignificant. How to understand Chinese civilization’s failure in
scientific development and how to change the backward state of China’s
scientific undertakings?
Generally speaking, the solution to such questions may be obtained in the
exploration of the interaction between science and society. In the discussion on
science and society, the conventional approach is merely to give an analysis of
the causality while the analysis of the teleological study or fortuity is always
neglected. As a matter of fact, the actual process of history is, after all, the
resultant derived from the three’s well-coordinated teamwork. When facing the
current trend of economic globalization, if we come to review China’s R&D
undertakings of the past century, it seems to me, least we have to trace back to
the worldwide situation 1,000 years ago. Since that time, drastic changes at
opposite directions have been taking place in the two cultures at the two tips
of Eurasian continent. At its western end, a Europe under the banner of
Christianity got awakening and rose to might while at its eastern end, China
fell from the climax of its national development and landed in the quagmire of
irrevocable national decline till now. Via a series of cataclysmic switches in
social infrastructure, such as the campus revolution, scientific revolution,
industrial revolution, information revolution etc., the community of European
countries holds the sway as the centerpiece of world civilization. In spite of
three attempts to renovate itself at the end of Northern Song Dynasty
(960-1127), the mid-Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and the late Qing Dynasty
(1644-1911), the Chinese nation failed to go on with its expedition to the
national modernization because the three attempts had been one by one frustrated
by the two dynastic overthrows in 1127 and 1644 respectively and in the burning
of the confiscated opium in the Sino-British Opium War (1839-1841).
In this way, China was marginlized in terms of world civilization.
Ⅰ.A
Conceptual Framework
According bio-evolutionism, the emergence
of the human being is an accidental consequence of biological evolution on the
earth. As the product of natural evolution, the human race creates splendid
culture. Here, the term of “culture” is not a sociological concept. Instead,
it is a generalized concept in an anthropological sense, including all human
activities and their physically and mentally creative fruits. Anthropologically,
“culture” is an opposite to “nature” as the latter is the precondition
for human subsistence while “culture” is the form of human existence.
The human being is the sole intermediate linkage between nature and
culture. Any human population has to exist in two basic relationships, i.e.
between man and nature and between man and culture respectively. Either
unfavorable natural conditions or unfavorable cultural setting can pose
a “challenge” to human subsistence. So, the human being can do
nothing but bring forth his potential creativity to answer the challenge.
British historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975) suggested a view of cultural
evolution under the title of “challenge and the answer to it” in his
12-volume work of A Study of History (1934-1961). The book’s view points constitute
one of the theoretical arguments based on which the theme discussion of this
article is unfolded.
Before embarking on the course of cultural evolution,
the human being has been spending several millions of years to evolve itself
from ape to man. It seems to us that the rate of human bio-evolutionism is
constant while the velocity of man’s cultural evolution goes up exponentially.
Anthropologists conventionally divide the course of cultural evolution
into three eras: the era of obscurity, the era of barbarism and the era of
civilization. During the past hundreds of thousand years, the cultural evolution
was mostly covered by the era of obscurity while the era of barbarism had
spanned scores of thousand years. The era of civilization so far has been in the
latest thousands of years. The history of human civilization in the past scores
of centuries was mostly covered by the farming civilization and only hundreds of
years ago, did the industrial civilization make its debut on the earth. The rise
of the S&T civilization with research and development as its keynote in
social life occurred only a few decades ago. Now, human bio-evolutionism has
withdrawn itself to the secondary position while man’s cultural evolutionism
gains a leading position of absolute dominance over the whole process of human
development. The information volume contained in human genome has several
billion (or 109) bytes in number, the data volume housed in a human
brain embraces millions of billion (or 1015) bytes while the human
society which covers all human brains, either alive or dead, creates an
explosive information volume added to the human culture up to billions of
billion (or 1018) bytes. So, quantitatively compared with man’s
cultural evolutionism, man’s bio-evolutionism is insignificant.
According to the research conducted by anthropologist Leslie Alvin White
(1900—1975) in his work Science of
Culture – A Study on Man and Civilization (1949), the culture of a
civilized era consists of three sub-systems of technology, institution and
concepts. If we introduce a further division of the three, this may be serving
as another important argument for our theme discussion in this article.
Technology may be regarded as maneuverable knowledge and further divided into
three kinds: the natural technology which takes natural matters as its research
object; the social technology which is targeted at human behavioral operations
and the thinking technology aimed at coping with conceptual maneuvering
operations. The institution may be divided into three kinds as a human
community’s organizational form: the religious system in which belief or faith
is the main cohesive agent for the community; the political system in which
political power acts as the reagent to stick its member together and the
economic system in which properties unite the involved people within it. Also,
concepts may be falling into three kinds: the concepts about faith, rationality
and values. If we deny the causality in the evolutionary chain of the three
subsystems in a cultural system, the relations of the three should be mutually
environmental and nature itself is the setting for the whole cultural system.
According to the views advocated by bio-evolutionism, the evolution of a
cultural system originates from the variations of the system itself and the
selection by the environment. The evolutionary history of the cultural system
indicates that so far it has undergone two stages of the technology-oriented
farming civilization and institution-oriented industrial civilization and now it
is marching toward the concept-oriented civilization of science &
technology.
How to derive the thinking framework of science
and society from such a structure of the cultural system? The key lies in the
cultural positioning of science. In line with the differences in terms of their
extension, science has a three-layered structure: the first are the concepts of
pure natural sciences; the next include the generalized concepts on science,
involving natural, social and thinking sciences and the last is the concept of
big science which covers scientific, technological and engineering undertakings.
Either pure natural sciences or generalized science is located in the subsystem
of conceptual culture and they are in the category of rationality knowledge of
the subsystem while concepts of faith and values constitute the direct cultural
setting of scientific rationality and the two subsystems of technology and
institution are its indirect cultural setting. Big science is located in the two
subsystems of concepts and technology as institution serves as its sole setting.
Hence, in our discussion on science and society, the relationship with
faith and values is primary in pure science while the relationship with
institution is fundamental in big science.
Ⅱ.The
Clash between Herding Culture and Farming Culture
The general tendency of cultural evolutionism is
the herding stage prior to the stage of fixed settlements. But the whole process
is uneven in its regional development due to differences in the natural setting.
In the valley of a mighty river, the primitive people tended to settle down
there to do farm work because of the excellent conditions of fertile soil and
agreeable climate. In woodlands, grasslands and deserts, it was difficult for
the ancients to find a fixed colony as the soil is infertile and vulnerable to
seasonal changes so the tribesmen were forced to lead a semi-herding and
semi-hunting life. Since then, in the course of cultural evolutionism, a
branching phenomenon made its debut after the appearance of settlers with their
fixed residence and roaming herdsmen. In search of the food to eat, some
communities of the prehistoric vagrants were fortunate enough to settle down in
a land of fertility while other communities were not so fortunate so that they
went on with their life style of wandering aimlessly here and there. In his work
The Outline of History—A
Plain History of Life and Mankind (1920), British
historian Herbet Ceorge Wells (1866—1946) suggested two kinds of communities,
providing an extensible research outline for our theme discussion.
The grouping approach for a herding people and resident
people are different. A resident nation tends to form “a community of
subjugation” while a herding nation is often inclined to bind itself into “a
community of willingness.” The
former refers to a resident people yielding themselves to a semi-god king or a
divine king. The king has a non-elective sanctity and innate inheritance to rule
the people. “The community of willingness” refers to a herding people who
elect their leaders from their free will. In such a case, a leader is supported
by his subjects instead of the latter being forced to pledge their allegiance to
the master. Because of the calm and stable life needed for doing the farm work,
members of a resident nation always are feeble in their physique and
peace-loving. Tempted by an unstable and perilous life, the disposition of a
herding nation is always physically strong and bellicose. The submissive nature
of a resident nation tends to form a massive community of subjugation and
upholds it for a long time while it is difficult for a herding nation to form a
huge community of willingness and, if such a community has been forged, it
cannot last for a long time because of the herding nation’s stubborn and
dauntless character.
In
the eyes of a resident people, the herdsmen were barbarous while in contrary, a
herding nation regarded a resident people as cowards. Once facing a crisis in
subsistence, a herding community always resorted to invading a resident people
to tide over the crisis. Then, the clash between a farming nation and a herding
nation became unavoidable. Along the fringe of two different developing
cultures, warlike herdsmen and mountainous tribesmen constituted an alliance in
one side while peace-loving townspeople and rural residents formed another.
Between the two sides, brawls even armed attacks were a common occurrence. A
politically and militarily weakened civilization always fell prey to herding
nations which were versed in plunder and invasion. After a conquest, the herding
nation always imposed their own ideology and life style on the conquered
residents. Thus, a native culture saw a suspension in its progressing course and
the most advanced technique in metallurgy of the time was shifted to making
swords, leading to endless warfare that brought in ravage to cultures. In
addition, with the mounting aggravation of war-time plunder, a slave society
came into being.
In
the repeated strife between the two, it was the herding people who had
subjugated a resident nation and then was naturalized by the farming
civilization. Yet, the adventurous herding people provided almost all new rulers
for a community of subjugation. Although a civilization is developing along the
direction of the latter, the spirit of freedom owned by a herding nation is
partially preserved and takes refuge in the blood of its posterity. In
particular, it remains to exist in the blood of the rulers and autocrats and
this fact finds its expression in their strong and insatiable ambition for
territorial expansion and world dominance. The strife between the two traditions
of subjugation and freedom is handed over from a generation to another and
illustrated by the short-lived republican city-states in the ancient history of
Greece and Rome. The succeeding alternative regimes of despotism and
republicanism in human history indicate that the shift from a community of
subjugation to that of willingness should be an instinct inherent to the human
being.
The strife between the two runs through the whole
course of farming civilization history and invariably becomes a universal
phenomenon. The main civilization centers of ancient world underwent a similar
formative course of conquest, assimilation, re-conquest and re-assimilation. On
the Eurasian continent, the struggle and confluence between barbarism and
civilization occurred at its two flanks because of the unsurmontable natural
barriers such as the Himalayas and the Taklimakan Desert. During the past 2,000
years, some kinds of peaceful and trading intercourse plus several small-sized
conflicts have emerged sporadically between the two opposite tips of the
continent while some large-scale armed clashes took place in the latest
millenium. It is just because of the cultural confluence as a result of
large-scale clashes between the West and East, the human race was promoted to
the modern society.
Ⅲ.China and Europe in
the Past Millenium
The
hundreds of years before and after 1,000AD constituted a turning point in human
history when the cultural confluence of great significance took place between
the eastern and western end of the Eurasian Continent. During the succeeding
millenium, however, it seems to me that two gradual changes at opposite
directions occurred at the opposite ends of the Continent. From disunity and
confusion, Europe at the western end awakened and gradually came to might and
prosperity under the banner of Christianity while China at the eastern end
landed in the quagmire of degeneration after falling from the peak of its
national development. Via a series of renovative social switches such as the
campus revolution, scientific revolution, industrial revolution and information
revolution, the European countries developed a new type of industrial
civilization and became a booming growth point and geographic center of the
world civilization. China had met with three chances trying to modernize itself
at the end of Northern Song Dynasty, mid-Ming Dynasty and the late Qing Dynasty
but in vain as it was frustrated in the two dynastic topples and the Opium War.
At last, China was marginalized by the world civilization.
The emergence of this state is closely related to the
disparity of the two’s cultural traditions. Although there is no principal
difference in the fundamental structure of the two cultures, the linking forms
between the two’s cultural elements are distinctively different. In the aspect
of technical systems, the relationship between natural technology and social
technology used to be emphasized in China while that between natural technology
and thinking technology was stressed in the West. In the aspect of institutional
systems, the relationship between politics and economy was emphasized in China
while that between politics and religion was stressed in the West. In the aspect
of conceptual systems, the relationship between rationality and values was
emphasized in China while that between rationality and faith was stressed in the
West. Among all of these differences, the disparity in religion’s cultural
position should be the most outstanding: in the West, the religion was so
powerful that it could make rival claims with politics as an equal while in
China, the religion was nothing but a maid-servant to politics; Western
religions featured their purpose to meddle themselves with the secular affairs
while Chinese religions wanted to stand aloof from the worldly affinity
So, the strife between the church and state in the West reserved space
for the subsistence of freedom and democracy; in China, however, the despotism
of an imperial regime strangled the potential creativity of the nation.
With the establishment of the Zhao Family’s Song Dynasty (960-1279), the short-lived separatist rule of warlords known as Five Dynasties and Ten States in Chinese history came to its end. In spite of the constant threat posed by the local regimes of northern herdsmen such as Liao (916-1125), Xixia (or Tangut, 1032-1227) and Jin (1115-1234), the Song Dynasty had once pushed Chinese culture to its apex of prosperity in many social realms. The fall of Bianliang, the Northern Song Dynasty’s capital, to the hands of the Jin regime’s invading troops in 1127 suddenly put an end to the burgeoning creativity of the vigorous Dynasty. The Mongolian empire of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) was noted for its short duration and accomplishment of nothing while some S&T achievements attained in Song and Yuan dynasties were the last radiance of the setting sun. In the succeeding Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) of the Zhu family, Chinese society was carried to the impasse of a harsher despotism and the ensuing Manchu regime of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) failed to embark China to a new and innovative road. Through the dynastic vicissitude in the alternative circulation of conquest and assimilation, China’s territory was expanded but, to our regret, its cultural creativity was declining steadily.
In western Europe, we have another scenario. With
the disintegration of the Charlemagne Empire (742-843) established by Frankish
German tribesmen on the ruins of Western Roman Empire, Europe started making its
way into the era of feudalism. Its survival had been challenged by Seljuk Turks,
Mongolian invaders and the murderous plague all coming from the East. With the
aid of the Christian spirit, technologies from China and the Greek tradition of
science introduced from the Arabic world, a European system of market economies
was set up on the basis of prosperous development of commodity economies. After
experiencing twists and turns, a brand-new community of willingness based on
nationality and knowledge eventually came into being. The awakening Europeans
created a more effective industrial civilization, which outlives the
millennia-long farming civilization by undergoing scientific revolution,
political revolution and industrial revolution and via the bloody expeditions of
colonization, they pushed their civilization to every corner of the world. In
succession, Portugal in the 16th century, the Netherlands in 17th
century, Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries and the US
in the 20th century succeeded in holding the sway of the whole world.
The main clashes in the human history of farming
civilization during the past millennia were essentially the strife between
barbarism of herding nations and the civilization of resident nations. Since the
industrial civilization created by Europe, the dominant human clash has been
concentrated on the antagonism between the newly emerging industrial
civilization and time-honored farming civilization. In the incessant and
countless collisions during the past millennia between herding and farming
nations, it was mostly the backward herding people who invaded an advanced
resident people and the struggle was ended at the final assimilation of
barbarism by a civilization. During
the past centuries, it was almost invariably the invasion of a newly rising
industrial nation to a time-honored farming nation and the inevitable conclusion
is the replacement of the old farming civilization by an industrial
civilization. On the Chinese land mass, the millennia-long Chinese history saw a
repeated process in which the native farming civilization assimilated the alien
herding invaders. Since the outbreak of the Opium War about 150 years ago, China
started facing the challenge of the industrial civilization and for the first
time, it felt the danger of being assimilated by an alien civilization. Today
our review of the last century in the context of past millenium means cognition
and consideration of the problem for our country: how did and how should China
cope with the unprecedented challenge in the future?
Ⅳ.Science & Society
in the 20th Century China
The first encounter between China and the West had occurred
in the period of introducing Western learning at the turn of the Ming and Qing
dynasties since the mid-17th century. But the genuine clash between
the industrial and farming civilization was initiated from the Sino-British
Opium War. China’s defeat in the two opium wars forced Chinese rulers to adopt
a strategy of “learning from the Westerners for the sake of getting rid of
them.” Rooted from Europe, the modern S&T saw a booming development in the
20th-century China. In the first half of the century, the groundwork
of China’s basic sciences was completed while in the second half, a national
system of industrial technology was erected. To sum up, the whole process of
China’s scientific growth in the past century covered three transitions, i.e.
the transition from the traditional mood to a modernized mood; the transition
from the model of Little-science to that of Big-science and the transition from
the development driven by national defense to that driven by economic growth.
Now China’s S&T endeavors are in the course of the third transition and
their international environment is full of challenges and opportunities when
welcoming a era of new civilization. If considering from the angle of the
relationship between science and society, how should we evaluate our conduct in
the clash between the two civilizations? How to look into the process of the
world history and plan China’s future?
In the mid-19th century when Chinese
society was intruded by the industrial civilization from the West, many
countries of farming civilization had been colonized by Western powers. Facing
the danger of being partitioned by the latter, China started a series of
reformist initiatives and enlightened officials led a movement of Westernization
and progressive politicians launched the constitutionalist reform in 1898 and
the 1911 revolution. Before long, a group of new-type literati triggered the
spark of the movement of new civilization, thus launching a transitional process
covering technological, institutional and ideological transformation. As the
course of modernization in Europe is from the ideological front via
institutional shift to the technological realm, China adopted an inverted
version, in which China spent half a century in a hurry for undergoing the
five-century-long process of European modernization. Such a hurried and inverted
program lead to a superficial success in lack of deserved thoroughness. Since
then, China could do nothing but wantonly repeated the ruts covered by the
Europeans in their march toward a modernized society. Very probably, such an
inversion should not be regarded as a mistake solitarily committed by China’s
program of modernization as almost all post-modernization countries share the
same experience. Not only China which had been downgraded into a semi-colonial
country, but also India having reduced itself to the status of a British colony
and Japan which self-styled itself to be an Asian country succeeding in elbowing
its way into the rank of European countries, all have been went through such an
experience.
The key to S&T success achieved by Europe’s
industrial civilization lies in the introduction of market economy and
democratized politics, leading to mutual promotion between the market and
technology and mutual guarantee between democracy and science.
The market is one of the decisive factors for promoting technological
progress and only under the stimulation of the market, the decision-makers in an
enterprise would put funds ceaselessly into technological progress. Democracy
provides a guarantee of thinking freedom for the scientific development.
Scientific creation not only needs the internal freedom in an individual thought
but also needs the external freedom guaranteed by the national institution.
Scientific society is a mini-society inlaid
in the mega-society and the latter serves as the precondition of its existence.
Scientists acquire their research freedom always at expense of their
recognizing the traditional position of social norms. In the same way, if a
society wants to accept science and gives full play to its social functions,
related measures of readjustment must be taken so that agreeable social
conditions may be created. The advancement of scientific progress will be more
and more fully grown with the aid of these conditions in the wake of social
development.
The main obstacles on Chinese S&T development
are institutional snags, including the ill-functioning coordination in its
political and economic systems. For a long time, China’s technology is
inaccessible to the setting of an market economy although the international
community of economists has proved commodity economy to be the most effective
form for business management. Yet, in China, people had to argue over this for
decades. As soon as China’s economic system embarked its performance upon a
market economy, immediately it has to face the challenge from the socio-economic
conditions compatible with a market economy. This is because the transition from
a planned economy to a market-oriented one needs the unlimited government to
transform itself into a limited one. Without a limited government contained by
social and legal restrictions in its power, function and scope, it is impossible
for us to form a sound market economy. Since the convention of the ninth session
of NPC, a series of measures have been introduced and enacted in the
institutional reform of the government. But the final introduction of a limited
government completely compatible with the market economy is still out of sight.
To catch up with the industrial civilization is not the
ultimate goal for China’s modernization program as the industrial civilization
is not the final form of human civilization. Our aim should be pinpointed at
answering the challenge posed by the industrial civilization and creating a new
civilization. In the past century, none of the many attempts designed to surpass
the industrial civilization was set off from the fusion of farming and
industrial civilizations. Probably, this is one of
the very reasons which lead to the failure of the planned economy and
socialist movement. In consideration of the experience derived from the
industrial civilization and the general trend of worldwide development, the
future civilization oriented by conception will be further developing and taking
shape with the aid of science. We cannot say exactly the concrete content of the
new civilization. But we can delineate its character of integration between
scientific rationality and living values. We cannot precisely predict where the
new civilization will make its debut. But one thing is certain: the Chinese
nation had been the most hopeful but lost its opportune chance in the clash
between herding barbarism and farming civilization and this time we by all means
must not once again lose the chance to create a new civilization in the clash
between industrial and farming civilizations.
(in Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of
Sciences,Vol.16,No.14,pp.214-219,2002)