Today I was invited to take part in a forum on the spirit of science. Although my theme talk was only five minutes long, I had also prepared some new formulations, which I will lay out here in a fuller way.
“The spirit of science” seems to include many dimensions: seeking truth from facts, pursuing truth, solidarity and cooperation, and so on. How should we understand this multiplicity of what is called the “spirit of science”? There are two reasons for this multiplicity. On the one hand, many people are too casual, stuffing every “good” quality into the spirit of science; but on the other hand, this multiplicity does have a deep basis, because the “spirit of science” did not suddenly appear out of nowhere in a single instant. The spirit of science itself has gone through a long historical process of development.
From ancient Greece to the present, the meaning of “science” has continually changed, and its spiritual content has likewise continued to develop and become richer. A rough outline is as follows:
Ancient Greece: pursuit of truth, free criticism. Ancient Greece was the germination of science, laying the foundation for science’s “original intention”: namely, an inward mode of inquiry driven by the desire for knowledge and curiosity, as well as a tradition of free, non-instrumental research and criticism.
The Middle Ages: valuing experience, distinguishing terms. But the free science of the Greeks was pure to excess, focusing only on contemplative, deductive theoretical research while excluding empirical investigation. It was during the Hellenistic period, when Greek civilization intersected with the civilizations of West Asia and Egypt, that the status of empirical research began gradually to rise. In particular, when this later met Christian civilization in the Middle Ages, and under the impetus of the nominalist movement in the late Middle Ages, empirical investigation was valued even more. In addition, the demand for greater precision in terminology also gradually took shape within scholastic philosophy in the later Middle Ages.
The Age of Exploration: conquering nature, exploration and discovery. Then, in the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, the great geographic discoveries driven by seafaring once again brought new ideas to the scientific tradition. The mentality of conquering nature, as well as the ideas of exploring the unknown and discovering new knowledge, all emerged along with the age of sail. Ancient scientists did not think of themselves as making “discoveries” that surpassed their predecessors, nor did they have the notion of ever-changing new frontiers and new fields.
The Renaissance: communication and collaboration, academic openness. At the same time, driven by the printing press, the scientific world after the Renaissance gradually formed the concept of the publicity of knowledge. Scientists no longer, as in antiquity, tended to confine themselves to communication within small circles, or simply insist on esoteric transmission; instead, they published their views as openly as possible and carried on discussion in the public textual realm.
The Scientific Revolution: experimental method, quantitative precision. Ancient science emphasized deduction, at most giving weight to certain observational experiences; but after the Scientific Revolution, experimental methods gradually matured, and the main method of science came to be research conducted through quantitative, pre-controlled experiments.
The Enlightenment: progressivism, benefiting humankind. In the Enlightenment era, the tremendous success of the Scientific Revolution increased humankind’s confidence in its own rational capacities. Thereafter, the way people viewed science also incorporated the idea of progressivism, and they came to believe that scientific development could and should benefit humankind.
The Industrial Revolution: combining with technology, the foremost productive force. During the Industrial Revolution, science gradually allied itself with technology. Science, which had originally stood aloof and disdained utility, began to interact and compromise with technology industries that emphasized efficiency, and even with capitalist business environments that emphasized profit, forming an alliance. Once allied, science and technology became the foremost productive force.
The 20th century: ethical reflection, social responsibility. Finally, in the 20th century, with the outbreak of the two world wars and the emergence of various pollution problems and ethical problems, people began to notice the negative consequences that scientific activity might produce. As a result, scientists could no longer merely care about data and ignore consequences; they had to take on more ethical responsibility and social responsibility. This dimension, too, was something ancient scientific activity neither had to consider nor needed to consider.
By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the face of science was still changing, and one striking aspect was the rise of pluralism; the results of these changes have still not yet been settled.
In short, when we talk about the “spirit of science,” we may be able to list many items. These items are neither wholly independent of one another, with no connections, nor are they mutually contradictory; rather, they can be seen as a complex unity gradually formed in the course of growth.
This unity is similar to the unity of personality formed in a person’s growth. In the first place, to speak of “spirit” is already anthropomorphic. We say that people have “spirit,” but how can “science” also have “spirit”? This is, after all, a kind of analogy. Therefore, the developmental course of the spirit of science can just as well be compared to the developmental course of the spirit of a particular individual.
Someone in childhood may be innocent and plain, and may have cultivated a vigorous desire for knowledge without having to worry about other trivial matters. But as he grows up, as his experience increases and his interactions with others become richer, his character will become much more complex. For example, he may begin to realize the importance of keeping his feet on the ground, learn how to get along with friends, and finally learn to strike a balance between personal interests and family chores, and so on.
But growth need not require negating or even erasing the spiritual qualities formed earlier. Someone who has learned to keep his feet on the ground has not necessarily lost interest in gazing at the stars; someone who has come to recognize family responsibility has not necessarily given up the cause of free exploration. So when we say “never forget why you started,” it does not mean staying where you began and changing nothing at all. Rather, it means that in the process of continual change, one must always uphold a certain unity of personality, integrating the various levels and facets of the spirit into an organic whole.
It is hard to grasp the unity of “spirit” through a mere list of items, and even harder to feel the infective power of spirit. For instance, how are we supposed to learn “the spirit of Lei Feng,” “the spirit of Bethune,” and the like? Of course we can sum up their spirit into a list of norms—being helpful, selflessly dedicating oneself, loving one’s work and being devoted to one’s duties, and so on—but once summarized like this, even if there is no conflict among the items, it still comes across as dull and tasteless. Only when we regard a person as a living, breathing unity of personality that has gone through growth does his “spirit” truly shine. That is why we have to learn someone’s spirit through “deeds” and through “biography.” The unity and vitality of this spirit can never be captured by simple bullet points.
So learning the “spirit of science” is similar. Rather than summarizing it into items one, two, three, we would do better to read more “history of science,” to read the growth process of science. Only within this historical continuity can one truly feel the richness and unity of spirit.
However, traditionally, whether in writing biographies of people or writing history of science, there has been an extreme tendency not to treat people as people, but to shape them into something sacred, into flawless models. But the “spirit” presented by this method is even more pale and dull than what is summarized from a list of items. What makes “spirit” precious is not that the person who has spirit is a flawless deity; on the contrary, it is precisely because people are always full of contradictions and flaws that their “spirit” is especially precious. To present truthfully the entanglements, conflicts, and obstacles in a growth process is, on the one hand, to express “spirit” in a more vivid way; on the other hand, it also helps us better understand the complex tensions within “spirit.”
Take Lei Feng, for example: he treated his comrades with the warmth of spring, and treated the enemy like a autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves. Here the warmth of spring and the autumn wind are opposed, and the faces of gentleness and anger are quite different; yet as a personality, they can still be unified. The key here lies in distinguishing contexts: different spiritual faces apply to different contexts. But the real world is not simply black or white. In fact, there are no once-and-for-all clear boundaries for which contexts count as enemies and which count as comrades. So in actual expression, what we see is often a more complicated situation, with different spiritual faces mixed and interwoven, seeming chaotic or contradictory, but that still does not hinder the unity of personality. (In science, questions such as when one should uphold non-instrumentality and when one needs to emphasize practical effectiveness are likewise key issues of contextual discrimination; learning the items of the spirit of science in a rigid way is of no help here.)
Because the various things in the real world are not pre-labeled in advance, how to uphold “spirit,” and how to balance and coordinate different circumstances, is something that is very hard to reduce to a rigid formula. If the deeds or histories we read are all shaped into idealized, simplified images in a black-and-white manner, then we will also be unable to learn from them how to deal with complex and intertwined real situations. In this sense, biographies of people or histories of science that present the complexity of the contemporary context as fully as possible are much more conducive to helping us feel the power of “spirit.”
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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