Natural history is generally translated as “博物学” (bowuxue, “studies of things”). In the Western tradition, natural history stands in opposition to natural philosophy, representing a way of studying nature that emphasizes observation, recording, and classification rather than reasoning or experiment. In the Chinese tradition, by contrast, though we lack a tradition of natural philosophy, we do have a developed tradition of “博物学.”
But did ancient China really have a so-called tradition of bowuxue corresponding to Western natural history? Is it really appropriate to translate natural history as bowuxue? I have always been skeptical. In this article, I will revisit this translation, trace the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western scientific traditions, and point out that translating natural history as bowuxue is mistaken; it should instead be rendered uniformly as “natural history.”
Scholars in China have already begun to question the translation “博物,” for example Peng Zhaorong points out that “‘博物’, ‘博物馆’ and other such concepts and models have long been familiar. The broad public and most professionals generally have no doubts about them cognitively. However, these concepts are in fact full of ambiguity; at the very least, the ‘博物’ in the Chinese traditional sense and Western ‘博物’ as well as museums differ enormously, and the mutual translation and mutual elucidation of the two is problematic. More importantly, this is not merely a matter of conceptual difference; it involves different classifications, different modes of cognition, and different systems of knowledge. And these differences have not drawn the attention of the academic world.”[1]
Indeed, the dispute over the translation of natural history will be far more than a stylistic revision; it also concerns our understanding of science and our interpretation of China’s traditional scholarship.
I. The Difficulty of Translating natural history as “博物学”
Of course, before we get into big questions such as our understanding of science or our interpretation of Chinese tradition, the first thing that a discussion of translation must pursue is accuracy. If a certain translation cannot, in actual usage, convey the exact original meaning, if it loses the connection with the context and causes misreading or becomes incoherent, then that translation is certainly unsuitable. No matter how deep the historical research or semantic elaboration may be, the first standard of translation is always whether it can accurately convey meaning in actual contexts. Therefore, before proceeding further, let us first cite some actual contexts in which natural history appears in Chinese translations; we will find that if one translates it as “博物学,” the original meaning cannot be conveyed precisely.
The main basis for insisting that natural history cannot be translated as “自然史” is that natural history is a proper noun, and history in it is its archaic usage, meaning the ancient Greek sense of “investigation, inquiry,” not “history.” And the term “博物学” certainly has nothing to do with history. But in actual contexts we find that natural history is not unrelated to “history” at all; rather, it includes the sense of history, especially the sense of an evolutionary process in the Darwinian sense.
For example, in Gould’s series Reflection in Natural History, the discussions are clearly all centered on evolution or evolutionary history, including “patterns and interruptions in the history of life,” “Science in society—a historical view,”[2] and so on. Gould emphasizes that “every organism has its own history, and the history of organisms, in many ways, subtly constrains the future of organisms”[3]; it is precisely from such a perspective that he conducts his discussion of natural history.
In the context of contemporary biology, natural history mainly comes to mean the study of the history of life guided by evolution. This meaning also affects its derivative uses outside biology. For example, in Paul Sibley’s A Natural History of Economic Life, this book is not merely a miscellaneous record of various aspects of economic life; it is indeed carrying out a historical investigation. In the very first sentence of the introduction, the author says, “Our everyday lives are much more miraculous than we imagine, while their foundations are alarmingly fragile. This is the astonishing message left to us by the evolutionary history of humankind.”[4] The examination and explanation of the history of human development is the book’s main thread. The author believes that “many people outside the specialist and mysterious world of economics cannot realize that this discipline can explain the past and future of the human species”[5] Clearly, the author uses the term natural history precisely to indicate that his investigation is, on the one hand, “natural” — treating human beings as a biological species in nature; and, on the other hand, concerned with “history” — the past and future of humankind, the evolutionary history of society. Translating it as “natural history” is accurate; if one changes it to “博物学,” then neither “natural” nor “history” remains, and both layers of meaning that the author originally intended to convey through this term can no longer be conveyed.
If in the above examples “自然史” is merely more appropriate than “博物学,” then in the following examples translating it as bowuxue is completely incoherent.
For instance, in Mike Sims’s A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form, the author juxtaposes natural history and cultural history, writing both about the human body in natural evolution and the human body in cultural history. In the preface the author says, “Whether in the history of civilization or in natural history, no historical period lacks stories of the human body.”[6] If this were rendered as “whether in the history of civilization or in bowuxue, no historical period lacks stories of the human body,” it would obviously be incomprehensible.
Similar examples include Rolston’s Genesis, Genes, and God—Values and Their Origins in Natural and Human History[7] (values and their origins in natural and human history), whose first chapter is “Genetic Value: Diversity and Complexity in Natural History” (Diversity and Complexity in Natural History[8]). Its meaning is obviously evolutionary history; if translated as “the origins of values in bowuxue and human history,” or “diversity and complexity in bowuxue,” it would be utterly incomprehensible.
In the book Foundations of Complex-System Theories by the well-known Chinese-born scientist Ouyang Yingzhi, there is a dedicated section on “Narratives and Theories in Natural History”[9] (Narratives and Theories in Natural History). The “natural history” involved here still first and foremost refers to genesis and taxonomy in evolutionary biology, but it also contrasts historical narrative with “theory,” and contrasts historical processes with nomological processes. She also mentions traditional forms of historical narration such as The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and contemporary ones such as the Annales school, comparing them with the mode of narration in natural history. It is clear that the “natural history” she is discussing is not only the course of natural evolution, but also a historiographical method opposed to theory and law. If translated as “博物学,” this entire section would become completely off-topic.
Then might the problem lie with those authors’ own poor English, using natural history incorrectly on the basis of superficial associations? That is certainly possible. But language itself develops and changes, and usages of words vary with the times. Since actual current usage has become what it is, to still insist on the entries of older dictionaries as the standard is already out of date.
However, the situation in which natural history is unsuitable for translation as bowuxue did not arise only in the contemporary period; tracing older texts backward, the situation remains similar.
Going a little further back, let us look at the early twentieth-century texts of the master of philosophy of history Croce. In his Theory and Practice of Historiography, there is a chapter discussing “‘natural history’ and history.” Croce points out that natural history is “only nominally history” (because natural evolution does not involve spirit), and places it “at a lower level than false history”[10] Although Croce believes natural history is not truly history, the whole discussion is possible only because the concept of natural history is indeed related to historiography. If translated here as “博物学与历史,” it would be impossible to understand what Croce is talking about.
Tracing back even further before the birth of evolutionary biology, the situation is the same. For example, Hume’s Natural History of Religion — to translate this as “宗教的博物学” or “宗教志” would be wrong, because Hume’s aim is not to classify and describe various religions, but to reveal the intrinsic causes of religion’s historical development. Natural History of Religion is the sister work to Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and the natural in the two titles is similar in meaning: natural religion stands in opposition to revealed religion, just as natural history stands in opposition to sacred history. Hume seeks to explain the arising and transformation of religion from the perspective of intrinsic, immanent causes, rather than by invoking some external divine power. The contents of the book include the origins of polytheism and an analysis of its causes, as well as the transition from polytheism to monotheism and an analysis of its causes. The “natural history” Hume advertises is intended precisely to stand in opposition to the Western tradition of sacred history and salvation history, and to explain history from the perspective of the natural, understanding religion’s present condition through its natural historical genesis. natural history carries both the meaning of nature/essence and of history; translating it as “博物学” completely loses the original intention, and may even create the false impression that Hume intended to compile a learned survey of all manner of religions.
Let us now look at the banner-waver of modern science — Francis Bacon. As is well known, Bacon formulated a new scientific method of “collecting facts — inductive organization.” And when Bacon expressed his new method, (natural) history was a core concept. In The New Organon[11], Bacon repeatedly mentions “natural history,” uses natural history and history of nature interchangeably, and also includes “natural and experimental history” (or history of nature and experience), and often directly uses history and history and tables. For Bacon, history mainly refers to the collection of facts and the recording of experience. Perhaps we can understand this as Bacon still using the word history in the ancient sense of “inquiry.” But we must also note that history in the modern sense had already taken shape, and Bacon was indeed using the word history in the sense of “historiography.” Bacon contrasted credible history with the historical writing full of marvels and strange tales represented by Livy[12]; Bacon also “divided historiography into natural history, social history, religious history, and history of learning”[13] In these contexts, translating history as “inquiry” is incoherent, and naturally one cannot translate natural history as bowuxue.
We find that in the many cases listed above, the meaning of natural history is constantly changing. Translating them as bowuxue is unsuitable, but translating them uniformly as “natural history” is all intelligible. Why is that? In fact, the reason the usage of natural history changes is that in different contexts people have different understandings of nature and history respectively. Among contemporary biologists, nature is seen as the natural world governed by Darwinian natural selection, and history is seen as the process of species evolution; thus natural history acquires the meaning of evolutionary biology. Hume, by contrast, places greater emphasis on nature as essence, as being-so-of-itself, as intrinsic cause, so natural history expresses the intention of explaining history’s inherent causes. Ouyang Yingzhi and Bacon, in turn, place greater emphasis on history in the sense of a disciplinary tradition or scholarly method, so natural history acquires a methodological meaning that emphasizes the recording of facts.
In addition, contemporary natural history also has specialized usages such as natural history of a disease and natural history museum. The contexts in which natural history can still be translated as bowuxue are probably only a very small portion, and it is entirely unable to cope with the much broader range of uses of natural history. Only “natural history” can consistently and accurately convey its intended meaning.
II. Did Ancient China Have a Tradition of “博物学”?
Since translating natural history as “博物学” has already encountered difficulties, we can, and should, revisit this translation. So how did this translation come about?
It is said that ancient China originally had a concept or tradition of bowuxue (博物, 博物志), and that this concept was roughly similar to, or basically the same as, Western natural history, so we used bowuxue to correspond to natural history. But is this really the case? Did ancient China indeed already have a bowuzhi tradition corresponding to natural history in the West?
When discussing the Western tradition of natural history, we cannot avoid mentioning the famous work of the elder Pliny of ancient Rome, Natural History (Naturalis Historia). It is said that this book should be translated as “博物志,” and correspondingly, the Jin-dynasty Chinese work Bowuzhi by Zhang Hua becomes the counterpart to it, serving as the sign and example of a supposed ancient Chinese tradition of bowuxue.
According to this view, China does indeed have a tradition of “博物学”: Zhang Hua’s Bowuzhi had wide influence, and throughout successive dynasties many annotated and supplementary editions appeared. But if one were to match the “tradition” of Zhang Hua’s Bowuzhi to Pliny’s tradition of natural history, I am afraid that would be a joke.
Pliny’s *Natural History* records all kinds of animals, plants, and regions, and it also includes some unverified odd tales and wild stories. Zhang Hua’s *Records of the Unusual* likewise records all kinds of animals, plants, regions, and curious and extraordinary events. So these two books seem similar, even identical, in tradition. Is that really so? Far from it! Pliny’s *Natural History*, whether in terms of the author’s self-positioning or its later influence, is plainly an encyclopedia. In the preface written in the form of a letter to Emperor Titus at the time the book was published, it is stated clearly that “the aim of the work is to investigate ‘the nature of things,’ in order to serve practical life and production, rather than merely to provide literary entertainment for people’s leisure reading.” [14] Although Pliny’s work on verifying the authenticity of his materials has drawn criticism, the purpose of his book was not to collect those bizarre marvels and monsters, but to undertake an inquiry into nature. The use of history in the title also reflects the book’s positioning—this is an “inquiry,” meant to provide practical knowledge, not literary amusement. Although Pliny did record some strange and curious things, the entries to which he devoted the most attention were still common yet practical matters such as papyrus, olive oil, wine, pepper, bees, pearls, dyes, ores, [15] and the like.
And what sort of book is Zhang Hua’s *Records of the Unusual*? “Scholars of different periods have offered different evaluations of it, and this can be seen from where it is catalogued in public and private bibliographies through the ages. *Records of the Unusual* appears in the *Treatise on Bibliography* of the *Book of Sui* as a miscellaneous work in the Masters category; in the *Treatise on Bibliography* of the *Old Book of Tang* as a novel in the B section of the Masters records; in the *Treatise on Arts and Literature* of the *New Book of Tang* as a novel in the B section of the Masters records; in the *General Catalog of Works Compiled by Chongwen* as a novel; in the *Bibliographic Treatise of the Junzhai Reading Notes* as a novel in the Masters category; in volume ten of *Zhi Zhai Shu Lu Jie Ti* as a miscellaneous work, and in volume eleven as a novel; in the *Sui Chu Tang Catalog* as a novel; in the *Treatise on Arts and Literature* of the *Tongzhi* as a miscellaneous work; in the *Treatise on Arts and Literature* of the *History of Song* as a miscellaneous work in the Masters category; in the *Treatise on Classical Works* of the *Comprehensive Examination of Literature* as a novel in the Masters category; in the *Catalog of the Hall of Jangyun* as a novel; in the *Catalog of Secret Books Collected in the Jigu Pavilion* as a novel in the Masters category; in the *Catalog of Books Collected in the Shugu Zhai* as a novel; in the *Supplementary Treatise on Arts and Literature of the Book of Jin* as a miscellaneous work in the B section of the Masters records; in the *General Catalogue of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries* as a novel in the Masters category; in the *Reading Notes of Zheng Tang* as a novel in the Masters category; in the *Reading Notes of Yuemantang* as a miscellaneous literary work; and in the *General Annotated Catalog of Chinese Vernacular Fiction* as a zhiguai work.” [16]
And in ancient China, the so-called “novelists” were those who specialized in street talk, hearsay, and unofficial anecdotes—an offshoot that had always been regarded as “not of the mainstream” in the Chinese tradition. The saying “ten teachings, nine streams” means precisely that “novelists” do not count as one of the main streams.
Researchers past and present mostly classify *Records of the Unusual* as belonging to the tradition of “zhiguai fiction,” in direct line with *Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio*. They do not place it within any serious scholarly tradition. At most, they point out that it contains some geographical elements, but it differs sharply from the Chinese tradition of geographical books as well: “First, it is shown by the fact that the mountains, rivers, and geography recorded in *Records of the Unusual* are mostly far beyond reach, whereas the geography books record for the most part strange lands that actually exist in the human world; even when there are occasional scattered legends, their mystical coloration is nowhere near as strong as that of the geography-and-marvels zhiguai fiction represented by *Records of the Unusual*. Second, the customs and products recorded in *Records of the Unusual* mostly possess wondrous functions, often surpassing common sense and the limits of knowledge, and are for the most part things that cannot be seen or obtained, whereas the customs and products recorded in geography books are mostly equivalent to local specialties: they are uncommon relative to other regions, but they can in fact be seen in the local area. Third, in terms of mode of expression, the novel *Records of the Unusual* is obviously exaggerated, frequently using rhetorical devices such as amplification and parallelism to enhance the narrativity of the things it records; this is an inheritance and development of the positive-romanticist technique of myth and legend. Geography books, by contrast, merely aim to record faithfully the mountains, rivers, and products of one region; occasionally, under the influence of a taste for the strange, they may record some legend, but that is not their main purpose.” [17]
Open *Records of the Unusual*, and the whole book is full of “strange people,” “strange customs,” “strange beasts,” “strange birds,” “strange plants and trees,” and so on. The book plainly aims to record marvels and oddities, and it has nothing whatsoever in common with Pliny’s encyclopedic practical research.
Even as a zhiguai fiction work, *Records of the Unusual* is not highly regarded. In the *General Catalogue and Critical Summary of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries*, it is even used as a negative example for comparison. For instance, in the introduction to *Records of the Search for Spirits*, written by the Eastern Jin historian Gan Bao, it says: “Yet the narrative in this book is often ancient and elegant, and the various discussions in the book could not have been written by anyone but a person of the Six Dynasties; thus it differs from other spurious books. I suspect it is simply a compilation of quotations from various books, piecing together fragmentary texts and adding other explanations, much like *Records of the Unusual* and *Accounts of Strange Matters*. But the compiler of those two books had narrow learning and a limited field of view, so omissions and gaps are found everywhere. The compiler of this book, by contrast, had seen many ancient texts and had a rather clear sense of literary form; thus its writing is graceful and worth reading, and only a careful examination can distinguish it.” In the introduction to *Strange Garden*, by Liu Jingshu of the Southern Dynasties, it says: “Yet if one examines the general substance, it is still complete, unlike *Records of the Unusual* and *Accounts of Strange Matters*, which were entirely supplemented by later hands. Moreover, its diction and purpose are simple and calm, without the vulgar habits of novelists; it was certainly not something that could have been written after the Six Dynasties, and thus Tang writers cited it often.” [18] Setting aside the question of whether *Records of the Unusual* is actually a forgery, in any case it is ranked as a work full of omissions and vulgar in style.
Later continuations and supplements to *Records of the Unusual* still followed the tradition of hunting for curiosities and recording marvels, and never managed to enter the realm of high literature.
Pliny’s *Natural History* is an encyclopedia intended to provide practical knowledge, whereas Zhang Hua’s *Records of the Unusual* is intended to provide literary amusement for one’s leisure hours. So it would seem that ancient China did in fact have a tradition of natural history, only from the very beginning it was several grades lower than the Western one. Is that really so?
In fact, China did indeed have many, rather than just one, developed scholarly traditions corresponding to Western natural history. Beyond the disreputable tradition of zhiguai and marvel-recording, these include philology of names and things, geographical books, local gazetteers, bibliographic catalogs, studies of medicine, studies of plants, trees, birds, and beasts, lithic and epigraphic studies, antiquarian studies, and so on. They were scattered among the categories of Classics, History, Masters, and other divisions, and were rarely gathered under a single unified rubric. So to say that the Chinese scholarly tradition of antiquity had natural history is rather like saying that ancient Chinese astronomy had “Aquarius”: in a certain sense that is correct—we have Nu, Xu, Wei, and so on, and if one takes some stars from each of these constellations and assembles them, one can obtain the Western Aquarius. From our philology of the Erya, local gazetteer studies, medical studies, and so on, one can likewise take some elements and make them correspond to Western natural history. But behind them, the entire classificatory systems and cultural contexts of China and the West are completely different; in that sense, one cannot say that Aquarius already existed in ancient Chinese astronomy. Of course, merely tracing the term “Aquarius” back into antiquity proves even less.
The term “bówù” may be ancient, but it either means broadly “things and all things” or “knowledge of many things,” as in “well-read and broadly informed.” Both are very broad senses, and it is hard for them to refer specifically to any one scholarly tradition. To put it by way of analogy, “bówù” is somewhat like what we now call “general education.” We can pick out courses from various disciplines and assemble them into so-called “general education” courses (general-education electives), but we cannot therefore say that “general education” has become a disciplinary tradition. Even if one says that the Ming dynasty already had a classed work called *Comprehensive Treasury of Bówù*, and that the *Complete Collection of Books and Illustrations of Ancient and Modern Times* in the Qing dynasty also had a category called “Bówù Compendium,” the basic sense is still “general knowledge” or “broad learning,” and it is hard to say that a self-conscious tradition of natural history had thereby taken shape. When later people borrowed the word bówù to translate natural history or natural science, they probably did so mostly by taking bówù in the sense of “being broadly conversant with all things” to match it, rather than using an already existing tradition of natural history to correspond to it.
In 1855, *New Compilation of Bówù*, edited and translated by the British physician He Xin, was published; it “covered knowledge in astronomy, meteorology, physics, chemistry, optics, electricity, biology, and other fields.” [19] Here bówù roughly corresponded to natural science in the broad sense. Even the 2002 edition of the *Modern Chinese Dictionary (English-Chinese Bilingual)* still glosses bówù as natural science. [20] This shows that at the beginning of the influx of Western learning into the East, the Chinese term bówù was vague and broad in meaning. Subsequently, “bówùxué” gradually became distinguished from physics, chemistry, and the like, and came to refer specifically to zoology, botany, and mineralogy. For example: “Du Yaqian (1873–1933), in the table of contents of his *Outline Lectures on Bówùxué*, wrote: ‘Birds and beasts are called animals, grasses and trees are called plants, while soil, stone, and other non-living things are mostly found in the earth and extracted from minerals, and are therefore also called minerals’; ‘A bówùxué scholar is one who studies the combination of animals, plants, and minerals.’” [21] Note that “animal,” “plant,” and “mineral” are all loanwords coined when Western learning entered China; scholars at the time defined bówùxué entirely through Western concepts and disciplinary systems. Yu Cuiling points out: “The specialized bówù dictionaries compiled in modern China are entirely conceptual and knowledge systems in the sense of Western disciplinary classification, and have no historical connection with China’s traditional notion of ‘bówù’ or with related reference works.” [22]
The reason why ancient China did not form a unified tradition of natural history is probably that ancient China fundamentally lacked the concept of nature—lacking both the classical concept of nature as essence or cause, and also lacking the modern concept of nature as a realm opposed to human society. Moreover, ancient China also lacked the Western concept of disciplines divided according to the objects they study. Therefore, although China did have a unified and continuous historical tradition, it could not have had the tradition of natural history developed by Western modern naturalists. Ancient China had historians, physicians, literary scholars, and scholars of the Confucian classics, but it would not have had naturalists or natural-history scholars.
III. What, after all, is history?
By now we have understood two things: first, that translating natural history as bówùxué encounters practical difficulties; second, that ancient China did not have any ready-made tradition of bówùxué corresponding to natural history. So now we can discuss the matter of choosing a new translation for natural history.
We may note that, in the case given above, translating natural history as “zìránshǐ” is appropriate. But my aim is not limited to that; what I am trying to show is that in the overwhelming majority of contexts—if not all of them—natural history can be translated as “zìránshǐ.”
There probably will not be much controversy in using “natural” to correspond to natural. Of course, given that ancient China did not have a concept of “nature” in the Western sense, translating natural history as “natural X” also means that it is something ancient China did not possess. And as we have already explained, natural history really is something ancient China did not have. In that way, the word “natural” poses no problem.
So the next question is to explain why the character 史 can be used to correspond to history.
Translating history as 史 is entirely unproblematic in most contexts; only in the phrase natural history might one encounter objections. This is because it is said that the history in natural history preserves an original ancient sense, meaning simply “inquiry,” not the ordinary sense of history. Although in the cases I listed earlier natural history did have an undeniable connection with the ordinary meaning of history, skeptics can still treat them all as special cases. In any event, there are indeed many other cases in which natural history does not include the sense of “past events” or “process.” If natural history is translated as zìránshǐ, then those cases will become “counterexamples,” and I would have to explain why 史 can still be used to translate it even when it does not mean “study of the past.”
What is history, or 史? According to modern dictionaries, it refers to “the past” or “the study of past events,” and there is indeed nothing wrong with that. But does that mean that once the dictionary says so, we cannot use it in other contexts, or that people will certainly be unable to make sense of it when it is used outside the dictionary’s prescribed scope? Not at all. In fact, people’s actual use of and understanding of language are always much more flexible than dictionary entries. For example, entries under history in English dictionaries usually all define it only in terms of “the past” or “the study of past events.” [23] There is no special usage prescribed there for history. One cannot simply because there is no definition under history that does not involve the past conclude that the word history cannot have any other special uses. Natural history is a technical phrase, and in technical usage words can have special meanings beyond their basic dictionary entries. And the Chinese expression “natural history,” which did not exist in the traditional language, would of course be read as a technical term; in it, the character 史 can likewise have usage that goes beyond its basic dictionary entry.
The only question is whether the extension of 史 beyond its basic usage in “natural history” has a sound basis, and whether it can be understood and accepted by readers.
Take the word “physics,” for example. In ordinary understanding and dictionary definition, it is obviously a natural science concerned with matter and energy, and “dynamics” is similar. Yet we find many usages such as “economical physics,” “social physics,” “psychodynamics,” and “communication dynamics.” When people encounter these expressions, they can usually make sense of them simply by taking the words at face value, referring to the context, or at most receiving a brief explanation—nothing more than applying methods from physics to the study of economics, using the category of dynamics to study psychology, and so on. I believe that such a capacity for understanding is fully within the reach of the general public, even without professional training. So in facing the concept of “natural history,” I believe ordinary readers will not encounter much difficulty either—it simply means using historical methods to study nature. Thus, if using historical methods to study nature is precisely the original meaning of natural history, then the understanding gained through the term “natural history” is smooth and accurate.
The ordinary understanding of “history” is indeed a study of the “past,” yet the “method” of that study does not necessarily involve the concept of the “past.” “The past” is merely the general object to which historical methods are directed; the methods for handling that object are another matter altogether.
Let us first look at the Western concept of history. If we examine the Western tradition of historical study, we will find that history as inquiry has always been primary in meaning. Herodotus is called the Father of History not because he was the first person to record “the past,” but because he was the first to consciously use the manner of “history” to investigate the truth of the past. [24] By the Hellenistic period, Polybius, the author of the *Histories* (historiai), was already using the word history in the modern sense. [25] He clearly set forth the method and attitude of such inquiry: “He called his work ‘pragmatikē historia’ (factual inquiry), that is, a factual description of wars and political events. … He believed that history was not an idle record for entertainment, but a pursuit of truth and an accurate description of historical events. … A historian should also be an ‘actor’; he should interview eyewitnesses and witnesses, and he should himself observe and personally participate in certain events.” [26]
In ancient China, the original meaning and primary sense of “shi” (史) was an official office, and the tradition of the historiographer continued without interruption from remote antiquity down to the Qing dynasty. “At the latest in the Shang dynasty, or in the Xia dynasty, China had indeed established historiographers,”[27] and by the Zhou dynasty, historiographers had already been widely established from the central government down to the localities. As for the duties of the historiographer, in remote antiquity they were of course various kinds of shamanic and ritual work; later, they came mainly to be responsible for recording events. Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian literally means the record of the Grand Scribe. From Confucius’s composition of the Spring and Autumn Annals to Sima Qian’s writing of the Records of the Grand Historian, China’s tradition of “historiography” took shape. The Grand Scribe’s famous formulation—“to investigate the boundaries between Heaven and humanity, to comprehend the changes of past and present, and to establish a school of thought of one’s own”—expresses the self-consciousness of “historiography” as an enterprise of “inquiry.”
Compared with Western historiography, Chinese historiography was clearly earlier in maturing and more developed. Already in the Zhou dynasty, the tradition of historiographers’ “observation and participation” in events had not only taken shape, but had long since become professionalized and institutionalized; faithfully recording the truth had already become a basic norm. And the ideal of “inquiring” into the boundaries of affairs and understanding change, along with the truth-seeking attitude of discriminating historical materials, had also already formed.
We can see that the reason historiography became historiography does not lie in whether it concerns the “past” (myths and epics also tell of the “past”), but in the fact that it signifies a series of methods centered on faithful recording, close observation, and organized narration.
We know that in the West there is another scholarly tradition, that of natural philosophy, which in simple terms is the path of philosophy. The method of philosophy emphasizes universality, seeks origins, and stresses reasoning and deduction. In opposition to history, this is another path of “inquiry into truth.” Ancient China lacked this kind of approach to truth-seeking, and instead shone brilliantly along the path of historiography.
When we apply this method of recording, observing, and organizing to human affairs, temporality naturally appears. This is not something imposed by the method of historiography, but rather because human life as human life is itself temporal. When you record an action, it is necessarily that person’s “past action.” Whether individual activity or collective activity, these events are always marked by temporality—because once they occur, they necessarily become “past.” Since historiography was mainly used to investigate human affairs, it naturally and gradually acquired the meaning of “past.” This does not mean that when one uses historical methods to investigate other natural things, one must always append the meaning of “past.”
Since ancient China had such a highly developed historiographical tradition yet lacked a philosophical tradition, we may guess that ancient China’s study of natural things also mainly followed the path of historiography rather than the method of philosophy, and this was indeed the case. What we generally call the ancient Chinese tradition of “natural history” is precisely also a product of the “historiographical” tradition. Although the Record of Wonders (Bowu zhi) was not scholarly in attitude, it still bore the name “zhi” (record); and before the strange-tales fiction tradition, the extensive traditions of geography and local gazetteers had already long possessed a tradition of truthful records of local mountains and waters, customs, and products. The study of birds, beasts, grasses, and trees that flourished in the Song dynasty is represented by the historian Zheng Qiao’s Outline of Insects, Grasses, and Trees[28], listed as one of the twenty outlines in the Comprehensive Treatise (Tongzhi); the study of names and objects, though belonging to classical scholarship, was in essence a study of historical source criticism…
It is just that in ancient China there was no concept of “nature”; there was neither the line of thought that investigates the essence and inner causes of things, nor the idea of an objective natural world opposed to human beings. Therefore the “truths” investigated by Chinese historiography were not inner causes or objective properties, but always carried human, ethical, or political implications. The ancient Chinese study of “things” was likewise often local and humanistic.
So we notice that translating natural history as “natural history” is not only accurate, but also helps stimulate a reexamination of China’s historiographical tradition and the meaning of historiography. Historiography is not merely literary fiction for amusement; like “natural philosophy,” it is also a serious pursuit of truth. And this pursuit of truth, on the one hand, is indeed a search for truth, but it is not carried out in an abstract, universal, reasoning, or computational manner; rather, it unfolds in a concrete, local, experiential, and descriptive manner.
Rickert said: “There are some sciences whose aim is not to formulate laws of nature, and indeed generally speaking not merely to form universal concepts. These are the historical sciences in the broadest sense. These sciences do not want to cut a set of standard garments that will fit Paul and Peter equally well. That is to say, they want to explain reality from the standpoint of its individuality, and this reality is never universal but always individual.”[29] Such “historical sciences in the broadest sense” clearly include natural history as well; the crucial point of natural history’s being natural history lies precisely in its historiographical method. Professor Wu Guosheng points out that natural history “is not about seeing through phenomena to the essence behind them, but about understanding phenomena themselves as fully and thoroughly as possible; this understanding is not aimed at the universality of principles, but at the individuality, uniqueness, and irreducibility of phenomena and facts, taking direct experience and lived experience as the most original and basic basis. In this sense, the phenomenological philosophical tradition initiated by Husserl has a natural-historical spirit.”[30]
Indeed, one may say that the method of historiography fits very well with the phenomenological method of “returning to the things themselves,” and this is especially true of traditional Chinese historiography. Traditional Chinese historiography does not attempt to summarize a set of universal laws or principles apart from narration, but it certainly does seek to investigate the boundaries of affairs and comprehend change; so where, exactly, does the rationale lie? For example, “if we speak of the Records of the Grand Historian, then on the surface what it presents is narration, while explanation often lies within the narration itself.”[31] The historian Lü Simian put it very clearly: “History is events. And what historiography seeks is principle rather than event. Why is this? It may be explained by the Buddhist doctrine of the non-obstruction of principle and event. Event does not lie far from principle, so one who is clear about principle must necessarily be clear about events… There is no principle outside events, so principle must be made clear through events.”[32]
Of course, whether it is Rickert’s “historical sciences in the broadest sense,” the phenomenological “return to the things themselves,” or the so-called doctrine of the non-obstruction of principle and event, none of these applies only to investigating the principles of human affairs; they can equally be applied to investigating the principles of natural things. Translating natural history as “natural history” not only accurately conveys its conceptual origins and basic method, but also points to the intrinsic connection between “natural science” and “historiography” contained within this concept.
Main References
Peng Zhaorong: “This ‘Bowu’ or That ‘Bowu’: This Is the Question,” in Cultural Heritage, 2009, no. 4.
Benedetto Croce: History: Its Theory and Practice, English translation by Douglas Ainslie; Chinese translation by Fu Rengan, The Commercial Press, 1982.
Li Yashu and Lu Chen: “The Ancient Roman Encyclopedic Writer—Pliny,” in History Teaching, 1984, no. 07.
Wang Yuchong and Zheng Kunfang: “A Preliminary Exploration of the Spiritual World of Pliny the Elder,” in Forum of Social Sciences, 2008, no. 14.
Lei Libai: Western Classics: An English-Chinese Digest—100 Classics of Ancient Greece and Rome, World Book Publishing Company, 2010.
Li Fang: “A Study of the Record of Wonders (Bowu zhi),” Master’s thesis, Southwest University.
Yu Cuiling: “From the Concept of ‘Bowu’ to the Discipline of ‘Bowu’,” in Journal of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (Social Science Edition), 2006, no. 3.
Collingwood: The Idea of History, translated by He Zhaowu and Zhang Wenjie, The Commercial Press, 1997.
Du Weiyun: A History of Chinese Historiography, The Commercial Press, 2010, p. 40.
Luo Guihuan: “The Song Dynasty’s ‘Study of Birds, Beasts, Grasses, and Trees,’” in Researches in the History of Natural Sciences, vol. 20, no. 2 (2001).
Rickert: Cultural Science and Natural Science, translated by Tu Jiliang, The Commercial Press, 1986.
Wu Guosheng: “In Memory of Natural Science,” in China Social Sciences Daily, August 25, 2009, p. 5.
Lü Simian: Seven Kinds of Historiography and Historical Texts, Shanghai Classics Publishing House, 2009.
Jin Guantao and Liu Qingfeng: Studies in the History of Concepts, Law Press, 2009.
Keen Thomas: Humans and the Natural World, translated by Song Lili, Yilin Press, 2008.
[1] Peng Zhaorong: “This ‘Bowu’ or That ‘Bowu’: This Is the Question,” in Cultural Heritage, 2009, no. 4.
[2] Stephen Jay Gould: Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History, translated by Tian Ming, Sanlian Bookstore.
[3] Stephen Jay Gould: The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History, translated by Tian Ming, Sanlian Bookstore, 1999, p. 6.
[4] Paul Seabright: The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life, Oriental Publishing House, 2007, p. 5.
[5] Paul Seabright: The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life, Oriental Publishing House, 2007, p. 14.
[6] Mike Sims: Adam’s Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form, Jiuzhou Press, 2006, p. 6.
[7] Holmes Rolston, III: Genes, Genesis and God, translated by Fan Dainian and Chen Yanghui, Hunan Science and Technology Press, 2003.
[8] The cited English originals are mainly verified through Google Books or in the original books; same below.
[9] Ouyang Yingzhi: Foundations of Complex Systems Theory, translated by Tian Baoguo, Zhou Ya, and Fan Ying, Shanghai Science and Technology Education Press, 2003.
[10] Benedetto Croce: History: Its Theory and Practice, English translation by Douglas Ainslie; Chinese translation by Fu Rengan, The Commercial Press, 1982, from p. 99.
[11] Bacon: Novum Organum, translated by Xu Baokui, The Commercial Press, 1984. The English text is from Francis Bacon, Novum organum, edit by Joseph Devey, M.A, New York, P.F. Collier and Son
[12] Bacon: Novum Organum, translated by Xu Baokui, The Commercial Press, 1984, p. 180.
[13] Bacon: The Advancement of Learning, translated by Liu Yuntong, Shanghai Century Publishing Group, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2007, p. 64.
[14] Li Yashu and Lu Chen: “The Ancient Roman Encyclopedic Writer—Pliny,” in History Teaching, 1984, no. 07. Also see Wang Yuchong and Zheng Kunfang: “A Preliminary Exploration of the Spiritual World of Pliny the Elder,” in Forum of Social Sciences, 2008, no. 14.
[15] See Lei Libai: Western Classics: An English-Chinese Digest—100 Classics of Ancient Greece and Rome, World Book Publishing Company, 2010, p. 262.
[16] Li Fang: “A Study of the Record of Wonders (Bowu zhi),” Master’s thesis, Southwest University.
[17] Li Fang: “A Study of the Record of Wonders (Bowu zhi),” Master’s thesis, Southwest University.
[18] General Catalogue and Abstracts of the Siku Quanshu, juan 142, Section of the Masters, juan 52, category of fiction, part 3. See the electronic version: http://guoxue.baidu.com/page/cbc4bfe2c8abcae9d7dcc4bfcce1d2aa/141.html
[19] Yu Cuiling: “From the Concept of ‘Bowu’ to the Discipline of ‘Bowu’,” in Journal of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (Social Science Edition), 2006, no. 3.
[20] Dictionary Editorial Office, Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences: Modern Chinese Dictionary (Bilingual Chinese-English) (2002 Supplemented Edition), Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2002, p. 150.
[21] Dictionary Editorial Office, Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences: Modern Chinese Dictionary (Bilingual Chinese-English) (2002 Supplemented Edition), Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2002, p. 150.
[22] Yu Cuiling: “From the Concept of ‘Bowu’ to the Discipline of ‘Bowu’,” in Journal of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (Social Science Edition), 2006, no. 3.
[23] For example, The New Oxford English-Chinese Double-Explanation Dictionary
[24] Collingwood: The Idea of History, translated by He Zhaowu and Zhang Wenjie, The Commercial Press, 1997, p. 49: “It was precisely the use of this term and its meaning that made Herodotus the father of history.”
[25] Collingwood: The Idea of History, translated by He Zhaowu and Zhang Wenjie, The Commercial Press, 1997, p. 70.
[26] Lei Libai: Western Classics: An English-Chinese Digest—100 Classics of Ancient Greece and Rome, World Book Publishing Company, 2010, pp. 148, 150.
[27] Du Weiyun: A History of Chinese Historiography (Vol. 1), The Commercial Press, 2010, p. 40.
[28] Luo Guihuan: “The Song Dynasty’s ‘Study of Birds, Beasts, Grasses, and Trees,’” in Researches in the History of Natural Sciences, vol. 20, no. 2 (2001)
[29] Rickert, “Cultural Science and Natural Science,” trans. Tu Jiliang, Commercial Press, 1986, p. 50.
[30] Wu Guosheng, “In Remembrance of the Natural Sciences,” in China Social Sciences Journal, August 25, 2009, p. 5.
[31] Du Weiyun, A History of Chinese Historiography (vol. 1), Commercial Press, 2010, p. 160.
[32] Lü Simian, Seven Kinds of Historiography and Historical Records, Shanghai Classics Publishing House, 2009, p. 45.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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