Wang Hongbo Ma Jianbo eds.: Cross the Gorge—Science in a Cultural Perspective, Fujian Education Press, February 2002
Kang Yanwu: An Incomprehensible Humanistic Spirit (Second Paragraph)
Page 16
In the fourth paragraph of Zhou Wen, he says: “The real danger of modern technology does not lie in visible consequences such as the explosion of an atomic bomb, but in this mode of dealing with things already contained in its very essence: it strips all things of their real existence and intrinsic value, leaving them only a functional, false existence.” This is truly an arcane piece of abstruse talk. What exactly is “this mode of dealing with things”? How does it “strip all things of their real existence and intrinsic value”? In my humble opinion, on the contrary, it is precisely science and technology that enable us to know various real beings better and to bring their value into play. Let us start with the moon. It has hung in the sky since ancient times, visible to everyone every day. Yet for a long time it remained shrouded in mystery. Some imagined it to be a gleaming crystal sphere (otherwise, why would it “shine”?), while others imagined within it the Moon Palace, the jade rabbit, Chang’e… Only after Galileo made a good telescope and observed the moon did people begin to know that there were mountains and valleys on it too, but no water, and that it was a celestial body similar to the earth, called the moon. After the Apollo manned moon landings, people gained a more comprehensive and more truthful understanding of it, and began designing all kinds of plans to make the moon serve us; the moon now has a bit more practical value for humankind than before. Take microwaves. They cannot be directly perceived by the human senses: you cannot see them, you cannot touch them. It is science and technology that enabled people to recognize their existence, and science and technology that allow us to make use of their advantages, restrain their shortcomings, and bring their own value into play. Used for transmitting information, they become microwave communications; used for cooking utensils, they become microwave ovens. Likewise with infrared rays: they too cannot be directly seen by people, and originally no one knew of their existence. Again it is science and technology that give people wisdom and enable them to recognize their existence. Bringing the beneficial value of infrared rays into play gives us infrared cameras, infrared trackers, … and so on. In short, there are countless examples showing that every major advance in science and technology enables us to grasp and understand various objective realities more truly, more comprehensively, and more concretely, and to make better use of the beneficial properties of all kinds of things, bringing their value into play for our own use. Why on earth does Mr. Zhou perversely arrive at the opposite conclusion, saying that technology “strips all things (note: all things) of their real existence and intrinsic value”? After racking my brains and still failing to understand, I sometimes feel that some humanistic scholars really are odd fellows who spout nothing but abstruse talk.
////——This article can be found at http://www.gmw.cn/01ds/1998-02/11/GB/185^DS1109.htm. Zhou Guoping’s related article “What Is the Danger of Modern Technology?” appears on pages 3–6 of this book; see http://book.sina.com.cn/longbook/1095142697_zhouguopingzxj/113.shtml,
As for Zhou Guoping’s critique of technology, I do not admire it very much, nor am I trying to defend Zhou Guoping. Among this set of related articles (the book includes debates in the Zhonghua Reading News involving Zhou Guoping, Xu Youyu, Tian Song, Kang Yanwu, and others), I admire Tian Song’s arguments and basically agree with them; nor did I go looking for the discussion that followed Kang Yanwu’s article to read it. Here, I only want to write down some thoughts on the excerpt quoted above.
“It is precisely science and technology that enable us to know various real beings better and to bring their value into play” — I do not wish to refute this sentence itself. My position is not one of anti-technology, let alone anti-science. I believe technology and science are not necessarily bad things; they may and should also become good and positive things. What we do and what we need to do is not to “reject” or “deny” technology and science, but merely to “criticize” and “reflect on” them.
However, I wonder whether Mr. Kang has reflected on the word “value” in what he is talking about? — “People design all kinds of plans to make the moon serve us; the moon now has a bit more practical value for humankind than before.” “Used for transmitting information, they become microwave communications; used for cooking utensils, they become microwave ovens.” “Bringing the beneficial value of infrared rays into play gives us infrared cameras…” — These new technologies certainly bring many conveniences to humankind; yet why should these “conveniences” be called “beneficial value”? What is “beneficial”? What is it that human beings are ultimately pursuing? While science and technology add convenience to people’s clothing, food, housing, and transportation, they also speed up the rhythm of life; people are busy all their lives, their lives seem compact, yet their souls may not necessarily feel fulfilled. The argument Mr. Kang gives here is precisely the key reason why we reflect on technology, precisely the “mode of dealing with things” that we criticize: the value of the moon, microwaves, infrared rays, and so on lies in serving human beings; but then what is the value of human beings’ own existence for? What is it that people’s lives are pursuing? — To further explore and develop new things so as to serve human beings further, so that human beings may then further explore and develop new things… ? Of course, at times circular reasoning can also solve part of a problem; yet such tedious repetition makes one feel empty and lost—could there not be some higher thing worth our pursuit? If spiritual life is empty, then what difference do material life’s conveniences and abundance make? The “beneficial value” spoken of in Kang’s article—does it merely mean that science and technology are beneficial to the increase of speed and the multiplication of wealth, or does it mean they are beneficial to people’s pursuit of “happiness”?
The concept of “happiness” is a bit abstruse, but it still seems more real than such a “pursuit” as “develop technology to increase wealth, thereby further promoting technological development, thereby increasing wealth even more.” And the “mode of dealing with things” in the technological age is precisely that we only know how to “see” the economic benefits of things, but do not know how to “see” the “meaning” of material wealth, or how to “feel happiness.” Tian Song puts it well: “Happiness has no direct relation to technology. No matter how advanced technology becomes, it cannot catch up with human beings’ ever-growing material and sensory desires. As the tide rises, so does the boat; eternal happiness is unattainable. At the same time, modern people’s sensibility is deteriorating, and they are losing the ability to feel happiness. We may have the satisfaction of the senses and material desires, but little happiness.” (Tian Song: “The Fisherman’s Sunset,” page 14 of this book, also included in The Spear of Don Quixote; see also http://www.juoaa.org/JiDa/JDforum/messages/101037.html,)
Liu Huajie Huyan Hua: Physicists Probing “Bubble Scholarship” — The Two Cultures Debate Has Never Been This Lively
http://www.oursci.org/ency/phil/041.htm
Page 35
What lesson does the Sokal affair give us? Should we use it to attack humanistic scholars vigorously, thereby further intensifying the already-cracked opposition between the “two cultures”? Should the scientific community continue, as always, to accuse humanistic scholars of lacking basic natural-science literacy and therefore needing to make it up in middle-school courses; while humanistic scholars continue to accuse scientists of having no culture, of only pulling the cart and never lifting their heads to look at the road, of being rigid-minded to the bitter end, and of becoming victims of social politics?
This view is too old-fashioned; people discovered long ago its weaknesses: intellectuals bickering among themselves, unable to unite, and thus unable to play an independent role that is decisive in society. Do you remember? Intellectuals are the most adept at tearing into other intellectuals.
////——The two authors give a relatively brief and concise account of the Sokal affair. My personal feeling is that their account is very appropriate and fair. Of course, I still do not know enough about the Sokal affair; I have books on hand such as Science Wars and “The Sokal Affair” and the Science Wars, and will be reading them soon…
I have always respected science and also respected the humanities. I would never be a “science opponent”—at least not in the sense of “opposing” or “contrary” as the “anti” in “anti-science.” If it means “reflecting on science” or “opposing scientism,” that is acceptable. However, I also tend to stand from the standpoint of the humanities to reflect on and criticize science and technology, and to affirm the significance of the “non-scientific”—even including enthusiastic support for religion. Yet such a seemingly “ambiguous” stance is very likely to lead to the predicament of “pleasing neither side,” a predicament that seems also discernible in the Department of Philosophy at Peking University—those who do “philosophy of science” are seen by scientists as “mystifying things for their own sake,” while philosophers regard them as “impure” and “off the beaten track”; as for “environmental ethics,” “science and religion,” “sociology of science,” and so on, whenever we try to connect and harmonize the two disciplines, neither side is often willing to acknowledge it. However, I have said many times already—my position is clear and firm.
Wu Guosheng: The Story of Evolution Is Enough to Make One Despair
http://www.gmw.cn/01ds/2000-11/01/GB/2000^324^0^DS2208.htm
Page 55
After hearing Dawkins tell the story of the genes, human beings ought to feel despair. Evolution is accidental and purposeless; genes are cold and selfish. They are supremely clever; after hundreds of millions of years of evolution, they have all become spirits of a sort. From here we can indeed learn quite a few skills for survival, but at the same time we also fall into such a predicament: we do not know why we are supposed to survive. Survival is accidental, and absurd. The meaning of life can be said to be negligible. In the world of human nature, the lofty and glorious spirit of sacrificing oneself for righteousness, of facing death as if returning home, is in an objective world so-called utterly unreasonable. This division between human beings and the world produced by modern science is, today, because of its greater refinement and rationalization, even harder to bridge.
Fang Zhouzi: Why Despair Over Evolution?
http://www.zmfp.com/education/news_4/41840.html
Pages 58–59
Faced with this reproach, Dawkins gave a brief reply in Unweaving the Rainbow:
“Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the universe’s ultimate fate really does have no purpose. Do we really all have to tie our hopes for our lives to the universe’s ultimate fate? Of course not, not if we are mentally normal. Our lives are governed by all kinds of more intimate, warmer things, as well as by human ambition and insight. To accuse science of depriving life of the warmth that makes life worth living—that mistake is so absurd, so utterly contrary to the feelings both of myself and of most scientists, that I almost feel like becoming desperate, as I have been wrongly suspected of being.”
Although scientific facts often can provide some inspiration for ethical and moral views, and can even become the basis for value judgments, scientific facts themselves do not carry value judgments. To equate scientific facts with moral value is precisely the way of thinking of extreme scientismists, and to use such a way of thinking to accuse science in turn is self-contradictory. The evolution of the universe has no purpose because the universe has no consciousness. But human life can have purpose because human beings have self-consciousness. In a cold, bleak universe, there can likewise be, and should be, warm and intimate human relations.
If one links the purpose of life with the fate of the universe, that may be a bit too sentimental. But the purpose of life by nature belongs to subjective value judgment and can take many forms; science cannot prove it to be either necessarily right or necessarily wrong. So if someone insists on sighing and lamenting in such a sentimental way, although Dawkins hints that this amounts to mental illness, and although I also think there is no need for it, one cannot say that it is wrong. However, if after despairing one goes on to question, “If we are doomed to be selfish, how can our non-evolutionary moral notions be possible?” then that is serious confusion. The fact that genes are selfish does not entail that we are doomed to be selfish, because our “fate” has two dimensions: biological and cultural.
Human beings are simultaneously products of biological evolution and cultural evolution. The theory of the “selfish gene” seeks to explain only biological evolution under natural selection (it does not even attempt to explain all biological evolution), whereas cultural evolution has very different mechanisms. Unconscious natural selection acts only on the short-term interests of individuals, and therefore it is necessarily favorable to “selfishness.” But human beings possess self-consciousness, rational reasoning, and the ability to foresee; they can make long-term plans, and therefore can sacrifice present interests for the sake of long-term interests, and personal interests for the sake of group interests. The adaptive evolution of culture is, to a large extent, the result of the environment selecting groups rather than individuals, and truly altruistic behavior thus arises. Moral views are precisely the result of this cultural selection. A cultural group with a better “value system” can expand, reproduce, and swallow up or eliminate other cultural groups. Thus values are also evolved; they are the result of countless repeated trial-and-error processes, successes and failures over the long term, and are the outcome most suited to the survival of a certain cultural group. If one mixes up biological evolution and cultural evolution, and tries to use biological instinct to explain all cultural phenomena, that is precisely the way of thinking of extreme biological determinists; to use such a way of thinking to accuse science in turn is again self-contradictory.
////——In Wu laoshi’s writing, one continually feels a tone of “sorrow”; I may not be as “pessimistic” as Wu laoshi (and of course not as optimistic as Fang Zhouzi). In addition, although I have not yet investigated it deeply, on many issues my views also seem to differ slightly from Wu laoshi’s (at present I have neither the need nor the ability to carefully analyze these differences, because I myself have not yet formed views that are independent, complete, and mature). Still, his spirit and his way of thinking are both things I admire greatly. I saw Liu Huajie laoshi’s comment on Wu Guosheng laoshi’s views: “Privately, I have always criticized Wu Guosheng’s views, denouncing some of his individual ideas as ‘anti-science’ and ‘cultural relativism,’ but only in terms of his views. Perhaps views and conclusions are minor matters; the spirit of inquiry, the way of thinking, and the ‘affectionate’ attitude are the most important.” (Liu Huajie: “Listening to the Soft Murmur of Those Who Pause,” page 298 of this book) Looking specifically at this quoted passage, I admire Wu laoshi’s mood of “anxious thought,” yet at the same time I hope for a more optimistic conclusion.
As for the “selfish gene,” I mentioned it already when writing my paper on ecological philosophy: I oppose projecting this “selfish gene” onto ethics and morality. If the “selfish gene” is discussed only within the scope of scientific research, I would certainly not oppose it, nor am I qualified to oppose it. After all, the mainstream of contemporary biology is represented by George Williams, John Maynard Smith, and Dawkins, not by Gould or Margulis (see Brockman, ed., The Third Culture, Hainan Publishing House, p. 3). As biologists, Gould and Margulis may criticize mainstream scientific theory, whereas I, a person who only understands biology in a superficial way, cannot possibly refute them merely because “I do not like their conclusion.” Philosophy has the right to think about, extend, and associate from scientific conclusions, but philosophy has no right to derive scientific conclusions, much less to direct science.
Therefore, although I still have some emotional reservations, I am first willing to acknowledge Dawkins’s doctrine (only as a scientific theory). Of course, I know very little about biology; I have not even read The Selfish Gene (I only skimmed a few electronic excerpts online and learned about it through introductions). But let us suppose that genes really are “selfish,” that evolution really is this cruel—so what? Does that not precisely prove that human beings must transcend their own animality and break free from the slavery of genetic instinct if they are to possess human dignity? Here, I seem to want to express conditional support for Fang Zhouzi. Fang Zhouzi sees that human beings are at once “biological and cultural.” In my paper on ecological philosophy, I also mentioned: “They (those who extend ‘the selfish gene’ into an ethical doctrine) see only the evolution of the human being as a biological gene, and ignore the other kind of evolution unique to human beings as human beings, namely cultural evolution. Even by their own line of thought, their perspective is one-sided—they notice only that human beings have a tendency to ‘ensure the proliferation and continuation of their own genes,’ while ignoring another tendency, namely the attempt to preserve and continue their own culture…” (Notice that I said “even by their own line of thought.”) But Fang Zhouzi then further extends the theory of the survival of the fittest, the weak being preyed upon by the strong, into “cultural evolution,” and this is where I disagree. For if one is discussing evolution in biology, the meaning of “the fit” and “the strong” can be made clear—say, for example, “fit” refers to adaptability to the environment, and species with stronger adaptability are more likely to persist. But when this is applied to so-called “cultural evolution,” I have to ask: what does it mean to say that a culture is “highly adaptable”? What is meant by a “good” value system? Is it because the value system is “good” that this culture can “absorb” and “exterminate” other cultures, or is it because this culture has absorbed and exterminated other cultures that this result proves that the culture is “strong”? Then why is it that so many steppe nomadic civilizations, after militarily “absorbing” certain agricultural civilizations, were in turn “conquered” culturally by agricultural civilizations? Why, in the end, was it the agricultural civilization rather than the steppe civilization that was “selected”? Who is doing the “selecting” (in biological evolution we can say it is the “environment” that does the selecting)? What is the standard of “selection”? In what way is “selection” realized? … These questions are all extremely ambiguous, and when concepts are confused, this kind of “cultural evolution theory” is very likely to produce extremely dangerous tendencies—the strength of culture is embodied in the “absorption” and “extermination” of weaker cultures!
In addition, Fang Zhouzi points out: “Although scientific facts can often provide certain inspiration for ethics and morality, and can even become the basis for value judgments, scientific facts themselves do not carry value judgments. Equating scientific facts with moral value is precisely the mindset of extreme scientistic believers.” “If one links the purpose of life with the fate of the universe, that is a bit too sentimental. But the purpose of life originally belongs to subjective value judgment, and can take many forms; science cannot prove that it must be right or must be wrong. So if someone insists on sighing so sentimentally in this way, although Dawkins implies that this counts as mental disturbance, and although I also think it is unnecessary, one cannot say that it is wrong.” These distinctions are indeed quite good. However, in fact, the reason one feels “despair” is precisely this divergence between “scientific facts” and “the purpose of life,” this rupture in the relationship between “truth” and “goodness”! So, since Fang Zhouzi also acknowledges that scientific facts cannot generate value judgments and that science is of no help in answering the purpose of life—that is to say, for a person, science alone is not enough, and life also needs certain things outside science—but what might those things be? Fang Zhouzi did not say. Fang Zhouzi points out: “In a cold, desolate universe, there can also be, and should also be, a warm and intimate human world.” This is of course also a very good attitude. However, he only said “can” and “should,” but did not say “how” one can have it, nor what exactly that human world is “like.” Answering the latter two questions—as Fang Zhouzi should also admit—requires a power beyond science, but presumably Fang Zhouzi also would not want that power to be “anti-scientific.” Yet if it cannot be anti-science, and must still accomplish tasks that science cannot accomplish, then what exactly is this power? Fang Zhouzi gives no answer. How, then, are those people to be comforted who are troubled and bewildered, sorrowful and even desperate over the meaning of life? Besides teaching people to “believe in science,” Fang Zhouzi has made no other effort, and he himself also admits that those desperate people cannot find comfort in science. Therefore, it is reasonable to show respect and tolerance to those who try to seek “meaning” outside science (for example, religion), is it not?
Li Shen: Also on whether ancient China had science?
Page 110
If we look at the science of ancient China from such a perspective (science is a historically developing understanding of the natural world, and its judgments are correct only within a certain range. Here once again Hegel’s proposition is proved: truth is concrete. There is no absolute truth that is valid everywhere and doubted in neither ancient nor modern times. If there is absolute truth, it also exists within these concrete, relative truths.), then we can say with confidence that ancient China had science, because the ancient Chinese were also understanding the natural world and also made many judgments. These judgments were not so systematic, and the theories were not so rigorous, but they were also achievements of humanity’s understanding of the natural world, and a stage in the development of science.
////——On the question of whether ancient China had science, I think Tian Song has already explained it very clearly, and there is no need for me to repeat it. I excerpt this passage because I feel it is typical of that kind of “naïve” way of thinking. I will point out only one issue: the concept of the word “truth” discussed here, the pursuit and quest for “truth,” can one find a similar belief in ancient China?
February 16, 2006
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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