1. Enumerate the major achievements attained by early Holocene Chinese ancestors in the realms of social economy and spiritual culture, and, on the basis of the several stagewise leaps in the development of human productive forces, attempt to demonstrate why human society thereafter entered an era of accelerated development.
The early Neolithic cultures of China in the Holocene were spread across the country, including dry-farming cultures in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, the Liao River and Hai River basins, irrigated rice agriculture in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, as well as hunter-gatherer zones distributed throughout the country. China is the place of origin of agriculture for crops such as millet, broomcorn millet, and rice.
There were many early Neolithic cultures in South China, but the most representative one was the Peiligang culture centered on the Songshan region in the Yellow River basin.
The Peiligang culture was discovered in Xinzheng, Henan, and dates from 9,000 to 7,000 years ago. Its main cultural content consisted of finely polished stone implements and a wide variety of pottery. Especially noteworthy was the discovery of turtle plastrons used as grave goods in burials, with incised symbols on them; although this cannot yet be said to constitute the formation of writing, it is enough to prove the degree of cultural advancement. Particularly striking was the discovery of bone flutes made from the leg bones of birds of prey; their exquisite craftsmanship and precise tone still amaze people today.
The Holocene is the latest stage of geological time, the second epoch of the Quaternary division, beginning about 10,000 years ago. The last Ice Age ended, the Earth’s temperature rose rapidly, spring returned to the land, and all living things revived. The streams that had once been everywhere amid ice and snow began to flow again. Human beings, who had lived in caves for millions of years, began to move out onto the open plains. From then on, human reproduction and the material reproduction of humanity entered a stage of accelerated development.
From the Paleolithic Age to the Neolithic Age, from the Neolithic Age to the Bronze Age, from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, from the Iron Age to the mechanical age, and from the mechanical age to the electronic age—these are the five stagewise leaps of Holocene humanity.
There are two reasons why human society in the Holocene displayed an accelerated trajectory of development.
First, after millions of years of evolution, human beings had developed both physically and intellectually to a certain stage, accumulating sufficient internal conditions for a leap to occur. At the same time, the end of the last Ice Age brought spring back to the great earth, with all things flourishing, providing favorable external conditions for human beings to emerge from caves and transform productive forces. These environmental factors and internal factors mutually reinforced one another, allowing early Holocene humans, as naturally as water finding its channel, to begin leap-like development almost simultaneously in various regions of the world. Once a breakthrough had been achieved, the momentum of humanity’s rapid development could hardly be stopped; and the encounter and mutual exchange among different human cultures that rose up simultaneously further accelerated the pace of development in the middle and later Holocene.
2. Marx and Engels said in The German Ideology: “We know only a single science, the science of history. History can be viewed from two sides, and can be divided into the history of nature and the history of humanity. But these two sides are closely connected; so long as human beings exist, the history of nature and the history of humanity mutually condition one another.” Briefly discuss your understanding and reflections on this statement.
Marx also said: “History itself is a real part of natural history, the real process of the transformation from nature to man. But in the future, the natural sciences will include the human sciences, just as the human sciences will include the natural sciences.” One cannot exclude nature and examine human society in isolation; likewise, to analyze nature in isolation while ignoring human influence is equally one-sided. Human factors and natural factors are always interwoven. As the famous social, psychological, and anthropological scholar Serge Moscovici pointed out in The Society Against Nature: “We depend on our environment because we have made it, and it has made us.”
Marx, starting from human beings, arrived at the conclusion that natural history and human history mutually condition one another; interestingly, modern physics, starting from nature, arrived at exactly the same conclusion. The famous quantum physicist Heisenberg said: “If one does not understand the meaning of the quantum revolution, one may feel that this revolution is not very fierce, because in this field the object of research and cognition is not nature itself, but humanity’s exploration of nature. … What we learn through various theories is not nature itself, but our relation with nature.” We can see that the common destination reached by the human and social sciences on the one hand and the natural and physical sciences on the other further confirms this truth—that human beings and nature act upon one another and are closely connected.
Today, as we have entered a new period, the relationship between human beings and nature is also changing—human beings are no longer helpless in the face of nature, left to submit to fate; humanity’s power to transform nature is growing stronger and stronger. Under such circumstances, our thinking must even less tear apart human beings and nature. As David Bohm put it: “The whole world, whether society or the natural world, is obviously also intrinsically connected with the inclusiveness within our consciousness and our thought processes.” —We must not, the moment we see “consciousness” or “thought,” stupidly denounce this theoretical physicist’s words as idealism. On the contrary, those who blindly worship science and arrogantly attempt to conquer nature are the more dangerous ones. To borrow Habermas’s words once again: “Nature-in-itself is an abstraction that we must take into consideration, but we always view nature only from the perspective of the historical formation process of humanity.” The most appropriate worldview and scientific attitude must certainly include a worldview that regards humanity and the environment, society and nature, as a unified whole.
Note: For citations in this question, see:
David Griffin, Postmodern Science—The Re-enchantment of Science, Central Compilation & Translation Press
Li Peichao, The Subversion of Ethical Expansionism, Hunan Normal University Press
Serge Moscovici, The Society Against Nature, Tianjin People’s Publishing House
Serge Moscovici, The Enchantment of Nature Restored, SDX Joint Publishing Company
3. Why is it said that early Chinese civilization displayed a “pluralistic unity”? And, from both social and natural background perspectives, demonstrate why only the Central Plains civilization could endure through the ages.
Early Chinese culture was spread throughout the country, including dry-farming agriculture in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, the Liao River and Hai River basins, irrigated rice agriculture in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and hunter-gatherer zones distributed throughout the country. Because China’s territory is vast and its ecology rich, spanning multiple climate zones from north to south and three geographic gradients from east to west, early cultures of different forms and distinctive characteristics emerged in various parts of the Chinese mainland. Distinct early agricultural civilizations appeared in ecological transition zones such as the West Liao River basin, the Gansu-Qinghai region, the Ring-Da’hai region, the Central Plains region, the Hai-Dai region, the Sichuan Basin, the Jianghan region, and the Ring-Taihu region. However, though “pluralistic,” it was also “unified.” Chinese civilization has continued from the Peiligang culture more than 8,000 years ago to the present day. Although it has passed through dozens of dynasties and been ruled by many different ethnic groups, its cultural lineage has never been interrupted. Meanwhile, the Central Plains’ moderate location, unique topography, fertile loess, relatively stable climate, varied landscapes, and abundant water resources laid the material foundation for the formation and development of Central Plains civilization.
Once Chinese civilization grew out of the pattern of pluralistic unity with the Central Plains at its core, it stood unshaken among the world’s civilizations. First, this was due to its powerful cultural centripetal force: that is, with the Yellow River region of the Central Plains as the cultural center, it continuously integrated various cultures, finally forming “China” out of the “Central Plains” and creating a unified cultural identity. The reason why it could successfully integrate multiple cultures into one unity is also closely related to China’s natural geographic environment—China’s major sites of civilization origins are concentrated in the regions below the eastern second-step terrain zone; here the terrain is flat and open, there are more plains, and natural barriers are fewer, which objectively is not conducive to the existence of cultural fragmentation. Meanwhile, the internal conditions that caused local early cultures to gradually weaken for various reasons while the Central Plains Yellow River culture stood out on its own, combined with geographic conditions, ultimately brought about the formation of cultural integration. Furthermore, once a pluralistic yet unified civilization had taken shape, the relatively closed geographic environment of the Chinese mainland guaranteed the relatively secure growth of Chinese civilization—the oceans to the east and south, the deserts and plateaus to the west, and the Siberian tundra to the north enclosed the vast and fertile Chinese land in a relatively isolated environment, so that China, in the early stages of civilizational growth, was less threatened by foreign invasion. In addition, due to the influence of China’s unique agricultural environment, the Chinese formed habits of self-sufficiency and a mentality of contentment and acceptance of Heaven’s mandate; these ideas, from another angle, also increased the stability of Chinese society.
4. Why did the international community launch the “Global Change Study” (Global Change Study)? Why does this program emphasize the process of evolution and human factors?
The Global Change Study began in 1987, and is so far one of the largest and broadest international cooperative research programs, involving many fields such as earth science, biological science, environmental science, mathematics and physics, astronomical science and remote sensing technology, polar science, the social sciences, and database and networked technology applications. Guided by earth system science theory, it emphasizes interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research, cross-sector and multinational participation, as well as regional-scale and global-model research on global environmental issues. From the standpoint of current development, global change research is a vast programmatic system composed of four relatively independent yet mutually complementary subprograms, namely: the World Climate Research Programme, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Programme, and the biodiversity program.
I believe that the Global Change Study was born out of crisis. By crisis, I mean on the one hand a natural crisis, and on the other hand also a human crisis: with the rise of modern scientism and anthropocentrism, and with humanity’s power to transform nature growing stronger day by day, the harmonious balance of nature as a whole, and the harmonious relationship between human beings and nature, have been broken. The Earth is facing an ecological crisis and a cultural crisis unprecedented in history. Under crisis, people have finally begun to realize that conquering nature simultaneously means conquering humankind itself, and destroying nature simultaneously means destroying humankind itself. And the “Global Change Study” is precisely the result of people reflecting on the mechanical, isolated science of the past. Traditional science emphasizes specialization, isolated analysis, and reductionism, deliberately distancing and severing the connections between whole and part, between one discipline and another, and between human beings and nature. But now, with the three great revolutions in twentieth-century physics—relativity, quantum theory, and chaos theory—with the rise of environmental science and ecology, and with the ever-deepening reflections of the social and human sciences, the scientific worldview that emphasizes specialization, isolation, and reductionism is gradually being replaced by a scientific worldview of interdisciplinary crossover and penetration, systems theory, and holism; the restoration of unity between science and the humanities, and between nature and society, is necessary and also the general trend. What the “Global Change Study” embodies is precisely such a pursuit.
Note: For references for this question, see: http://www.br.gov.cn China Basic Science Research Network
6. Briefly explain your understanding of the ecological fragility of “ecological transition zones,” and propose how human-land relations in these areas should be coordinated in the practice of socioeconomic development.
An ecological transition zone, by the definition of Chinese scholar Niu Wenyuan, is “in an ecosystem, the ‘interface’ between two or more material systems, energy systems, structural systems, and functional systems, as well as the transitional spatial domain extending outward around that interface.”
According to the geobotanist Beechar’s 1942 discovery, edge effects are one of the salient features of ecological transition zones. That is, in the interface zones of different landform units and biotic communities, the structure is often relatively complex; species from different habitats coexist there, population density is high, and productivity is correspondingly high.
However, aside from such advantages as “long food chains, increased biodiversity, and higher population density,” ecological transition zones also have the characteristics that “competition among species and communities within the system is intense, the frequency and magnitude of mutual rise and decline are high,” which means that ecological transition zones have “poor resistance to disturbance, interfaces prone to variation, and a long recovery cycle for the system.” “If natural fluctuations and human disturbances are superimposed on one another, it is easy for the system’s carrying capacity to exceed the critical threshold, leading to disorder and even collapse of the system.”
In general, on the one hand, the richness and diversity of ecological transition zones promote the formation of human culture; on the other hand, their instability and fragility pose a threat to the continuation of human society.
However, from another angle, the instability of the natural environment is not necessarily a bad thing for the forward development of human society. As Moscovici argues: “Like other species, human beings can only evolve and develop by disturbing the balance of nature.” In an environment of extreme volatility, human beings cannot gain a foothold; but in a placid environment, human beings also find it difficult to make progress.
I was also reminded of a characteristic belonging to nature, society, and life: the phenomenon of “negative entropy increase” — according to the second law of thermodynamics, an isolated system always irreversibly tends toward thermal equilibrium, that is, always from order toward disorder, from complexity toward simplicity; whereas life shows the opposite tendency. Life always strives to draw negative entropy from the environment in order to develop in the direction of increasing complexity and order. Such a negative-entropic turbulence, running counter to the overall tendency, is similar to the “dissipative structures” studied by Prigogine: when a system satisfies certain specific conditions, it may rely on absorbing negative entropy from the environment to order itself. These conditions are: first, a certain degree of openness; second, suitable fluctuations; third, being far from equilibrium; and fourth, the occurrence of internal nonlinear interactions—how astonishingly apt these four conditions are when applied to a “human-nature” system! The healthy growth of human society precisely requires openness, fluctuation, distance from equilibrium, and complex interrelations among one another. And ecological transition zones happen to provide exactly the two conditions of “fluctuation” and “distance from equilibrium,” while also increasing “openness” and “interaction.” It can be seen, then, that ecological transition zones are of great significance for the progress of human civilization.
Note: For this question, see:
Song Laoshi’s article “A Brief Discussion of Human-Land Relations in Ecological Transition Zones”
Serge Moscovici, The Society Against Nature, Tianjin People’s Publishing House
Guo Huaqing, The Wisdom of Nature—Modern Teleology, Shandong Education Press
April 15, 2005
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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