Today’s forum on “The Contemporary Significance of Natural History” left me wanting more. It’s my fault that I asked my question too early at the beginning; later, when I wanted to say a few things of my own, there was no further chance.
Hearing some classmates ask about natural history and anthropology, others mention history, and others ask what natural history is, I had a few associations.
Natural history is not a single discipline, just as “experimental science” is not a specialized discipline, but rather a spirit, a tradition, a method, a way of thinking, an attitude, and so on. Advocating these features of natural history serves as a certain counterbalance to many tendencies in contemporary natural science.
Natural history is “Nature history,” literally “natural history.” In some places, natural history is mistranslated as “natural history” in the sense of nature history, and that is inaccurate. But does that mean natural history has some intrinsic kinship with history?
We often talk about the significance of the natural history tradition for contemporary natural science. What I have thought of, however, is that it is also worth discussing the significance of the methods and ways of thinking of natural history for contemporary history, or more broadly, for contemporary “cultural science”!
I was reminded of Rickert’s famous work Culture Science and Natural Science ([Ger.] Heinrich Rickert: Culture Science and Natural Science, trans. Tu Jiliang, ed. Du Renzhi, The Commercial Press, 1986), in which Rickert, from the perspective of philosophy of history, discusses the significance of the cultural sciences and issues such as how to distinguish natural science from cultural science.
“There are some sciences whose aim is not to formulate natural laws, and in general not merely to form universal concepts. These are historical sciences in the broadest sense. These sciences do not want to tailor a standard suit equally suitable for Paul and Peter. That is to say, they want to explain reality from the standpoint of its individual character; and this reality is by no means universal, but always individual.” Rickert points out: “How historical science formulates the special and individual character of the reality it studies is as yet unclear. For reality itself, by virtue of its immeasurable diversity, cannot be subsumed under any concept, and since every conceptual element is universal, the idea of the formation of individuating concepts appears at first to be problematic. Yet it cannot be denied that history regards it as its own task to make statements about the once-only, the special, and the individual, and that one must begin from this task in order to explain the formal essence of history. For every concept of science is a concept of task, and only by starting from the aims science sets for itself and penetrating the logical structure of its method is it possible to attain a logical understanding of science; this is the road to the goal. That history does not wish to adopt the method of universalization like natural science is, for logic, a matter of decisive significance.” (p. 50)
The “some sciences” Rickert refers to are the “cultural sciences” represented by “history,” but his description applies equally well to natural history. The hallmark of the modern experimental tradition in natural science is precisely its wish to “formulate natural laws” and “form universal concepts,” whereas the hallmark of natural history is precisely its attention to “the individual character of reality,” to what is “by no means universal, but always individual.”
Modern science pursues a method of universalization. Modern science seems always to study things down to fewer and fewer. Before we do science, we face all kinds of rich and varied things; but once we start doing science, we gradually come to know that this thing and that thing are due to the same law, this object and that object have the same essence… In the end, it would be ideal if one could find a theory of everything and explain all diverse events with a set of formulas. The world picture modern science seeks is one that tends toward unity and simplicity.
But the method of natural history goes in the opposite direction. Natural history seems always to make things more and more “natural-historical,” more and more numerous. Before we do natural history, we only know that these are trees and those are grasses; but once we take up natural history, we gradually learn to distinguish this kind of tree from that kind of tree, this kind of grass from that kind of grass… The world picture natural history brings with it tends toward richness and diversity.
This refusal to pursue universalization is consonant with the cultural science Rickert idealized.
In addition, Rickert believed that one major difference between cultural science and natural science is this: the object of natural science is without meaning, whereas the object of cultural science is imbued with meaning. The same is true of natural history. Compared with the objectification pursued by natural science, natural history cannot exist apart from human feeling. The reason natural historians observe nature is, first and foremost, that they certainly regard what they observe as not cold and lifeless, but as full of meaning.
However, Rickert further points out that as “science,” historical science also requires the elimination of human subjective evaluation. At first glance this seems a bit “inhuman,” but after a careful look at Rickert’s argument, one will find that his intention is actually very far-reaching: “There is no doubt that no one therefore wants to forbid the historian to adopt an evaluative attitude toward the events he studies, and perhaps not even a single meaningful historical work is entirely free of affirmative or negative evaluations. What must be emphasized is only this: evaluation does not belong to the concept of historical conceptual formation; on the contrary, only through connection with guiding cultural values can the historical importance or significance of events be expressed. This importance or significance is not the same thing as the affirmative or negative value judgment on events; therefore, the logical possibility of individuating concept formation does not mean that theoretical connection with value can be dispensed with, but that practical evaluation can be dispensed with.” (pp. 79–80)
Rickert’s intention is not to forbid evaluation of history, but to make one point clear: “evaluation” no matter what does not belong to historical “science”! Rickert sets a clear boundary for history as a science, but historians are not merely scientists. Just as physicists may express their metaphysical views, and those metaphysical views and beliefs are of great significance to their scientific inquiries, so too we must be clear about what is not science. Evaluation of history is obviously important, but it should not become the duty of science!
Natural historians of course ought all the more to offer opinions on the meaning of nature; however, such opinions lie outside “science.” For those evaluations of nature are by no means objective statements, nor correct propositions, but rather some kind of philosophical, intellectual, and emotional “insight.” Here again, natural history shares common ground with the historical science idealized by Rickert!
The natural science of the modern experimental tradition has become so powerful that its ways of thinking and methods have profoundly influenced fields of cultural science such as history. In such a situation, the significance of the ways of thinking and methods of natural history for history becomes especially important!
Our country’s history discipline—and also because of the former Soviet Union—has long been deeply infused with overbearing modern science, always trying to seek “universal laws” in history, always hoping to simplify the complex and diverse into a few things—for example, the “five stages,” and so on. These ideas are quite harmful! (I have written quite a few articles on these matters before.) In my view, not only should natural history be translated as “natural history,” but the history of humankind should also be some kind of “natural history” as well—we should not cling to summarizing universal laws, nor always think about how to simplify and reduce history. History is rich and colorful; like natural history, taking an “individual” perspective on history is of great significance.
Then what meaning does this kind of “historical natural history,” which does not pursue universalization and simplification, have? In fact, just like natural history, this kind of history focuses on each individual historical event, first because we are fascinated by history and interested in history; history and culture are our roots, the place where human beings live as human beings (just as nature is also our root, our home), and reading history and observing nature alike both carry a sense of “seeking roots.” Second, if we must say there is any “benefit,” then what we gain from examining history is “inspiration” and “insight,” rather than some law or theorem—just as we gain from natural history.
April 18, 2006
Latest Comments
- Gu
2006-04-19 12:17:40
Teacher Liu’s opinion is very good: translating it as natural history or as nature history is only a convention. It has now become customary, which has certain advantages, but convention must not be absolutized.
History itself already means investigation and discussion. Natural history refers precisely to the observation, summary, and study of nature. The term “natural history” is not really wrong; at most, it does not adhere to the convention of earlier generations.
Marx has a famous passage that also speaks of history and science. In The German Ideology: “We know only a single science, the science of history. History can be considered from two sides, and can be divided into the history of nature and the history of mankind.” Here the science of history includes what we now call natural science, social science, and the humanities. Engels, when speaking of Marx’s materialist conception of history as “a discovery of revolutionary significance for all historical sciences,” further added that “all sciences which are not natural sciences are historical sciences” (Selected Works, vol. 2, p. 38)
I feel that history’s significance for contemporary science is very great. In fact, China’s historical tradition, just like China’s natural history tradition, is the most remote and profound. China’s traditional methods and attitudes toward historiography are very different from those of Western historiography, and among them there is much valuable wealth worth inheriting. - Gu
2006-04-19 12:54:43
Contemporary positivist views of history, as well as utilitarian, simplistic, and reductionist approaches and methods of writing history, have brought about great problems. In my second year of high school I was once especially interested in history books. I read some of Qian Mu’s works and felt that he was deeply sorrowful about modern China’s forgetting of the historical tradition. China’s Twenty-Four Histories are a precious legacy, but they ought not originally to have become a “legacy”; they should rather have been a continuing undertaking. Qian Mu was asking: who is writing the history of the Republic of China? How should it be written? But I am afraid that, no matter what, it will be hard to reconnect with the historiographical lineage that has continued unbroken for thousands of years; the Twenty-Four Histories now seem destined to end with the History of Qing. Now I, too, have a deeper appreciation of his lament—medieval antiquity did indeed have “science,” and it was radiant and brilliant, but our most precious scientific tradition actually lies in natural history and history. Our ancient achievements in natural history, embodied in Chinese medicine, gazetteers of mountains and rivers, botanical treatises, astronomical observation, literature, poetry, and so on, together with such a glorious historiographical tradition, are unmatched by any other civilization anywhere in the world. I think those who want to build up the Chinese people’s confidence might as well talk more about these ready-made glories and develop them further~
- Ming
2006-04-22 14:51:29
After high school physics, chemistry, and biology, I’ve almost never come into contact with science again. I ended up attending one forum and half a salon in a row, and I felt that it was actually pretty fun~~
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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