In the first week of the Wendao seminar at Wu, junior brother Liu Renxiang, a promising new talent, took the initiative to give a talk on “The Poverty of Anti-Whiggish Historiography.” There were many discussions in class at the time, and I even went up to the podium to draw a diagram, but afterward I kept busy writing my travel notes on Mount Lu and preparing my own seminar report, so I never got around to writing anything down. Still, this topic is quite important, so I’m taking a little time now to add some thoughts.
Just from the title of Liu Renxiang’s article, you can tell that the junior brother is full of swagger. Of course, this title also became the article’s biggest weakness. As for some of the views of history he actually wanted to express, there is not much problem, but aiming the spearhead at “anti-Whiggish history” is not appropriate.
Of course, there really is such a problem in the history of science field: almost every historian of science will begin by unthinkingly “going anti-Whig,” but there is not enough reflection on what exactly Whig history and anti-Whig history mean. Thus some people have begun to rethink this slogan-like “anti-Whiggishness,” believing that Whig history may be unavoidable. Besides Liu Renxiang, I remember arguing about this topic with Meng Qiang on KKBBS a long time ago.
They understand the anti-Whiggish position as some kind of “objectivist” position—that is, as requiring historians to abandon their biases and return to the original historical context in order to sort out history. But a simple rebuttal is: “All history is contemporary history”; “observation is theory-laden.” The historian’s subjective standpoint cannot, and should not, be shaken off.
So then, has the anti-Whig position been refuted just like that? That seems a little too easy; anti-Whiggishness has almost become an impossible task to uphold. But in fact, what anti-Whiggishness requires is only the suspension of “conclusions,” not transcendence of “perspective.” Anti-Whiggishness has never demanded “objectivism.”
Every historian, when faced with a vast ocean of sources, must find a point of entry, a focus, and a way of sorting and selecting materials—that is what is called “historiography.” Whether Whiggish or anti-Whiggish, once it is called “historiography,” it is inevitably subjective; that is, driven by one’s own standpoint, always using contemporary historiography to select and organize historical materials.
So what, exactly, is anti-Whiggishness opposing? In fact, it is very simple. I think many people make the issue overly complicated when they speak of anti-Whiggishness; in fact, the problem with “Whig history” is very low-level—precisely because it is “Whig history,” it means “science by scientists” before historiography has become self-conscious.
The reason historians of science are all eager to emphasize “anti-Whiggishness” is actually a declaration of independence: historians of science have historiography as historians of science, an independent perspective from which to assess history, no longer taking contemporary scientists’ standards as the measure.
Whig history in essence is “the history of science by scientists,” that is to say, scientists are not acting simultaneously as historians, but as scientists, compiling what is called “history,” and this “history” is often not part of history proper at all, but part of science. Its typical form is the introductory section of science textbooks, as well as some great deeds of ancient scientists added for vividness and richness when presenting each scientific law.
Strictly speaking, what Whig history compiles is not history at all, but ready-made scientific conclusions. Scientists arrange these conclusions according to the dates when they first came into being, and have no real intention of entering into history, much less of consciously adopting some historiographical program.
And anti-Whig consciousness marks the awakening of historiography in the history of science: the history of science is not meant to serve present-day scientific conclusions, but to return to history and excavate other possibilities.
Anti-Whiggishness emphasizes returning to the historical context and trying to stand in the position of people at the time in order to look at problems. This refers to a minimum of sympathetic understanding, not to abandoning one’s own standpoint and attitude.
A typical example of clinging to one’s own field of vision while failing to understand sympathetically is “Why not eat minced meat porridge?”—in my own living environment, if I’m hungry and there’s no food, then eat minced meat porridge, right? But put that conclusion in a different living environment and it becomes a joke. The history of science written by early scientists would have just such a problem: for example, how could ancient scientists not have thought of this, how should that be understood? Quite often this is simply the mistake of “Why not eat minced meat porridge?” The case Kuhn mentions—when one first reads Aristotle and feels he is beyond comprehension—is a manifestation of failing to switch out of Whig history. In a Whiggish narrative that uses contemporary scientific achievements as the standard, Aristotle’s contribution probably wouldn’t even rank above Huang Daopo’s; this is why “Whig history” absolutely has to be opposed.
Anti-Whiggishness requires suspending one’s ready-made value judgments. The key point is not to take present-day outcomes as the standard for measuring history, rather than to completely abandon subjective likes and dislikes. At the time I mentioned that in anti-Whiggish historiography, the historian brings not his or her own “values” but rather his or her own “interests.” That still does not seem quite accurate, because interests often contain values, and values often determine interests—I am more interested in things that I think are valuable. But the key is that anti-Whiggishness is self-conscious and reflective about its own value judgments, whereas its own “interests” are what it “lets be.” Whig history, by contrast, holds ready-made, unexamined value standards and lets them be without scrutiny.
In short, I think “Whig history” is in fact a problem at a very low level. Once the history of science has acquired a self-consciousness of “historiography,” once historians of science have independent agency in doing history, then they are basically already beyond the Whig-history problem. A fully grown history-of-science discipline no longer needs to get entangled in whether or not it is Whiggish; it should instead freely construct all sorts of historiographical schools and approaches.
However, before completely overthrowing Whig history, I would like, from one angle, to offer some defense of its existence.
Literally, Whig history means the history of the Whig Party. The British Whigs wrote the history of their own party, portraying the whole of history as a history of how they step by step defeated their enemies, overcame difficulties, and achieved final victory. The party history of a certain party that we are more familiar with is also a very typical example of this kind of writing. This way of writing history has very strong religious roots; it is almost the general form of “sectarian history.” Whiggish science history is likewise described as the history of how science defeated its enemies (religion), overcame difficulties (ignorance), and achieved final victory. And anti-Whiggishness is, in fact, a demand for the independence of the historian: it should be a non-Whig, or at the very least someone who has suspended his or her own party zeal, who can write Whig party history.
But is it completely meaningless, or ought it to be prohibited, for Whigs themselves to write Whig history? Of course not. Such party history, guided by conviction and containing the glorious achievements of predecessors, is always something important, even sacred, for Whigs. If believing in a certain sect is not an error, then Whig history is of course not bad either.
In addition to its similarity to Protestant sectarian history, Whig history can also be seen as the continuation of an even older tradition, namely “heroic epic.” Whiggish history of science does not aim to reveal historical possibilities or satisfy any philosophical or intellectual demand; rather, it is about erecting a monument to the great cause one holds in one’s heart. We say that Whig history is not really history at all, but anti-history, static history—it merely slaps discovery and date labels onto things already present in the now. But this static label is precisely an immortal “monument.” The ancient Greeks painstakingly recorded the champion of each Olympic Games; what historical significance does that long list of names actually have? What possible insight or philosophical space can it provide us? None; it provides nothing at all. And yet this tedious list has its own sacred value, and that value lies precisely in stepping beyond history and transcending time: through “being remembered,” great figures achieve “immortality.” Scientists are like that too. Their highest aspiration is nothing other than to have scientific laws or constants named after themselves. When those historical names are inscribed upon these ready-made, seemingly fixed laws and constants, the scientist’s “feats” receive the highest praise and become immortal legend. This is also what Arendt calls the highest pursuit of the “active life.” Precisely because scientists still remain enthusiastic about Whiggish history of science does it prove that scientific activity has never entirely become “contemplative life,” and has always retained the dimension of “active life.”
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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