According to Professor Wu, the historiographical program for a general history of science should primarily address the problem of how to make things “comprehensive.” In addition to the continuity of historical development across periods, we also hope to connect science and technology, Western science and Chinese science, and tell their story within a larger whole.
I discussed this with Senior Brother Shengli, Jin Shixiang, and others, and we reached some basic common ground. First, we can still hold high the banner of “intentional history” as a basic defensive strategy. Of course, when explaining the outline of the historiographical program, there is no need to get too deeply into its philosophical details.
Broadly speaking, so-called intentional history, or transcendental history, begins from our situation in the present age and traces back the conditions of possibility for those circumstances—how is the world-picture of modern science possible? It requires mathematization, mechanism, and so on; then how is mathematization itself possible? And so one traces further back. In this way, one reconstructs a transcendental historical logic, and then discovers how, in actuality, this historical logic was gradually filled out.
This method of reconstructing history bears a certain family resemblance to what is called Whig history: both take the modern situation as the result and then, after the fact, trace backward. But the difference is, first, that the reconstruction in intentional history is self-conscious, a perspective adopted through reflection rather than an unexamined prejudice; second, intentional history acknowledges the multiple possibilities of history, suspends value judgment, and does not take modern outcomes as the sole or highest standard.
The reason intentional history can acknowledge the multiple possibilities of history is that this method of tracing backward the conditions of possibility can only perform retroduction; it cannot be pushed forward—otherwise it would become rationalism or Hegelian history of ideas. In other words, the background against which transcendental history is gradually realized, the actuality of history, is not merely a one-dimensional force of obstruction or promotion; rather, it has a more active role and can lead history down different paths.
As I mentioned earlier in the snowball metaphor, the self-rolling movement of intellectual history has its own inner momentum and inertia, but the background in which it unfolds will also exert influence at any time, and this influence more often constitutes the contingent factors in historical movement.
What serves as the actual background of history may be called the “media environment,” including technical conditions and various other mediating roles, such as religion, politics, and so on. These elements likewise function as conditions of the possibility of modernity, but this layer of conditions differs from the transcendental conditions retroactively derived by intentional history: these are not transcendental conditions in the sense that, without them, the thing would be impossible; rather, they are conditions in the sense of what I call “catalysts.” On the surface, a catalyst does nothing more than accelerate or amplify, seemingly only exerting a simple obstructive or promotive effect; but in actual history, catalysts often also play an active role, because history is not a controlled environment screened off in isolation. Tradition contains all kinds of possibilities, and once one kind of possibility is accelerated by certain catalysts, other possibilities are bound to be suppressed. So, on the whole, the introduction of this catalyst shifts the direction history takes.
Heidegger says that modern technology is the final realization of metaphysics, and that all modern thought can find its roots in Greek philosophy; Mumford says that the modern mechanical system had already begun to function at the pyramids of ancient Egypt. But this does not mean that the overall course of history had already been predetermined from ancient Greece or ancient Egypt. In fact, the ancient world contained many possibilities. Not to mention that there were countless forms of civilization besides ancient Greece or ancient Egypt, even within Greek thought itself things were complex and diverse. In the end, a particular thread was filled out by actual history, while other possibilities were suppressed. This was due to many contingent links—glass, clocks, printing, climate, the Black Death, and so on.
Thus we sketch a picture of general history: first, we begin from the present and trace back its transcendental conditions, reconstructing the thread of intentional history; then we verify this against actual history, narrating the process by which intentional history was filled out; within this actual process, we then trace each turning point back to its background, that is, to the media environment functioning as a catalyst.
Broadly speaking, the logical thread constructed by retroductive reconstruction is the history of ideas, while the actual background of the history of concepts is the history of technology. But in fact things are not so simple. Many times technology is also included within the thread of transcendental conditions, while the background also includes various ideational elements. For example, writing technology, as the exteriorization of knowledge, is a transcendental condition for the possibility of science; but which particular writing technology—parchment or Chinese paper, alphabetic script or logographic script—this is a more external or more contingent condition. From the retroduction of intentional history, we should be able to conclude that some form of recording technology must be present in order for the objectification of knowledge to become possible, but we cannot deduce that this recording technology must specifically be alphabetic writing and printing. Therefore, tracing the media history of recording technology is both reconstructing the transcendental conditions of science and sorting out its actual background.
Still, roughly speaking, our picture has already connected science and technology. First, the intentional history we reconstruct constitutes the narrative thread of “history of science,” and the marginal parts of this intentional history—that is, the actual background causing its contingent turns—constitute the narrative thread of “history of technology.” “Science” is inside; “technology” is outside. Of course, “inside” and “outside” are only distinguished relative to the center of gravity of the narrative. A narrative that takes the history of technological development as its main line and scientific thought as the catalyst is also possible.
This picture also helps connect Western science and Chinese science. First, of course, we take the reconstructed history of Western science as the main line to determine the position of Chinese science history. To begin with, at the origin of the history of science, West and China may share some common starting points; if they then develop in different directions, we must investigate their respective media environments. Second, in many respects West and China were not very similar from the starting point onward; yet in the course of their respective development, they encountered changes in similar media environments, so we can examine the similarities and differences that different developmental paths present under the action of similar catalysts. Finally, China experienced the eastward spread of Western learning and ultimately merged into the torrent of Western history, reaching a similar endpoint; but the manner in which actual history filled it out was different. For example, China did not use alphabetic script, skipped over the background of Christian theology, and reversed the order in which it encountered civil society and industrialization. These differences in background may have given modern Chinese science a “momentum” different from that of the West.
It is worth noting that this picture does not solve the problem of defining science, because modern Chinese science, as the endpoint, is the consequence of the eastward spread of Western learning, and its origins in traditional Chinese science are severed from it. By tracing backward from the modern point of view after the fact, we cannot reconstruct the logic of ancient Chinese science. How exactly to define ancient Chinese science is another question. But this picture does not require the Chinese side to be “science” in order to make the connection. In fact, along this line we can also connect Western science with Western religion and the like. For instance, we can sort out the similarities and differences between the paths of science and religion under the catalysis of the same media environment.
As for defining the ancient Chinese scientific tradition, let me add a few remarks by the way. Of course, our usual approach is to take Western science as the main line and as the reference point, and then place the ancient Chinese scientific tradition accordingly. What stands out are the four major fields of agriculture, medicine, astronomy, and calculation; each has its own tradition, but only when attached to the scale of Western science can they be seen as a whole. But if we consider China’s own scholarly tradition, or rather a Chinese-style enterprise of “seeking knowledge,” does it have its own main line? The main line of Western science is “nature,” that is, the pursuit of interiority, of the world of essences. But China does not have an equivalent “natural science.” So it seems we can only make some loose comparisons, comparing Western arithmetic with Chinese computation, Western medicine with Chinese medicine, and so on, yet it is difficult to find a Chinese scientific tradition that can be compared with Western science as a whole.
However, if we widen our horizon a bit and understand so-called “science” as a kind of academic activity that pursues knowledge and seeks to understand things, then “nature” is only the central theme of Western science by coincidence, while in China one can develop a series of scholarly activities around another theme; then we may also be able to find some form of science as a whole within the Chinese tradition. Clearly, this science’s theme is not “nature” but “history.” I believe that “history” is the core concern of ancient Chinese scholarship, and all the various disciplines must determine their respective positions around this concern.
Western writing originated among the Phoenician merchants, while Chinese writing originated in Shang-dynasty divination by shamans, so from the very beginning they had radically different characters. The Chinese scholarly tradition originated in the “shaman-historians”; the so-called agriculture, medicine, astronomy, and calculation were all responsibilities of the ancient shaman-historians, but the core mission of the shaman-historians was recording and divination. In later times, the disciplines originally gathered in the person of the shaman-historians differentiated into different traditions, but their overall scholarly structure did not change. Recording and divination have always been the core of Chinese scholarship, while agriculture, medicine, astronomy, and calculation are all branches serving that core.
Of course, agriculture and medicine are relatively more separated, and this is even more true in the West; Western agriculture and medicine were also less often incorporated into the main line of Western science. But in China, agriculture and medicine still retain in many respects their connection with the shaman-historians. Agriculture has always been the study of governing the common people, the study of agricultural administration, and so-called “lower medicine treats diseases, middle medicine treats people, and higher medicine treats the state”; in the end, all branches of learning aim at the fate and fortunes of the state.
As for so-called astronomy, Professor Jiang Xiaoyuan has already made it clear: ancient Chinese astronomy was political through and through, serving the fortunes of the state and the Mandate of Heaven of the dynasty. As for mathematics, on the one hand there is the technical computation that was incorporated into astronomy; in the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, texts such as The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Arts and The Elements of Geometry are classified under the subcategory of calendar and mathematical astronomy in the Masters’ section, and are in essence applied sciences serving astronomy. As for “arithmetic” in the sense of theoretical science, it was still divination: the “calculation” in “arithmetic” was the calculation of divination, the “number” in “arithmetic” was the number of fate. In the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, the mathematical works included under the subcategory of arts and numerology in the Masters’ section are all books on calendrical and numerical calculation such as The Canon of Great Mystery and The Canon of Imperial Ultimate World Ordering. The Complete Library of the Four Treasuries is already a modern classification influenced by Western learning; from a more traditional perspective, The Canon of Imperial Ultimate World Ordering is of a piece with The Book of Changes, and even more closely related to The Mathematical Classic of the Gnomon of Zhou. Zhu Xi called it a “book of astronomical reckoning” (“推步之书”) (The Mathematical Classic of the Gnomon of Zhou is classified under the category of astronomical reckoning in calendar and mathematical astronomy). The Canon of Imperial Ultimate World Ordering speaks of “observing things,” speaks of “exhausting principle, fully realizing one’s nature, and thereby reaching destiny,” speaks of how “when one can know the way by which all under heaven and the myriad things are exhausted in human beings, only then can one exhaust the people,” and in the end it still takes the fate of the state as its ultimate aim.
In the Western traditional scientific system, because “nature” is central, the world of interiority and ideas has an independent significance, so “mathematics” of course has the independent status of a theoretical science. But in the context of the Chinese tradition, the status of arithmetic is instead merely instrumental and subordinate.
Chinese people point the meaning of arithmetic toward the fortunes of the state, while Westerners point the meaning of geodesy toward the elevation of the soul; both seem utterly incomprehensible, yet this is precisely the two divergent paths of reason. But just as understanding the structure of Western science requires understanding Western natural philosophy and soul theory, understanding the structure of Chinese science should also require understanding Chinese philosophy of history and theories of fortune and momentum.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply