The 2nd Tsinghua Forum on the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology was held on December 10, 2017. This year’s forum was somewhat smaller in scale than the first one, but it marked the point at which the forum entered a regular pattern; even if it were held just once a year as a summary report meeting mainly for the disciples of the Wu school, that would already be quite good.
After the meeting, Teacher Wu asked me to write a review, but I spent the first day preparing classes, the second day teaching classes, and the third day came down with a cold; I am still in a cold state now. I have dragged this out for more than half a week. Today Teacher Wu himself posted the meeting minutes, and I don’t know whether he still wants me to write anything, but I’ll still jot down a few comments.
For the program of the meeting, please refer to Teacher Wu’s minutes; what I am doing here is roughly adding some commentary.
The first report was Teacher Wu Guosheng’s “The Origins of Greek Astronomy.” It is said that this round of reports was arranged roughly in chronological order, so Teacher Wu just happened to be placed first.
Of course, this order was in fact not accidental. The reason Teacher Wu turned to the history of Western scientific thought was that he began from an examination of the history of Greek thought; and we students who later followed Teacher Wu also all began by hearing that one must always speak of Greece. Teacher Wu’s occupying the starting point of Greece is also only fitting.
As for the content of Teacher Wu’s report, there were many commonsense introductions to Greek astronomy and cosmology. Of course, these are commonsense for those of us who have long been steeped in the history of Western science, but not necessarily for a general audience, so I won’t go into detail. One point that was rather interesting is that Teacher Wu cited Vernant’s view, “arguing that the Greeks’ geometrical preference for the circle derived from the political life of the Greek polis.” He mentioned that the Greeks’ preference for a circular cosmos was related to the polis political ideal of “no domination,” and that political ideals and cosmological ideals influenced one another. This perspective of linking Greek political philosophy with natural philosophy is important; if one side is missing, it is hard to understand the other. But some of the more specific claims still struck me as somewhat dubious. For example, to start from the custom of heavily armored infantry often gathering in a circle to listen to the person in the middle and then infer a preference for equality and the circle, that seems a bit far-fetched. Of course, the recognition of “the heavens are round” is not unique. More crucial is that the “heavenly sphere—earthly sphere” two-sphere model is the distinctive Greek understanding: the heavens are not a hemisphere, and the earth is likewise a sphere. Heavily armored infantry certainly had a tradition of circular discussion, but they also had a tradition of forming phalanxes. In this sense, deriving the idea of “round heaven and square earth” from a preference for the circle also makes sense.
The second report was Jiang Che’s “The Genealogy and Commentary of the Various Editions of Pliny’s Natural History.” Junior fellow Jiang Che had just completed his doctorate at Peking University and had come to Tsinghua’s Department of the History of Science as a postdoctoral researcher. Jiang Che’s characteristic is “versatility”—he really is learned and omnipotent, fluent in Latin, Russian, Japanese, and various other languages; if you come across flowers and plants and want help identifying them, or if you run into computer problems, you can turn to him. But one flaw, or perhaps one trait, is that he is too low-key and modest, so at times he seems to lack sharpness. In fact, in this report Jiang Che put forward a sharp criticism to the entire Chinese academic community studying the history of Western science: if you do not know philology, you cannot do history of science well.
In the history of ancient science, especially in the manuscript age before printing, philology is indeed crucial, because there is almost no book that has survived from ancient Greece to the present unchanged. Almost all transmitted texts have come down through repeated copying over many generations. And each manuscript is almost never exactly the same as the next: there are copying errors, omissions, losses, reconstructions. The texts popular today are the result of countless scholars’ work of collation and textual criticism over the centuries. But these textual-critical decisions do not come with standard answers; deciding which version is more authoritative depends on solid philological research, and it also affects our understanding of the content of the text.
Jiang Che took the elder Pliny’s Natural History as an example to show why philological work is also necessary for understanding textual content (for example, in understanding the concept of “general education” / “encyclopedic learning”), and he also surveyed the philological work of scholars from England, Germany, France, Japan, Russia, and other countries.
The painstaking work of philologists and Jiang Che’s own work are all worthy of our learning, of course, but in practice this needs to be discussed case by case. First, the significance of philology in the manuscript age is beyond question, but in the era after printing, when discussing certain well-known works, it is not necessarily so important. Second, as modern scholarship becomes increasingly specialized, the existence of philology as a professional field means that we need some people to become philological experts, but it does not mean everyone must become a philological expert.
After discounting Jiang Che’s demands, my view is this: first, at the very least, every scholar must have a philological consciousness; one should not casually take a contemporary published edition and regard it as standard, but should seek the most authoritative and reliable edition possible while remaining aware of textual differences; second, we should learn from Western philology and from the philological traditions already present in Chinese classical historiography. But whether this learning means adding a dedicated philology specialty within the discipline of history of science, or even guaranteeing it institutionally at the level of disciplinary organization, is something about which I remain reserved. For example, foreign-language ability is an even more basic requirement for studying the history of Western science, but that does not mean a Latin program should also be set up under the history of science department; programs in Greek and Latin naturally ought still to be housed in the foreign languages department, just as specialties such as history of philosophy and history of theology naturally ought to be housed in the philosophy department, even though history of philosophy and history of theology are also necessary foundations for understanding the history of ancient Western science… Then a philology program should naturally still be housed in the history department rather than the history of science department; the key is to strengthen exchanges with overseas colleagues and with sister departments. Finally, although historians of science may not necessarily need to establish a philology program themselves, it is necessary to offer their own philology courses. For instance, although the history of science department does not have a Latin major, an academic Latin course specifically aimed at history-of-science texts can and should be offered within the history of science department itself. I also look forward to a new generation of historians of science represented by Jiang Che being able to set up distinctive philology courses in Tsinghua’s Department of the History of Science and to train doctoral students who specialize in philology.
The third report was Professor Yuan Jiangyang of the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ “Two Modes of Thought in the History of Chemistry: Elemental Chemistry and Atomic Chemistry.” He argued that the true origin of modern chemistry should not be Lavoisier, who traditionally is generally recognized and who held an elemental theory, but Dalton, who held an atomic theory. (This summary is taken from Teacher Wu; the similar outline parts below are also taken from Teacher Wu.)
We are more familiar with the application of the “history of ideas” program in fields such as astronomy and physics. Whether it is the transition from the closed world to the infinite universe, or the mechanization of the worldview, what is actually being discussed are the distinctions among “modes of thought” and their changes. So what about the history of chemistry? The opposition and transformation between the two modes of thought—element theory and atomic theory—proposed by Teacher Yuan is an excavation of the intellectual history of chemistry. Although Lavoisier proposed the important oxygen theory, its significance cannot simply be understood in terms of the “oxidation-reduction theory” we are familiar with today; the oxidation-reduction theory we have in mind today in fact already bears the imprint of atomic theory. Although Lavoisier opposed phlogiston, he belonged to the same tradition as Priestley, who adhered to phlogiston. Lavoisier did not overthrow the more basic mode of thought behind phlogiston theory (element theory), so his revolutionary character must be discounted. By contrast, Boyle’s position needs to be reassessed: he did not belong to the elemental tradition; his mechanistic, corpuscular approach seems closer to Dalton’s later view, though still very different.
The fourth report was doctoral student Lü Tianze of Peking University’s Department of Philosophy, “An Examination of the Thesis of an Industrial Revolution in Medieval Europe.” He examined what various scholars have said about the thesis of a medieval industrial revolution, mainly listing the extensive use in medieval Europe of water power, wind power, fulling mills, and similar mechanical devices in textile production and various other industries; all these technical achievements show the important place of medieval Europe in the history of technology. But Lü Tianze’s analysis concluded that, although we certainly should pay attention to medieval technological development, the term “industrial revolution” is not appropriate.
Lü Tianze’s report is related to my report later on. I believe that in order to discuss other “industrial revolutions,” one must first make clear what the genuine Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century actually means. As for the conclusion, I agree with Lü Tianze’s opposition to the term “medieval industrial revolution,” and I also agree with Teacher Wu’s comment: namely, that one may speak of a “technological revolution” in the Middle Ages.
I raised a question at the venue about the explanatory power of GDP data, but because there was no opportunity for back-and-forth discussion on site, I did not manage to make it clear. Lü Tianze mentioned that “from 1000 to 1500, per capita GDP increased from 400 international dollars to 774. In the same period, Asia rose from 450 to 572…. This result shows that around 1500, the degree to which Western Europe led other regions was far less dramatic than in the past two centuries.” But my doubt was this: first, when talking about revolution, one should compare more with oneself rather than with Asia. In fact, from 400 to 774, Europe nearly doubled, whereas Asia only increased by 1.27 times; if one compares a 94% increase with a 27% increase, can that not be called dramatic? One must also consider that the feature of the ancient world is that the economy did not grow continuously, but often fluctuated within certain limits. If medieval Europe had already established some kind of sustained growth trend, then could that not be called revolutionary?
I agree with Lü Tianze’s conclusion, but I do not quite agree with his mode of argument. Many of the pieces of evidence he cited in support of or against the idea of a medieval industrial revolution were economic data. But on the one hand, reconstructing economic data for ancient history is in itself highly uncertain; on the other hand, even if the data are taken to be reliable, the unavoidable problem is that data only provide quantitative comparisons, and deriving qualitative conclusions from quantitative comparisons is always suspect. If GDP growth of 300% counts as a revolution, what about 100%? What about 50%? What counts as significant growth? It is all a mess. The key point is that “industrial revolution” means a qualitative transformation; it must involve some overall structural upheaval, and such upheaval can only be supported by data, not directly inferred from data.
The fifth report was doctoral student Gao Yang of Peking University’s Department of Philosophy, “A Brief Analysis of Paracelsus’s Concept of Experience.” He went deep into the texts and carefully sorted out the meaning of the concept of “experience” (experience, experientia) in Paracelsus and in the actual usage of scholars before and after him. The modernization of the concept of “experience” is in fact a change in how “knowledge” or the activity of seeking knowledge is understood. What left a deep impression on me was the mention of “symbol” as “a way of obtaining knowledge of all hidden things.” This tradition of “magical knowledge” happens to echo the account we read in our book club this semester, Foucault’s discussion of the epistemic configuration of “similarity”; the friends in the book club said that after hearing Gao Yang’s report, they felt even more strongly about The Order of Things.
The sixth report was “Prometheus, Orpheus, Hermes — From Historiographical Programs to Stances on Knowing Nature” by Du Haitao of the School of Philosophy at Shanxi University. He argued that these three mythological figures correspond respectively to three historiographical programs concerning the Scientific Revolution: mechanism, natural history, and chemistry. Zhang Butian commented that making Orpheus correspond to a historiographical program of natural history is rather forced, and that chemistry is also insufficient to encompass the mystical currents represented by Hermes. [The above is also excerpted from Teacher Wu’s minutes]
Making Orpheus correspond to natural history is indeed somewhat overly romanticized, but Du Haitao mentioned that his discussion of natural history was based on Teacher Wu. It is true that Teacher Wu often says that we should use the historiographical program of natural history to reassess issues in ancient Chinese science, and he also mentions that the attitude of natural history can provide a kind of supplement or correction in a scientistic modern age. But the historiographical problem that needs attention and the problem of reconstruction are two different matters. The natural history that we advocate anew in this era can of course be idealized and romanticized, but to use natural history as a clue for understanding ancient science, especially ancient Western science, is a completely different matter. In fact, both I and Senior Brother Butian have thought—and Teacher Wu, in turn, has also been influenced by us and has come to agree—that the term “natural history” is simply not suitable as a translation for the ancient Western tradition of Natural History; we cannot use today’s ideal of a natural history attitude to understand ancient history.
Du Haitao criticized Di Bosi’s formulation of a chemistry tradition, arguing that Di Bosi was too conservative and unwilling to affirm the positive significance of the mystical tradition, and thus his chemistry program was incomplete. But Senior Brother Butian’s criticism was that Du Haitao was still too conservative; it would be better not to talk about a “chemistry” program at all, and instead talk about a “mystical” program, as Zhang Butian put it at the last meeting. The mystical program can encompass chemistry, but not vice versa. I also agree with this view. In fact, I long ago felt that the term “chemistry program” is rather awkward, because the two lines of chemistry and mechanism ultimately converge, with mechanism swallowing everything up; yet precisely after modern chemistry completely broke away from the background of mysticism, the line of “chemistry” itself was severed and merged into the line of mechanism. That makes it seem very strange: the establishment of chemistry in the modern sense is precisely the end of the chemical tradition. By contrast, the mystical tradition can cover a broader range, and its concept is more consistent. Of course, the drawback is also that mysticism is too broad in scope; what it covers does not seem to be on the same level as what chemistry is talking about.
The seventh report was by the associate professor of our department, Zhang Butian: “From Natural History to Natural History — How the Temporal Dimension Was Introduced.”
Several years ago I challenged Teacher Wu and proposed that in the context of Western history of science, Natural History should not be translated as “博物学” [bówùxué, often rendered as natural history or natural studies in Chinese], which sparked a fierce and long-lasting debate. I now feel increasingly proud of that debate, not because Teacher Wu was persuaded by me, but because that debate in fact more or less inspired the rather deep historical research of people like Jiang Che and Zhang Butian. These studies themselves are more important than the dispute over translation.
But translation issues still have to be involved in the research process, and Zhang Butian’s report this time first demonstrated, through numerous translation examples, that translating Natural History as “博物学” is inappropriate. Further, Zhang Butian also noticed the semantic change of Natural History in Western history: around the time of Buffon, it was infused with a temporal dimension. He therefore suggested that, depending on the historical period, it should be uniformly translated as “natural history” for the earlier period, while for the later period it could be translated as “natural history” according to context.
Teacher Wu commented that translation should strive to maintain consistency, and that one may examine “how the temporal dimension was introduced into natural history,” but the translation should not be changed; it would be better to translate it uniformly as “natural history.” I also agree that terminology translation should, as far as possible, remain consistent, but I continue to insist that “natural history” is the best translation.
The eighth report was by the assistant professor of our department, Hu Yilin (me): “What Is an Industrial Revolution.” My report was prepared rather hurriedly; the paper was not finished, and it was mainly just a PowerPoint presentation. Of course, by now I count as an old hand and know that many people will only post an abstract and not the paper, so I followed suit and muddled through, but this habit is actually not very good. I will try to put together an article in the next two weeks and post it on the blog.
I questioned the meaning of the Industrial Revolution from seven angles: time, place, person, event, why, what kind, and good/bad (the 7 Ws). Simply put, my conclusion is that only from the dimension of the history of technology can the starting and ending boundaries of the First Industrial Revolution be accurately defined. At the same time, if one insists on the dimension of the history of technology, then one is less inclined to recognize the so-called Second, Third, and Fourth Industrial Revolutions, and can replace them with plural, concrete “technological revolutions” instead (such as the electricity revolution, the information technology revolution, the Internet revolution, and so on).
At the venue, a teacher suggested that I bring in the perspective of engineering history, which I said was worth paying attention to. But because I did not manage my time well, I left no more time for discussion, which was very regrettable.
The ninth report was “The Ideas, Institutions, and Debates of a French School for Engineers” by Yao Dazhi, associate researcher at the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, introducing the founding of the École Polytechnique. The École Polytechnique is a model institution for modern science and engineering education, with emblematic significance, and it has had a considerable influence on the professionalization and institutionalization of modern science.
The tenth report was “The Chinese Communication Network of Darwin and Hooker” by Liu Hongjin, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Science, Technology, and Society Studies, Tsinghua University; the eleventh was “Science and Politics: The World Federation of Scientific Workers in the Early Cold War” by Li Jiayi, a master’s student at Columbia University. After I finished giving my own talk, I felt my spirits slacken a bit, and since I was not all that interested in the topics of these two talks, I did not listen very carefully. My impression is that I still heard some fresh anecdotes, but nothing left a deep impression, and I did not remember them.
The twelfth report was “Map Metaphors in European Classical Artworks” by Professor Wang Qianjin of the School of Humanities at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Old Wang showed us a great many ancient paintings to enjoy, and, according to the different metaphorical meanings of maps (globes), he made a preliminary classification (for example, symbols of power, symbols of knowledge, and so on), but he did not pursue a deeper analysis. His own research is in the area of Chinese classics, while Western artworks are studied here as a point of comparison.
The thirteenth report was “Gombrich and the History and Philosophy of Science” by Researcher Liu Dun of the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. It introduced the other side of the famous art historian and art critic Gombrich: his thoughts on the history and philosophy of science. Gombrich was familiar with the work of leading figures in the history of science such as Kuhn and Yates, and he also maintained close exchanges with Needham, Popper, and others; in the field of the history and philosophy of science, even if he could not quite be called an expert, he was certainly a seasoned enthusiast. In dealing with certain problems in world history and art history—such as the significance of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci’s role, and so on—he touched on many insights concerning the history of technology and science. Gombrich’s views on the history and philosophy of science may not have much reference value for professional historians or philosophers of science, but at the very least, his broad vision is something worth learning from. Art historians ought also to know a little history of technology and science; likewise, historians of science should learn a bit of art history. In this regard, Teachers Wang Qianjin and Liu Dun have set an example.
In the final closing ceremony segment, Professor Yuan Jiangyang, chair of the Department of History at the School of Humanities, University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor Ju Shier, chair of the Department of Philosophy at Sun Yat-sen University, and Professor Mei Jianjun, director of the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge, each delivered remarks.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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