标签：science versus metaphysics

The Debate between Science and Metaphysics in Educational Modernization: The Case of Zhang Junmai

【Abstract】To define the “Science-CXuan debate” in China’s modernization process as either a dispute between the ancient and the modern, or between East and West, misses the point. The Science-CXuan debate reflects a certain tension internal to the process of modernization itself. What the Xuanxue faction, represented by Zhang Junmai, was proposing was precisely the demand of modernization, or “enlightenment.” At the core of enlightenment lies the education of national character, the cultivation of a free will. What Zhang Junmai was concerned with was not whether science could explain a worldview, but how to cultivate and establish a new worldview. And the establishment of a new worldview, or a new culture,…