Transformation of Knowledge and Educational Reform 9811992703, 9789811992704

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Zhongying Shi

Transformation of Knowledge and Educational Reform

Transformation of Knowledge and Educational Reform

Zhongying Shi

Transformation of Knowledge and Educational Reform

Higher Education Press

Zhongying Shi Institute of Education Tsinghua University Beijing, China Translated by Lin Zhang College of Foreign Languages Qufu Normal University Qufu, Shandong, China

ISBN 978-981-19-9270-4 ISBN 978-981-19-9271-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9271-1 Jointly published with Higher Education Press Limited Company The print edition is not for sale in China (Mainland). Customers from China (Mainland) please order the print book from: Higher Education Press Limited Company. © Higher Education Press Limited Company 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publishers, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publishers nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publishers remain neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Foreword

The relationship between knowledge and education does not merely have a long history, but has also become a theme of this age. How to understand knowledge and how to consider its changes have a very important significance to education reform and the development of education theories and practices. On this account, to discuss the relationship between knowledge transformation and education reform needs to be an important topic in current studies of philosophy of education. This book begins by defining of the concepts of knowledge, knowledge form, knowledge transformation, and the like, and then investigates knowledge forms and changes since ancient times till now before detailing horizontal and longitudinal multi-perspective studies and discussions: by virtue of the analyses of the three knowledge transformations, the book offers a solid theoretical foundation to the studies of the increase of human knowledge and the evolution of educational thinking; by virtue of the critical analyses of the objectivity, universality, and value neutrality of modern knowledge, it shakes the absolutization in views of modern knowledge along with the formularization of educational modes which significantly guides knowledge innovation and education reform; the discussions with respect to “tacit knowledge” (i.e., “implicit knowledge”) and indigenous knowledge promote more considerations about the important positions of the diversity of knowledge and of traditional culture; challenging the traditional belief of knowledge uniformity notwithstanding, the studies of the differences and the interrelations between natural, social, and humanistic knowledge all the more deepen the current discussions as regards humanistic spirit and education, and so on and so forth. On the whole, by extensive use of both foreign and local literatures, this book gives a broad, multi-perspective and multi-level discussion with regard to the relationship between knowledge and education, from the past via the present to the future. The author elucidates his particular views in which there is much insight manifesting his sparks of thought. This book combines theories and practices, embracing characteristics of the current time and creative thinking. It is of noteworthy theoretical depth and is strongly concerned with reality; it makes one sense the pressing need for education reform and appreciates the practical values of academic studies.

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At the level of writing, this book shows plain style but much grace. The author writes with ease and fluency while providing much material for thought, which can be said having sufficient grounds for his views and standing to reason, and will be an important reference for future decision-making in the practice of education. Since the ideas in the book are innovative, there will unavoidably be some problems needing further discussion and consideration, and this is common in the sphere of scientific research. For instance, at the end of Chapter 3, the author raises some questions for further discussion. I hope that the publication of this book can provoke concerns and discussions of many scholars. As the ancient Chinese saying goes, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step,” and in scientific research, it is of vital importance to raise creative questions. The author has not merely done this but has already stimulated some creative discussions regarding them. During less than one year of academic visit to Britain, Prof. Shi Zhongying wrote this book in his spare time even though he was at times ill. This monograph of some 30,000 words is a model for young scholars. Confucius appreciates “being bright and fond of learning,” and The Golden Mean upholds “being well-read, interrogated, meticulously reflective, evidently distinguishing and sincerely practicing”, and so forth. All of this is embodied by Zhongying. Appreciating his doings and writings, I wrote my impressions as the foreword. Beijing, China

Huang Ji

Contents

1 Introduction: Knowledge and Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2 Knowledge, Knowledge Form, and Knowledge Transformation . . . . .

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3 The Three Knowledge Transformations in Human History . . . . . . . . .

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4 The Historical Perspectives of Knowledge Transformation and Education Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5 The Change of Knowledge Qualities and Education Reform . . . . . . . . 101 6 The Change of Knowledge Increasing Mode and Education Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 7 Explicit Knowledge, Tacit Knowledge, and Education Reform . . . . . . 175 8 Humanistic World, Humanistic Knowledge, and Humanistic Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 9 Indigenous Knowledge and Education Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

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Chapter 1

Introduction: Knowledge and Education

As is commonly known, knowledge and education are closely connected. On the one hand, education is an important channel for the screening, dissemination, accumulation, and development of knowledge. On the other hand, knowledge is the content and carrier of education, and education without knowledge would be like a brick without clay, and the different educational aims (e.g., skill, capacity, attitude, emotion, personality, and the like) would be unachievable. To probe deeply into the interconnection between knowledge and education is a necessary premise on which social education in a period might be deeply understood and, simultaneously, is the foundation on which various schools of educational theories are based. Nonetheless, this interconnection between knowledge and education is not “natural” or “automatic”; rather, it is deeply rooted in power and practice (or social practice). That is to say, the interconnection as such is completely formed and generated by the results of human practices and out of their requirements. Therefore, for the sake of in-depth as well as specific understanding, this interconnection must be observed and understood considering the particular background of all social–historical practices, rather than being analyzed and discussed in an abstract and isolated fashion. This is the methodological principle that I employed throughout this manuscript in the context of the relationship between knowledge transformation and education reform.

1.1 Practice and Knowledge The concept of “practice” has various definitions. In the broad sense, it refers to all the activities of human beings aimed at cognizing and reforming subjective and objective worlds. In this sense, practice is life, life practice. Examples of practices include workers’ labor, farmers’ planting, and scientists’ research, as well as common

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people’s entertainment, students’ studies, and artists’ performances. There are innumerable types of practices. In the narrow sense, practice refers to the activities of human beings directed to “reforming” the worlds of the subject and object, in relation to the category of cognition. In this sense, practice is merely a particular sort of life, wherein knowledge is applied to change the objects of activity to meet the (individual and social) subjects’ needs for life. In an even narrower sense, practice is regarded as the activity of human beings intending to reform material, and even physical, worlds; here, practice mainly refers to “production,” and “social practice” is nothing but a sort of analogous parlance, a metaphor. Generally speaking, these different definitions rely on various contexts and serve multiple aims of discourse. As a result, there is no right or wrong between them, as they all have their respective advantages, functions, or limitations. In this manuscript, my understanding of the concept of practice leans toward the narrow sense, as this is the only one capable of clearly expressing my ideas as regards the relationships between practice, knowledge, and education; furthermore, this interpretation offers a conceptual ground to criticisms of and reflections on my discussions with regard to the relationship between knowledge and education. Practice as an activity reforming subjective and objective world makes the “subjectivity” of human life prominent, and constitutes simultaneously the “species trait” of human activities. This is because one of the fundamental differences between humans and animals is that humans can actively “reform” the surroundings through practical activities to accommodate their needs for survival and development, whereas animals can only passively “adjust to” the changes of the surroundings through instinctive reactions. Therefore, practice is a confirmation as well as a condition for human survival and development. If humans have some intrinsic nature, this is surely neither the so-called unfathomable “divinity” nor some intrinsic “naturalness” or metaphysical “reason” but the “practicality” they have formed during the course of their socio-historical activities. It is through practice that humans have increasingly expanded their living space, raised their living quality, and made their living style more colorful. Meanwhile, we have achieved more and more in-depth understanding of ourselves and our relationship with the surroundings, and we have become increasingly affirmative and confident in our future. Practice is the fundamental power pushing human civilization from low to high, simple to complex, and closed to open in the path toward continuous evolution and progress. Despite the differences among diverse types of human practice, they share some common and fundamental traits as follows: In the first place, all human practices have purposes, which play guiding and dominant roles. As pointed out by Marx, the results of human practice exist from the very beginning in the subject’s consciousness as ideas that are presented, accepted, or understood by him/her. There would be no human practice without a purpose. In the strict logical sense, there is no blind practice. The purposefulness of practice reflects the motivation or value expectation of the subject, namely, “why” to practice. Only when in-depth considerations are made to answer this question and are found satisfactory will the practices of the subject become “automatic” rather than “spontaneous,” “active” rather than “passive,” and “mature” rather than “naïve.”

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In the second place, all human practices involve objects and are aimed at changing a certain form of a subjective or objective thing or its existing state. If there is no human practice without a purpose, there is no human practice without objects, either. Similar to the purpose, the object is also sensed by the subject from the very beginning. The cognition and the understanding of the objects of practice become a prerequisite for the subject to set and realize the purposes of his/her activities. This aspect of practice addresses the question concerning “what” will be reformed or what might be used to meet the subject’s needs for a certain form of survival and development. Thirdly, all human practices concern systems and are performed under certain social systems by which they abide. The purposes, objects, and methods of practice are greatly constrained by social systems. Albeit isolated and individual practice exists at a logical level, it is quite infrequent and contingent in factual life. Under most circumstances, people are engaged in practical activities through certain groups organized in accordance with certain systems, each one shouldering a minor part of the overall practical tasks of the group to which it belongs. To this connection, the systematic facet of practice answers “who” is carrying out the practice, namely, the questions with regard to practical subjects and their form of existence. Without understanding this point, one would not be able to correctly treat the functions and limitations of the subject in human social practices. Fourthly, all human practices are technical and need certain special techniques. Regardless of whether the subjective or the objective world is reformed or whether the scope of practice is wide or narrow, to achieve his/her purposes effectively, the subject must grasp some special techniques, know some fundamental rules of practical activities, and be capable of concretizing them in his/her vivid practical processes. Otherwise, the purposes of practice will only achieve the stage of the “moon in the water” or “flowers in the mirror,” namely very superficial stage, and the subject will be enmeshed in “armchair strategies.” The technical facet of practice stresses that the subject must know “how” to perform practical activities. Fifthly, all human practices are cultural and are performed under certain cultural circumstances. This is mainly because the subject who plans and carries out practical activities is a “cultural human being,” growing up in the backdrop of certain cultural contexts in relation to nation, gender, territory, religion, language, values, and so on, that leave deep imprints. Human beings are always embedded in some cultural mode and tradition; hence, practices are never independent of such cultural modes and traditions. The purposes, means, and organizing styles of practices are influenced by culture. In this sense, only when the subject understands the cultural backdrop of the practical activities in which he/she is engaged can he/she effectively perform practical activities. The cultural facet of practice points out the relevance of “where” the practice is conducted. Finally, all human practices are historical and performed based on ready-made practical fruits in history to address the unsettled problems by historical practices. Today’s practices are the continuation, expansion, and deepening of yesterday’s and tomorrow’s practices reflecting on, criticizing, and surpassing today’s. Any specific social practice is a segment of the historical development of the species. Therefore, the subject should know “when” one is engaged in practical activities and should

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learn from the experiences of similar activities in history before correctly assessing the situation, handling it, and bringing forth the new through the old. Given these traits of practice, humans must gather the relevant knowledge required to perform practical activities reasonably and effectively, namely, metaphysical and philosophical knowledge pertinent to purpose-defense, notably the value theories (know-why) in philosophy; factual knowledge (know-what) in relation to practical objects; knowledge of sociology, psychology, politics, management, and so on (know-who), in relation to the practical subject and his/her organizing forms; technical and normative knowledge (know-how) to practical techniques; cultural knowledge (know-where); and historical knowledge (know-when) in relation to practical time and place. When this knowledge is lacking, no practical activity will be performed and no satisfying effect will be achieved. Consequently, human practices are based on knowledge, practices are penetrated by knowledge, and the degree and range of practices are conditioned by human knowledge. One of the reasons that human practices differ from the activities of animals is that humans own rich, systematic, complete, and symbolized knowledge, whereas animals have no knowledge or, at most, they merely have so-called momentary, sensuous, and scattered knowledge embedded in their actions. Over the past thousands of years, the increasing deepening and expansion of human practical activities were inseparable from the continuous progress of their knowledge. Today, in the twenty-first century, this demand for knowledge made by human practical activities becomes stronger than ever before. After a long-lasting “agricultural society” and a relatively short “industrial society,” humans are stepping into a new era, the “knowledge society”: a society relying on knowledge and knowledge creation in every aspect. This society is called, among other terms, the “information society” (Toffler, Naisbitt), “postindustrial society” (Bell), or “late capitalism society” (Habermas). The term “knowledge society” is the most suitable and precise among them. Since the 1960s, the progress of human society has been based on the shift from relying on “energy,” “resources,” and “capital” to “knowledge.” “Knowledge economy” has shown some inkling. The “knowledge industry,” particularly the “high-tech industry,” has become the burgeoning “sunrise industry,” and the reform and recombination of traditional industrial models are increasingly relying on the inventions and applications of new and cutting-edge technologies. Sharing new knowledge, controlling it, and struggling for it are also becoming the most relevant tasks of international political struggles. Behind the increasingly fierce competition to acquire international talents, there is de facto that for the creation of knowledge and potential new knowledge. The quality rather than the number of laborers is increasingly becoming the decisive factor of the developing potentials and comprehensive national strength of a country. International societies are increasingly concerned with the popularization of education and improvement of educational quality, most notably the effects of education on cultivating the quality of and capacity for knowledge creation in adolescents. Thus, education is being pushed onto the stage of political activities and has become an important issue in that field.

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As argued by Bruno Ribes, “Information is knowledge. Knowledge is power.” More than ever, this saying is acquiring compelling force, although it has in fact been true…Those who lack knowledge see their fate shaped by others in the light of their own interests. This is true of individuals and also of social groups and of peoples. Thousands of millions of human beings are subjected to oppressive forms of domination, both covert and overt, because they lack access to knowledge. (Ribes, 1981, p. 9)

What would future scenarios be? This is determined by whether the adolescents will win the struggles in the fields of politics, economy, and knowledge. Symbiosis within the current sphere of knowledge, which has not been clearly realized until today, leads to the foundation of the new one in future political or economic fields.

1.2 Knowledge and Education Practice calls for knowledge, and knowledge for education, which, via the screening, dissemination, accumulation, and development of knowledge, serves practices, promotes their development, and enables them to present greater, higher, and more complex needs for knowledge. This is the dialectic between practices, knowledge, and education. By virtue of the historical development of this dialectic relation, individual development, social progress, and human civilization are capable of mounting one stair after another. Knowledge calls for education. From the perspective of the individual, only through education can the individual acquire systematic knowledge, understand and uphold the value of knowledge, continuously develop from being ignorant to learning something new, enrich the content of knowledge, upgrade his/her knowledge structure, and improve his/her capacity to obtain, appreciate, reflect on, and apply knowledge. Thus, the individual can meet his/her knowledge needs during his/her practices and raise his/her level of practice and competitive power in the labor market. Given this connection, education consumption and education investment have become the main constituents of the individual’s and his/her family’s structure of consumption and investment in contemporary society. From a social perspective, increasing an entire society’s level of knowledge and creativity is essential to continuously increase the extent and quality of educational popularization so as to better enable people to grasp increasingly more knowledge and improve their knowledge cultivation. In addition, the traditional educational mode must be reformed; people’s enthusiasm for exploring new knowledge must be protected; and their activity, initiative, and creativity when engaging in knowledge creation must be improved. This is the only available strategy to lay a solid foundation for the upsurge of many creative talents, particularly that of renowned scientists, thinkers, artists, and engineers. Insofar as the competitive power of the knowledge of a country is improved, it is necessary to offer support to some disciplines and academic leaders to meet pressing needs, especially for developing countries. Nevertheless, practically speaking, this would not yet be sufficient. The demand for new knowledge encompasses manifold aspects and

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levels, which require corresponding creative talents; thus, the thousands of people engaged in knowledge creation are as yet insufficient to cover the society’s needs. Ideally, everyone should have an awareness of knowledge creation and capacity for it, as this would allow everyone to be engaged in creative work. Conversely, there is no specific protocol for the emergence of outstanding creative talents of knowledge. A person who has contributed much in the past may not necessarily make greater contributions in the future; conversely, if a person was obscure in the past, this by no means indicates that he or she would never enjoy prominent achievements in the future. In the history of science, this condition is exemplified by statements such as “Jianglang the genius has exhausted his talents” and “A great man becomes famous late in life.” Therefore, in terms of a country’s knowledge creation, the essential aspect is not offering superior conditions of scientific research to some individuals but using education to improve everyone’s awareness of knowledge creation and capacity for it, and establishing a set of complete systems of knowledge creation throughout society. In this way, knowledge conditions can be established within all systems of knowledge creation, and everyone can have the opportunity to contribute to the development of social knowledge. Knowledge calls for education; however, knowledge conditions constrain education at the same time. Although education can be said, in a certain sense, to have participated in the activity and constituted a necessary condition for the production of general human knowledge, it is by no means a productive institution of knowledge. More often than not, a person obtains new knowledge outside educational institutions. Typically, education merely starts from a certain value stance and with specific value needs to screen, disseminate, and distribute the knowledge a person has obtained so as to promote its accumulation and development; nevertheless, it also improves adolescents’ capacity for cognition and practice. Therefore, the products of cognition obtained by humans and the knowledge conditions they have reached are the major premises of educational activities, constraining the screening, dissemination, and distribution of knowledge during the educational process and, moreover, the key factors of educational activities like the purposes, courses, teachers’ roles, teacherstudent relations, and so forth. For instance, when there was no scientific knowledge, there could not have been the education of science; when human knowledge developed slowly, no assignment of knowledge creation could have been presented. In educational theories, different views of knowledge also produce different views of education, courses, teaching, and learning. The conflicting views on knowledge are among the causes to the contrasts between many educational theories. For example, the conflicts between the “traditional education” represented by Herbart and the “progressive education” of Dewey have deep epistemological origins; Herbart based his theory on a rationalist view of knowledge, whereas Dewey assumed a pragmatic or instrumental perspective, presenting his new ideas of education as based on a revised notion of knowledge. Therefore, one cannot understand any aspect of educational activities without understanding the knowledge conditions reached by humans in a specific historical period; those who analyze education problems in a certain era need to also analyze problems of knowledge.

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This interconnection between knowledge and education has been overlooked in the past. In conventional education theories, educators mainly extracted the educational conditions of an era from its social conditions (mostly the political and economic ones), which is rather reasonable and helps to grasp the social properties of education. Be that as it may, this perspective ignored an important issue, namely that the requirements presented by social politics and economy for education in an era are also realized via the newly performed screening, dissemination, and distribution of knowledge during the educational process. In other words, the new political and economic requirements for education are de facto reflected in new requirements for knowledge. For instance, once the Western bourgeoisie (inspired by Protestant ethics) gained control in the fields of economy and politics, they required that education be independent of religion and re-screen the contents of courses; to achieve this, they advocated the removal of empty knowledge aimed at maintaining the feudal system of hierarchy and the addition of knowledge of scientific technology, politics, history, philosophy, and so on. In terms of the distribution and dissemination of knowledge, the bourgeoisie established the requirements for popularizing education, permitting the mass of laborers to grasp technical knowledge to a certain extent; nevertheless, it also universally implemented the “dual system,” monopolizing academic knowledge and other forms of knowledge applicable to management. Even today, some “privileges of knowledge” are reserved for their juniors, such as expensive but competitive private high schools and universities. Accordingly, from the perspective of the relationship between knowledge and education, the connections between social politics, economy, and education can be seen to be complex and reveal that different political and economic forces control education, struggling fiercely against each other. It can thus be seen that the relationship between knowledge and education is far more complex and significant than previously expected. Nevertheless, this relation has long been ignored by those who work on education theories and practices, as evinced by the current education reform in China. The connection between these aspects has even been weakened by some very radical education reformers who hold that, in this age of knowledge upsurge, the most important aspect is not to grasp “knowledge” but to develop students’ “quality” and “capacity,” simply opposing “knowledge” to “quality” and “capacity.” Some have even noted that the notion of “knowledge-oriented teaching” should be converted into “capacity-oriented teaching.” As for the problem of “students being overburdened,” in recent years, the amount and degree of difficulty of knowledge in teaching materials and courses have declined and been reduced to different extents, resulting in more spare time for students but a decrease of intellectual burden. In the current education reform in China, the concepts of “naturalism” and “formal education” are dominant; hence, “child-oriented-ness” and “capacity-training” have become the primary principles guiding many reforming modes of education and teaching. As a result, the capacity to grasp knowledge has weakened, and, worse still, the relationship between knowledge and education fails to be discussed earnestly. This is quite unfavorable to the education reform in that as was stated afore, it is not that the new century and new practices do not need knowledge; just the opposite, they present stronger and more comprehensive needs for knowledge. Past difficulties should not be entirely attributed to the

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stress on grasping knowledge. The current education reform should not weaken the relationship between knowledge and education; rather, it should rethink it, aiming at understanding what knowledge is most relevant to educational values, what methods of teaching and acquiring knowledge are significant, how students’ awareness of knowledge creation and capacity for it can be cultivated, how the purposes of society can be realized via the distribution of knowledge, how the relationship between Western knowledge and Chinese knowledge can be dealt with, and so on and so forth. On the whole, given the relevant changes that are occurring in contemporary social practices, deeply contemplating the relationship between knowledge and education is an essential mission of educational philosophy. As said by Scheffler, The development and transmission of knowledge are fundamental tasks of education, while analysis of its nature and warrant falls to that branch of philosophy known as epistemology, or theory of knowledge. An adequate educational philosophy must not only address itself to epistemological problems in their general form but must also strive to view these problems from the perspective of educational tasks and purpose. (Scheffler, 1965, 1)

References Ribes, B. (1981). Domination or Sharing? Endogenous Development and the Transfer of Knowledge. The UNESCO Press. Scheffler, I. (1965). Conditions of Knowledge: An Introduction to Epistemology and Education. Scott, Foresman & Company.

Chapter 2

Knowledge, Knowledge Form, and Knowledge Transformation

Before addressing the relationship between knowledge transformation and education reform, some key concepts need to be introduced, say, knowledge, knowledge form, and knowledge transformation. Of these three concepts, knowledge is familiar to people whereas knowledge form and knowledge transformation are generally novel in the sphere of education, in which concepts, however, are not without rational source and empirical foundations. My discussion of these concepts goes beyond the need to provide a “standard” definition for them, nor is it meant to reveal their “logical truth”; rather, I intend to explicate these concepts’ different usages, their meanings in the context of this monograph, their thinking origins, and some relevant epistemological meanings so as to offer a conceptual framework to the upcoming chapters that can also be used as a reference for future studies.

2.1 Knowledge In our daily life, including the educational aspect, people discuss, study, and teach various types of knowledge. When it comes to the question of “What is knowledge?” nevertheless, not everyone is capable of offering a definite answer. As a matter of fact, this is also a hard question in that first, the extension of the concept of knowledge is very broad, including various recognitive results with different qualities, types, scopes, levels, stating modes, or the like, and, resultantly, its intension is as hard to determine. In general, people employ this word in some vague sense or in a quite specific one. For instance, “Lu Xun is very knowledgeable,” “We are sending the children to school to get the knowledge of sciences and cultures,” and so on. The question “What is knowledge?” sounds somewhat metaphysical and people seldom think of it or try to answer it directly. Secondly, at a logical level, “What is knowledge?” is associated with “What is not knowledge?” hence, de facto, with

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“standard of knowledge.” This issue gives rise to some other questions: What is the standard to judge whether or not a statement is knowledge? Who sets this standard and how? How do people deploy the standard as such in practical judging acts? Such questions are particularly that in which common people would not “like” to show their interest. That said, my coming analyses would indicate that albeit people might not have interest in these questions, how to answer them is not without any immediate or mediate “concerns about gains and losses” with them. Thirdly, in daily life, there are complex relations between the concept of knowledge on the one hand and truth, belief, etc., on the other. When people obtain some knowledge, they will, as a rule, consider it as a truth and have a sort of belief in its truthfulness and operability. To this connection, it is never an easy thing for one to make rational thinking about knowledge itself. In a word, to answer “What is knowledge?” is a conundrum not merely in the sphere of pedagogy but also in the philosophical field.1 Nonetheless, we must offer an answer, albeit a tentative, immature one needing further modifications. This is because in pedagogy, when we cannot answer “What is knowledge?” we will naturally be incapable of answering “What is knowledge with educational values?” let alone screening and organizing the deposited wealth of human knowledge to form course knowledge. Worse still, we will not correctly treat the relationship between knowledge and education. In the sphere of philosophy, when we cannot answer “What is knowledge?” all the epistemological questions concerning the origin, development, and values of knowledge will lose their significance or logical support. Moreover, these questions are also closely related to educational problems, and that is why some pedagogical philosophers regard the question “What is knowledge?” as the foremost issue of epistemology or theory of knowledge. As a consequence, necessary as answering this question is, generally speaking, nevertheless, due to the restriction from their educational background, many pedagogical philosophers have great difficulty in offering a definite and persuasive answer to this question. That which they can do is mainly to help readers or the audience to better understand it, promote them to get its meaning by themselves, and perform independent considerations via connecting them with their own work.2

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The difficulty also has some bearings on the mode of questioning. The question “What is knowledge?” has omitted any context whatever, which is not expecting an individual to answer it with his own ideas but expecting that a specific individual be capable of rising over, once and for all, the restrictions of any linguistic and cultural backgrounds and directly hitting upon the very “essence” of knowledge. Anyone faced with such a question will unavoidably feel a little bit timid in that we are so intellectually clear that we cannot hit the unique essence. In other words, our intellect knows exactly that we are not sure enough to hit upon that essence. In college classes, students’ response to such a question is, as a rule, “silence.” Be that as it may, when we change the mode of questioning to a little extent, the situation would be greatly different. As to “How do you know about knowledge?”, I think everyone is capable of answering it with confidence. The fact, however is, our modern culture has been accustomed to asking “What is…?” So, it is somewhat difficult to change the mode of questioning. 2 In the preface to his Conditions of Knowledge: An Introduction to Epistemology and Education (1965), the American philosopher Israel Scheffler wrote, “My hope has been to engage the reader himself in the process of philosophical reflection on the nature and conditions of knowledge,

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In the history of Western philosophy, philosophers have offered various answers to “What is knowledge?” Plato distinguished between knowledge (“episteme”) and opinion (“doxa”), contending that knowledge was the result of human rational cognition, and people’s reflections upon and expressions of the essence of things, and hence it was different from “opinion” produced by human sensuous cognition. As regards this, Bertrand Russell definitely argued, Most modern men take it for granted that empirical knowledge is depend upon, or derived from, perception. There is, however, in Plato and among philosophers of certain other schools, a very different doctrine, to the effect that there is nothing worthy to be called “knowledge” to be derived from the senses, and that the only real knowledge has to do with concepts. In this view, “2 + 2 = 4” is genuine knowledge, but such a statement as “Snow is white” is so full of ambiguity and uncertainty that it cannot find a place in the philosopher’s corpus of truths. (Russell, 1945, p. 149)

It can be said that in Plato, knowledge is truth, “the work of reason,” and no sensuous experience is capable of constituting genuine knowledge. In his view, there is only one sort of genuine knowledge and truth: mathematical knowledge and mathematical truth. This idea of Plato was followed by some philosophers in the history of Western philosophy albeit they were of different epochal and cultural backgrounds and of statements in difference modes. Like Plato, in terms of the problems of knowledge, Descartes qua one of the founders of modern Western philosophy also holds a skepticism attitude toward the reliability of sensuous experiences. Plato believed that “Snow is white” is very vague; Descartes argued that “I feel that I am sitting beside the firestone in pajamas” is very questionable in that sometimes the fact is merely that I am dreaming and the actual I is lying in the bed, naked. Nevertheless, compared with Plato, Descartes is more radical as regards his skepticism in that in him, not only the aforementioned sensuous experiences are questionable, even mathematical knowledge considered by Plato as true is of no exception. The only thing going beyond suspicion is the being of “I” as a thinker which, in Descartes’ terminology, is “Ego cogito, ergo sum.” It is Descartes’ contention that this is the strongest foundation and premise of all knowledge. He cited “wax” as an example to show how the knowledge of things in the external world is produced in the “cogito.” The wax is of many sensuous properties, such as tasting sweet, smelling fragrant, looking colored in a certain way with a certain size and shape, and touching hard and warm to a certain extent, to name a few. Nevertheless, when the wax approaches fire, these attributes change albeit the wax remains there. From this example, Descartes concluded that genuine wax is not what people feel but is constituted by properties such as extension, flexibility, and so on, obtained not via sense organs but via thought. In the view of Descartes, the knowledge obtained via sense organs is confusing and shared by human and brutes; only the knowledge obtained via thought is clear and reliable, being unique to the humankind.

to encourage him to develop his own solutions to the problems and his own evaluation of their educational bearings” (Scheffler, 1965, preface).

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After Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, and others all stressed the logical constituents of knowledge structure and the rational function of knowledge formation. Spinoza maintained that as the association between each part of the cosmos is logical, the only proper method to explore this association is the geometrical one, in virtue of which all the essences of the world and human life can be deduced logically from the self-evident axioms. He emphasized that during the course of human cognition, the participation of affections will only bring about confusions of knowledge and only pure reason can lead to the clear and definite knowledge in Descartes’ terminology. As regards problems of knowledge, Leibniz inherited the ideas of Descartes and Spinoza, merely basing his own demonstration on the new ontology—Monadology. He believed that both the cosmos and human body are composed of individual monads. Each monad differs from others and is an uncuttable unit. There is no connection whatsoever between these monads, except for the so-called “pre-established harmony” between them, just like two clocks from different places happen to point to the same time. Of all the monads, there is one being dominant, the human mind. Only the human mind is capable of recognizing the “pre-established harmony” among the monads, hence producing clear and definite ideas. Leibniz qua the founder of modern mathematical logic strongly stressed the importance of logic during the process of knowledge acquisition, contending that by dint of logic, deduction can be performed in the spheres of metaphysics and morals as in the mathematical field. Kant was greatly influenced by David Hume’s skepticism on epistemological problems and was engaged in answering how pure natural science (knowledge) could be possible. Compared with Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, Kant did not deny the role of sensuous experiences in knowledge formation, holding that our knowledge cannot transcend experiences. However, he also argued that these experiences merely offer materials to knowledge and whether or not they constitute reliable knowledge depends on some “transcendental categories” and “analytic judgments,” not resulting from empirical inductions. In the history of Western philosophy, that which stood side by side with the aforementioned rationalist concept of knowledge was the empiricist one. Generally speaking, empiricist concept of knowledge denies any transcendental idea or category, holding that all human knowledge originated from sensuous experiences and reflects the various associations in the external world. The concept as such was explicated in the most concentrated fashion in Francis Bacon and John Locke. As the founder of modern experimental sciences, Bacon pointed out, not without justice, after investigating the then conditions of human knowledge, That the state of knowledge is not prosperous nor greatly advancing, and that a way must be opened for the human understanding entirely different from any hitherto known, and other helps provided, in order that the mind may exercise over the nature of things the authority which properly belongs to it. (Bacon, 1960, p. 7)

Here, the “new path” is that of empirical science, the “help” the new methods of induction and experiment, and the “thinking authority belonging to human beings” that of scientific knowledge and methods. As such, to obtain this novel and more reliable knowledge, Bacon appealed to people to abandon the four “idols” that had

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been controlling people’s thoughts, namely, the “idols of the tribe,” “idols of the cave,” “idols of the marketplace,” and “idols of the theater.” Of the four idols: the idols of the tribe are of their humanity ground, misleading people to think that human ideas are the standards for things, as the result of which the idea of human beings and the essence of things are mixed and the latter is distorted; idols of the cave are human beings’ own fantasies, which make them intend to believe that their ideas are true; idols of the market place appertain to the usage of words in social communication. Words dominate and control understanding hence lead people into futile disputes; idols of the theater originated, whereas, from various philosophical dogmas and wrong statements, from people’s blind worship for them. Bacon believed that the existence of these idols results in the fact that none of people’s ideas properly reflects the essence of things in the external world, and hence, they are delusive, distorted wrong ideas. Genuine knowledge will not be obtained unless Nature is followed and idols eliminated. Genuine knowledge is a faithful reflection of external things, and observation and experiment are the most reliable paths to obtain it. On the basis of these statements, Locke pointed out, in more plain fashion, that human mind is like a piece of white paper without any transcendental idea whatsoever. All ideas are obtained via sensation as the only access to knowledge. Knowledge is the cognition with regard to the “coincidence,” “similarity,” or “causality” between two ideas. Locke argued that human cognition proceeds gradually from the perception of individual phenomena via induction to general principles. It goes without saying that in terms of the concept of knowledge and relevant problems, there is much difference even opposition between empiricism and rationalism. They have something in common, though. For instance, they both connect the concept of knowledge with “genuine knowledge” or “truth” and differentiate them from “fallacy,” “bias,” “idol,” etc.; they both base their theories on the differentiation between the subject and the object of cognition, merely putting emphasis on different points; they both have a sort of ahistorical epistemological inclination, namely, once the subject of cognition obtains knowledge, the knowledge as such would be ultimate and unquestionable, and the knowledge is itself seen as an ahistorical product. It is due to these deeper similarities that Karl Popper claimed, very plainly, “The differences between classical empiricism and rationalism are much smaller than their similarities” (Popper, 1963, p. 4). In the history of Western philosophy, the concepts of knowledge of empiricism and rationalism existed and were confronted with each other for a long time. To the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, a new concept of knowledge emerged, namely the pragmatist one. The pragmatist concept of knowledge was gradually formed during American people’s historical life. Rather than connecting knowledge with the subject’s reason (e.g., rationalism) or with the object’s attributes (e.g., empiricism), it regards knowledge as an “instrument”; thus, it is also called the knowledge of instrumentalism. William James and John Dewey are the two philosophers who gave the most definite elucidations. James qua a psychologist firmly denied the existence of “consciousness,” hence denied that of a transcendental subject and the distinction between subject and object. That which he employs to substitute for “consciousness” is “pure experience,” a transient “stream

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of life.” Under some circumstances, a given undistinguished pure experience is the “knower”; under some others, it might become the “known.” It is James’s contention that “Knowing” is the particular connection between two parts of pure experiences. In this vein, people can hardly distinguish in the constitution of knowledge between transcendental form and experiential content for they are lively intermingled and have fused into the stream of life experiences. James believed, as a standard examining knowledge, “It is useful because it is true or that it is true because it is useful! Both these phrases mean exactly the same thing” (James, 1907, p. 79). That is to say, the standard of knowledge is neither the subjective rational form nor the objective sensuous experience but the capacity to produce satisfactory behavioral results. Dewey further theorized and reified James’s thought. He sharply criticized the conventional concept of knowledge, contending that viewing “truth” (genuine knowledge) as static, ultimate, perfect, and eternal knowledge was drastically incorrect. According to him, all knowledge is tentative and perpetually evolving. Knowledge is itself the media of the interplay between the organism and the surroundings, and the result of the organism’s exploration for the sake of being attuned to the stimuli from the surroundings. If a sort of knowledge is valid or genuine, it will surely improve the organism’s capacity to explore and be attuned to the surroundings, or else it is invalid and incorrect. He thus argued, If ideas, meanings, conceptions, notions, theories, systems are instrumental to an active reorganization of the given environment, to a removal of some specific trouble and perplexity, then the test of their validity and value lies in accomplishing this work. If they succeed in their office, they are reliable, sound, valid, good, true. (Dewey, 1920, p. 156)

This is pragmatist or instrumentalist view of knowledge and knowledge standard, an authentic “American” concept of knowledge. Daniel J. Boorstin once said, not without confidence, “No American invention has influenced the world so powerfully as the concept of knowledge which sprang from the American experience” (Boorstin, 1958, p. 223). He called the concept as such the knowledge of “natural history” so as to distinguish it from the “aristocratic” knowledge in European history of philosophy. He meant that American philosophers’ concept of knowledge was practiced in the field rather than discussed in the aristocrats’ saloons, which was of plain characteristics of “practicality” and “positivity.” It is such a concept of knowledge that freed the American culture from large amount of metaphysics and dogmatism, enabling American people to turn their regard toward the changes in the surrounding world and hence to have a high sensitivity to new problems. Views as regards the concept of knowledge in the twentieth century were all the more varied and colored, being full of disputes. On the whole, philosophers either modified the empiricist, rationalist, or pragmatist concepts of knowledge, or essentially abandoned them and understood knowledge from some other novel perspectives. Analytic philosophers like Russell, early Wittgenstein, and others modified the empiricist concept of knowledge and denied the rationalist one, and further analyzed a piece of knowledge or a proposition into some smaller examinable “atom propositions,” holding that the significance and truthfulness rested in their “coincidence” or “conformity” with experiences and evidences. This logic positivism view did

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not exert great influences in the twentieth century theories of knowledge except, if possible, for setting a target for new notions of knowledge. In the section on the quality of knowledge, I will analyze in detail the revolution of the notion of knowledge and the relevant pedagogical significance in the twentieth century. Here, I merely intend to point out that in the twentieth century, philosophers such as Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Richard Rorty, sociologists of knowledge such as Karl Mannheim and Max Scheler, scientific philosophers such as Karl Popper and Paul Feyerabend, and thinkers upholding “post-modernism” such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and others, all argued against the rationalist and empiricist concepts of knowledge from different perspectives and explicated their contributions and limits, attempting to reveal, in new theory of knowledge and socio-political background, the social, historical, ideological, and power qualities of human knowledge including the scientific one. For instance, Nietzsche criticized in fierce fashion the tradition of rationalist knowledge in the German culture, often employing as satires on rationalism such appellations like “underdeveloped logic,” “deficient logic,” “pale concept,” “callous reason,” among others. Mannheim presented, whereas, the concept of “sociologically determined knowledge,” arguing against the individualism, absolutism, positivism, and euro-centrism of the concepts of knowledge. As to the standard of knowledge, he argued that it could not be found in the sphere of philosophy and epistemology but must “be found somewhere else,” namely, in the society. Foucault set out from the relations between knowledge and discourse and between knowledge and power, and made some brand-new statements as regards the concept of knowledge, say, “Knowledge is a group of elements formed in a regular manner by a discursive practice”; “Knowledge is that of which one can speak in a discursive practice”; “Knowledge is the space in which the subject may take up a position and speak of the objects with which he deals in his discourse”; “There are bodies of knowledge that are independent of the sciences, but there is no knowledge without a particular discursive practice” (Foucault, 1972, p. 201). In Foucault, knowledge is no longer static but dynamic; no longer a signified statement but a series of standards, tests, institutions, and modes of behavior; no longer a result of rational contemplation but a series of results of the operation of social power. This review shows that the problem of the concept of knowledge involves more than merely offering a simple definition of knowledge; rather, it is concerned with other complex and important epistemological problems, such as the origin, standard, quality, and even development of knowledge, to name just a few. More than that, seen from the history of Western philosophy, it is not that there has never been consensus as to the concept of knowledge from ancient times till now, but there were also not without bifurcations. We may even say that there were few authentic consensus but a large number of bifurcations not merely among different philosophical schools but within one school also. Thus, the question “What is knowledge?” is open and cannot be settled once and for all. When we rise over the specific bifurcations on views and observe it from a purely logic perspective, we can see that, historically, people’s answers to the concept of knowledge or to “What is knowledge?” are generally pertinent to the following relations.

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In the first place, it is the relations between knowledge and the knower. Does the knower emerge with individual or social status during the course of obtaining knowledge? Is he/she active or passive on earth? Does reason or sensation play the dominant role? How to deal with the relationship between statements of knowledge and the knower’s knowledge beliefs in the end? In the second place, it is the relations between knowledge and the known. Is knowledge the “mirror” of the external world? Does genuine knowledge coincide with the external world? Is the empirical evidence sufficient to establish knowledge as a truth? Does the known objectively precede the knowing? Thirdly, it is the logic problem of knowledge eo ipso as a statement. Is there a uniform or standard form of statement for knowledge? If yes, what is it? If not, why? Are concepts and propositions merely logic constitutions or the products of historical culture? What different properties do concepts and propositions in different areas have? How to defend a knowledge statement? Fourthly, it is the relations between knowledge and the society. Is knowledge neutral at the value level? Is scientific research a purely rational conduct? What are the relations between knowledge on the one hand and interests, power, ideology, sex, etc., on the other? How are the production, dissemination, and allocation of knowledge in social life constrained by social factors? It can thus be seen that the significance of the concept of knowledge lies in a series of conceptual relations with different dimensions, which are interconnected. The significance of the concept of knowledge cannot be well understood until these conceptual relations and relevant connections are clarified, which concerns not only epistemological problems, but also axiological ones; not only logical problems, but also sociological ones; not only the problem of justification, but also that of legitimacy. The complexity of the question “What is knowledge?” lies here. The problem of the concept of knowledge is merely a “knot” of many other problems of knowledge. To untie this “knot,” we must recognize the “knotting method,” which is exactly the issue of knowledge form.

2.2 Knowledge Form and Knowledge Transformation In short, knowledge form has structural properties constituted and produced by the answers with logical coincidence to the above four sets of question pertaining to the concept of knowledge. Thus, it can be seen also as the “model of knowledge” or the “paradigm of knowledge.” As the model or paradigm of knowledge, knowledge form is the standard of all the productions, defenses, disseminations, and applications of knowledge in an era. When some human experience conforms to the requirement of knowledge form in that period, it would obtain the privilege and power of knowledge and be disseminated and applied in the name of knowledge, or else it would be excluded from the kingdom of knowledge. On the other hand, knowledge form is the integration of the problems, categories, qualities, structures, methods, systems, and beliefs of knowledge shared by all the intelligentsia in that period. As a rule, the

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adoption, understanding, and mastering of some knowledge form are the premise for a person to grow into an “intelligentsia” or to be admitted to this group. Conversely, that the group of the intelligentsia of an era has a common social consciousness and status is also due to the fact that they share this knowledge form. This apart, the form as such is not limited to the group of the intelligentsia, but it will also be adopted by more people via education or other means. Knowledge form resembles the “view or standpoint of knowledge” to a great extent, and it can even be virtually understood as the latter. In this vein, nevertheless, the view of knowledge would not be that of “the qualities of knowledge” in the narrow sense, but broadly includes the views of knowledge problems from the above four sole dimensions of relation. Be that as it may, even if knowledge form were understood as the view of knowledge in the broad sense, its whole connotations would still remain to be captured. This is because as was said afore, knowledge form is not merely an idea, but it also includes more—problems, structures, methods, systems, beliefs, among others. That is to say, knowledge form is more than an interpretative concept; it is simultaneously a descriptive concept, the most proper description as regards the situations of knowledge of an era. That which merits heed is, knowledge form is not equivalent to knowledge type. As is known to all, human knowledge is not in chaos but may be classified into many types, say, the “religious knowledge,” “metaphysical knowledge,” and “positive knowledge” classified by Auguste Comte; the “facts knowledge” and “human knowledge” by Russell; and the “salvaged knowledge,” “cultural knowledge,” and “practical knowledge” by Scheler, and the like. Another example is the knowledge classification generally adopted by school courses: physics, chemistry, biology, politics, economics, pedagogy, psychology, and so on and so forth. There are naturally this or that kind of difference among these knowledge types; they, however, can all be called knowledge and be recognized as members of the big family of knowledge, which is due to the fact that they are at least coincident with a certain “type of knowledge” in the mind of the person performing the classification. Comparatively, knowledge form places more stress on the coincident recognizing and grasping of various knowledge types, whereas knowledge type on the different ones with certain coincidence as the basis. Seen from the perspective of contemporary cognitive psychology, knowledge form is the upper-seat concept, whereas knowledge type the down-seat one. The classification of certain knowledge types always takes a certain knowledge form as its thinking premise. The presentation of knowledge form has experiential as well as theoretical foundations. At the level of experience, we often find, in daily education and academic life, that our students or colleagues hold identical or similar ideas or beliefs on the concept, quality, value, and findings of knowledge, say, “Knowledge is the crystallization of human cognition, and the right response of the cognitive subject to the object,” “Knowledge is power,” “Knowledge is objective,” “The sole task of students is to obtain knowledge,” and “Knowledge is an experiential system stated via certain linguistic symbols and logical forms,” and so on. These identical or similar ideas or beliefs prescribe, restrict, and simultaneously support, by dint of direct or indirect paths (such as the educational teaching systems, academic systems and norms, or

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the like, corresponding to them), these people’s learning, education and academic conducts, endowing them with the property of coincidence to a certain extent. At a theoretical level, the concept of knowledge form mainly comes from Thomas Samuel Kuhn’s “paradigm” and Foucault’s “episteme.” The concept of “paradigm” presented by the philosopher Kuhn is important in his studies of the construction of scientific revolutions, and this concept has now been broadly employed in every sphere of knowledge. In Kuhn, On the one hand, it stands for the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community. On the other, it denotes one sort of element in that constellation, the concrete puzzle-solutions which, employed as models or examples, can replace explicit rules as a basis for solution of the remaining puzzles of normal science. (Kuhn, 1962, p. 175)

Kuhn believed that the scientific revolutions in the history are not a process of gradual accumulation manifested in simply presenting new scientific knowledge or modifying the existent scientific conclusions; but rather, it is a structural process of the “shift of paradigm” of the whole scientific research: consistent severe crises emerge in the old paradigm which hence fails to well interpret and settle the string of new facts and new problems in scientific research; scientists begin to lose belief in the old paradigm and consider another option; the restrictions imposed by the old paradigm on scientific work are broken in every sphere, and a new paradigm begins to take shape; on the basis of comparison, old paradigm is radically abandoned and a more powerful new one is adopted, involving new problems, theories, methods, research models, among others. The new paradigm is not the specification or expansion of the old one but the “reconstruction” of some sphere on a new ground, having changed the fundamental theories, methods, and modes of the studies in this sphere, even the specialty setup and education therein. Kuhn’s concept of paradigm is mainly appropriated in the realm of scientific research, particularly that of natural science, considering his examples. The “paradigm” as such and the thought of its shift, whereas, contain broader epistemological significance. In my view, not only in scientific or natural scientific sphere, but in the reign of the whole human knowledge, there exist the phenomena of such a paradigm; not only people’s scientific concepts, conducts, and systems are influenced by some paradigm, but the knowledge conceptions, conducts, and systems of the whole humankind are deeply conditioned by it. To this connection, I present the concept of knowledge form and interpret it as “knowledge paradigm.” I, however, do not employ this name directly in that knowledge form in our terminology is broader at the level of constituents than Kuhn’s—beliefs, values, techniques, and models. The concept of knowledge form is, so to speak, an expansion of that of paradigm. Foucault’s concept of knowledge form is another important source for my argument. According to Foucault, This episteme may be suspected of being something like a world-view, a slice of history common to all branches of knowledge, which imposes on each one the same norms and postulates, a general stage of reason, a certain structure of thought that the men of a particular period cannot escape—a great body of legislation written once and for all by some anonymous

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hand. By episteme, we mean, in fact, the total set of relations that unite, at a given period, the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences, and possibly formalized systems. (Foucault, 1972, p. 211)

In Foucault, knowledge form is not some specific knowledge type or intellect. It goes beyond the boundaries between different disciplines and between different thinking modes, having constituted the background of them, “being common to all the spheres of knowledge.” Foucault pointed out also in definite fashion the many properties of knowledge form; for example, it frees itself from the restrictions of any disciplinary boundary and opens up endless fields; it is not something static that will eliminate all the other future possibilities once it emerges or is born but is de facto in constant changing and expanding, and so on. According to my understanding, Foucault’s knowledge form refers to the “inconsistency” of knowledge, the relations between “knowledge and power,” and between “knowledge and discursive practice,” to name a few, presented in his archeology of knowledge. It is the realization of these relations that makes possible “epistemology,” “science,” “power,” “discourse,” etc., hence enables them to constitute an “inescapable structure of thought” for people in any historical period whatsoever. This concept of knowledge form led to Foucault’s investigations of knowledge shifting from pure epistemological perspective to the historical, social, and political ones, and to his finding the problems of knowledge beyond the reach of traditional philosophers, and, resultantly, it exerted great influences in the academia of knowledge in the latter half of the twentieth century. The enlightenments offered to me by Foucault’s concept as such is, whether they be philosophical epistemology, science, or any other systematic and formalized knowledge system or discursive practice, they exist in a complex web of power, being the result of the function of this web, and simultaneously a media of it. In this way, the production, defense, dissemination, and application of knowledge would not be genuinely understood without knowing the complex relations between knowledge and this power web. In Foucault’s terminology, knowledge form is the “regime” of knowledge and no “citizen” living under this regime would be known to us if we do not understand the “regime” as such. On the one hand, the concept of knowledge form presented here inherits the previous thoughts of Foucault’s concept of “episteme”; on the other hand, it inclines to surpass his understandings and to investigate the broader situations of knowledge in some historical period. Seen in the province of the afore-presented four sets of questions, Foucault’s knowledge form may be concluded to the investigation of the relations between knowledge and society which is in close relation to and interconnection with the former three sets of questions. In this line, my concept of knowledge form is also an expansion of Foucault’s. It can be seen from daily experiences, Kuhn and Foucault’s elucidations as regards “paradigm” and “episteme,” respectively, and the argument of knowledge form in this monograph that knowledge form as a framework of the production, defense, dissemination, and application of knowledge in a certain historical period is of the fundamental properties as follows:

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Firstly, it is normative. As the “paradigm” or “regime” of knowledge, knowledge form plays a normative role at the level of the production and defense of knowledge, presenting not merely the standards, procedures, and methods of knowledge production, but also the methods of knowledge defense. In effect, any knowledge production and defense rely on a certain knowledge form without which we would be unable to judge whether or not a statement is knowledge. Secondly, it is common. Knowledge form is the cognitive framework co-accepted, applied, and followed by different spheres of knowledge in a time, and hence is of high identity and exclusiveness. Under usual circumstances, there is only one widely accepted knowledge form in one era. In some particular historical periods, nevertheless, a new knowledge form, different from the previous one, might emerge. Some people, such as the philosophers, may be the first to question the former knowledge form and explicate, choose, believe in, and uphold the new one; consequently, conflicts might emerge between the new and the old knowledge forms and cause some division within the intelligentsia. These crises of knowledge form indicate that an era has entered into the period of knowledge transformation. Thirdly, it is historical. Human knowledge deepens along with the constant deepening of human activities of practice and cognition. The knowledge achievements obtained by today’s human beings are more and greater than in the past. The evolution of human knowledge is not merely manifested in the increase of the amount of knowledge, but all the more in the alteration of the knowledge form. Like Kuhn regards the scientific revolution as the shift of scientific paradigm, the evolution of human knowledge can also be considered as a shift in human knowledge form. We can even say that without the shift as such, there would not be the evolution of human knowledge. There are different knowledge forms in different historical periods and no knowledge form is eternal. Studying the historical progress of the knowledge form is important to recognize the histories of knowledge, thought, or sciences of the humankind. Fourthly, it is transcendental. The transcendental here is directed upon the individual rather than the humankind. Insofar as the individual in a certain society is concerned, a certain knowledge form has been there objectively before he/she was born and, disregarding crises, this knowledge form will influence his/her whole life’s activities concerning cognition and practice. The individual obtains and understands this knowledge form from each aspect of daily life, such as language acquisition, school education, and practical work, among others. The understanding of some knowledge form means the obtainment of the key to some social system. Fifthly, it is cultural. As the origin and the development of human culture are of multiple clues, the living environment of people in different areas and the problems they suffer are naturally different. Even to date, although human communication is increasingly more efficient, there is still a multiplicity of socio-cultural environments and relevant problems. Therefore, in the fairly long historical period from the past to the future, the system and knowledge form produced for the sake of meeting the needs of such multiple subsistence and developments are as multiple. All the properties of knowledge form mentioned above, namely, being normative, common, and historical, occur in certain cultural backgrounds. These properties may

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be manifested in various fashion in concordance with different cultural backgrounds. When one knowledge form attempts to break the cultural barriers to enter into an alien culture, it will undoubtedly be confronted with the resistance and rebellion of the existent knowledge form. Noting the cultural properties of the knowledge form helps us better recognize many problems in knowledge dissemination, particularly abandoning the Western centrism on these problems and protesting against the hegemony of Western knowledge.3 The presentation of the concept of knowledge form enables us to better understand the question “What is knowledge?” to which there is not, and it is impossible, a fixed and universally valid answer insomuch as the answer depends on the cultural background in which the answerer is located and the knowledge form to which he/she accords. People with different forms of knowledge in history gave different answers and so do those in different cultural modes. Accordingly, the answers today are determined by the cultural background and knowledge form in which people are embedded. Here, the concept of knowledge transformation becomes relevant. The concept of knowledge transformation4 means, as its name implies, the shift of knowledge form, the shift or being subverted of the “paradigm,” “form,” or “regime” of knowledge, or the process in which the original knowledge form suffers a crisis and a new form gradually emerges and replaces it. In terms of content, knowledge transformation includes not merely the shift of the idea of knowledge, but also that of the system, organization, belief of knowledge, the roles of the intelligentsia, and the like. It might at first emerge in some single knowledge sphere or some single sphere of knowledge theory, such as science and philosophy, or of the quality of knowledge, but later it will gradually expand into the whole knowledge sphere or all the spheres of knowledge theory. Knowledge transformation is, first and foremost, the deconstruction of the former knowledge form, and hence, it is undoubtedly of a destructive result, say, it destructs the foundation and mode of knowledge life people have adopted and are accustomed to. On the other hand, knowledge transformation is simultaneously the construction of a new knowledge form, offering new knowledge foundation and mode of knowledge life, so it also has a constructive effect. Some distinct markers indicate a period of knowledge transformation. For instance, some people present new concepts or standards of knowledge; within the intelligentsia, the arguments about the standard of knowledge become numerous; along with the arguments, more and more “heretic” intelligentsia appear; new methods and procedures to find and demonstrate knowledge are put forward; new modes of stating and disseminating knowledge appear; some new standards of knowledge classification emerge; the roles of some intelligentsia begin to change, so does the way in which the intelligentsia obtains the authority; the original knowledge 3

Mannheim once made profound criticisms on this from the perspective of knowledge sociology. He said, “Radical positivism holds that…evolution of human knowledge…so the two stages are essentially different.” See Mannheim (1952, p. 17). 4 Lyotard once employed this work in The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge, and has noticed the influences of knowledge transformation on “public power” and “civil institution.” He, however, focuses on the shift of knowledge qualities rather than that of the whole knowledge form. See Lyotard (1984, p. 5).

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beliefs are questioned, and so on and so forth. Of these indicators, the most relevant one is the criticism of the original qualities or standards of knowledge aimed at introducing the new ones. All other markers are in close relation to it. Some chaos emerges in the province of knowledge during the transformation period, just like before a new social system comes into force. There might emerge some social disorders due to the fact that the original power system is no longer valid, whereas the new one remains to be established. When the new knowledge form has completely replaced the old one and it is widely accepted, the phenomenon of chaos in the kingdom of knowledge will naturally disappear, and people’s knowledge life will return to peace: some will be busy producing knowledge, some others disseminating knowledge, yet others consuming knowledge, and still others controlling knowledge, all being so ordered with a panorama of a peaceful and prosperous world. Knowledge transformation is not a natural and spontaneous process but a historical and social one; thus, it needs certain social motivations or conditions. To the extent that several great knowledge transformations occurred in human history (as I will discuss in Chap. 3), these social motivations or conditions are mainly manifested in the following two aspects. In the first place, it is the consistent inquiries into and reflections upon the quality or standard of knowledge form within the intelligentsia. Admittedly, knowledge transformation primarily occurs within the intelligentsia, so does the chaos in the period of transformation. This is because the quality or standard of knowledge is a diachronic problem, the inquiry into which will never end. No answer is perfect, so the intelligentsia is forever faced with questionings from the society as well as themselves on the truthfulness of the knowledge they produce. This leads the “knowledge-oriented” intelligentsia to be always in an unsteady state. Albeit the intelligentsia might convert to some knowledge form by means of belief, and suspend, tentatively, the troublesome questionings, they are very rationally clear that a knowledge form might only provincially legitimize the knowledge they produce and protect them from being attacked but cannot offer eternal “shelter” to them. In this line, the intelligentsia qua a person fond of knowledge and socially responsible must incessantly inquire into the qualities and standards of general knowledge, while consistently producing specific knowledge. Otherwise, he/she would not be capable of finding more reliable support for the truthfulness of his/her knowledge. Thanks to the inquiry as such performed by generations of intelligentsia, people can continuously modify, even abandon, essentially, the original knowledge form and create the conditions for the emergence and establishment of a new form. Be that as it may, given that the knowledge form is a sort of knowledge “regime” or even an “ideology,” once a knowledge form takes shape, it will exert considerable constraints on the intelligentsia, and restrict and suppress intelligentsia’s questioning of its knowledge qualities or standards, not to mention holding a tolerant attitude toward the new ones. Thus, those who have the courage to question the old knowledge qualities or standards and present the new ones are de facto to risk greatly, to shoulder the imputation of “heresy” in different degrees, even to sacrifice themselves for that. Such things are not rarely seen in human history. In this term, any intelligentsia might feel the invisible pressure from the group in which he belongs. Consequently,

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knowledge transformation is never accomplished in a single attempt but requires a long period of struggle, just like the French Revolution in the eighteenth century: revolution—counterrevolution—re-revolution, until the final victory. In the second place, great changes might occur in society’s political, economic, or cultural structure. It is not hard to understand that there is high relevance between the knowledge form and the social form in a period. On the one hand, society’s political, economic, and cultural lives are all based on a certain knowledge form; on the other hand, the former support and maintain the latter. For instance, a society controlled by some religion or some other mysterious power at the level of its political, economic, and cultural lives will necessarily regard knowledge as the revelation or appearance of God’s wisdom, put the standard of knowledge into the hand of the clergies, set up institutions of knowledge study and dissemination with the clergies as the center, and provide knowledge to the society’s political and economic activities on the one hand and family and public lives on the other for the sake of their needs. Thus, the intelligentsia taking holy orders will obtain the power from society to produce knowledge and, in turn, they will shoulder the obligation to maintain such knowledge ideas and standards. When explicating the reason why science has become a sort of “superior” knowledge form, Scheler holds that it is not that scientific knowledge is itself of some superiority, but that the capitalism society worshiping material interests and seeking the super control over the outside world raises it to a “superior” knowledge form. As a consequence, natural science regarded as the exemplary knowledge is controlled by capitalism ideology, but it per se is also one of the capitalism ideologies, one of the supports on which capitalism governing gains its legitimacy. In a society pursuing other values, particularly spiritual values, superiority is attributed to another form of knowledge. When Foucault discussed the relationships between knowledge and power as influencing the modern conception of knowledge, he ascribed it in a definite fashion to the social revolution pervading Europe and America in 1968. Under the leadership of the “left” of the intelligentsia, the difference between this social revolution and any previous one is: it was based on daily struggles and started from the problems in daily life rather than being executed under the dominance of some social utopia and ideology. It is in such struggles based on daily life that people find, for the first time, the operating mechanism of the system of social power—the knowledge/power relationships—and find that each one, however humble he/she is, is not in a powerless state or outside power or at the periphery of power as was expected; rather, everyone is at the center of various power relationships, comprehending, applying, and bestowing power by virtue of knowledge. Everything had to be reflected on again, to wit, the original concept of knowledge, the relations between knowledge and society, between knowledge and the individual, and the liberalism ideal of knowledge, or the like. In the view of Foucault, it is the daily political and cultural struggle as such that offers the power, soil, and conditions to the new recognition as regards the qualities of knowledge. As a matter of fact, we can also regard Foucault himself qua an intelligentsia and his thought as the product of this social revolution.

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On this account, the questioning with respect to the original knowledge form is in a great measure a questioning on the social form it supports, and hence it is not merely a cognitive conduct, but a social activity also. The questioning as such might emerge prior to society’s political, economic, or cultural revolution without the support of which, nevertheless, it would never ultimately subvert the old knowledge form and set a new one. In this sense, we can exactly regard knowledge transformation as a constituent, a precondition, or an ultimate consequence of the “social transformation” on a larger scale.

2.3 Knowledge Transformation and Social Transformation Social transformation refers to the shift in the social form. At the macro level, it includes the shifts in society’s political, economic, and cultural forms. The shift in the political form is solely manifested in the shift of the form of regime, say, the shifts from helotism to feudalism, from feudalism to capitalism, and so on. The shift in the economic form is solely manifested in the shift in productivity and mode of production, for instance, the shifts from handcraft to machine industrial productions, from agricultural to industrial economy, from industrial to intellectual economy, and so on. The shift in the cultural form is solely manifested in the shift in the idea of social values and the living style based on it, for example, the shifts in emphasis from spiritual values to material ones, from group life to the individual one, from cultural centrism and cultural chauvinism to cultural relativism and multiculturalism, and so on. Generally speaking, society’s political, economic, and cultural transformations are executed in consecutive steps and influence each other, making the whole society show a state of total shift. Nevertheless, under some particular circumstances, transformations may occur in one or two aspects of society when other aspects are fundamentally steady. The one-sided transformation as such, however, might be confronted with great resistance and hence destruct the whole social ecological system and, at last, it might further promote the social shift of other aspects or give up halfway, and return to the original state in a certain measure. In Chinese academia, there have been not a few theoretical as well as practical studies as regards social transformation. Many people even call the present stage of social development “the period of social transformation” and start from the perspective of social transformation to capture, observe, and analyze some social phenomena and problems. Presumably, this is a new problem of social transformation, which cannot be fully addressed here, though. I will discuss it only referring to knowledge transformation and leaving a more detailed discussion to future studies. As is mentioned above, the knowledge form and social form of a period are closely related to one another. In a certain sense, knowledge transformation can be regarded as a constituent, a precondition, or a result of the social transformation on a larger scale. This has in effect illuminated from two aspects my views on the relations between knowledge transformation and social transformation. Nonetheless, why do I say that there is high relevance between them? How is it logically possible? What’s

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more, it might be easy to understand that knowledge transformation is a constituent and a result of social transformation, but is not it a little bit exaggerated to say that the former is a precondition of the latter? These issues need to be elaborated further. In the Introduction, I have analyzed the relations between knowledge and “practice,” noting that “Human practices are based on knowledge, practices are penetrated by knowledge, and the degree and range of practices are conditioned by human knowledge.” If this is tenable, I can argue: (1) society is constructed on the basis of knowledge; (2) people’s social life is penetrated by knowledge; (3) people’s social identities are de facto granted by the knowledge system they control. Let me discuss these three points in respective fashion. As the old saying goes, “One tree does not make a forest.” No matter what, society is neither individual nor agglomerated by individuals without any interconnection whatsoever, nor is it, as is often satirized, “a sack filled with potatoes.” In the most basic sense, society is the interpersonal “relations” and the series of social “institutions,” “systems,” and “activities” producing, maintaining, and realizing the relation as such. Nevertheless, how to define the interpersonal relations in social life? How to set corresponding social institutions, realize corresponding systems, and develop colorful social activities? Presumably, all this must be achieved in virtue of a certain knowledge system. Interpersonal relations are not natural relationships between two objects; they are rather intersubjective. Their quality lies in the fact that they are realized only via the subjective interpretation and admission of the two poles, or else they would not constitute social relations bounding the two poles together. The subjective interpretation and admission are always based on some knowledge. The marital relation, for example, is not a relation between a man and a woman at the physiological level but a social relation formed under a certain marriage system. That the relation as such is confirmed and respected by the couple is solely due to the fact that the couple know and acknowledge the marriage system in this society (even if it is “primal”), and admit its knowledge system relevant to marriage, say, relevant laws, systems, responsibilities, and obligations. The setting of society’s marriage system and the development of corresponding activities are based on the idea of “happy marriage.” The miscellaneous rituals in the wedding ceremony are also aimed at hinting or showing what is a “happy marriage.” Marital relation is the case, and so are the complex social relations such as parent–child relations, friendship, teacher-student relations, colleague relations, comrade relations, or the like. Similarly to the marital system, the educational, political, and economic systems and their activities follow the same logic. In this connection, the knowledge system determines social relations, institutions, systems, and activities based on it. Comparatively, when society regards human nature as good by birth (e.g., Mencius and Jean-Jacques Rousseau), there should be sincerity, friendship, trust, and expectation pervasive the interpersonal field, and society should then construct a set of institutions and systems, and organize a series of activities to disseminate and uphold people’s goodness, and prevent them from being infected with vices. Contrariwise, when a society regards human nature as evil by birth (e.g., Xunzi, Christianity, and Thomas Hobbes), the interpersonal relations would be filled with suspicion, alertness, conspiracy, and deception, and society should then implement a set of strict punishing institutions and systems,

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and perform activities of penalty in public. On the whole, whether it be the primitive society where people ate the raw meat and drunk the blood or the modern one where people have been accustomed to sound, light, and electricity, the construction of society is always based on knowledge. Knowledge offers intellectual instruments to the construction of a social form, but it also provides guidance and defense to it. Without the foundation of knowledge, the edifice of the whole society would be ruined, and humans would return to the primitive age.5 People’s social life is colorful. At the individual level, it includes multiple activities, such as studying, working, exercising, communicating, entertaining, thinking, and so on; at the social level, it includes education, production, medical care, administration, business, scientific research, military affairs, engineering, and the like. The existence of these activities and people’s capacity to carry them out are due to the corresponding knowledge on which they are based. If an individual is lack of the foundation as such, how can he/she study, work, do exercises, communicate with others, enjoy entertainment, or think? If the society is in the case, how can there be differences between the careers such as education, production, medical care, administration, business, scientific research, military affairs, engineering, etc.? To this connection, if social space is based on knowledge, people’s social life is naturally one penetrated by knowledge. Without the knowledge of education (be it theoretical or folk), no educator would be possible; without the knowledge of production (be it from experiences or training), no producer would be qualified or be a skilled worker; without the knowledge of entertainment, no one would have the capacity for singing, dancing, writing poems, or painting. On this account, he who is lack of knowledge will not enjoy a colorful life; he who is poor on knowledge would not enjoy a healthy life. Similar to the knowledge foundation of social careers, people’s social status is also bestowed by different knowledge systems. Humans are equal by birth in essentials while different in minor points, those born into a wealthy family being not necessarily intelligent, those into a poor family not necessarily slow. When I traveled abroad, I usually was marveled at the sight of children of different colors playing together. The intimacy and mutual love and understanding between people from different backgrounds indicate that there is no bias, discrimination, let alone hatred with regard to class, race, social stratum, gender, etc., at all. That said, as children of different social statuses, classes, races, and genders grow up, the formal or informal education they receive and their individual life experiences make them realize their differences, their social statuses, and know how to behave in accordance with their social statuses. 5

Popper once presented similar remarks. He made two experiments of thought for the sake of explicating the values of world 3—the world constituted by books, libraries, computer memory, and the like: first, if all our machines and tools were destroyed, and all our subjective knowledge (which refers to some natures of the organism) suffered destruction, but world 3 survived, our world would regain its vitality after more sufferings. Secondly, in the same vein, if all the machines and tools were destroyed as were our subjective and objective knowledge (i.e., world 3), the civilization would not emerge until after thousands of years. In Popper’s view, it is “world 3”—the world of knowledge in common sense or one richer than it—that constitutes the frame and hope of our human civilization. See Popper (1963, p. 108).

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On this ground, to an individual, his/her social status is not merely an external signal (e.g., skin color, gender, status, rank of nobility, dressing, etc.), but all the more a whole knowledge system. Physiological, social, and even fortune powers might bestow a status upon a person at his/her birth; that which enables him/her to hold this social status, nevertheless, is the knowledge system that he/she acquires afterward. In our society, women are perceived as weak as they are represented as such in our cultural systems, namely, movies, novels, stories, history, and so on. In some primitive tribes, on the other hand, women are strong as they appear as such in the narrations of the generations. The differences and oppositions between the statuses of man/woman, aristocrat/commoner are shaped by certain knowledge systems. Thus, in humans’ educational history, people of different classes, strata, races, and genders always received different education and knowledge. The properties of education pertinent to class, hierarchy, and religion, and to discriminations of race, gender, etc., in the milieu of education in our ordinary sense are all operated by dint of the different allocations of knowledge. It then can be said that the legitimacy of social relations, institutions, systems, and activities takes that of their knowledge foundation as the premise. Once the legitimacy as such disappears, it will delegitimize every aspect of society and cause the chaos of the original social ideas, institutions, and systems, which means the end of the old social order and the birth of the new one. It is at this point that we can say that knowledge transformation—rather than the simple enlargement of knowledge amount—is the precondition of social transformation, and that it will necessarily exert an important social influence. Here, I pay particular attention to the relationship between knowledge transformation and education reform.6 Education qua a social institution of import has been playing a self-evidently important role in the evolution and development of human civilization. In contemporary society, education has become the hope of promoting social and individual developments and solving social problems pertaining to poverty, environment, racial conflicts, and the like. That education is entrusted with such an important mission is due to the fact that people have realized more clearly than they did at any time in the past that the various social and individual problems all appertain to the conditions of the old knowledge, and hence, all have recourse to the input of new knowledge for the sake of changing the old conditions. Education plays an irreplaceable role in this process. Nonetheless, a large quantity of experiences have shown that it is not all the educations or any education whatsoever is capable of satisfying the demands on knowledge for the sake of social and individual development; but rather, some educations cannot meet the needs and, worse still, they will sharpen the severe social and individual problems. On this account, the education reform is necessary and it has become an important constituent of the movement of social reform having swept the globe. 6

As is well known, the term “education” has a very broad meaning. My study focuses on the relations between “schooling education” or formal education, institutional education on the one hand and knowledge transformation on the other. Of course, the influence of knowledge transformation on education is by no means restricted to education in this sense, as it affects the whole system of social education.

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Similar to the reform practice of other social aspects, the education reform is also influenced by complex factors like the political, economic, and cultural ones, among others. Of them, knowledge is a fairly important factor, being associated with others but also playing its role independently. Education reform must answer the following questions: What new demands for knowledge should be embraced by the new development of society and the individual? It must reflect anew on such questions: What kind of knowledge has more educational values? How to obtain the knowledge as such for the sake of educational significance? What roles should teachers and students play in the activities of such knowledge and on what epistemological basis? What kind of new teaching mode, particularly the mode of teaching assessment, should be developed in accordance with the new demands for knowledge? The answers to all these questions are inseparable from the existent knowledge conditions of society and from the knowledge form of the present era. In this connection, that which is brought by knowledge transformation is necessarily the essential change of the social knowledge conditions, and the profound influences on the education reform as well, which should draw the attention of all the education reformers. As regards the influences exerted by knowledge transformation on the education reform, in addition to the aforementioned direct ones at the level of educational practical activities, there are also some indirect effects on these activities via the influence on the educational theories. It’s not hard to understand that like other social practices, educational practice is concerned with theoretical participation and instruction. In a certain sense, without educational theoretical knowledge, there would not be mature educational practices. Consequently, the conditions of educational theoretical studies undoubtedly influence those of educational practices. This is why the education reform attaches importance to and calls for educational theories. Be that as it may, educational theoretical studies qua a department or a field of human knowledge production assumes the knowledge form of an era as its premise. Only when the knowledge and studies of educational theories conform to the knowledge standard of the era and the system of knowledge production and defense based on it, it can be accepted as “genuine knowledge” by the sphere of knowledge and the practical educating staff. Otherwise, the values of educational theories will be hard to realize. Albeit many scholars do not think that educational theories are genuine, or the studies on educational theory are genuine activities of theoretical studies, and some even think that educational theories as a sort of “theory” are merely an “honorific title,” educational theories still always defend themselves for their legitimacy as well as validity by means of the knowledge form of the era to which they belong. Under such circumstances, knowledge transformation will necessarily dispel the effect of the self-defense of the original educational theories which then cannot but confirm, according to the new knowledge form, to their knowledge qualities and modes of development, formulation and defense, etc., and engage themselves in new theoretical activities under the new knowledge form. Meanwhile, shaken as the theoretical foundation of the original educational practices is, they cannot but seek for a new theoretical foundation and perform, on that basis, new practices or education reforms. In addition, knowledge transformation influences the education reform also by means of its effects on social transformation. The latter is, compared to the former,

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more mediated but presumably more profound. This is because education is situated in certain social relations, which deeply influence and constrain the relations between education and society and those within education. For instance, in feudal counties, it was essentially impossible for education to become an independent juridical entity, or for equal and democratic teacher-student relations to be set up inside education, which is the result of the control and influences of feudalism relations of personal bondage on education. Certain social relations are based on the knowledge of a certain form. That which is accompanied by knowledge form necessarily accompanies the conversion of knowledge standard, knowledge structure, relations between knowledge and society, the roles of the intelligentsia, or the like, which will necessarily shake the entire social relations based on them, say, political, economic, and cultural relations, and, resultantly, great influences will be shed on the internal and external relations of education, and education reform will thus be consistently deepened. To be sure, knowledge transformation promotes the education reform and constitutes an in-depth drive and social background of the latter; conversely, however, education reform also plays a role allowing no ignorance in knowledge transformation. As was stated afore, knowledge transformation is not accomplished in a single step, namely, there must be a complex and long period inevitably filled with conflicts, struggles, setbacks, and failures between the crisis of the old knowledge form and the setup of a new one as two poles. Of the various social factors supporting knowledge transformation and helping people widely acknowledge and accept the new form, education is an important one, which plays its peculiar role as follows. First of all, it can universalize or generalize the questionings as to the old knowledge form. The questioning as such is the starting link and might be primarily presented by a single person or some small knowledge community in their own knowledge activities. Undoubtedly, their questionings are very important but remain to bring the entire knowledge form into crisis. Only when such questionings are increasingly understood, considered, and accepted by people who then present them in their own knowledge fields, will a genuine knowledge revolution be triggered. During the course whence the questioning as such on the old knowledge form is universalized or generalized, education plays an active role, being capable of rapidly delivering such questionings, by virtue of its particular mode of disseminating knowledge, to others and the next generation, and hence of accomplishing the task of universalization or generalization within the shortest time. In the second place, it can adopt in very succinct fashion into its own course content the bifurcations and conflicts between the new and the old knowledge forms which, hence, helps the students to understand the bifurcations and conflicts within the shortest time and promotes them to seek new settlements so as to best improve and modify the new knowledge form. Thirdly, after the new knowledge form is established, it needs to become popular in the whole society to eliminate the influences of the old form on every aspect of society. In the process of educational activities, teachers’ authority, teenagers’ pursuit of novelty, educational and teaching activities of ritual properties, just to name a few examples, are all very beneficial to the popularization and strengthening of the new knowledge form. The experiences of education have also indicated that a new concept of knowledge is most easily acknowledged and accepted first among teachers and students.

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Fourthly, schools, particularly colleges and universities, are the places where new types of intelligentsia are cultivated. The intelligentsia plays a pillar role in the whole knowledge transformation. There is a spontaneity between the birth of a new knowledge form and that of new intelligentsia. Schools as the places in which knowledge is disseminated and the intelligentsia is cultivated might produce a large number of new types of intelligentsia once they acknowledge and accept a new knowledge form. Schools will necessarily contribute greatly in terms of promoting the ultimate accomplishments of social and knowledge transformations and of amounting to the new progress of social knowledge under the instruction of the new knowledge form. Overall, the inquiry into “What is knowledge?” will get a tentative answer only in a certain knowledge form, and different answers are provided in different knowledge forms; knowledge form qua a sort of “knowledge model,” “knowledge paradigm,” or “knowledge regime” is not constantly steady but will show, under the action of complex internal as well as external factors, clear indications of transformation in some historical period; as a critical stage of the development of social knowledge, knowledge transformation will change the whole conditions of the latter; knowledge transformation and social transformation, knowledge transformation and educational transformation or reform interact with and promote each other, and act as the condition for each other, promoting together the development, advancement, and prosperity of human society.

References Bacon, F. (1960). The New Organon and Related Writings. The Bobbs-Merrill Company. Boorstin, D. J. (1958). The Americans: The Colonial Experience. RosettaBooks LLC. Dewey, J. (1920). Reconstruction in Philosophy. Henry Holt & Company. Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge (A. M. Smith, Trans.). Tavistock Publications. James, W. (1907). Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. Longman Green & Co. Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolution. University of Chicago Press. Lyotard, J. F. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (G. Bennington & B. Massumi, Trans.). Manchester University Press. Mannheim, K. (1952). Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. Rutledge & Kegan Paul. Popper, K. (1963). Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Russell, B. (1945). A History of Western Philosophy. Simon & Schuster.

Chapter 3

The Three Knowledge Transformations in Human History

Studies as regards the history of human knowledge transformation have thus far drawn few concerns in both philosophical and sociological spheres. The epistemologies before modern times, be they Western or Chinese, were mainly concerned with the truth of knowledge, namely how the subjects of cognition grasp the object of knowledge and obtain determined and reliable knowledge; however, they paid little attention to the historical development and transformation of the knowledge form. The epistemology of the twentieth century has mainly transformed into or produced scientific philosophy and sociology of knowledge, mostly concerning the general internal logic of scientific development and its relationship with various social factors. Albeit it is very important to conceptualize knowledge transformation, the problem of knowledge transformation in general has still to be analyzed from a historical perspective. For instance, Popper established the general mode of “knowledge evolution” (Popper, 1963, p. 287), but failed to discuss the historical shift of the knowledge form. In effect, from his mode of knowledge evolution, that which we can see is merely the enlargement of the amount of human knowledge rather than the transformation of human knowledge form. Kuhn (1962, pp. 23–85) set a framework to analyze the scientific revolution, but his studies were restricted to the paradigm shift of scientific knowledge, notably that of natural sciences. Mannheim and Scheler extensively explicated the social construction of thought or knowledge and presented new ideas pertaining to knowledge classification, but they remain to offer their opinions on the historical shift of the knowledge form. As to general philosophical textbooks or works on theories of knowledge, they mainly concern the longitudinal comparisons among different epistemologies or schools of theories of knowledge, or, under the influences from analytic philosophy, commit themselves to analyzing the conditions of knowledge but seldom observe the transformation of human knowledge from a historical perspective. As a result, people are under the impression that, from ancient times till now, the progression of human knowledge is nothing but the enlargement on amount, the overlapping of new and old knowledge, or the process wherein wrong ideas were constantly eliminated in favor of right knowledge. This, however, is an idea supposed to be questioned and criticized. © Higher Education Press Limited Company 2023 Z. Shi, Transformation of Knowledge and Educational Reform, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9271-1_3

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Be that as it may, in the history of Western thoughts, it is not that none has ever shown concern with the shift of knowledge form or none has ever offered thinking resources in this regard. Comte, the nineteenth-century sociologist, and Foucault and Lyotard, the philosophers of the latter half of the twentieth century, are prominent representatives. Proceeding from the stance of positivism, Comte presented the three stages of the progression of human thought, which are also necessary to any kind of human knowledge: “theological stage,” “metaphysical stage,” and “scientific stage” also named “fictitious stage,” “abstract stage,” and “positive stage,” respectively. Comte thus interprets them: In the theological stage, the human mind, seeking the essential nature of beings, the first and final causes (the origin and purpose) of all effects—in short, absolute knowledge—supposes all phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural beings. (Comte, 1974, p. 134) In the metaphysical stage, which is only a modification of the first, the mind supposes, instead of supernatural beings, abstract forces, veritable entities (that is, personified abstractions) inherent in all beings, and capable of producing all phenomena. What is called the explanation of phenomena is, in this stage, a mere reference of each to its proper entity. (Comte, 1974, p. 135) In the final, the positive, state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws— that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts, the number of which continually diminishes with the progress of science. (Comte, 2009, p. 26)

It is Comte’s contention that in terms of the conditions of human knowledge at that time, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and physiology had reached the stage of positive science, politics had gone beyond the first two stages and was entering the third one, and sociology had to reach the third stage, which it would certainly accomplish. Presumably, of all knowledge, the one about moral phenomena would be the last and the hardest to reach the stage of positive science. According to Comte, which kind of knowledge system would first reach the third stage appertained to the degree of complexity of the phenomena studied. The knowledge of relatively simple natural phenomena would first reach the third stage, whereas that studying the complex phenomena like the society and man, say, politics, sociology, ethics, etc., cannot but be the last ones to reach the third stage. On the whole, in Comte’s eyes, all knowledge would ultimately lead to the third stage; it was merely a matter of time. Comte’s views are fairly clear. The key distinct between the three historical stages of human intellect rests in the different modes of interpreting facts. The first stage appeals to subjective conjectures, the second to metaphysical abstractions, and the third to observations and demonstrations. These three different modes of interpreting facts, so to speak, are three different modes of obtaining knowledge and three different standards of assessing the truth of knowledge. Therefore, we can entirely regard these three stages of Comte as his three historical states or forms of human knowledge. It is praiseworthy that Comte has expressly explicated the historical changes of the state

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of human knowledge by virtue of the theory of the three stages of the development of human intellect or evolution of human knowledge, but he also tried to analyze the relationship between this historical change and social revolution, particularly the revolution of social politics and economy. He maintained that in the era in which all knowledge was in essence conjectured and metaphysical, the social government in the spiritual sphere naturally fell in the hands of some theology in that theologists were the only thinkers at the time. That which was constructed on this basis was the Catholic feudal society. Once the whole sphere of knowledge started to be based on observations and demonstrations, the management of the state of affairs in the spiritual sphere naturally fell in the hands of sciences or positive sciences, thus giving rise to the new social system, namely, the modern scientific industrial society. Nonetheless, it is a pity that during the 150 years after Comte put forward the above ideas no other Western thinker has shown concerns about knowledge transformation. People seemed uninterested even in Comte’s ideas and treated them, at most, as the negative materials deployed to criticize the author. This condition did not change until the 1960s; the two postmodern thinkers, Foucault and Lyotard, were the movers of the change. As I pointed out in the previous chapter, Foucault has once noticed the knowledge form and its influence on the process of cognition and practices. What is more significant is, he has also noticed some knowledge form like the “discontinuity” in the progression of the form of medical knowledge. The results of this sort of “discontinuity” are “not merely some new findings, but also a brand-new discourse system and knowledge form” (Foucault, 1980, p. 112). Foucault pointed out definitely, Thus it is not a change of content (refutation of old errors, recovery of old truths), nor is it a change of theoretical form (renewal of a paradigm, modification of systematic ensembles). It is a question of what determines statements, and the way in which they govern each other so as to constitute a set of propositions which are scientifically acceptable, and hence capable of being verified or falsified by scientific procedures. (Foucault, 1980, p. 112)

Foucault called it “the issue of governmental form” or “the issue of politics of scientific statements,” which is de facto the issue of the form and knowledge transformation in our terminology. Foucault strived, via the discussions pertinent to this issue, to find out why there were “abrupt jumping” and “the speeding of evolution” in the evolution sequence of some knowledge at some time, and why they were contradictory or even conflicted with the smooth and successive images of evolution accepted by people. In virtue of investigations as regards the discontinuity during the evolution process of some knowledge in the spheres of medicine, psychiatry, etc., Foucault presented the renowned theory of knowledge/power and knowledge/discourse, connecting the changes of the “governmental system” of knowledge with the practices of social power and discourses, and hence presenting the concept of “subjugated knowledge” and such important issues like “the rebelling of the subjugated knowledge.” Nevertheless, Foucault’s deficiency is, on the one hand, he merely restricted his investigation to the “modern time” and hence failed to make descriptions and analyses as to the transformation of ancient knowledge; on the other hand, he merely circumscribed the analyzed objects to some knowledge sequences, striving to eidetically grasp general

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conclusions from their investigations, and hence failed to present his own ideas in terms of the transformation of the whole human knowledge. Maybe, this is related to the fact that Foucault has essentially abandoned overall discourses or statements, and their spokesmen, “universal intellectuals,” are inclined to deception or autocracy, as they have deprived the legitimacy of specific, trivial, and low-level knowledge. I, however, believe that no specific study can replace the overall discourses or statements; their lack might even lead, to some extent, to the impossibility of interpreting or stating any specific facts. This is similar to the epistemological principle of Gestalt: albeit there will not be the cognition of the general or holistic without that of the individual or partial, the opposite is also true; that is, without the cognition as regards the general or holistic (even if it is completely elusive), there will not be that of the individual or partial. The two are in a vivid epistemological recycle. As a matter of fact, overall discourses or statements can still be taken as effective tools to cognize and interpret history, if we cancel the element of autocracy, no longer regarding it as a sort of grand and ultimate historical regulation or general statement but merely as the tentative “ideal type,” in Scheler and Weber’s terminology, or a sort of theoretical framework in need of being criticized, modified, or improved. Similar to Foucault, Lyotard’s analyses with respect to the transformation of human knowledge were also restricted to modern society. Nevertheless, unlike Foucault, it seems that he was no longer restricted to partial knowledge but tried to explicate the shift of the form of modern human knowledge in an overall sense. He thus said, The status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter what is known as the postmodern age. This transition has been under way since at least the end of the 1950s, which for Europe marks the completion of reconstruction. (Lyotard, 1984, p. 3)

Lyotard employs the term “postmodern knowledge” to refer to this new situation and “modern knowledge” for the situation before the transformation, and referred to the shift from “modern knowledge” to “postmodern knowledge” to explicate the property of the transformation having been occurring since 1950s and beyond. According to him, this shift in the knowledge form was, in effect, a response to the crisis of the legitimacy of “modern knowledge” or “scientific knowledge.” It is Lyotard’s contention that the property of the problem of knowledge legitimacy is: the “law-maker” dealing with scientific discourses is empowered to determine whether or not some statement will be accepted by the scientific community as scientific discourse, namely who according to what determines that some state deserves to be considered as “science.” Scientific knowledge will not be produced and defended until this problem is settled. Lyotard maintained that since the seventeenth century, the legitimization of scientific knowledge had been achieved via “grand narratives,” such as spiritual “dialectics” (speculative narrative), the “liberation” (liberating narrative) of the subject of reason or labor, or the like. That is to say, the criterion for a statement to be accepted as scientific knowledge conforms to spiritual dialectics (the procedures of demonstration or justification) or is capable of promoting the “liberation” of human reason and social life from the state of autocracy.

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Scientists are often empowered to carry out the first criterion whereas politicians the second. In this connection, Lyotard pointed out that the legitimization of modern sciences is in effect a process of “double legitimization.” As a result, the legitimization of science is inseparable from that of lawmakers, the power determining what truth is from that determining what justice is, and knowledge from power, all of which being nothing but the two sides of the same coin. Nevertheless, with the advent of the postindustrial society characterized by the popularization of computers and the networking of information, grand narratives (speculative and liberating narratives) lost their rationality and security, being abandoned by both epistemology and sociopolitical life; thus, scientific knowledge faced again a severe crisis of legitimacy and survival, which forecasted the beginning of a new knowledge form. Lyotard pointed out many traits of this new knowledge form. Knowledge is rendered as the amount of information, and that which cannot be rendered into information in knowledge systems will finally be abandoned. The legitimacy of knowledge will be assessed via “paralogy,” and the heterogeneity of knowledge will obtain respect and tolerance. The relations between suppliers and users of knowledge and their relation to knowledge are being prone to adopting the relations between manufacturers and consumers of commodities and their relation to commodities, and knowledge has finished its own “commercialization”; every person is a link of knowledge network and can perform his/her own power of knowledge like previous experts, accepting, consuming, retelling, and producing knowledge; the “autonomy” of college institutions vanishes, and the status of professors will also change, and so on and so forth. Comte’s distinction of developing stages of intellect during the whole process of human civilization and Foucault and Lyotard’s explications as regards the transformation of knowledge from their respective angles have provided valuable resources of thought and terrific inspirations to my observations around the historical vicissitudes of the knowledge form. Based on their discussions, I classify the history of the forms of human knowledge, from ancient times to the present, into four major developing periods or phases: “primitive knowledge form,” “ancient knowledge form,” “modern knowledge form,” and “postmodern knowledge form,” or, to put it in another way, “mythical knowledge form,” “metaphysical knowledge form,” “scientific knowledge form,” and “cultural knowledge form.” In what follows, I will analyze the traits and formation of the four forms and the primary power and results of the three transformations of knowledge.

3.1 Primitive Knowledge Form The primitive knowledge form is the knowledge form of primitive society, being the earliest knowledge form of humankind. It is very difficult to find direct or sufficient proofs to analyze this form and the entire primitive society. That which we can do is to indirectly infer the situations of them according to the social structures and people’s modes of conduct pertinent to primitive society since the age of civilization.

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Some factual support is provided by the anthropological investigations with regard to some modern primitive tribes since the nineteenth century. The deficiency of factual materials will be supplemented by a rational logical constitution, and the results will wait for the rectifications of new archaeological findings. It is not hard to understand that primitive people are of knowledge albeit their knowledge cannot be as extended as the present one. In terms of type, primitive people almost had all the types of knowledge we have now, e.g., natural knowledge, social knowledge, knowledge of self, among others. Of course, in our modern humans’ perspective, their knowledge is rather simple, rough, and unreliable. In the long-term primitive society, nevertheless, that was all their spiritual wealth. We cannot infer what the first sort of knowledge produced by humans was; nevertheless, we are sure that all human knowledge was first produced in humans’ practical life, emerging as a by-product of the struggle for survival under tough conditions. This by-product differs from the instinctive conduct inclination inherited by humans from their ancestor anthropoid. Once people “realized” that the by-product was different but inseparable from their bodies, the first sort of knowledge was used as an intellectual tool to guarantee the survival; hence, animals’ struggles for survival were transformed into “practical activities” peculiar to humans. Since then, human practices and knowledge entered from the very start into a vivid state of historical recycle in which practices producing knowledge and knowledge deepening practices. No matter what the first sort of knowledge of primitive people was, and no matter how many sorts of knowledge they had, one point is definite, namely, their knowledge was not interpreted as “experiential” on quality but as “mythical,” being considered as bestowed by some mysterious cosmic or natural forces. Evidence indicates that in the ceremonies of many tribes, when people try to interpret some phenomenon, they appeal, as a rule, to mysterious revelations, rather than their previous “experiences.” In other words, the content was extracted from previous experiences, but the origin was considered as coming from mysterious forces. Thanks to the connection with some mysterious force, common experiences were raised to “revelations.” These mysterious forces might come from any spirit dwelling in the cosmos, mountains, and rivers, or from the “totem” created by the tribe itself. Today, we cannot imagine what kind of extreme piety primitive people held when they sought and treated this sort of revelation from mysterious forces. “Trembling with fear” may not be exaggerated. The revelations from mysterious forces played the role of “laws” in the life of primitive people, offering the legal foundation to all their conducts, which resulted in the legitimization of their behaviors and, simultaneously, in the mystification of people’s and the whole tribe’s conducts. Presumably, this sort of revelation from mysterious forces is the only legitimate knowledge of primitive society. During the acquisition of this knowledge, it is obvious that humans were not the cognitive subjects but merely tools that made the appearance and statement of the mysterious revelations possible. Humans were all the time in a passive and subsidiary position. The mysterious revelations are not the “reflections” of “the objects of cognition” either. In fact, the object from which people seek interpretations is itself regarded as the “product” of the mysterious forces. To be sure, mysterious revelations did not “reflect” their own products but at most “opened”

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them to people, or, so to speak, revealed their products and “let the cat out of the bag.” Insofar as the form of the statement of the mysterious revelation is concerned, on the one hand, it aims to show some mysterious “signs”; on the other hand, it does so by means of the retellings of those who can better sense the revelation than the commoners, “wizards.” “Wizards” play a decisive role in the statements of the mysterious revelations. In a certain sense, the wizards capable of cognizing mysterious signs can be seen as the “intelligentsia” of primitive societies. They naturally held the power of the intellectual and spiritual life of primitive society. In terms of the dissemination of this sort of mysterious revelation, it is mainly performed via two paths: “ceremony” and “myth.” Comparatively, the ceremony is instant, whereas myth is historical. In the ceremony, the wizard would retell the mysterious revelations to all the attendees. By virtue of myths, the knowledge revealed in many mysterious revelations was separated from the concrete ceremonial situations and handed down to the younger generations in a relatively simplified way. It can be said that myths are the “characterless textbooks,” the only mysterious revelations preserved in primitive societies. At this level, we also call the primitive knowledge form “mythical knowledge form.” The main bodies or themes of each nation’s epics, called “the encyclopedias of the prehistoric age,” are myths. This apart, in the narrations of all epics, the awe for mysterious forces has persevered. Without the mythical forces, the various sorts of knowledge contained in the whole epic, be it the knowledge of origin, production, war, or life, will become nonsense and lose their legitimacy. As Popper once mentioned, when Hesiod, the ancient Greek historian, wrote his historiographical works to prove that his writings were rather “secure,” he often said that his knowledge came from the revelations bestowed by the God of Muse in Mount Olympus. Popper thus called this phenomenon “the divine sources of knowledge” (Popper, 1963, p. 9). In addition, in his self-defense in the court, Socrates also often swore in the name of God, saying that his defenses were down to earth. All these are, presumably, the remnant of the mythical knowledge form in primitive society, and they all indicate to a certain extent that God is the top authority in determining whether or not a statement is true. Be that as it may, we prefer to regard this phenomenon as an indication of the “mystery” or “mythical-ness” rather than “divinity” in that only the former is related to the spiritual state of the people in primitive society, whereas the latter appertains to that of the people in the Middle Ages. This is also the reason why we call the primitive knowledge form “mythical knowledge form” rather than “divine knowledge form” or Comte’s “theological” knowledge form. “Theology” includes myths and the interpretations of them but has lost the traits of being a metaphoric, situational, and vivid sort of oral knowledge form, becoming a system of doctrines and creeds appealing to logical demonstrations. Albeit the content of theological knowledge is still about divine revelations, in terms of form, it has been metaphysical speculation rather than a sort of vivid storytelling. Therefore, the mythical knowledge form of primitive society in our terminology does not include medieval theology in Western society. “Theology” in effect belongs to a new knowledge form, ancient or metaphysical knowledge form, being a product of it. Detailed analyses will be made in what follows with respect to this point.

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Undoubtedly, in a very long period, primitive people have accumulated many experiences of production and life, which could all the more promote the development of primitive society than mysterious revelations. In today’s words, nonetheless, these experiences do not deserve the reputation of “knowledge.” In Foucault’s terminology, they are “subjugated knowledge” or “knowledge deprived of the qualification,” and hence cannot be disseminated in primitive society. The person who wanted to turn his/her own experiences of production and life into the principles guiding the life of the tribe had to explicate or demonstrate the interrelations between the mysterious power worshipped by the tribe on the one hand and the principles on the other. Presumably, this was the process by which the knowledge of primitive societies was legitimized. Nevertheless, very little experiential knowledge can pass the test as such. As a result, still, very little experiential knowledge can be disseminated via ceremonies and myths. In addition, compared with mysterious revelations, the importance of the experiential knowledge is ignored by people. The dissemination of the knowledge as such can only be performed spontaneously by dint of passing from mouth to ears in individual and partial processes of production and life. It is imaginable that this is rather unfavorable to the accumulation of experiences of production and life and might sometimes lead to the loss of some valuable experiences as such and the later generations having to explore them anew from the beginning. The progress of experiential knowledge is rather slow and may even pause or stop under some particular circumstances. The lowness of the productivity of primitive society is imaginable, and so is the slowness of its development. Nonetheless, primitive or mythical knowledge form plays an important role in primitive society. First and foremost, it offers a mode of interpreting the world and enables people to make interpretations with regard to the natural, social, and human phenomena like wind, rain, thunder and lightning, life, age, disease and death, winter being followed by spring, good and bad luck, fortune and misfortune, to name just a few. This is of vital importance to the survival of primitive people. When they said farewell to their animal ancestors that which threatened them was not merely the shortage of materials of physical life but also the puzzlement of spiritual life, which originated from the emergence of human consciousness and their “ignorance” of the whole internal as well as external world. The ignorance as such produced a strong impulse to seek knowledge in primitive people, but it also brought fear due to their incapacity to interpret a changing world. The primitive knowledge form was exactly based on this impulse and fear, providing people with a method to interpret the world. Being far from perfect as it may be, humans took the first step from then on to explore the world by means of reason. Without this first step, there would not have been the progress of human cognition, not to mention the development of human civilization, and people engaged in working with knowledge when sitting before computers. In the second place, by way of creating some mysterious revelations to assemble the primitive people, the mythical knowledge form constitutes the primitive “society” in the true sense of the word. As is known to all, society is not merely the assemblage of many individuals, but it has also gone beyond the blood relations between people. It must offer new connections outside the blood relations and obtain people’s identification of these

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links. Primitive myths can do that. People sharing the common myths may claim to be of the same kind and hence trust and accept each other; on the other hand, tribes having different myths may be suspicious of or hostile to, even fight with, each other. Presumably, the earliest human battle was not launched for the sake of territory, food, properties, resources, desires for power, or the like, but of their respective gods, as has been told in ancient Greek myths. At any rate, the mythical knowledge form offers the foundation of knowledge to all social systems, institutions, and activities.

3.2 Ancient Knowledge Form and the First Knowledge Transformation The ancient knowledge form is newly developed based on the primitive one, being the deconstruction and negation of the latter as its main knowledge form is metaphysical, and hence, it is also called “metaphysical knowledge form.” The ancient knowledge form is suitable for the whole ancient society (including slave and feudal societies) and has offered an important epistemological foundation to the development of the ancient civilization of the humankind. At a temporal level, the ancient knowledge form sprouting roughly at the end of the primitive society got formed during the whole slave society, and got improved and developed in the feudal society wherein it was simultaneously confronted with questionings and criticisms. As a consequence, crises appeared therein and it was replaced by the modern or scientific knowledge form. As was stated in the previous chapter, there are two causes of each transformation of knowledge, one being the consistent questionings of and reflections on the quality or criterion of knowledge within the intelligentsia and the other being great changes with respect to the political, economic, and cultural structures of society. The crises of the primitive knowledge form and its ultimate replacement and denial may also be analyzed from these two aspects. Insofar as the first cause is concerned, the wizards qua the primitive intelligentsia are rather clear about the essence of “miracles,” “revelations,” and “myths.” They may deceive others but not themselves: their communications with the gods are nothing else than their conversations with their internal world, their interpretations are nothing but those that they believe, and they have merely created myths via analogy, imagination, metaphor, personification, and so on, a mere re-arrangement of the tribes’ histories in imagination. Naturally, all the knowledge produced under the instruction of the knowledge form as such is vague, full of ambiguities, and lacking determinacy and will change according to different people, times, or places. This mode of producing knowledge can still be seen in some “witches” (Western) or “woman wizards” (China) and all the relevant people to this. This attribution of knowledge to the revelation of ungraspable mysterious forces and its narrative mode of expression run counter to humans’ intuitive impulse of seeking the clear, identical, and definite interpretations of all things in the life-world. The wizard himself/herself

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and all the other people involved are not very satisfied with this interpretation and they might even be suspicious of it and privately seek clearer, more reliable, and more definite interpretations whenever the opportunity comes. This primitive skepticism constantly shakes the orthodox status of the primitive mythical knowledge form. As for the political and economic structures, at the end of primitive society, along with the accumulation of productive experiences and the improvement of productivity, people obtained more and more living materials, making them to meet their needs and even leaving some surplus. These additional living materials were usually taken by the chiefs of the tribes, which hence led to private ownership and the formation of class opposition and exploitation, oppression, and slavery within the tribes or clans. Nevertheless, the newly emerging class exploitation, oppression, and slavery as such should not have gotten God’s revelation in primitive myths wherein (as in the epics found today) that which was revealed by God was the sharing of rights, obligations, and wealth among clan members. On this ground, when private ownership and class exploitation, oppression, and slavery first emerged, they were “illegitimate.” To “legitimate” permanently this system and act, the newly emerging ruling class had to reform or even abandon the primitive myths in favor of choosing or setting up another system of knowledge. Along with the appearance of the society of private ownership, there were largescale battles between tribes and clans with different purposes than in primitive societies, which were mainly aimed at plundering populace or wealth rather than serving the ghosts of the tribes. In other words, at that time, ghosts already ceased to be the origin of battles but were merely tools for the latter. As a result of these largescale battles at the end of primitive society, there were either “tribe mergers” or “tribe alliances.” They were both faced with the task of re-organizing the social life of tribes in that one of the cultural results of the tribe merger or alliance was the breaking of the closed state of the original mythical knowledge and the appearance of various narrative myths and corresponding knowledge. This was quite detrimental to the consolidation of the new tribes or tribe alliances, as the alien myths might become the fuses to contrast the new tribes or dissolve the tribe alliances. Under such circumstances, the new chiefs might expect to establish their gods or myths as “orthodox” and the others as “heresy.” As a matter of fact, they merely expected the appearance of a new knowledge form, which might deprive the various mythical knowledge of their legitimate status. Overall, both the internal legitimacy and the external social values of the mythical knowledge form suffered suspicion at the end of primitive society. The intelligentsia and the newly emerging ruling class hoped to set up a new knowledge form and develop a new knowledge system therein. The new form should, first and foremost, abandon the “animism” (pantheism) as the basis of the mythical knowledge form and set up a “monotheism” or ontology. Secondly, it should overcome the traits of circumstances, metaphor, or narration of mythical knowledge so as to obtain a clearer, definite, and reliable knowledge. The two aspects both rely on metaphysical thinking, which is the only one that can set up the “monotheism” needed by people or a clearer, more definite and reliable knowledge.

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It should be noted that the “metaphysical thinking” mentioned above is not the one-sided, static, and ossified thinking mode in opposition to “dialectics” in today’s cognition; rather, this thinking and its results are relevant to the origin of all the things in the life-world, which hence can also be called ontological thinking and ontological knowledge. The crucial differences between ontological thinking and the primitive mythical one are the following. First, ontological thinking relies on logic, whereas mythical thinking on metaphor. Secondly, ontological thinking is abstract, whereas mythical thinking is concrete. Finally, ontological thinking focuses on the origin or the support of the existence of things, what it is and how it produces things in the life-world, whereas mythical thinking hardly inquiries into the existing state of the origin (the mysterious powers) but merely takes it as a premise on which the story is unfolded. Direct proofs of metaphysical thinking as such can be found in many human cultural states. In ancient Greece, there emerged some new intelligentsia—philosophers. They observed the celestial phenomena all day and all night before making contemplations and meditations, and thought about the origin of the world and the support of the existence of things in the life-world. They drew colored conclusions: either “fire,” or “gas,” or “atom,” or “number,” and so on and so forth. They explicated in detail how this world was produced from fire, gas, atom, number, etc., and ultimately return to them. In ancient China, there also emerged some philosophers in same fashion, say, Laozi and Confucius, and others. In the Xia and Shang periods of ancient China, myths or thoughts of destiny were rather prevalent. By the West Zhou period, whereas, these thoughts declined and were replaced by a sort of symbolized system of knowledge—Yi易 or Yijing易经 (The Book of Changes). Yi or Yijing sets up the fundamental framework for interpreting things in the life-world by means of some simple concepts or symbols, and hence enables these interpretations to shift from relying on gods to relying on humans, which, presumably, is a great step forward for Chinese ancient epistemology. In the age of Laozi and Confucius, the thoughts of myth or destiny further declined. Laozi understood “heaven” at the level of nature, whereas Confucius essentially followed the principle “saying no strange things, violence, riots, or ghosts and gods.” They presented a new noumenon of the world—“Ren仁” or “Dao道.” Being not specific things notwithstanding, they have the attribute of generating or cultivating things in the life-world, being the essence or origin. Plainly, these philosophers could not have found these categories in ordinary life without metaphysical interest or relying on metaphysical reflections. To be sure, their conclusions differ from the Western philosophers’, and their modes of drawing conclusions, however, are quite similar, with only difference on expressing styles. Whereas ancient Greek philosophers paid stress on logical inferences, Chinese ancient philosophers attached great importance to expressing their thoughts via very plain and brief words. At any rate, metaphysical thinking has changed humans’ mode of understanding the world and producing knowledge, and ultimately suspended and destructed the orthodox status of the primitive mythical knowledge form. Nonetheless, the knowledge form as a sort of “ideology” or “regime” of knowledge is, once set up, a requirement to maintain its existence. It will not undo its work of “magister” of knowledge unless it has lost all its legitimacy and social

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foundations. It will ally with the old socio-political forces to proclaim that the new knowledge form is illegitimate and the new intelligentsia “heresy.” In the history of Western thoughts, the first “heresy” as such is no one else but Socrates the ancient Greek philosopher. In his age, albeit some philosophers had emerged as stated afore, mythical knowledge still played a quite important role in people’s ordinary life, so much so that the legitimacy of the social regime greatly relied on divine oracles. Having begun to discuss the origin of the world independently of mythical knowledge notwithstanding, other philosophers did not, it seemed, confront themselves in a conflicting fashion to mythical knowledge and the social customs and systems based on it. In most cases, they immersed themselves in their philosophical considerations and scarcely exerted great influences on the then social life. Socrates was distinguished. He walked out of his internal philosophical considerations and brought them to every public place such as market, family, roadside, or the like. More than thinking about what was “genuine knowledge,” he also taught others to think about that. His renowned “midwifery” made those who originally thought themselves to be intellectuals eventually find out that the knowledge they owned was vague and full of ambiguities. Their knowledge mainly originated from myths and dramas developed on their basis. Socrates’ actions destructed Greeks’ original intellectual beliefs and shook the basis of knowledge of Greek social systems, which surely aroused the vigilance and panic of the conservative forces. As a result, he was informed against and put in jail for judgment. Socrates was mainly accused of “believing no gods,” “confusing right with wrong,” and “sophmorism.” As to these accusations foisted on him, Socrates in his 70s said in his court defenses: (T)he young men who have the most leisure, the sons of the richest men, accompany me of their own accord, find pleasure in hearing people being examined, and often imitate me themselves, and then they undertake to examine others; and then, I fancy, they find a great plenty of people who think they know something, but know little or nothing. As a result, therefore, those who are examined by them are angry with me, instead of being angry with themselves, and say that “Socrates is a most abominable person and is corrupting the youth.” And when anyone asks them “by doing or teaching what?” they have nothing to say, but they do not know, and that they may not seem to be at a loss, they say these things that are handy to say against all the philosophers, “the things in the air and the things beneath the earth” and “not to believe in the gods” and “to make the weaker argument the stronger.” For they would not, I fancy, care to say the truth, that it is being made very clear that they pretend to know, but know nothing. Since, then, they are jealous of their honor and energetic and numerous and speak concertedly and persuasively about me, they have filled your ears both long ago and now with vehement slanders. (Plato, 1919, p. 89)

Undoubtedly, Socrates’ defenses were very effective and the accusers were often silenced by him. The defenses were invalid, though. He did not know that his view of truth was different from that of the ancient Greeks, nor did he know that his mode of exploring truths had also shaken essentially the intellectual and social foundations of the whole Greek society and, hence, made everything questionable. He only knew how to teach people to explore the truths but did not know that he had simultaneously pronounced another sort of “truth” as “fallacy.” He only knew that he had not taught the youth anything but did not know that he had taught them the spirit of questioning and the pursuit of determinacy. To the ancient Greeks, the latter was his severest

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crime, an unforgivable one. He was hated not only by his accusers but also by many Greeks. Consequently, even Socrates himself did not know who his real enemy was and he found that he was “fighting with his shadow.” De facto, his enemy was the whole traditional knowledge form and the ancient Greek society based on it. Socrates’ death was the result of the conflict between the mythical knowledge form of primitive society and the metaphysical one in ancient society. His death was due to his dedication to establishing the new metaphysical knowledge form, just like the later Bruno dedicated himself to the establishment of the scientific knowledge form. Be that as it may, new knowledge form is always superior to the old one. Socrates’ sacrifice did not prevent other philosophers’ metaphysical explorations. His student, Plato, and the latter’s student, Aristotle, went on along the road of knowledge cleared by Socrates. Plato presented the famous “Platonic idealism” and the demarcation between “the world of phenomena” and “the world of ideas.” In his view, the world we experienced was an ever-changing phenomenal world, an “irreal” one. The impressions we obtained via our senses from this world were all vague, ambiguous, and unreliable. Plato believed that there was an eternal and static world outside the phenomenal world, namely the “world of ideas,” and the phenomenal world was merely the “shadow” or “copy” of it. The world of ideas consisted of innumerable ideas or concepts, which alone really reflected the essence of things, and hence, it was knowledge in the true sense of the word. Studying consisted of recalling the ideas we owned before we were born and that we then forgot. Aristotle put forward the famous “syllogism” and treated it as a unique method to gain knowledge. The syllogism was, in essence, the combination of the reliability of knowledge and the logic of the process of gaining knowledge. True knowledge increasingly broke away from the mysterious revelation but turned to concepts, logic, and speculations. Nonetheless, that which Plato and Aristotle had done to develop the metaphysical knowledge form was merely the scholars’ ideas and beliefs in ancient Greece, but had still to become a “regime” of knowledge controlling the production and dissemination of the whole social knowledge, and to be united with social forces such as politics, culture, and so on. The situation began to change after the fourth century, A.D. The key reason is that Christianity was established as the state religion, which ended the polytheism era in the Greek world. To differentiate itself from primitive myths, Christianity had to establish its orthodox status, and hence it had to seek its logic support and explicate its creeds at a theoretical level. Thus, many theologists emerged, who used metaphysics as the best way to help them not only ontologically demonstrate “the existence of God,” but also deduce an absolute and tremendous system of theological knowledge. Metaphysics was combined with spiritual power, which became the support of the origin and legitimacy of theological knowledge. All other knowledge, be they from customs or experiences, must be proved metaphysically and must be coincident with theological knowledge. Metaphysics became the most fashionable mode of producing and defending knowledge at that time. The famous dispute between “nominalism” and “realism” was performed within the milieu of metaphysics, in a metaphysical way. More than that, metaphysics had also evoked people’s unlimited intellectual impulses and passions. Also, along with the ruin of the Roman Empire,

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many Greek scholars or oriental scholars proficient in Greek philosophy wandered all around Europe, which hence broadly disseminated the belief of metaphysical knowledge and made possible the long-term trend of metaphysical studies in European history. By the eleventh century, not only theological studies were enmeshed in metaphysical ones, but natural studies and historical studies were also entangled to that. The metaphysical knowledge form reached full maturity. In China, the development of the system of metaphysical knowledge differed greatly from the West, as it was never the standard of knowledge in the true sense of the word in the whole ancient society. Although in Laozi and Confucius’ works there is a difference between “Dao” (advanced, essential, and metaphysical knowledge) and “art” (elementary, concrete, and empirical knowledge), it seemed that only a few thinkers were concerned about it after Laozi and Confucius; rather, they paid more attention to how their knowledge could be applied in practice. They mostly replaced the reflections on nature and the cosmos with those on society and history, immersing themselves in historical and moral knowledge rather than the metaphysical one. This situation slightly improved in the period of the Song and the Ming dynasties. The Neo-Confucianists in the Song and the Ming dynasties began to make efforts to construct a metaphysical system of knowledge, presenting different ideas, such as “li理-oriented” (Cheng Yi, Cheng Hao, Zhu Xi), “mind-oriented” (Lu Jiuyuan, Wang Yangming), “qi气-oriented” (Zhang Zai), and engaging themselves in constructing the whole spiritual world with these ontological categories as the starting point, through some intermediary categories. Nevertheless, the realists in the Ming and the Qing dynasties failed to follow their path of knowledge and turned to criticize their studies for their emptiness and uselessness, assuming again pragmatism as the primal task of the scholar and the primal criterion of judging the truthfulness of knowledge. The unformed or immature state of metaphysics in Chinese ancient society has led to the lack of a logical character and a spirit of tracing back to the origin in Chinese traditional intellectual life; on the other hand, it has also freed Chinese traditional intellectual life from the fetter of some absolute knowledge and hence amounted to the insistent progress of knowledge. Presumably, the latter aspect is the very reason why Chinese ancient knowledge achieved far more than Western epistemology before the seventeenth century. Metaphysics as a knowledge form holds that the world deviating from some particular origin and genuine knowledge is the one revealing the “noumenon” of the world. As the world’s noumenon is outside the sensuous world, the main path to gain knowledge as such is logic rather than feeling. Genuine knowledge is surely a proposition constituted by concepts and logic. Any human experience whatsoever that fails to be expressed in this way is not genuine knowledge. Genuine knowledge is abstract, absolute, and ultimate, and it will be valid forever once it is gained. During the acquisition of this sort of knowledge, the individual is active rather than passive, but he/she should not allow his/her private feelings and experiences to get involved. In addition, not everyone is capable of gaining such knowledge, as only those who received proper training can attain it. Compared with such knowledge, the populace’s ordinary experiences are of no value and not worthy of being collected by libraries or disseminated by schools. As knowledge is the manifestation of the

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world’s noumenon, it is naturally “value-neutral” and universally valid, being the spiritual wealth of the whole humankind, rather than belonging to some person or some group. The only thing that scholars would like to follow is the calling of truth. As to theologists or Christians, they reformed the metaphysical views of knowledge to serve the interests of their religion. They believed that God was the only origin. God created the world so He was omnipotent. There could be only one God in the cosmos; that is, Jehovah and other “Gods” were all “Demons.” The Bible, intended as the record and manifestation of God’s speeches and behaviors, was the only reliable origin and reliable standard of knowledge. Theology was the explications as regards the origin and standard as such and, in terms of its property, was a sort of metaphysical knowledge.1 All those who did not believe in this system of knowledge were “heretics,” having been bewitched by the Demon. The belief in God needed to rely on reason to be accomplished and reason was a tool of belief. The knowledge in the Bible constituted the basis of all the social systems and was the legitimate support for all social activities. The first knowledge transformation led to several important intellectual fruits and social effects. It presented new concepts of knowledge, pointed out new paths to gain knowledge, and produced new types of intelligentsia. It changed humans’ cognitive status from passive to active and hence made prominent the role of reason in cognition. In ancient Greece, philosophers even claimed that humans were the measure of all things, not only of their existence, but also of their non-existence, which greatly inspired people’s confidence and enthusiasm in gaining knowledge and, undoubtedly, promoted the development of ancient knowledge. It promoted the midwifery of many social institutions focusing on the studies of knowledge, such as Plato’s, Aristotle’s, and many others’ “Academies” and various libraries were built afterward. It gave rise to the style and mode in which scholars discussed and argued on issues of knowledge, which was unimaginable for the primitive or mythical knowledge form. Compared with the mysterious revelation, it also allowed testing more experiences through metaphysics and hence allowed them to become part of human knowledge, broadening its scope. Most importantly, religion made use of knowledge transformation, or, differently put, it was fused with religious theology, which enabled the latter’s knowledge to enjoy the status of absolute truth during the Middle Ages. Resultantly, religious theology became dominant and was a sort of hegemony knowledge, controlling not merely the spiritual life of the whole society, but also its secular life. The “magisterium” based on the hegemony knowledge as such was regarded as the supreme power in Europe, being superior to the “sovereignty” as the state power. Each social system or activity would not be legitimized unless it got the support of religious theoretical knowledge. With the support of metaphysics, the 1

Hence, sometimes Comte considered his “theological phase” and “metaphysical phase” as one for analysis. Nevertheless, he contended the idea questionable that theology is fictitious whereas metaphysics is abstract for theology is de facto also abstract, so much so that few people can understand it.

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religious culture and social life in the Middle Ages were characterized by “absolute,” “imperious,” and “divine.” The intolerance and persecution of “pagans” and the invasion into “pagan countries” were the subjects of the cultural and political struggles in that period.

3.3 Modern Knowledge Form and the Second Knowledge Transformation Ancient or metaphysical knowledge form having contributed much to promoting the development of human culture notwithstanding, it has some shortages. On the one hand, the zealous pursuit of noumenon led to the intelligentsia’s ignorance of all the experiences in real life, which ultimately turned ontology into a theory with a mysterious flavor like mythical knowledge. In theological knowledge, beliefs all the more replaced reason as the proof of the truthfulness of knowledge. On the other hand, the absoluteness and ultimacy of metaphysical knowledge had also hindered people’s suspicion and modification with respect to the obtained knowledge, which made large amount of knowledge into undeniable dogmas and, as a result, the trends of speculation and copious quoting prevailed. Undoubtedly, all these have hindered the progress of human knowledge, notably the pragmatic knowledge closely related to the welfare of human life. It can be said that at the same time when ancient or metaphysical knowledge form freed people from the constraint of mysterious forces, it also trapped people into the pernicious customs of pure speculation and authority worship. Along with the introduction of the pragmatic scientific knowledge of the oriental Arab world in the eleventh-twelfth centuries, this essential shortage of ancient or metaphysical knowledge form became all the more apparent. Rather than taking concepts and logic as the basis, the oriental pragmatic knowledge was based on empirical observations, being a drastically different knowledge form that could not find its position in the metaphysical one. At the very beginning, they were introduced merely for the sake of satisfying the curiosity of the Westerners but failed to attract the attention of the metaphysicians and theologists. Contrariwise, many of them were the active advocates of the knowledge as such. As was recorded by Comte, at that time, some famous monks, even the popes, were engaged in the pragmatic knowledge under the instruction of Arabian professors. Moreover, with the support of the popes and the kings, many museums of natural history, observatories, and dissecting rooms were built in Italy, France, Britain, and the like (Comte, 1974, p. 81). The building of these institutions of the new knowledge form played an important role in promoting the advancement of Western empirical knowledge. In the twelfth century, there appeared in the renowned Sartres Abbey the School of Sartres studying natural phenomena by means of observation.2 In the thirteenth century, R. Bacon started observational 2

Sartres Abbey was founded in France in the twelfth century with St. Bernard as the representative. The spirit of the School of Sartres is the rational spirit in later generations’ terminology—diligent

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studies of physical phenomena. In the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries, with the aid of the pragmatic knowledge as such, the adventurers started their global explorations and finally found “the Cape of Good Hope” and the North American continent. These explorations were simultaneously of the signification of today’s scientific investigations. Every time and everywhere, the explorers would make detailed observations, records, classifications, and analyses with regard to the natural phenomena such as astronomy, geography, vegetation, ocean, etc., so as to provide the most accurate knowledge for the explorations. For the first time, they demonstrated at a large scale the validity of the natural knowledge with the aid of their practices and, meanwhile, they established the absurdity of the natural knowledge based on metaphysics and theology. Be that as it may, from the eleventh century to the sixteenth century, pragmatic natural knowledge developed outside the metaphysical and theological systems of knowledge and had no legitimated qualification of knowledge. Those who were engaged in these studies were not legitimized as scholars either. At that time, it was impossible to be hired by medieval universities or theological institutions by virtue of the knowledge as such, nay, as in the fifteenth century, and even earlier, the church had noticed that this new type of knowledge might exert destructive influences on the absolute domination of religion and theology on the spiritual sphere. Therefore, they began to constrain the monasteries on performing these studies and criticize the legitimacy of this new knowledge form from a theological perspective. The scenario was the following: to further develop and to gain the status of genuine knowledge, the natural knowledge coming from observations must shake and destroy the metaphysical knowledge form and break the authority of theological knowledge, must reset the standard of knowledge, reestablish the orientation of knowledge, and re-explicate the responsibilities and obligations of the intelligentsia. The path to realizing the aforementioned task was long and winding, roughly covering almost 400 years, from the beginning of the sixteenth century until the mid-nineteenth century. In religious sphere, there emerged the Reformation led by Martin Luther directed to the authority of the pope and theology, and to blind beliefs. The principle of “righteousness through faith” was presented, which upheld that the individual might be faced with God directly without relying on the church, and hence fully affirmed the individual’s autonomy in the spiritual life, including the cognitive life. In the sphere of thought, there prevailed skepticism directed upon metaphysical and theological knowledge, say, many early humanisms like Erasmus Darwin, Montaigne, and others, performed sharp satires on people’s ignorance brought about by metaphysics and theology. In 1510, Erasmus wrote his famous Moriae Encomium, denying the omnipotence and omniscience of God, revealing that what the monks longed for was money, and pointing out that the church and theology were the very origins of people’s ignorance. Meanwhile, Montaigne excavated anew Aristotle’s thought of “follow the nature,” noting that all the metaphysical and theological knowledge was elusive and useless. To gain genuine knowledge, people must take “nature at observing, fond of thinking, stressing evidence, and objecting authority. This school exerted great influence on many later thinkers in European Renaissance, such as Michel de Montaigne, and others.

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as man’s teacher.” In the political sphere, the struggles for power within the feudal reign and those between it and the pope were also rather fierce, and there appeared also large-scale peasant rebels in European history, which had shaken the imperial power and the crown. In the economic sphere, the bud of capitalism productive mode emerging along the Mediterranean coasts at the beginning of the fourteenth century had spread all over Europe and become a new economic form, different from the feudal manorial economy. Capitalism forces became increasingly powerful in the society’s political and economic life and began to raise the requirement of subverting the feudal system and breaking away from the church’s control. Consequently, the struggles in each sphere of the sixteenth century provided the conditions to the development of natural science in the modern sense and the ultimate establishment of the new scientific knowledge form in the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries. The seventeenth century was called the “scientific century” in European history in that in this century there emerged not only several modern scientific giants like Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, and others and their achievements of decisive significance to the whole modern science, but also the representatives of modern empiricism and rationalism epistemology like Bacon, Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and others. From their respective perspectives, they concluded that, at a philosophical level, the qualities of the empirical knowledge appearing since the eleventh century profoundly criticized the absoluteness, ultimacy, and abstraction of the metaphysical knowledge form, definitely explicated the new view of knowledge unlike the metaphysical and theological one—the scientific view of knowledge—and hence provided epistemological instructions to the future development of the science courses. On this account, at the level of the conception of knowledge, if the sixteenth century is merely suspecting the metaphysical and theological view of knowledge, the seventeenth century is one of deconstruction and construction in the true sense of the words. Comte thus says when criticizing the epistemological influences of Copernican astronomy theories: Even the best minds rarely estimate at its true value, the vast influence which the change of ideas thus wrought exerted in the radical destruction of the theological system. So great was this influence that it alone would have sufficed to demolish that system. (Comte, 1974, p. 86)

It is due to Copernicus’ awareness of the great destruction that his theories might bring to the whole ancient metaphysical and theological system of knowledge that he dared not publicize his discoveries in his lifetime. It is due to the fact that the church had realized the great destruction this new knowledge form might bring that Galileo was summoned several times and was forced to admit that his theories were wrong. It is also due to their fear of the destruction of the legitimate foundation of the whole Christian world brought by the dissemination of the theories as such that the inquisition decided to sentence Bruno to death, who refused to revise his scientific beliefs. Be that as it may, all these autocratic and violent conducts were of no avail to the ultimate ruin of the ancient metaphysical knowledge form and the legitimacy of theological knowledge.

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The eighteenth century was a “rational century” to philosophers, a “century of capitalism revolution” to politicians, a “century of industrial revolution” to economists, and a century, whereas, of fundamental establishment and consistent extension to the new scientific knowledge form. All these aspects were interconnected with and promoted each other. As is known, the epistemological revolution against metaphysical and theological knowledge and their theories targeted first natural sciences. By the eighteenth century, nevertheless, the new view of knowledge kept expanding, so much so that it not only replaced metaphysical and theological knowledge and took the dominant position in natural sciences like astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, etc., but it had also stepped out of the sphere of natural sciences and played a part in the political and economic spheres of society. French enlightenment thinkers demanded that the old ideas of the history and the customs be broken and that the social systems and all the conventions be brought to trial in the court of reason. Starting from his theory of good nature and natural philosophy, Rousseau presented ideas of “liberty,” “equality,” and “fraternity,” and the like, contending that an ideal social system should be one based on these notions rather than on metaphysical, theological, and unreasonable customs. This means that metaphysical and theological systems of knowledge should be dispelled out of social life and be replaced by the ideas of reason. Seen in this line, the 1789 French Revolution was not merely a result of class struggle inside France, but, in a certain sense, an experiment that the capitalists made to destroy the old society and set a new one by means of the new knowledge form. It is the first intermarriage between the new knowledge form and the new political power. The British Capitalism Revolution in the seventeenth century failed to do this, and it was lack of the conditions also. This may be one of the reasons why the British Revolution was characterized by “compromise” to a great extent than the French Revolution. In the economic field, the British industrial revolution starting in the eighteenth century was the direct result of the development of modern natural scientific knowledge and technologies, which, presumably, was the first demonstration of the tremendous role of human knowledge in this field. By the end of the eighteenth century, the scientific knowledge form was already fundamentally established among intellectuals and in other fields of society. The nineteenth century is one wherein modern scientific knowledge form advanced in triumphant fashion. From the beginning to the end of that century, a large number of intellectual spheres, namely, sociology, politics, history, economics, anthropology, psychology, pedagogy, to name a few, successively adopted the research paradigm of natural sciences and formed a fundamental methodology of scientific research. The dominant position of the scientific knowledge form had been firmly established in virtually all human intellectual spheres and the residual metaphysics was ultimately dispelled. Meanwhile, natural sciences had also achieved significant results, such as cell theory, the theory of revolution, energy conservation law, electromagnetic theory, and so on, and scientific theories began to be transformed into new productive technologies and productivities. Humans’ capacity to explore nature improved abruptly, and that to control and reform the nature was also unprecedentedly advanced. At the end of this phase in history in the middle nineteenth century, Engels pointed out, not without passions, that the progress of

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sciences had outnumbered the sum of all human knowledge before the seventeenth century. Along with the scientific progress, essential changes occurred in human ideology and the spiritual sphere. Be they commoners or governors of the society, they believed that only scientific knowledge was the genuine knowledge that could tell them the truths and hence bring them the evangel. In ordinary life, an atmosphere of esteeming, exploring, and applying sciences had been formed. Each policy of social reform was also demanded to be built on the basis of scientific knowledge. Western society had entered into a scientific era in the true sense of the word, and the “scientific polity” that Comte expected at the beginning of the nineteenth century had also been authentically set up. After over 400 years of struggles and development, the scientific knowledge form was already completely developed at the end of the nineteenth century, having replaced metaphysics and theology in dominating people’s whole spiritual life. Compared with the ancient or metaphysical knowledge form, the modern scientific knowledge form is of the main connotations as follows: (1) Genuine knowledge is neither speculative nor theological but positive. It has been corroborated by observations and experiments and has been proved by rigid logic. As is said by Einstein, “external corroboration” (i.e., empirical corroboration) and “internal completeness” (i.e., the logical coincidence between theories) are the two fundamental conditions for scientific theories to be formed. (2) Genuine knowledge is not subjectively conjectured or speculative but is coincident with the essence of the cognitive object. It is the result of the subject’s “reflection” on the essential attributes of the cognitive object. The ontological basis of knowledge is not anymore some abstract categories or gods but the “essence” of things. During the cognitive process, the knower plays the role of a “mirror,” reflecting or revealing the essence of things. To do this, when committed to cognition, the knower should exclude all the individual biases and “falsities” and polish the “mirror” as such. (3) This sort of knowledge is objective, universal, and reliable. It is objective in that it is the reflection of the objective essence of things rather than the product of the subjective speculations of the knower; it is universal in that the essence of things is unique and unchanging, and hence, the objective reflections of the essence is no exception, being of universal significance once it is obtained; it is reliable in that the knowledge as such has been rigidly proved or corroborated. In a word, only this sort of knowledge is truthful. (4) Observation and experiment are the starting point of scientific activities, the only method to obtain reliable knowledge and judge whether or not a statement is scientific knowledge. Theoretical presumptions and logical inferences are the necessary conditions to obtain this sort of knowledge. Disputes about knowledge can be settled through observation and experimental methods, data processing, or presuming or inferring procedures. (5) The statement of knowledge is performed by means of some peculiar concepts, symbols, categories, and propositions. Mathematics and logic are recognized as the most basic scientific languages. If a statement is neither mathematical

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nor logical, it is not scientific, at least not in an advanced sense. In this connection, to be engaged in scientific activities, one must grasp this set of peculiar languages. Scientific language breaks away from ordinary language and increasingly develops into a language of artificial traits. (6) “Knowledge is power,” ignorance incapacity, and stupidity the origin of all social problems. The values of knowledge are absolute, universal, and unconditional. Grasping knowledge corresponds to grasping the power to control the nature and reform society and the self. Thus, the capital in the government and enterprises’ hands began to flow copiously to scientific fields. (7) Given that knowledge is objective, universal, and beyond individual factors, it is value-neutral or value-free, rising over the restrictions of any ideology, culture, territory, or gender. Science has no borders and is considered as the shared wealth of all humans. Scientific knowledge or knowledge named after “science” is disseminated around the world without any hindrance whatsoever, having obtained a sort of “immunity,” in a worldly sense. In the twentieth century, the former USSR scientists presented the “Soviet physics,” “Soviet economics,” or the like, which were taken by the international scientific community as the product of an ideological struggle, a joke. (8) Scientists and researchers have replaced metaphysicians and theologists and become the new intellectual elites and blue-eyed people of the industrial society. Scientific academy and research institutions in universities and colleges have replaced seminaries and metaphysicians’ studies and become the main places where knowledge is produced. School teaching, scientific journals, scientific conferences, scientific exhibitions, scientific lectures, etc., have begun to become the main paths of disseminating scientific knowledge. Albeit to a certain extent, this modern scientific knowledge form resembles the ancient metaphysical one in some individual aspects, say, it preserves the objective (with different connotations) belief of knowledge, or something, this new knowledge form is in essence a genuine “revolution,” a drastic “subversion,” and an exact “transformation” into the metaphysical form. It offers the above brand-new answers to the four sets of question as regards the concept of knowledge. On the one hand, it has destroyed the order of the ancient kingdom of knowledge; on the other hand, it has set up a new order of the modern kingdom of knowledge. The knowledge having supremacy in the ancient metaphysical kingdom of knowledge is deprived of the legitimate status in front of the modern scientific knowledge form, at least being “exiled” to the remotest area of the kingdom of knowledge. On the contrary, the originally oppressed empirical knowledge is given supremacy after being reformed and becomes the model of all knowledge. This situation is similar to that of the eighteenth-century France Revolution whence the feudal crown was abolished and the people’s sovereignty was established. That which merits heed and serious study is, the second knowledge transformation mentioned afore mainly occurs in Western countries. The situation was rather different in China and other non-Western countries. As was stated afore, there have really been some metaphysical considerations and knowledge in academia in Chinese

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history; they, however, had never obtained the intellectual powers as in Western countries. They failed to be combined with the secular regime and to exclude other thinking modes and knowledge systems. In the two-thousand-year ancient civilization of China, the standard by means of which people judged knowledge was not metaphysical but historical. Whether or not some knowledge is conceivable depends on whether or not there is an origin in history, or whether or not it is given by some sage or is obtained from historical experiences. On this account, to be an intellectual in ancient Chinese society, it is rather important for one to have both ancient learning and modern learning and to be thoroughly acquainted with what one had learned, which, at the level of importance, is similar to the case that Western intelligentsia grasp scientific methods and language. This is because only when one achieves this, can one’s ideas be believed and accepted by others, be transformed from individual ideas to social knowledge, and then be widely disseminated in society. To this connection, in ancient academia, there were more historical textual criticisms than metaphysical disputes. This is also the reason why in ancient Chinese academia the atmosphere was not severe, overbearing, and oppressed as in its Western counterpart; contrariwise, each sort of knowledge could have its developing space. The development and the great achievements obtained by ancient empirical or natural sciences were relevant to this. Nonetheless, on the other hand, since in ancient China, historical and moral knowledge (the two were often one and the same) were over-worshiped, the development of natural sciences was all the time lack of a social, particularly political motivation and support but stayed at a level of individual independent studies outside the system of knowledge. Until the Ming and the Qing dynasties, under the influences of the first “Western learning spread to the East,” some researches of natural sciences were supported by the feudal government, which nevertheless failed to realize the significance of the research as such to the development of the whole society, particularly of knowledge, but merely regarded it as a sort of “diabolic tricks and wicked craft,” in the same way as the metaphysical scholars and theologists treated the scientific knowledge introduced from the Arab world. This changed attitude was the result of the Opium War in the latter half of the nineteenth century and of the series of invasive wars into China launched by Japan and Western powers. Western and Japanese gunboats eventually caused the late Qing government and many intelligentsia to realize the shortages of the holistic structure of Chinese traditional knowledge, and the necessity and importance of getting the knowledge of Western modern sciences. At the very first, due to the restriction of the traditional standard of knowledge, many people still treated traditional cultural knowledge as the “Dao” whereas Western science and technologies the “technique” or “art,” believing that the latter might assist but never replace the former. People, however, soon realized that the case was not so at all. Studying Western sciences and technologies (“Western art” and “Western politics”) would surely shake the orthodox status of traditional knowledge and the legitimacy of the feudal government. Thus, within the intelligentsia and the feudal government there emerged “disputes between China and the West,” and between “Chinese knowledge” and “Western knowledge.” As a result, theories of “Chinese essence, Western application” presented by Zhang

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Zhidong and others emerged which, de facto, were still intended to settle the problems within the traditional intellectual structure. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, along with the sending and returning of some students studying abroad in early phases, a large amount of Western scientific knowledge developed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries began to be systematically introduced in China, which resulted in the first large-scale tide of translations and adoptions of such knowledge in the twentieth century. At that time, the translations included not merely the teaching books and works related to each specific discipline but also the philosophical works of Locke, Descartes, Rousseau, Comte, Spencer, and others. In this connection, Chinese intelligentsia could then gain a deeper understanding as to Western system of knowledge and its principles, and a clearer cognition as to the causes of the development and prosperity of modern Western civilization. On the relationship between “Chinese knowledge” and “Western knowledge” at the beginning of the twentieth century, people were increasingly apt to Western scientific knowledge. The foundation of the Republic of China (ROC) in 1912 enabled Western scientific knowledge to find its political allies in China for the first time in that many founders of the ROC were those who had been abroad for a long time and obtained Western scientific technologies and knowledge. The famous New Culture Movement of 1919 all the more definitely presented the slogan of “Democratic” and “Scientific,” insisting that new knowledge be applied to reforming the old culture and building a new one. The scientific knowledge form began to be acknowledged by more and more elites in academia. This process, however, was also rather complex, always accompanied by disputes between “sciences” and “mysterious knowledge,” and between “the school of complete Westernization” and “the school of Eastern culture.” After the liberation of the whole country, particularly after the 1980s, China vigorously developed the courses of sciences and technologies, formed independent scientific research and teaching system, and attained remarkable scientific achievements, having contributed much to the construction of Chinese socialism modernization and enabling people to see and personally experience the power of science. It can be said that until the end of the twentieth century, the dominant status of the scientific knowledge form had been steadily established in the spiritual life of Chinese people, and “work according to scientific laws” had become the pet phrase of modern Chinese people. Comparatively, after the “May 4th Movement,” “complete Westernization,” and “Cultural Revolution,” the traditional intellectual system has been gradually destructed or absorbed into the system of scientific knowledge. In the textbooks of each level and each type of education, except for several disciplines studying Chinese traditional culture, say, history, Chinese traditional philosophy, etc., traditional knowledge plainly acts as the footnote of the system of Western scientific knowledge. The case is particularly clear in the teaching materials of pedagogy in universities and colleges. After the introduction of the Western scientific knowledge form in China, there have also been some subtle yet rather important changes. In the West, science is not merely a ready-made knowledge system, but all the more an exploring action. Thus, when it comes to understanding it, people highly stress scientific methods, attitude, and spirit. In China, nevertheless, people’s cognition as regards science is restricted

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to its conclusions and values. No matter what kind of knowledge it is, so long as it is called “science,” people will immediately think of its truthfulness, incontestability, and validity in practical activities. Some matters originally far from “being scientific” are also called “science” by those who then may swagger about and evade from questionings. In the education of science in primary and high schools, even in universities and colleges, that which is stressed by educators are students’ acceptance and understanding about the existent scientific concepts, propositions, axioms, facts, methods, among others, rather than the cultivation of students’ interest in science or the creation of the conditions for students to autonomously perform scientific experiments, discussions, analyses, demonstrations, or the like. On the one hand, these changes might be relevant to the introduction of the scientific knowledge system from abroad, namely, Chinese scholars failed to understand the genetic process of the scientific knowledge system in Western history of knowledge and hence misunderstood science as some ready-made conclusions of research; on the other hand, it might appertain to the attitude toward knowledge in Chinese traditional culture, namely, its esteem for the authorities of knowledge. Of course, it might be all the more due to the limitations of the scientific knowledge form, namely, its consideration of the knowledge it produces as objective, universal, and reliable; hence, the knowledge allows no further questioning, which leads to people’s blind belief in, even superstition of, scientific knowledge, and eventually to the overflow of scientism.3 The twentieth century witnessed the progress spurt of scientific-technological courses and the obtainment of many important scientific achievements, such as the theories of relativity, the quantum theory, gene theory, information theory, and so forth. In the sphere of physical science, research has reached the level of the elementary particle; in the sphere of life sciences, that of the molecule; and humans have also obtained tremendous breakthroughs in the spheres of noetic science, cosmological science, marine science, material science, energy science, and the like. The upsurge of computer science has all the more drastically changed the production, circulation, storage, teaching, etc., of knowledge, and the technological basis of the whole production and life. The populace’s educational level, the number of scientists, the ratio between scientists and technicians, and the capacity to make scientific creations have become an important index measuring the comprehensive national strength of all countries in the world. The application of sciences and technologies in production has further reached an unprecedented level. Be they traditional industries or the new ones, scientific technologies and management are taken as the premises to improve productivity, market occupancy, competitive power, and scale development. With the support of some high and new technologies like bioengineering, electronic information, new energy and new materials, and the like, the high-tech industry is replacing traditional steel industry, manufacturing industry, etc., and it is becoming a pillar industry of a country’s national economy. Knowledge capitalizing process is

3

Habermas thus interpreted, “‘Scientism’ means science’s belief in itself: that is, the conviction that we can no longer understand science as one form of possible knowledge, but rather must identify knowledge with science.” See Habermas (1971, p. 4).

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starting, and the calculating methods have been presented with regard to the participation of an invention patent into the shareholding system. All these are obtained under the instruction of the scientific knowledge form on the one hand, and they further prove, reversely, the superiority of this knowledge form. Slogans like “technocracy,” “scientific management,” “scientific life,” etc., indicate that the scientific knowledge form has not merely deeply influenced people’s cognitive sphere, but expanded to each realm of people’s social life also, and it is exerting profound influences on state decisions at the macro-level and on individuals’ necessities of life at the micro-level. Be that as it may, all the progress has a cost. The scientific knowledge form frees people’s spiritual life from the shackles of metaphysics and theology and hence promotes the advancement of human knowledge and civilization; however, it simultaneously traps people into its prison and hence brings profound spiritual and social crises. Insofar as spiritual crisis is concerned, it judges knowledge’s values according to the degree of the demonstration of knowledge and its logical coincidence, treats the humanistic knowledge, be it traditional theological, metaphysical, historical, moral, or the like, as incomplete, and hence rejects the intelligentsia producing such knowledge, and mobilizes the government and the industries to grant only a few funds to support their studies, which has greatly hindered the progress of knowledge in these fields. Due to the lack of progress in the seemingly “non-scientific” or “insufficiently scientific” knowledge, the social intellectual structure has lost its balance: on the one hand, scientific and technological knowledge increases rapidly, virtually reaching the degree of “knowledge explosion”; on the other hand, the increase of humanistic knowledge, including some social knowledge with humanistic properties, is considerably slower due to the lack of scientific conditions and to the social biases produced by the mobilization of the scientific knowledge form. If knowledge is power, the progress of the knowledge of natural sciences has greatly improved human power of controlling the external physical world; nevertheless, the lack of humanistic knowledge and social knowledge with humanistic properties has led to people’s vulnerability on cognizing and controlling themselves and society, which makes them feel a loss of life’s significance and the confusion of values while social wealth increases in an unprecedented fashion. In terms of social crisis, the progress of scientific knowledge has changed humans’ living conditions and enabled them to find the best methods to deal with poverty, diseases, and ignorance. Along with the progress of sciences and technologies and the ensuing endless inflation of human desires, the harmony between the natural environment and human society has been destructed, say, the population has increased exponentially, the air, water, and soil environments have suffered damage unknown in the past millenniums, large numbers of creatures have successively become extinct, and various disasters evoked by environmental problems have emerged in an endless stream. With the support of science and technology, a modern war will surely rise, at the level of destructive degree, over the sum of all the wars in history. During the cold war or after it, people have lived under the shadow of nuclear war; worse still, relying on their high-tech military might, some developed countries launch “air strikes” now and then on other countries’ sovereignty and people, and interpret the loss of people’s lives and property caused by wars as “the minimum loss,” without any intention whatsoever as regards

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apologizing, compensating, and regretting. Is this the purpose of human beings when they produce sciences and technologies? In a certain sense, the progress of science and technology is losing control over itself and hence leading human fortune to an unknown future.

3.4 The Third Knowledge Transformation and the Postmodern Knowledge Form It is not from now that questionings about scientific knowledge form start. As is known to all, early in the eighteenth century when this form emerged, Rousseau already gave a negative answer to the question as to whether or not scientific progress might promote the moral one. In the second half of the nineteenth century, when the scientific knowledge form was marching from the sphere of natural sciences into other intellectual spheres, W. Dilthey put forward the concept of “spiritual science” (Geisteswissenschaften),4 starting from the critique of the historical reason to discuss the methodology of spiritual science and highlight its independence so as to prevent the expansion of natural science’s research paradigm into the broad spheres of history, religion, literature, philosophy, and the like. The questioning of the scientific knowledge form proceeded constantly with the revolutionary development of natural sciences in the twentieth century and reached the climax in the second half of that century. Chronologically, these questionings mainly concentrated on three spheres: sociology of knowledge, scientific philosophy, and philosophy. In the sphere of sociology of knowledge, the representative questioners of the scientific knowledge form were Scheler and Mannheim. Scheler qua “the father of the sociology of knowledge” contended that the key purposes of the sociology of knowledge were to elucidate the social essences of all knowledge, preserving and delivering all knowledge, and expanding and advancing all the methods of knowledge. He believed that to the individual, the external world was given prior to the internal one; the external world shared by us was given prior to the one cognized or owned by the individual; the internal world shared by us was also given prior to the one of our own. On this account, “we” exist prior to “I” and there would be no “I” without “we.” The internal and external worlds shared by “us” are the conditions of the formation of all “my” knowledge and thoughts, and they decide “my” knowledge and the understanding of it. It can be seen that to Scheler, human beings are far from being abstract and pure cognitive subjects; they are rather concrete and social ones, and all their knowledge would be impossible without social conditions. Accordingly, Scheler pointed out that the ruling class of society must maintain the traditional 4 Neither in Chinese nor in English is there an equivalent translation of Geisteswissenschaften. In addition to “spiritual science,” some translate it into “humanities,” some others “sciences of man,” still others “social sciences,” yet others “cultural sciences,” or the like. The root of this phenomenon is the richness and complexity of “Geist’s” connotation, which includes mind as well as spirit, objectivity as well as subjectivity.

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knowledge system and strive to demonstrate its validity; thus, it is unsuitable for humans to study and discover knowledge. The main logical form is “demonstrating” rather than “inventing” or “discovering”; the cognitive method it usually employs is surely “ontological” and “dogmatic” rather than “epistemological” or “critical”; its understanding about categories is surely “realism” rather than “nominalism,” and so on and so forth. Seen in this line, all knowledge is restricted by the social conditions in which the cognizer is situated, particularly the conditions of the social class and ideology over which no knowledge is capable of rising. According to Scheler, it is natural that the ideas of the scientific knowledge form held by empiricists and rationalists, namely those on the objectivity, value neutrality, and universal validity of knowledge, are untenable. Like Scheler, Mannheim pointed out that when the social origin was ignored, no thinking form whatsoever might be fully comprehended. To be sure, only the individual is capable of thinking and there is never a group mind that can think, except for the individual mind. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to conclude that all ideas and emotions only have individual origins and will be fully comprehended only according to individual life experiences. Rather it is more correct to insist that he participates in thinking further what other men have thought before him. He finds himself in an inherited situation with patterns of thought which are appropriate to this situation and attempts to elaborate further the inherited modes of response or to substitute others for them in order to deal more adequately with the new challenges which have arisen out of the shifts and changes in his situation. Every individual is therefore in a two-fold sense predetermined by the fact of growing up in a society: on the one hand he finds a ready-made situation and on the other he finds in that situation performed patterns of thought and of conduct. (Mannheim, 1936, p. 3)

Mannheim contended that the patterns of thought and conduct prepared in advance by historical and social situations constituted the “perspective” of knowledge, namely, the way by which individual cognizers observe the objects. In different historical and social backgrounds, one will get different perspectives, which hence deeply influence one’s thinking process and the knowledge category and form one produces. Taking the concept of “liberty” as an example, Mannheim argued that in Germany in the early nineteenth century, if one was a traditional conservative, “liberty” would have been the power to determine one’s social status according to one’s “privilege.” If one was a romantic conservative and a Protestant, “liberty” for him/her would have been the “inner liberty,” that is, the power of each individual to live according to his/her personality. It is Mannheim’s contention that the difference in understanding concepts due to different socio-historical statuses of the individuals is a “qualitative difference” rather than a logical one. The difference as such constitutes the condition of individual thoughts, namely, together with the socio-historical situations in which it is produced, it not only constitutes the perspective of individual thoughts, but also deeply influences the types and methods of questions raised by the individual during his/her thinking process, his/her level of expressing the questions, and the abstract level he/she is supposed to reach in his/her view stating, and the like. To this connection, Mannheim presented the concept of “socially determined knowledge” and argued against scientism and phenomenology’s objective and universal views of

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knowledge, believing that there was no knowledge system or value system that might be considered eternally effective, and that reason, knowledge, and truth should have been redefined to appertain to certain socio-historical conditions. If sociology of knowledge mainly questions the scientific knowledge form with the relationship between knowledge and socio-historical conditions as the point of departure, and mainly focuses on the field of socio-historical knowledge, then the successive scientific philosophy launches its criticisms on the scientific knowledge form mainly from inside natural sciences. Karl Popper and Paul Feyerabend are representatives in this aspect. As regards scientific knowledge form, Popper made complete, profound, and clear criticisms exactly thanks to which great changes occurred to people’s ideas of science after the second half of the twentieth century. Directing upon the claim that knowledge is objective and verifiable, Popper noted in definite fashion that all knowledge, not merely the scientific one, is “conjectured knowledge” in essence, is our tentative answer to some questions, and needs to be constantly modified and refuted in later cognitive activities. Therefore, there is not any knowledge whatsoever that can be obtained once and for all, and the so-called “ultimate explanation” by the scientific knowledge form does not exist at all. Therefore, again, no knowledge is verifiable. “Verifiability” cannot be a standard for the reliability of knowledge, nor can it be one for knowledge to be true. Be that as it may, Popper did not aim to return from the absoluteness of the scientific knowledge form to the relativity of the mythical knowledge form. He thought that albeit a sort of knowledge was unverifiable, it could be falsified, which was indubitable. “Falsifiability” or “refutability” should replace “verifiability” as a standard to examine whether or not a statement is scientific, and distinguish between “science” and “metaphysics.” On this ground, he presented his views of science: Science is not a system of certain, or well-established, statements; nor is it a system which steadily advances towards a state of finality. Our science is not knowledge (epist¯em¯e): it can never claim to have attained truth, or even a substitute for it, such as probability. (Popper, 1959, p. 278) The advance of science is not due to the fact that more and more perceptual experiences accumulate in the course of time. Nor is it due to the fact that we are making ever better use of our senses. Out of uninterpreted sense-experiences science cannot be distilled, no matter how industriously we gather and sort them. Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her. And we must hazard them to win our prize. Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game. (Popper, 1959, p. 280)

Popper pointed out that those who claimed that scientific knowledge is the objective, definite, and ultimate explanation gave rise to the authoritarianism in epistemology, or a new one—the authoritarianism originating from observation and reason replaced the theological and metaphysical one. In terms of the oppression of the commoners’ cognitive rights, nevertheless, the new scientific authoritarianism was not necessarily superior to the theological and metaphysical one. Nay, the political sequel of such a view of knowledge is, society is epistemologically divided into two parts: one is

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the noble part owning truth or the capacity to discover it, and the other being the humble part merely sharing truth but lacking the capacity to discover it. Seemingly, it is natural that the former dominates the latter. As an epistemological critic of rationalism and liberalist on social politics, Popper tried to deconstruct the scientific knowledge form since modern times and beyond to free the power of cognition from the restricted intellectual elites before returning it to each person. Compared with Popper, Feyerabend was more radical. His studies put stress on criticizing scientific methodology. He thus said, The idea that science can, and should, be run according to fixed and universal rules, is both unrealistic and pernicious. It is unrealistic, for it takes too simple a view of the talents of man and of the circumstances which encourage, or cause, their development. And it is pernicious, for the attempt to enforce the rules is bound to increase our professional qualifications at the expense of our humanity. In addition, the idea is detrimental to science, for it neglects the complex physical and historical conditions which influence scientific change. It makes our science less adaptable and more dogmatic: every methodological rule is associated with cosmological assumptions so that using the rule we take it for granted that the assumptions are correct. Naive falsificationism takes it for granted that the laws of nature are manifest and not hidden beneath disturbances of considerable magnitude. Empiricism takes it for granted that sense experience is a better mirror of the world than pure thought. Praise of argument takes it for granted that the artifices of Reason give better results than the unchecked play of our emotions. Such assumptions may be perfectly plausible and even true. Still, one should occasionally put them to a test. Putting them to a test means that we stop using the methodology associated with them, start doing science in a different way and see what happens. Case studies such as those reported in the preceding chapters show that such tests occur all the time, and that they speak against the universal validity of any rule. All methodologies have their limitations and the only “rule” that survives is “anything goes.” (Feyerabend, 1975, p. 296)

“Anything goes” was the creed of Feyerabend’s “anarchism” theory of knowledge, which reflected his pluralism stance on the methodology of scientific research. As regards advocating the theory of knowledge as such, Feyerabend has another reason at the level of politics apart from the aforementioned epistemological one, namely, it helped increase people’s “freedom” of cognition and protest various “chauvinisms of science” so as to provide intellectual foundation to the authentic social-democratic decision-making. Apparently, Feyerabend has incisively sensed the internal contradictions between the intolerance of the modern scientific knowledge form and socialdemocratic decision-making. The reason is rather simple: any democratic decisionmaking is based on certain knowledge, the lack of which will result in no one knowing how to express his/her ideas. What kind of knowledge is to be taken as the basis is restricted by the epistemology of the theory of knowledge. If there were only one knowledge form in society and all knowledge were under its control, there would not be competing knowledge in this society, nor would there be authentic socialdemocratic decision-making. That which is implied here is: in a scientific era like ours, science has monopolized the standards for knowledge as a result of which science is de facto the basis of democratic decision-making and scientists are in fact dominating the lion’s share of the social decision-making. There lies the secret of the so-called “technocracy.” It can thus be seen that what Feyerabend is against is not merely scientific knowledge form, but the traits of “regime” and “ideology”

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contained by any knowledge form whatsoever. He hoped that plural epistemologies might be permitted to exist in one era, as well as competitions between plural knowledge forms. This is the real purpose of his “anarchic theory of knowledge.” In terms of questioning the scientific knowledge form, if sociology of knowledge starts from the relationship between knowledge and society, scientific philosophy begins from the internal logic of the development of scientific knowledge, and philosophy or general philosophy does this in a more general sense, unlike the other two, which are restricted to the sphere of social or natural sciences. Philosophy performs essential critiques on the basis and ideas of the scientific knowledge form. In the twentieth century, except for early phenomenology and analytic philosophy, almost all other philosophies participated in this struggle being of vital significance to the development of human knowledge. During this struggle, the most prominent ones are L. Wittgenstein, Foucault, J. Habermas, and Leotard. Given that I have introduced Foucault and Leotard’s thoughts at the very beginning of this chapter, here I will focus on Wittgenstein and Habermas’ views. As is known, there is essential change in thought between the early and the late Wittgenstein. The early Wittgenstein, Russell, and others contended that the relationship between language and reality, or that between word and the world, is rather important. To get clear thoughts, one must “eradicate” all the phenomena of vague meaning in language and indicate, from an empirical perspective, whether those critical concepts and propositions are right or wrong. It is their contention that a clear meaning can only be based on a language capable of describing the factual fundamental elements or states that can be immediately distinguished in sensuous experiences. It is via the logic-language-experience analyses of propositional sentences that people are capable of setting their fundamental meanings and judging whether they are right or wrong. By virtue of the analysis as such, they claimed that some main problems in traditional metaphysics and epistemology are nothing but linguistic misuses. These views of the early Wittgenstein and Russell are, in fact, the application of the positive and rational spirits advocated by the modern scientific knowledge form to the studies of philosophical problems. From the 1930s, Wittgenstein began to reflect in holistic fashion on the above theory of meaning and the method of reductive analysis. The reflections resulted in such an idea: the meanings of concepts, propositions, and all other forms of utterance can be found in their “usage.” It is in the “rules” dominating these concepts and propositions, in the “conditions” and “standards” of their usage, and in the “public activities” and “events” in which they participate that people are capable of grasping their meanings. That is to say, the logical forms of concepts and propositions are not that essential to their meanings which, as well, do not conform to the reality they reflect. The meanings as such can be analyzed and distinguished via neither reduction nor sensuous experiences. Therefore, no meaningful concept or proposition can be presupposed to have some self-evident core or essential meaning, as there is a set of rigid, necessary, and sufficient conditions for their usage. The standard of using concepts might be open and overlapping. Linguistic analysis is no longer considered as a reductive exercise but as an exploration of the connection between concepts during the process of language usage for the sake of discovering the confusions in

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people’s comprehending process and intellectual utterances. The late Wittgenstein’s thoughts are fatal to both empiricists and rationalists in that empiricism holds that sensuous experiences are the relatable conditions to examine whether or not a concept or a proposition is true whereas rationalists believe that concepts and propositions are reflections of the real essences. It thus stands to reason that late Wittgenstein gave a fatal attack on scientific knowledge form from the perspective of ordinary linguistics. Like many twentieth-century philosophers as exemplified by Wittgenstein, Habermas also gives the theory of knowledge a fairly important position in his considerably broad field of academic studies. The kernel view of his theory of knowledge is the two in one of “knowledge” and “interests.” At first sight, this view very much resembles Foucault’s two-in-one view of “knowledge” and “power”; there is not little difference between them, though. Habermas laid more stress on starting from historical perspective and reproducing the pre-historical stage of positivism so as to systematically analyze the relationship between knowledge and interests, reveal the “knowledge-constitutive human interests,” and argue against positivism’s objectivism and absolutism view of knowledge. He pointed out that only when people admit of the relationship between knowledge and interests and refute the illusion of self of pure theory, they can start their critiques of scientific objectivism. From the aforementioned questionings and critiques as regards scientific knowledge form made by sociology of knowledge, scientific philosophy, and general philosophy in the twentieth century,5 we can see that the scientific knowledge form is not that perfect as it exaggerates itself, and it is not suitable for all the disciplines, not value-neutral, let alone being objective, absolute, universal, and determinate. To be sure, the scientific knowledge form emerging in the seventeenth century is of many shortages the biggest of which is: like the mythical and metaphysical knowledge forms in history, once it emerged, it got into the trouble of being bigoted, overbearing, vain, and greedy. It degraded the commoners’ daily cognitive experiences; it attempted to become the methodology of all intellectual spheres; it set up a new empire of knowledge and occupied the top position; it was already entirely at one, on image, with the mythical and metaphysical forms in history. For its interests, it makes use of the government, industries, news media, education, etc., to consistently strengthen its value image and “inputs” those problematic ideas into the mind of every modern citizen. Insofar as its controlling degree and scope on the society and people’s spiritual life are concerned, it had gone far beyond mythical and metaphysical knowledge forms. It “sanctified” itself, and even more, it turned from an advanced force to a conservative one in terms of social culture. Today’s scientific knowledge form has damaged humans’ due comprehension of knowledge and the progress of total human knowledge, but it has also brought damage to the process of human society’s democratization and the vital interests of the populace.

5

Indeed, more spheres have criticized the scientific knowledge form. To my knowledge, anthropologists, feminists, educators, scientists of culture, and even natural scientists have proposed their critiques. Other chapters of this book will be concerned with them.

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The critiques of the scientific knowledge form come from both reason and the critiques of social facts. These critiques mainly concentrate on fields such as anthropology, femalism, the theory of development, and so on. When performing fieldwork, anthropologists find that the originally conceived “primitive,” “barbarous,” and “uncivilized” villages, areas, or countries are never a desert in terms of knowledge. Rather, they have their peculiar knowledge systems, such as those of agriculture, law, medicine, to name a few. Were it not due to the “intrusion” of external, particular Western scientific knowledge, their knowledge systems would be fairly sufficient for the needs of their own subsistence and development. As a matter of fact, their own knowledge systems are the products of the history of their subsistence and development, being closely interrelated to their socio-historical structures. Be that as it may, the “intrusion” of scientific knowledge and the process of modernization based on it have largely deprived the “indigenous knowledge” or “local knowledge” of legitimacy. This is because according to the standard of scientific knowledge, the indigenous or local knowledge as such is not qualified for “knowledge” at all but at most constitutes the materials. As the logical conclusion, genuine scientific knowledge should be used to replace the indigenous or local knowledge. This logic has threatened the diversity of human knowledge, which forces humans’ world knowledge to develop toward “simplification” or “homogenization.” Femalism is a multi-disciplinary field of study developing from feminism. In the twentieth century, feminism was primarily mainly concerned about sexual discriminations in the spheres of politics and social life. Along with the deepening of their contemplations about the problems, nevertheless, the scholars in this field found that sexual discrimination as such had its origin in epistemology or theory of knowledge. Females were denied equal rights to males because they failed to share and create knowledge like males; females were considered rationally weak by birth and most spheres of human “knowledge” started from a male perspective. This applied to the scientific knowledge form as well as the mythical and metaphysical forms, to general knowledge spheres as well as female knowledge spheres. Female knowledge was gotten totally from male perspectives and hence was undoubtedly of male taste and biases. Unfortunately, such female knowledge understood by males was exactly the basis of females’ ordinary life. Femalists contended that so far most human knowledge had been “male-centric,” and this was the essential cause for males’ privileges both in history and in today’s society. Femalism hence raised rather radical questions: “Whose science is it?” “Whose knowledge is it?” (see Harding, 1991), and took these questions as the entrance into the deepening of femalism struggles. The theory of development appertains to the factors, processes, powers, or patterns of social development. Early theories of development mainly regarded how to use developed countries’ experiences for reference to promote the social progress of the undeveloped or underdeveloped areas. Later theories of development were concerned with the “reliance” of undeveloped and underdeveloped countries on the developed ones at the level of economy, politics, and culture. After the 1980s, when people further explored the laws of social development, they found that development was an internal rather than external process, namely, it all the more relied on the harmony and reconstruction of the various internal relations and the creative wisdom of the local

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people, rather than on entering into alliances with some great powers or their groups, or on the inspections or suggestions from some foreign experts. This is the idea of “endogenous development” later adopted by the UNESCO, which roughly goes that development is increasingly considered as a process of provoking and motivating most social members’ creative forces and releasing their individual functions rather than one during which planners and scholars settle the problems from outside. To achieve these goals, though local educational and cultural courses must be developed, the reliance on foreign knowledge must be overcome, the existent knowledge resources of the local areas must be sufficiently emphasized, and the capacity to produce knowledge must be further improved. The reliance on foreign knowledge is one of the main causes of reliance on foreign political and economic forces. All the above entails, first and foremost, that the knowledge standard of the scientific knowledge form must be reconsidered and broken, and be replaced by a new one capable of including indigenous or local knowledge. The general questionings and critiques on the modern scientific knowledge form mentioned afore have very clearly revealed the inner shortages of this form, promoted the forthcoming of the third transformation of human knowledge, and pointed out many properties that the new knowledge form should own. Summarizing these critiques, I venture here a new knowledge form capable of covering the various new requirements of knowledge mentioned above, the “cultural knowledge form.” As this form is considered as one coming after the “modern” scientific knowledge form, we can also adopt Lyotard’s terminology and call it “postmodern knowledge form.” Insofar as the relationship between postmodern and modern knowledge forms is concerned, unlike the latter has completely abandoned the ancient knowledge form, the postmodern knowledge form will not do so to the modern form. It will not deprive the legitimacy of modern scientific knowledge as the latter did to metaphysical and theological knowledge; rather, it will reiterate the legitimacy of scientific knowledge and take it as the model or standard of one form of human knowledge rather than all knowledge. Moreover, the postmodern knowledge form will reiterate the qualities of scientific knowledge and present a new view of science that is more modest, more open and more suitable for the democratic society. Be that as it may, postmodern knowledge form is by no means a new phase or a modification of the modern knowledge form. The former is a proper “revolution,” as it essentially “subverted” the framework and faith of the modern scientific knowledge form and tried to reveal a new knowledge schema to people and to provide an epistemological foundation to the coming postmodern society or knowledge society. In terms of the time when the postmodern knowledge form came into being, I do not agree with Lyotard who considers it to be the 1960s from the perspective of technology and believes that the postmodern knowledge form is the result of “postindustrial society” or “computer society.” It is my contention that it should be earlier when postmodern knowledge emerged or sprouted, namely, it emerged early in the second half of the nineteenth century when Dilthey presented spiritual science methodology and Nietzsche performed critiques of rationalism, only that it thrived like a storm not until the second half of the twentieth century when increasingly clear new views of knowledge emerged and got

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support from some social organizations or movements. Nonetheless, to date, postmodern or cultural knowledge form still remains to take the dominant position in the intellectual life of the society or to be universally accepted or acknowledged by most intelligentsia. Even worse, it often suffers distortions, mockeries, and resistance from the mainstream scientific or academic sphere. Some supporters of the postmodern knowledge form have even long been refused to rise to the level of “professors,” and their articles are often refused to be published due to their “failure to conform to academic norms,” which also reveals, albeit only limitedly, the struggle between the two knowledge forms. I believe, nevertheless, that it is merely a matter of time before the postmodern or cultural knowledge form completely replaces the modern or scientific one, and people will finally find that, compared with the latter, the former is more consistent with the demands of the present and future social development, and it is more capable of meeting the needs of knowledge of all people. Compared with the modern scientific knowledge form, the postmodern or cultural knowledge form has the following fundamental viewpoints on knowledge: (1) Generally speaking, knowledge is not merely a cultural factor but also a cultural product. In human history, different cultural states included or produced different knowledge forms and systems which have contributed to different cultural states and corresponding social states. The diversity of human cultural states determines that of human knowledge states, which means that diversified knowledge forms own equal rights to survive and deserve equal respect and identification. There is never a general, absolute, and eternal knowledge form, and the legitimacy of all knowledge forms may be traced back to their socio-historical origins. Similar to the transformations in other social aspects, knowledge transformation is inevitable and hence is not merely epistemologically significant. In addition, it has not merely changed the standards of the production and assessment of the knowledge, but it is also relevant socio-politically, economically, and culturally. (2) On the relationship between knowledge and the knower, the cultural knowledge form holds that there is not pure and abstract knower but only the one living in the concrete surroundings of social history and culture. In this connection, all knowers cannot but be imprinted with the mark of social history and culture. The mark as such exists in the whole process of knowing, and hence, it cannot be eliminated. From the presentation to the analysis and settlement of the questions, the knower cannot but be restricted to his/her context of social history and culture. He/she may know, reflect on, and understand even suspend them provincially but cannot break their restrictions completely. On this account, during the process of knowledge acquisition, there is never an absolute “free mind,” even though there is also never an absolute “social determinism theory” in a reverse sense. “General intelligentsia” has disappeared and “concrete intelligentsia” has come on the stage (Foucault, 1980, p. 129). Considering this, both the knower and those who share knowledge should examine, whenever necessary, the social taste, interests, power, and even biases behind the logic form of knowledge. In the strict sense, no knower is entitled to refusing the examination as such, nor can he/she pretend to be the spokesperson of “truth.” Questions

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like “Whose truth is it?” should be directed upon those who claim that their knowledge statements are truthful. Due to the restriction from the social history and culture, neither reason nor perception is a reliable source of knowledge in the process of knowing in that the knower’s reason and perception are both the products of certain socio-historical and cultural contexts. The perception or inference of something is not performed out of the void but relies on the perceptual or rational culture of the age wherein the knower lives. These cultures are merely a tiny part of the whole sociohistorical and cultural system and are closely related to the other parts therein. That is to say, neither perception nor reason is capable of accomplishing their legitimization; but rather, they must rely on certain surroundings of social history and culture. The cultural knowledge form holds that the knower’s knowledge statement is inseparable from his/her beliefs. Which kind of statement is to be taken “as true” by the knower, whereas, is inseparable from certain knowledge forms and cultural states. For instance, the Chinese believe in Chinese medicine, whereas the Americans will not necessarily believe in it, since to believe in Chinese medicine means to believe in the “doctrine of yin-yang and five elements,” to which Chinese medicine has recourse, and to believe in the doctrine as such means having to understand the holism and the thought of “harmony” (he和) in Chinese traditional culture. These, however, can only be achieved within the circumstances of Chinese culture which, to Chinese, is very natural as going to see the practitioner of Chinese medicine when in disease; to an American understanding nothing about Chinese traditional culture, whereas, it would be terribly complex, and great trouble would be brought to him to accept the knowledge of Chinese medicine as true and agree to be treated by it. (3) On the relationship between knowledge and the object of cognition, knowledge is never a “mirror” response of the object. Just like the knower is not a “polished mirror,” the object of knowledge is not a matter purely objectively waiting to be reflected. To the contrary, it results from the choices and constructions of the knower’s cognitive capacity, taste, and even interests, without which there would not be the appearance or emergence of the object. No “correspondence” exists between knowledge and the object of knowledge and any knowledge is nothing but a presupposition of grasping the qualities or relationships of the object, a presupposition of conjecture calling for further modification. Any knowledge should gain empirical evidence which, however, is not sufficient. Inductionism has unconquerable shortages as rationalism, which reminds people that all knowledge is fallible and remains to be examined or refuted. In the cognitive sphere, there are no ultimate interpretations as regards the object of knowledge.

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(4) Insofar as knowledge statement is concerned, the statement form is not unique but multiple, including “descriptive statements,” “prescriptive statements,” “narrative statements,” and the like. Different stating forms of knowledge are connected with different languages and cultures. No stating form is capable of protesting against or stopping other forms. Concept, category, symbol, presumption, proposition, mathematical language, observational language, etc., are necessary to the statement of scientific knowledge but unnecessary to other types of knowledge, such as “local knowledge” or “tacit knowledge.” Concepts, categories, symbols, among others, are artificial products and are relevant to certain cultures but do not “reflect” or “represent” the essence of things, and they are merely our cognitive tools or strategies. To obtain satisfying cognition, we may continuously choose again these tools or strategies until we are satisfied. (5) As for the relationship between knowledge and society, given that there is not a pure and abstract knower, nor is there a mirror response of the object of knowledge or concept, category, or a symbol representing the essence of things, there is naturally no “purely objective,” “value-neutral,” and “culture-irrelevant” knowledge. Like the knower, the object, and the process of knowledge, knowledge is the result of a socio-cultural construction rather than the product of pure individual reason or experiences. In this line, there are complex relations between knowledge on the one hand and social interests, gender, power, ideology, etc., on the other, the former being influenced by the latter and vice versa. In terms of the values of knowledge, they are not absolute or universal. The production, dissemination, allocation, and consumption of knowledge are not beneficial to everyone. The circulating process of knowledge between various social institutions and staffs is de facto one wherein social power relations are realized and reproduced. For the sake of comparison, I will list the main properties of the several aforementioned knowledge forms in the following Table 3.1.

Knowledge was thought to be the cognition not of the knower but of the object of cognition. It was merely the self “appearing” or “opening” of the mysterious forces. There was no objective cognitive object

Wizards were the intelligentsia, enjoying the privilege of knowing. Knowledge, however, was considered not as the product of the knower and the latter merely played the role of “re-teller”

“Metaphysicians” or “theologists” were the main intelligentsia, enjoying the privilege of knowing. Knowledge was considered as the product of the reason or belief of the knower

The primitive knowledge form (mythical knowledge form)

The ancient knowledge form (metaphysical knowledge form) The object was derived from gods or the noumenon of the world. Genuine knowledge was believed to be that of real noumenon or gods. The Bible was the only reliable source of knowledge in the Middle Ages

Knowledge and the object of cognition

Knowledge and the knower

Table 3.1 Main properties of the several knowledge forms

The main stating forms were category and proposition characterized by objectiveness, absoluteness, ultimacy, or divinity

The main stating forms were myth and ceremony, characterized by being “mysterious,” “contextual,” “narrative,” and “metaphorical”

Statement of knowledge

(continued)

It offered to the ancient society the mode of interpreting the world and the move of forming the society

It offered to primitive society the mode of interpreting the world and the move of forming the society

Knowledge and society

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Knowledge is not the revelation of the essence of objective things. It is a conjecture, presumption, or a provincial cognitive strategy of the traits and associations of the object chosen by people. All proofs are insufficient

“General intelligentsia” disappears and “concrete intelligentsia” appears. The privilege of cognition is abolished. The perception and reason of the knower are both the products of culture. The knower’s knowledge statement is inseparable from his/her knowledge belief

The postmodern knowledge form (cultural knowledge form)

Knowledge and the object of cognition The world was objective. Knowledge was the revelation of the essence of objective things. Genuine knowledge was positive, being coincident with the essence of objective things

Knowledge and the knower

The modern knowledge form Scientists and researchers were the “intelligentsia,” (scientific knowledge form) enjoying the privilege of knowing. The “knower” reflected the essence of objective things. Observation, experiment, or inference were the main methods of gaining knowledge

Table 3.1 (continued)

There are various stating forms of knowledge. They are irreplaceable to each other and are characterized by culturalism, relativity, and diversity. Concepts, symbols, and categories are all the products of a certain culture, but they do not reflect the essence of things

Knowledge was stated via particular concepts, categories, symbols, and propositions. Mathematical language and observational propositions were the fundamental forms. Knowledge was characterized by objectivity, determinateness, and positivity

Statement of knowledge

Complex relations exist between knowledge on the one hand and practice, power, gender, and interests on the other. There is no “value-neutral” or “culture-unconcerned” knowledge, nor is there some universally valid knowledge

It offered to modern society the mode of interpreting the world and the move of forming the society. Knowledge was value-neutral, culture-unconcerned, and non-ideological. Knowledge was the common wealth of human beings

Knowledge and society

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References

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References Comte, A. (1974). The Crisis of Industrial Civilization: The Early Essays of Auguste Comte, R. Fletcher (Ed.). Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. Comte, A. (2009). The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (Vol. I) (H. Martineau, Trans.). Cosimo. Feyerabend, P. K. (1975). Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. Humanities Press. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge, Selected Interviews and Other Writings, C. Gordon (Ed). The Harvester Press. Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and Interests (J. J. Shapiro, Trans.). Bacon Press. Harding, S. (1991). Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Open University Press. Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolution. University of Chicago Press. Lyotard, J. F. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (G. Bennington & B. Massumi, Trans.). Manchester University Press. Mannheim, K. (1936). Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Mannheim, K. (1952). Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. Rutledge & Kegan Paul. Plato. (1919). Euthyphro. Apology. Crito. Phaedo. Phaedrus (H. N. Fowler Trans.). Harvard University Press. Popper, K. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery, London: Hutchinson, p278, 280. Popper, K. (1963). Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Chapter 4

The Historical Perspectives of Knowledge Transformation and Education Reform

In Chapter 2, I have explicated the relationship between knowledge transformation in general sense and education reform: on the one hand, social knowledge transformation forces schools to rethink about the questions as follows: What knowledge is of the most educational values? How to obtain knowledge in educational sense? What new changes are there as to the roles of teachers and students during the process of knowledge acquisition? What are the properties of the teaching mode suitable for the new knowledge form? On the other hand, schools play an irreplaceable role in society’s knowledge transformation, say, promoting the questionings pertinent to the old knowledge form, accepting the new one and cultivating the new type of intellectual, or the like. In Chapter 3, I explicated the four main knowledge forms in human history—primitive or mysterious, ancient or metaphysical, modern or scientific, and postmodern or cultural knowledge forms, the emerging properties of the latter, and the processes, powers, and results of the three knowledge transformations occurring therein. In this chapter, I will explicate in more detail the relationship between the four knowledge forms and the state of education, and, particularly, I will adopt the perspective of pedagogy to elucidate the influences shed by the three transformations on the corresponding education reforms. Given that my focus is on the analysis of the relationship as such, I will not provide a complete statement of the educational situations in every period, which would be impossible anyway.

4.1 Primitive Knowledge Form and Primitive Education Any description and analysis with regard to primitive society is of the constituent of conjecture, which is undoubted. To us, what is important is not to make no conjecture but how to combine, as much as possible, conjectures with limited evidences so as to offer a reasonable or refutable account.

© Higher Education Press Limited Company 2023 Z. Shi, Transformation of Knowledge and Educational Reform, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9271-1_4

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As for the education in primitive society, our pedagogy textbooks have offered some bold conjectures, namely, in primitive society, and education was classless, combined with productive labor and daily life, quite basic, mainly manifested in teaching by percepts and examples or orally. The presentation of these conjectures is inseparable from people’s recognition with regard to primitive society, say, the level of social productivity was quite low as the result of which people must labor in collective fashion for the sake of survival, as they must carry out primitive communism system and perform management together and share the fruits of labor, and so forth. In these analyses crucial to conjecturing the educational situations of the primitives, those of primitive cultural or intellectual situations remain to receive due attention from the pedagogical experts. Without the analysis as such, it would be quite hard to answer: What knowledge is conveyed by primitive education without class discrimination? What did the “teachers” and “students” in primitive society look like? How was the primitive “educational” or “teaching” process carried out? What was the form of teaching by percepts and examples or oral? For example, was it similar to today’s teaching in our daily life? Thus, further conjectures about primitive education can be elaborated from new perspectives. Seen from the broad sense of “education,” education in primitive society must have included the education given in daily production and life, as reported in our textbooks, just like today’s highly developed educational system also embraces the education given in daily production and life. This educational form coexists with human production and life, and hence with human beings. This is because so long as human beings exist, there must be life and production, and thus also education as such. The values of this sort of education go beyond assessment in that none is capable of telling exactly how many sorts of life conception and productive technique were conveyed to the next generation in this imperceptible teaching mode. It is beyond anyone’s imagination as to how human civilization would last should something go wrong with this educational mechanism. From a modern perspective, nevertheless, the shortages of the education as such are also quite apparent: scattered, informal, mutually contradictory, contacts merely between individuals, restrictions on life and productive places, or the like. There is evidence that in primitive society, the teenagers were strictly prohibited to attend the tribe’s important productive or social activities before they passed the ceremony of passage. Even in modern society, there are some public places for life and production that prohibit children and teenagers from entering freely. Therefore, so long as we do not imagine primitive society as a group of apes (in which they played and lived together regardless of age and gender) but regard it as a genuine organized society, a series of important questions will arise: Was the conveyance of knowledge in a primitive society organized or not? If yes, who organized it? How did he/she do that? If not, how were the “accumulation” and “advancement” of primitive knowledge produced in the teachings by percepts and examples or orally? Thus, I conjecture that the educational form of primitive society was at least more than the teaching as such in daily life and productive experiences; rather, it might own some more important and valid form. In my view, this more important and valid educational form is the “ceremony.” As is well known, primitive society is one of animism. Given that the primitives

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were mentally weak and incapable of correctly interpreting natural, social, or human phenomena such as the alternation of winter and summer, birth, death, illness, old age, and so on, they naturally regarded things in the world as having souls, and hence they held that all their behaviors should beg for permission from the relevant souls. To achieve this, various “ceremonies” had to be performed. Not merely wars, harvests, etc., but also the decisions on minor tribal or clan affairs, e.g., when a person originally foreign to their tribe or clan was accepted, ceremonies would be held. Ceremony was, so to speak, the focus of the various social lives in primitive society. It can even be said that the primitives lived exactly in various ceremonies. The hosts of ceremonies were usually not the heads of the tribe but those of particular status—the “wizards.” To today’s people, their actions would look quite odd. There were two tasks overall: first, leading all the attenders of the ceremony to “copulate with” the mysterious force they worshiped; second, reporting the “revelations” from the mysterious force. Ceremonies not only enabled the primitives to constantly understand their statuses and many “taboos” in the society; more importantly, in virtue of a large number of constantly repeating ceremonies, the primitives’ behaviors obtained “legitimacy.” This legitimacy is in a sense different from the authentic legal one in modern times. Insofar as the practical effect is concerned, nevertheless, they are the same. So to speak, the ceremony was the most powerful social link in primitive society in addition to the blood relationship and the essential factor promoting the mutual identification between the members of primitive society. Undoubtedly, the ceremony was of universal and strong educational significance to these members. This notwithstanding, the ceremony mentioned above was merely directed upon the adults, viz., those who were qualified to share the life properties and powers of primitive society rather than the teenagers therein. To the primitive teenagers, there was another sort of ceremony—“the ceremony of passage” or “pubertal initiation.” This might have been the first ceremony in their lives, but also their first step into the primitive society, and the first serious social test they experienced. Not a few experts of pedagogical history at home and abroad contend that the ceremony as such might be the origin of the later systematic education in civilized societies. On the part of today’s people, to understand the ceremony as such, the prerequisite is to suspend the concept of “childhood” contained in our mind. To the primitives, there was no “childhood” in one’s life, or, to put it differently, they did not regard childhood as a valuable phase of human life, let alone showing too much love and tolerance for children in this period as what we are doing today. It stands to reason that primitive people’s breeding of children was mostly out of an animal instinct. Children’s diseases and deaths were not much grief-worthy to them. In Plato’s The Republic, all children must be faced with the selection at birth and those who were poor on physique would be directly thrown away. Be that as it may, once the children grew up healthily into the puberty (around 11–13 years old), the primitive society would hold a grand ceremony for them. After attending the ceremony or passing the tests therein, they would obtain the qualification of entering into society and share with other adults the properties, rights, and obligations in it. In general, the pubertal initiation included three interconnected phases: isolating, returning, and authorizing. In the isolating phase, the children were forced to leave

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their birthplace or tribal society and suffered the torture of starvation, panic, and darkness. After a certain period of time, say, one week, the survived children would be welcome back to their birthplace, and thus entered into the returning phase. Nonetheless, the retuning as such was not at all like what we have today when the traveling children are warmly welcome by the relatives. That which waited for them was a series of quite harsh tests usually manifested in genuine “lashes.” Those who had once accompanied the children living through the childhood held thorn branches or other things to mercilessly hit the children’s naked backs until the backs became split and bloody. Some children might even die of this. Only those who passed such tests were entitled to attending the grand ceremony. In the ceremony, the children would usually do three things, that is, “things shown, things done and things told” (Boyd & King, 1972, p. 10). This is to say that someone would show something to the children, stipulate them to do something, and teach them something. As a matter of fact, the three things might not be three separated activities but were united into one, being merely three functions of one activity: “showing,” “demonstrating,” and “stating.” This is because these are the utterance characteristics or functions of a ceremony, still preserved to different extents in today’s ceremonies. By virtue of reflecting on practical life experiences, we know that any ceremony whatsoever is always connected with an overall spirit (national spirit, Olympic spirit, professionalism, etc.), always shows and states this spirit, and always expresses or approaches it via certain ceremonial activities. In the pubertal initiation of primitive children, the most important thing was to show the spirit of the gods or totem worshiped by the clan or tribe, to tell them relevant rituals and taboos, and to state the history, bloody relatives and enemies, and social norms, among others, of the clan or tribe under the blessing of the gods. After the initiation as such, the adult society would “bestow rights” on the children attending it—a bone, a feather, a name, or some other thing sharing the spirit of the gods or totem. In virtue of the rights and obligations represented by these things, it seemed as if the children had grown up “once and for all” and become a member of the primitive society. To be sure, pubertal initiation was an organized one in that there were certain time, place, procedures, objects, and other strict demands in terms of its performance and not everyone can hold it at any time in any place. It was also an initiation of definite purposes, which selected or supplemented fresh blood for primitive society by means of certain tests and procedures. To the children, pubertal initiation was one in which they obtained development. Albeit they were lashed on the body, their spirits were awoken and headed from the individual being to the collective one. In the ceremony, they encountered for the first time with the overall clan spirit, and knew for the first time their rights and obligations, and the history of the group to which they belonged. To them, the overall spirit was their individual spirit, and so was the overall taboo. In this connection, Engels concludes that the primitives were human beings of mere sociality but of no individuality, which sounds reasonable. In the pubertal initiation, the children obtained two sorts of knowledge: ceremonial knowledge and mysterious knowledge, the former serving the latter. These two sorts of knowledge, particularly the mysterious one, were what primitive children could never obtain in their daily lives, and were also what they could never understand

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either. The knowledge as such disposed of all other knowledge and the experiences of daily life and production, and hence it was the most valuable. It is impossible for society’s education to deliver all the experiences therein, and only the most valuable and unobtainable experiences in daily life can be delivered. Thus, compared with the daily life and productive experiences we understand today, mysterious and ceremonial knowledge might be more proper as the education content of a primitive society. All the other stages or links in the pubertal initiation served the grasping of this knowledge or were the natural results of it. Without the “isolating” phase and pausing from the original life produced therefrom, the children might bring their self-centered experiences into primitive society; without the lashing, the children would not embrace great fear and hence would not respect and accept the mysterious forces and their revelations; and without grasping the mysterious and ceremonial knowledge, the children would not be qualified as social members. It can be seen that this pubertal initiation is not a simple social activity but a fairly complex one, a particular social activity differentiated from other various ceremonies, and is of various social functions like cultivating, teaching, selecting, or the like. To this connection, this pubertal initiation was presumably the education in the narrow and authentic sense in primitive society. In this initiation, that which was conveyed and learned between two generations of people were mysterious knowledge and the ceremonial one as the appurtenance, and they might even learn some particular language by means of which they might contact some mysterious forces. The primitive intellectual, the “wizard,” who was responsible for holding the initiation, was the authentic teacher in primitive society. Given that what was taught and learned was mysterious or ceremonial knowledge, the “teaching” in primitive society was mainly manifested in words and deeds, which essentially differed from the ordinary ones for they were composed of some particular languages and gestures. As to the students, be it observing, imitating, or listening, they must keep a pious state of mind and quiet attitude, so it was rarely seen that they might present their ideas and discuss something with the “teachers.” On the whole, under the disposal of the primitive knowledge form, primitive education was as filled with a mysterious atmosphere as other lives in primitive society. The mysterious atmosphere as such is also embodied via the etymology of “education” in English, Chinese, and German, respectively (Shi, 1999). The English word “education” originated from the Latin “educare,” its verb form being “educêre.” “Educêre” is composed of the prefix “e” and the stem “ducêre,” meaning “out” and “guide”, respectively, and the whole word means “evoke.” “Evoke” means that there is already some valuable thing existing “apriori” in humans but remaining to be “self-revealing.” The role of education is to reveal it by virtue of certain paths and means. In The Republic, Plato further elucidates “evoke” as “guiding from the low to the high places,” “from dark to light,” and “from false to true,” and he also explicates education’s role into promoting “the mind-turning.” All these are sufficient to show the mysterious significances of the English term “education” when it was created. The Chinese 教育 was retranslated from Japanese at the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, and hence it can be said a modern word. In ancient Chinese literature, discussions about education usually employed the two characters of jiao

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教 (teach)” and “xue学 (learn), the latter being more often used. Interestingly, in the system of tortoise shell inscriptions, the two characters both contain the symbol of “yao爻” which plays a key role in the construction of them, explicating the content of “teaching” and “learning”, respectively. There are not a few bifurcations as regards the interpretations of this symbol in the sphere of education, some contending it refers to “net” or “the act of netting,” some others holding it as “weed,” and still others believing that it is “a symbol of lashing.” In my view, these parlances are much farfetched, taking the words too literally or interpreting the past via the present, and hence they are questionable. I think it is “the act of divination or augury,” namely, the act of seeking mysterious revelations. My support is: in Zhouyi周易, there are concepts of yao xiang爻象, “yao locus” and “yao words,” but there are also parlances of “64 gua卦and 384 yao.” So obviously, yao is an act of augury. If this is justified, we can deduce therefrom that both “teach” and “learn” indicate a sort of act relevant to augury, and are the teaching and learning pertinent to this act and its knowledge. In effect, it is teaching and learning how to obtain and interpret the knowledge of mysterious revelations by certain means. In primitive society, this is probably a quite important skill, capacity, or career. There are two words meaning education in Germany, i.e., “Bildung” and “Erziehung.” Comparatively, “Bildung” is more ancient. It came into being in the medieval mysticism and later obtained the important significance of bridging nature and religion, this life and afterlife, heaven and the human world, and the like. In Hegel, “Buildung” represents a profound spiritual process wherein humans obtain the “omnipotent” form, ascending from individuality to generality, from relativity to absoluteness, and from historicity to reality. In a word, “Bildung” represents a sort of awakening, turning, and ascending of the individual spirit, and the fusion of the transcendence of individuality with the general spirit given by the individual to his corporeal body. In this connection, the primitive education was presumably such an educational activity “with the wizard as the teacher”: the teaching and learning of mysterious knowledge as the path, the establishment of the social spiritual connection between children and the clan or tribe as the means, the bestowal of the qualification (rights and obligations) for social life on children as the direct purpose, and mystery, situation, and ritual as the main properties. In primitive society, automatic education during the process of life and production existed in a large amount but might not have been the dominant educational form therein.

4.2 Ancient Knowledge Form and Ancient Education As was stated in previous chapter, in the late stage of primitive society, due to the emergence of social classes and mysterious knowledge form’s shortages, people began to broadly question the reasonability and social values of primitive knowledge form with mysterious as the paradigm, and hence they began to look for more

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definite and reliable knowledge—metaphysical knowledge. Along with the emergence of metaphysical knowledge which as a knowledge form gradually replaced the mysterious one, the aforementioned educational state of primitive society surely changed and produced a new educational state of ancient civilized society. Which was changed first and foremost by metaphysical knowledge form after replacing the mysterious one was the concept, standard, and epistemological line of knowledge. In mysterious knowledge form, knowledge was the mysterious revelation, so only mysterious forces were capable of judging whether or not an idea was knowledge. Mysterious forces not only owned knowledge but also monopolized the standards of it. People must prostrate themselves in worship for the mysterious forces, and even offer “sacrifices” to them before getting knowledge and the judgment relevant to it. Under such circumstances, people’s attitude toward recognition was naturally negative, passive, and vulnerable. They were deprived of the right to recognize and only had the obligation to share the mysterious revelations. Metaphysical knowledge form however pronounced that the mysterious knowledge was unreliable and that the truly reliable knowledge was that which appertained to the noumenon of things in that only noumenon was the origin of all the existent supports and changes. The noumenon of things was that which existed behind all the phenomena and the knower must come through torturous considerations and consistent reflections before grasping it. In this vein, the knower should not be wedded to the ossified mode but should positively observe and think; particularly, the knower should be good at grasping the noumenon of things from their various surfaces. In the West, philosophers hold that only the “logos” is capable of gaining the recognition as such; in China, whereas philosophers believe that only the “thinking” is capable of reaching the state of truth. At all events, metaphysical knowledge form pointed out that knowledge was not the bestowal of mysterious forces but the result of the knower’s torturous thinking. He who wanted to obtain knowledge must perform the thinking as such. When the metaphysical knowledge form replaced the mysterious one, it also changed the idea of the values of knowledge. If the mysterious knowledge form treats the mysterious knowledge as valuable, so does the metaphysical knowledge form to metaphysical knowledge. If the mysterious knowledge form takes ritual knowledge as the instrumental knowledge to gain mysterious knowledge, then the metaphysical knowledge form takes knowledge pertinent to the concept, category, and linguistic form as the instruments to gain its knowledge. The metaphysical knowledge form held that myths, customs, personal ideas, etc., were unreliable, even dangerous foundations of our acts, and the only reliable knowledge was metaphysical. Only metaphysical knowledge was capable of offering the most solid epistemological foundations to our actions. On this account, primitive philosophers all had quite similar political impulses and hoped that their knowledge might exert political effects. That which accompanies the aforementioned changes is the change of the role of the intellectuals. Primitive intellectuals embraced many mysterious, unspeakable, and even ridiculous things. To maintain their privilege for recognition, they often employed some odd decorations, gestures, and languages to hide and isolate themselves from the external world. Such phenomena can also be seen in modern

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witchcraft. Ancient intellectuals were not the case. They had neither peculiar decorations nor special languages. They used the same language as others to discuss problems and seek for truths. At most, they had some eccentricities out of excessive demands for truthful knowledge. Corresponding to the knowledge transformations mentioned above, ancient education also produced many new traits different from primitive education. First, ancient schools emerged. This was a significant event in the developing history of education and human civilization. It is correctly pointed out by the educators in our textbooks of pedagogy that ancient schools need some complex social conditions to be produced, and they are based on the development of social productivity. This is because only when social productivity develops and social material wealth increases to a certain extent, will some people be freed from production and be committed to the exploration, dissemination, and study of knowledge. I think this sounds reasonable. Nonetheless, it seems that such social economic conditions are insufficient and reasons with respect to knowledge need to be taken into account. As has been pointed out afore, in primitive society, there were also knowledge-disseminating organizations similar to schools, namely, the various rituals, notably those directed upon the teenagers. Nevertheless, it is quite obvious that the intellectual premise of the ritual as such is: the amount of knowledge needing disseminating was quite small and, more importantly, the knowledge was mysterious by nature and its stating mode circled around narration. If the amount of knowledge as such were quite large, and the knowledge were logical rather than mysterious by nature, abstract rather than situational, the ritual in primitive society would be out of action. People then would have to create a new social institution as the substitute for the primitive ritual to finish the task of disseminating new knowledge. It is my contention that this is an important condition and drive for the promotion of the production of schools in ancient society. Be that as it may, it is impossible that ancient schools completely overcome, at the very beginning it emerges, the mystery of primitive rituals. We can see in effect that ancient schools of human society were usually built where primitive religious activities were held. More than that, in early school life, the rituals of primitive mysterious significance were also preserved and played an important educational role. In the first pedagogical work in ancient China, Xueji学记, the grand occasion of the school’s opening ceremony was recorded. In Athens, the education before the sixth century B.C. was still closed with the oath activities in the shrines. Experts of the history of education offer us the students’ oaths from which we can apparently sense the relic of primitive pubertal initiations: I will never disgrace my sacred arms, nor desert my comrade in the ranks. I will fight for temples and for public property, whether alone or with my fellows. I will leave my country not less, but greater and better, than I found it. I will obey the magistrates and observe the existing laws, and those the people may hereafter make. If any one tries to overthrow or disobey the ordinances, I will resist him in their defence, whether alone or with my fellows. I will honor the temples and the religion of my forefathers. So help me, Aglauros, Enyalios, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo and Hegemone. (Boyd & King, 1972, pp. 20–21)

Of ancient schools, there was one sort typically engaged in metaphysical studies. In Greece, for instance, such schools included Plato’s “Academy,” Aristotle’s “Lyceum,”

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and schools held by Isocrates, Zeno, Epicurean, and others. In China’s Pre-Qin Period, the schools held by authors of all classes were of similar traits. In spite of metaphysical studies, there are some other common traits among these schools, say, the origins of the students were complex and not restricted to teenagers; there was not a clear borderline between teachers and students who often equally discussed some topics instead; of the many topics discussed, problems of basic categories took the lion’s share; a school was usually set up around a teacher in the whole academy, and there were great bifurcations between different schools or academies, which resulted in frequent debates; for the sake of exploring knowledge or debating, the schools attached great importance to language training; the teaching work was performed by some staff with expertise on knowledge; and the schools were privately run and relied on students’ fees for survival, and so on and so forth. There was no connection at all between such schools and the primitive pubertal initiations, so such schools can be said a completely newborn thing which, as the institutions of learning and teaching characterized by academy, played a quite important role in promoting the progress of ancient knowledge. The school as such had a very long history in China, covering about 2000 years from the private schools in the Pre-Qin Period to the academies in the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties; in the West, nevertheless, these schools rapidly disappeared since the northern barbarians’ invasion in the fourth century, and it was not until the twelfth century that medieval universities emerged. Nonetheless, the metaphysical discussions of the medieval universities could not but make a complete change and became a constitution of theological studies. The debates between nominalism and realism were a case in point. On the surface, people were discussing metaphysical matters; in fact, whereas, they were debating in metaphysical fashion around theological problems. It is probably from then on that metaphysics abandoned discussions of ontological problems and became a mechanic, ossified, and static thinking mode. Along with the establishment and development of the ancient knowledge form, another property of ancient education appeared centering at delivering “metaphysical knowledge.” This property is the answer to the question of what is the knowledge with the highest educational value. In ancient schools, particularly in the private schools founded by philosophers in ancient times, the knowledge of mysterious flavor was essentially rejected by school education and hence declined from the king of knowledge in primitive society into a new kind of “folk knowledge.” Of course, the schools also shut the door upon some experiential knowledge from production and life. In Plato’s The Republic, he definitely suggested to expel the artists (then the dramatists) from Athens mainly because the plays they created were filled with primitive myths. In his education, Confucius also objected to the discussions about “weird, violent, odd and spiritual things” on the one hand, and plainly rejected productive knowledge on the other, and the story of “Fan Chi asked about farm work”1 in The Analects is a paragon. Rejecting such mysterious and experiential knowledge, 1

The story thus goes, “Fan Chi asked about farm work from Confucius who said, ‘I am not as skillful as the farmer.’ Then Fan Chi asked about gardening from Confucius who again said, ‘I am not as skillful as the gardener.’ Fan Chi went out. Confucius said, ‘You a mean one, Fan Chi! When the king prefers to ritual, the people dare not show contempt; when the king prefers to righteousness, the

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school education mainly delivered some metaphysical knowledge as regards nature, society, and human life, namely, the abstract and absolute knowledge. That which needs explicating is, the knowledge as such refers not only to some general philosophical knowledge but also to some social, historical, and natural knowledge obtained metaphysically. On the one hand, Plato’s demarcation between “phenomenal world” and “ideal world,” Aristotle’s “theory of the four causes,” Laozi’s “The Dao that can be told of is not the primal Dao; the name that can be interpreted is not the primal name,” and the like all belong within metaphysical knowledge; on the other hand, metaphysical knowledge also includes the extensive knowledge involved in Plato’s “theory of justice” and Aristotle’s “ethics.” Confucius’s “theory of Ren” and a large number of ancient Chinese debates include the “debates between name and nature,” “debates between good and evil by nature,” “debates about a white horse being not a horse,” “debates between reason and desire,” and “debates between Huaxia Nationality and the barbarians,” among others. At least, the knowledge mentioned above is obtained, stated, and defended in metaphysical fashion. Unlike the theological knowledge characterized by being “situational,” “narrative,” and “metaphorical,” the metaphysical knowledge had the properties of being “abstract,” “absolute,” and “ultimate.” After the Middle Ages, the trait of “divinity” was added to the theological knowledge compared to the metaphysical one. Along with the change of such traits of knowledge, teaching modes including the roles of teachers and students would naturally change. On the part of the students, gaining primitive mysterious knowledge mainly appealed to emotion and blind belief and relied on some external rituals and internal eidetic understanding; thus, the students were passive throughout the learning process, whereas gaining ancient metaphysical knowledge mainly appealed to intellect and the beliefs based on reason, necessarily by means of logic and dialectics. The students must learn how to apply their intellect during the learning process, or they would not understand metaphysical knowledge, let alone finding it. In the primary religious education in the Middle Ages, the situations in which the students automatically applied their intellect were rare and teachers more often stressed blind accepting albeit in universities people relatively stressed intellect’s role in understanding beliefs. As for the teachers, in primitive people dare not be inobedjent; when the king prefers to credit, the people dare not ignore affections. If the case is so, then the people all around the country can be satisfied with enjoying embracing their infants, so where is the necessity to think about farm work?’”(The Analects, Zilu) This conversation was once considered Confucius’ “criminal evidence” of his despising the laborers. Seen from the story itself, nevertheless, it might not rise to this hight of “class.” Confucius originally means that if the governor would like to accept and practice the set of moral principles he presents, namely “ritual,” “righteousness,” “credit,” etc., they would reach the state that the world becomes peaceful, those living near are happy to communicate with his state, and those living far approach his state, and thus people will not need the knowledge of farm work. In my opinion, Confucius here is de facto explicating what kind of knowledge is of the most social values at that time. His answer is ethical or moral knowledge in that in his eyes, the society at that time was an era when “ritual was ruined and music was destroyed”, and what was threatening the society was not poverty but the various crises brought about by the ruin of traditional moral system. That Fan Chi was considered as a “mean one” is due to the fact that he did not ask about “Ren” or “filial piety” but about “farm work” or “gardening” which, in Confucius’ eyes, were knowledge looking valueless or less valuable.

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education, they mainly “metaphorized,” “symbolized,” and “visualized” substances and hence turned them into mysterious forces of educational significance. Teachers in ancient education, whereas, mainly “substantiated,” “logicalized,” and “systematized” concepts and therefrom performed deduction or speculations as regards the relations between concepts. The definition and classification of concepts usually became the first step of teachers’ trainings pertinent to metaphysics. Let us have a look, through others’ records with respect to the teaching activities in Plato’s Academy, at how such defining and classifying were operated. A. Tell me about Plato and Speusippus and Menedemus. What are they working at now? What deep idea and what great argument is being examined by them? For the land’s sake tell me truly, if you know anything about it. B. I know all about it and will tell you plainly. At the Panathenaea I saw a group of boys in the gymnasia of the Academy. And there I heard strange and indescribable things. They were defining and dividing up the world of nature, and were distinguishing the habits of animals and the natures of trees and the species of vegetables. And there in the middle of them they had a pumpkin and were inquiring o what species it was. A. And what did they decide that plant to be, and of what species is it ? Tell me, if you know. B. Well, at first they all stood silent and bent over it for some time considering. Then suddenly, while they were still bending over it and examining it, one of the boys said that it was a round vegetable, and another said it was grass, and another that it was a tree. On hearing this a Sicilian doctor who was there exploded with wrath at the nonsense they were talking. A. I should think they must have been very angry at that and shouted him down as a scoffer. For it was a rude thing to do in the middle of such talk. B. It didn’t worry the boys. But Plato, who was there, told them very kindly, without being in the least disturbed, to try again from the beginning to define its species. And they went on with their definitions. (Field & Litt, 1930, pp. 38–39) Apparently, this dialog is ironic; however, from it, we can see the rough style of metaphysical and medieval theological teaching, namely, paying stress on training students’ intellect. Naturally, this sort of education vis-a-vis mysterious primitive education was more advanced. Be that as it may, not as was claimed, namely exploring the truths, it was more often enmeshed in linguistic traps which, presumably, is the origin of the “idols of the marketplace” later presented by Bacon and of the upsurging of analytic philosophy in the twentieth century. Given that ancient metaphysical and theological knowledge was characterized by being “absolute,” “ultimate,” or “divine,” ancient teaching paid great stress on “obeying the authority,” “citing from the classics or ancient works,” and “debating.” In the Middle Ages, Aristotle and Augustine’s explications and the utterances in the Bible were authorities allowing no question. The role of the reason of understanding was only directed upon demonstrating and explicating these authorities rather than questioning or subverting them. When modern philosophers like Bacon and Descartes explicated new philosophical ideas, the first thing they did was to protest against

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metaphysical even theological authorities, and to advocate that “experiences” and “reason” were employed as the standards to reexamine all knowledge. That which appertains to the stress on knowledge authority is the citing from classics or ancient works during the teaching and learning process. Amid Chinese ancient intellectuals, the motto of “There is nobody but sages are cited” was quite common, say, teachers of private schools always claimed “Confucius said” or “It is said in Shijing that…” in class. In the West, it was also quite frequent for people to claim “There is nowhere but Greece” in the Middle Ages. Scholars in later generations always try to show how their views have been identical to or coincident with those of the ancient sages or philosophers to make their arguments more persuasive. On this account, scholars at home and abroad spent large amount of time on collecting, studying, and explicating ancient people’s works. In the West, ancient languages (Greek and Latin) hence became, for a long time, the only languages for teaching and learning, and the main subject of education at each level and of each type before the nineteenth century. In China, albeit there was no essential problem of language, to understand the ancient works, people must know something about judou句读(sentence parsing of Chinese) and had some other grammatical knowledge. Corresponding to “obeying the authority” and “citing from the classics or ancient works,” ancient schools, notably those of the nature of higher education, considerably stressed debating. This is because different authorities and different understandings of authoritative works might naturally lead to different and conflicting ideas. Be that as it may, debating did not mainly occur within a school but among different schools, say, those between “Platonism” and “Aristotelianism,” “nominalism” and “realism,” “Confucianism” and “Mohism,” and between “theory of Li” and “theory of mind,” or the like. The debates between these different ideas constituted a great landscape in ancient cultural and educational life, played an active role in promoting the progress of ancient cultural and educational courses, and remedied, to a certain extent, the negative influences brought about to cultural development by the absoluteness, ultimacy, or divinity of ancient metaphysical or theological knowledge. In terms of the first knowledge transformation of human society, it directly influenced ancient education in the above aspects which led to the production of some of the latter’s apparent properties, and, in addition, it also indirectly influenced educational practices via influencing the theories of ancient education. There was no educational theory in primitive society but some legends, myths, and customs about education, such as “Suiren teaching people how to make a fire” and so on. Along with ancient intellectuals’ refutation of mysterious knowledge, they also began to pay attention to education in their educational practices or discussions as regards knowledge in other aspects, and presented some ideas on education from an ontological perspective. For instance, Plato set out from the demarcation between two worlds and between “idea” and “doxa,” and pointed out that education was the process of helping people recall forgotten ideas. His idea mentioned afore, namely, education promoted “the turning of mind” was de facto intended to guide people’s thoughts to turn from the phenomenal world to the ideal one, from the doxa produced in the phenomenal world to the ideas produced in the ideal world. His other educational ideas like educations of music, mathematics, dialectics, etc., were all based

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on this metaphysical presumption. For another example, at the very beginning of the ancient Chinese educational work The Golden Mean, it is said, “The intrinsic destiny is called nature, letting the nature run is called Dao, and seeking for Dao is called teaching,” which hence connects the recognition of education with that of human nature and the essential laws of the cosmos, and presents a series of educational principles and methods. Before modern pedagogy emerged, this sort of recognition of education from the ontological perspective had been the fundamental mode of the construction of educational theories. Philosophers combined, at a theoretical level, the educational issues with those of the world’s noumenon and human nature for considerations and hence enlarged the horizon of educational consideration. In their works about education, we can sense the concrete knowledge of the methods and techniques of education, but we can also sense the complex and profound relations between education and society, between education and human life, and the like. These thoughts constituted the main part of the philosophical considerations of ancient education, and simultaneously offered theoretical instructions to the practice of ancient education, which, for the first time, based human education on reason, having promoted the development and improvement of ancient education. Without doubt, the ancient times is the period when the educational cultural traditions of each nationality of humankind were formed. The traditions differed greatly from each other and, in addition, ancient education was itself consistently changing, namely, from content to form, and from idea to act, and they were increasingly coming into being and getting improved. The previous discussions about ancient education are mainly some common analyses proceeding from the framework of ancient metaphysical epistemology. We can thus conclude that the ancient metaphysical knowledge form determined that the fundamental spirit of ancient education was over against mysticism, relativism, and empiricism. Whereas the objection to mysticism was quite drastic in Chinese ancient education, in Western medieval education, particularly the Christian one, it seemed to have revived. The objections to relativism and empiricism were shared by Western and Chinese ancient educations; they however plainly headed for another extreme, becoming the “metaphysical panic” and “the vice of chewing upon a subject” in people’s spiritual life.

4.3 Modern Knowledge Form and Modern Education Since the sixteenth century, particularly since the seventeenth century and beyond, along with the vicissitudes of human society, the rational shortages and reactionary points of metaphysical knowledge form were increasingly exposed and, resultantly, it was gradually replaced by the new and more vital scientific knowledge form. Meanwhile, classic knowledge of humanities and theological knowledge with metaphysical knowledge form as the justified foundation were also confronted with people’s severe critiques. Scientific or positive knowledge was regarded as a genuine and reliable one, and the scientific method was considered the only effective method to obtain

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knowledge. The atmosphere among the intellectuals and even the whole sphere of social cognition experienced tremendous changes. Just as was said by Comte in 1820: In proportion as the sciences became positive and consequently advanced with increasing rapidity, a multitude of scientific ideas entered into general education, while the religious doctrines gradually lost their influence. Special schools for the sciences arose, in which the influence of theology and metaphysics was almost nothing. Finally the mental state has undergone such a change in this respect that in our day, the ideas of everyone, form the least instructed to the most enlightened, spring, almost entirely, from the positive sciences; the ancient beliefs occupying, comparatively speaking, but a small place, even in the classes over which these beliefs have maintained their strongest hold. Along with the shift of this knowledge form, the unreasonable even ridiculous points of ancient education were increasingly exposed, which was faced with sharp critiques. The critique as such resulting from the new knowledge belief and ideal probably started from the sixteenth century and lasted until the nineteenth century when “modern education” concordant with the modern knowledge form was completely established. The quite obvious “critique style” during the progression of modern educational theories was thus formed. De facto, the critique as such is, as a rule, a necessary constitution of people’s critiques on ancient metaphysical and theological knowledge, only that in different people, the objects and methods of critique are different, and so are the intensities of the critiques. Classic humanists such as Desiderius Erasmus, Melanchthon Philipp, Michel de Montaigne, and others, are supposed to be the earliest people who made critiques of ancient education, and their main thoughts are familiar to people in Chinese pedagogical sphere. Of them, Montaigne (1533–1592) the French philosopher can be said an outstanding representative. In an article in the widely-loved Of Pedantry, he sheds merciless ironies and critiques on traditional knowledge and education. We are constantly asking about a man, does he know Greek or Latin? Can he write in verse or prose? What is really important is whether he has grown better or wiser; and that is overlooked. We direct all our efforts to the memory and leave the understanding and the conscience empty. Like birds which go forth from time to time to seek for grain and bring it back to their young in their beaks without tasting it, our pedants go gathering knowledge from books and never take it further than their lips before disgorging it. And what is worse, their scholars and their little ones are no better nourished by it than they are themselves. It passes from one person to another and only serves to make a show or to provide entertainment. (Boyd & King, 1972, pp. 222–223)

It is Montaigne’s contention that genuine knowledge is never obtained by rote but is combined with individual judgments, coming from practices. Traditional metaphysical knowledge failed to improve but has also degraded people’s judgment. To this connection, he quite appreciated ancient Persian’s education, thinking that they educated their children via models and actions rather than words and rules. Montaigne strongly objected corporeal punishment aiming to maintain the authority of knowledge or theology in that it would only turn the original noble mind into inert and degraded, whereas genuinely good educational methods were supposed to inspire children’s desire to learn and enable them to brave the setbacks as well as to enlarge their horizons in practice. He was impetuously against the learning of Greek and Latin, pointing out that people wasted “half of their life” on these ossified languages.2 These thoughts of Montaigne have exerted great influences on 2

Montaigne pointed out that in traditional education, it would take a student four to five years to learn the vocabularies and their inflections in sentences, four to five years to learn the particular

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some educationalists after the seventeenth century, say, J. A. Comenius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others. Comenius being a follower of religion notwithstanding, he however sharply criticized the medieval education, contending that there was not a proper school in the Middle Ages. Rousseau qua an enlightenment philosopher in the eighteenth century was all the more filled with resentment about the feudal and religious education in the Middle Ages, contending that it was the vices in a traditional society that damaged people’s originally good nature. In his famous novel of educational style, Emile, he even objected to sending Emile to school for education but upheld that he received education from Nature, and believed that only in this way could their pure mind and noble characters be cultivated. On the whole, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, people’s critiques with respect to traditional education mainly focused on the following aspects: first, the suspicion about the values of traditional knowledge. People believed that traditional knowledge was the product of the traditional society, and hence it was unsuitable for the new demands of social development. The new social development was built on industrial and scientific foundations, so the most valuable knowledge was scientific rather than the so-called classic or theological knowledge. In this respect, Herbert Spencer the British sociologist, economist, and educationalist of the nineteenth century offered the deepest analyses. He sharply criticized the fantasy and futility of British traditional education and presented the proposition that “The most valuable knowledge is scientific knowledge,” which exerted great influences on British even European and American academy and educational fields. Some Chinese philosophers at the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, such as Yan Yuan and others, also sharply criticized the emptiness and futility of the Neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming Dynasties, and presented the idea of the pragmatism “real learning.” Of course, at the level of quality, the “real learning” as such remained to be the “science” in a Western sense but mainly referred to some theories of Confucius and Mencius and others on administrating state affairs and ensuring national security, also including some knowledge on productive techniques and mathematical astronomy relevant to agriculture and handicraft. Secondly, it is the critiques with respect to the content and structure of traditional course. As for European traditional courses, that which dominated in the primary period of education mainly included some questions and answers of educational creeds and the knowledge of basic reading, writing, and calculating; in the secondary period, it included the “la liberalaj artoj” and classic languages, namely music, astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, grammar, rhetorics, logic, Latin, and Greek. In most grammar schools, the last three arts and two classic languages were the mainstream. In colleges and universities, grammar, medicine, law, and theology were the lexicon of each sphere of knowledge, and at least four to five years to learn how to organize these lexicons into various complex genres according to certain grammatical rules. Hasn’t this wasted half of one’s life? This is the most valuable time. To modern people, it is really hard to imagine education at that time. Nonetheless, since each work in society at that time relied on language and knowledge as such, it does not sound that strange any longer. Aren’t today’s people spending more than ten even twenty years obtaining scientific knowledge? This might again become the laughingstock of future generations.

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main courses, the study of which occupied almost all the study time of students. Along with the emergence and development of scientific knowledge, people began to criticize the content and structure of traditional curricula, demanding that broad scientific knowledge be absorbed into the content and structure of the school curricula and that the studies of classic subjects and religious course be reduced, which hence evoked the most fierce debates about courses since modern times and beyond. Thirdly, it is the critique with regard to traditional educational methods. As is stated afore, the traditional educational methods centering at getting metaphysical and theological knowledge were mainly manifested in learning by rote and corporeal punishment, and the learning activity and initiative of students were severely ignored or oppressed, which was necessary to maintain the authority of metaphysical and theological knowledge. After the Renaissance, particularly after the seventeenth century, almost all the educationalists criticized the inhuman method as such and pointed out the great damage it brought to children’s physical and mental development and social advancement. Comenius qua a theorist of religious education also sharply pointed out that the medieval schools were the “slaughterhouses” of children’s intellect and the “hell” of their mind. He thus suggested that “natural principles” be followed to reform traditional schools so as to turn them into paradises wherein children might live. “Naturalism” thoughts, namely, objecting corporeal punishment, respecting children, and educating children according to the regularities of their physical and spiritual development, had almost become the common educational philosophy in this period. Fourthly, quite similar to the situation in which the ancient knowledge form replaced the primitive one, educationalists in this period were committed to reforming traditional schools on the one hand, and to building new schools according to the new knowledge and views of education on the other. In addition to the various forms of the aforementioned “la liberalaj artoj,” there emerged in the eighteenth century’s Europe and America “schools of multi-disciplinary techniques” focusing on disseminating modern scientific knowledge and “modern universities” committed to studying and disseminating it. The emergence of these schools and universities obtained great support from the government and enterprises and, resultantly, modern scientific knowledge was all the more closely connected with national economic development and enterprises’ benefits, which promoted scientific knowledge to gain the power in the broad social sphere and to dispel traditional metaphysical and theological knowledge. Be that as it may, whether at the level of system or of curriculum, the setup of modern education was a quite long process, which was not finished until the end of the nineteenth century, over 100 years afterward. In what follows, I will take as an example the century-long debates on the curriculum reform in Britain at the origin of modern science to explicate the arduous and tortuous process of the second knowledge transformation and of the setup of modern education. As is well known, in the seventeenth century’s Britain, there emerged great scientists like Newton and a group of empiricism philosophers like Bacon, Locke, and

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others, who shed strong critiques not only on traditional metaphysics, but also, particularly in Bacon and Locke’s cases, on traditional education. In his educational argumentations, Locke definitely presented the idea that very broad courses of natural sciences should be introduced in the school curriculum system to meet the needs of capitalism development and cultivate “gentlemen” knowing “rites” as well as embracing “talents.” Nevertheless, the philosophers’ critiques are one thing while educational act in practice is another. British education practices in the seventeenth century still kept the style used since the Middle Ages. On the one hand, this might be related to the fact that educational practices were more constrained by the factual social forces; on the other hand, it might appertain to these philosophers’ stances of thought. De facto, their thoughts were ambivalent or they were puzzled to a certain extent, which was mainly manifested in the fact that at the same time when they made great scientific discoveries or elucidated new epistemologies, they sincerely believed in theology, even gave some room to metaphysics. A case in point was Bacon and Locke’s “double truth” (“scientific truth” and “metaphysical truth” or “theological truth”). Newton was also a paragon. He himself was, so to speak, a theologist, even a metaphysician, and a scientist. Known for the formulation of the law of motion of matters, Newton believed that God created the solid, mass-embracing movable “particles” that constituted matters, so the motion of matters was carried out following God’s aim when He created them. On this account, from the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, albeit Britain’s scientific causes and empiricist epistemology progressed rapidly, this development was achieved on the premise of leaving the theological or metaphysical system and beliefs untouched, even of being protected by the theological and metaphysical forces. The revolutionary significance of scientific development at the level of epistemology failed to be elucidated, which revealed the conservativeness and compromise of British scientific and philosophical spheres on dealing with the relationship between science and theology or metaphysics. It is, presumably, due to the conservativeness and compromise of the scientific and philosophical spheres that while Britain was the first country where scientific development and empiricism epistemology came into being, its scientific-educational cause was the slowest among European and even American countries. As a matter of fact, until the end of the eighteenth century, scientific courses still had to officially enter into the curriculum system of British schools in which classic and religious courses still dominated. Take the renowned “Leeds Grammar School” as an example, in 1551, its curriculum was composed of “Greek” and “Latin”; in 1779, besides these two courses, there were merely writing, accounting, and French; and in 1797, “modern language,” “arithmetic,” and “mathematics” were added to the curriculum, which was, so to speak, a response to the development of modern society, and only that the step was apparently so small that there was not even one course of natural sciences. To the nineteenth century, disputes started in British society with regard to the curriculum of science courses. The attendees of the disputes included numerous educators, but also famous scientists like C. R. Darwin, Kelvin, T. H. Huxley, M. Faraday, great philosophers like W. Hamilton, Carlyle, J. S. Mill, philosophers like J. Betham, H. Spencer, and famous clergymen and theologists like G. Moberley, R.

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Jones, and others. In general, vis-à-vis theologists and clergymen who went against and constrained scientific education, most scientists and philosophers upheld it. When it came to the attitude toward classic courses, whereas, those upholding scientific education differed from each other, some suggesting to keep these courses, some others insisting in the abolishment of them, and still others holding that classic courses should be paid as attention as the scientific ones. From the two parties’ views, it can be seen that those who were for the reduction of classic courses and the setup of scientific ones believed: First, classic courses were heresy-oriented, immoral, and would make one degenerate; Secondly, they were of no practical usage whatsoever; Thirdly, they emerged before modern science came into being, so they were unfit for the spirit and needs of present society; Fourthly, they were merely appreciated by few people; Fifthly, natural sciences studied matters rather than words; Sixthly, the knowledge of natural sciences was of genuine usage in practical life and might promote the progress of society; Seventhly, the knowledge of natural sciences was more easily to be effectively delivered to the adolescent students; Eighthly, natural sciences might provide authentic intellectual trainings. Contrariwise, those who took the opposite views contended that: First, in virtue of studies of classic courses, one’s memories might be associated and strengthened; Secondly, classic courses might cultivate people’s capacity to analyze and judge about words; Thirdly, they might cultivate people’s capacity to use language exactly; Fourthly, they associated people with the great intellectual achievements in Greek and Roman eras, and made people accept their cultivation; Fifthly, they were of inner values; Sixthly, the knowledge of classic courses was indispensable to politicians, lawyers, judges, and all the other professions; Seventhly, they had a fairly long history so their values had experienced the test of history, whereas modern natural sciences were just springing up; Eighthly, the studies of natural sciences were narrowly utilitarian, which would not promote the development of advanced spiritual capacity; Ninthly, natural sciences were merely capable of filling people’s mind with facts but had no idea developing their intellect and virtues; Tenthly, there was no room in the school’s schedule for natural sciences. The two parties’ views can be said tit for tat. Seen from the views listed above, the focus of bifurcation between them plainly lies in: between classic knowledge and the scientific one, which is of more values, be they to the development of the individual or to that of the society. This question is theoretical as well as practical.

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Theoretically, either party of the defense sticks to its argument; practically, nonetheless, the development of British society after the mid-nineteenth century made the ultimate decision: “Science!”. This is because science can reinforce socioeconomic strength, but it can also satisfy the individual’s intellectual curiosity and promote its advancement. Nonetheless, albeit people have recognized the educational values of scientific knowledge, some other problems are really confronted when it comes to the application of scientific education, say, teachers of science are in great need, particularly the qualified ones, students, and their parents’ long-term biases on scientific knowledge and worries about the employment prospect of the science courses they choose, the shortage of scientific-educational instruments, equipment, funds, and so on and so forth. At any rate, after long-term debates, until the end of the nineteen eighties, British education had opened its arms to science, which was manifested in the universal setup of scientific courses in primary and secondary schools and colleges and universities all over Britain. Scientific courses gradually turned from the extracurricular lectures and free activities in the nineteenth century into the nuclear and compulsive courses in the curriculum system of the schools, whereas classic humanities were greatly reduced on class hours or integrated into the knowledge system of scientific courses, or were abolished once and for all. This is an important mark of the birth of modern education. In the nineteenth century’s Britain and other Western countries, besides the longterm debates pertinent to scientific and classic courses, there was another debate with respect to scientific and religious courses. As was stated afore, howbeit the development of science after the seventeenth century constituted a threat to the legitimacy of religious knowledge, it remained to touch the authority of the latter, and the educational power was still dominated by the church. After the nineteenth century, along with the critiques of classic knowledge, people also began to raise questions as regards the legitimacy of religious knowledge’s being in school curricula. The questions mainly came from two aspects. One was the political sphere. Politicians gradually recognized the important role that education played in the development of the state and, more than that, from the eighteenth century onwards, some countries successively popularized education to different extents and enlarged the degree of funding of and control over the educational courses. To the nineteenth century, the managing power of public schools of other European states was already fundamentally transferred from the churches to the states which instilled their ideologies through schools. The other aspect was the religious sphere. After the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, the church’s power and social prestige suffered a disastrous decline, and its economic power was also far worse than before since it was no longer capable of squeezing money by means of racking their brains. Until the nineteenth century, the churches were already incapable of paying the increasingly rising fees of educational courses, as the result of which their practical control over schools also declined day after day. Moreover, in the nineteenth century, the conflicts between the Church of England and its non-followers were quite fierce, which resulted in the emergence of “indifferentism,” namely, admitting the legitimacy and equality of the differences between various beliefs. In this vein, schools’ religious education centering at the Church of England were faced with questioning

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since it was on suspicion of damaging the freedom of religious belief and forcefully instilling some particular religious belief. To this connection, parents who did not believe in the Church of England and its non-followers all actively demanded that the religious courses in the schools should be abolished, which exactly conformed to the interests of the state. Under these two conditions, and with the decline of classic courses, religious courses also began to disappear in schools’ schedules at the end of the nineteenth century. Scientific courses began to completely occupy the core position of the schools’ curriculum system. Since the seventeenth century and beyond, along with the establishment of the scientific knowledge form and its gradual replacement of the metaphysical one, the study of educational theories also began to turn from metaphysical speculation to scientific research. In the history of Western education, Bacon can be said the advocate of scientific pedagogy, J. F. Herbart the founder, and E. Meumann, and W. A. Lay the practitioners. Be that as it may, due to their different understandings of the concept of “science,” they pursued different paradigms of scientific pedagogy. Herbart can be said the representative of rationalist educational science, whereas Meumann and Lay of positivism educational science. Also, there was the pedagogy of spiritual science represented by Dilthey (Shi, 1999). No matter what is their “scientific-ness,” the theories of education since the seventeenth century and beyond achieved rapid development under the call of scientific reason, and hence they laid the theoretical foundation for the development of educational practices. After a long period of struggles, the second knowledge transformation, together with the political, economic, and cultural forces of modern society, exerted tremendous influences on the emergence and development of modern education. Many properties of modern education or the “modernity of education” about which people are delight in talking are shaped to a great extent by the modern scientific knowledge form. To begin with, it is the scientific-ness. Modern education is scientific, disseminating and developing scientific knowledge. Scientific courses occupy the dominant and nuclear position in schools’ curriculum system in that modern knowledge form holds that only scientific knowledge is genuine and hence is of the most educational values, and only it is capable of promoting the valuable advancement of society and individuals. All the spheres of human knowledge will sooner or later reach the state of scientific knowledge. Some knowledge systems will not be qualified to appear in the school’s schedule unless they are demonstrated as scientific. Reversely speaking, furthermore, any knowledge system appearing in the school’s schedule will be regarded as scientific. The criterion of educational assessment is the extent to which the students grasp the taught scientific knowledge and methods, and the extent to which their “correct” scientific attitude and beliefs are formed. These ideas have been incorporated into the modern educational sphere and dominated every word and deed of modern education. The scientific-ness of modern education also refers to the fact that modern education is based on teaching scientific knowledge and is under the instruction of the scientific knowledge of modern education. Be they the individual acts of teaching and learning of teachers and students, or the national policies of education reform,

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they are based on the various educational surveys and theories of educational science. Like psychological discipline, educational science is also regarded as a panacea of searching for, diagnosing, and solving the various educational problems. Comparatively, traditional individual and philosophized folk educational knowledge fails to be considered. After the nineteen sixties, some analytic educational philosophers in Britain, America, and Germany even imitated the analytic philosophers at the beginning of the twentieth century to be committed to “clearing the thinking” of the various metaphysics in educational theories, slogans, and policies. They attempted to apply the positive spirit of natural sciences and the preciseness of scientific logic to the studies of educational science so as to enable educational science to become genuine scientific knowledge for the sake of essentially solving the chaos and puzzlement in educational practices brought about by the bifurcations in educational concepts, propositions, and theories. Secondly, it is the mundaneness. Coincident with modern scientific knowledge at the level of quality and value properties, modern education has abandoned the mystery of primitive education, but it has also abandoned the divinity of ancient education and has become a sort of education meeting the mundane needs—property, power, order, career, identification, etc.—of the individuals and the state. Words like “efficiency.” “profits,” “equality,” “utility,” “development,” etc. have replaced “mind,” “virtue,” “Ren,” “state,” “afterlife,” etc. and have become the basic terms expressing modern educational ideas. The contact between education and economy becomes increasingly close and draws more and more concerns from the individuals, enterprises, and the state. On the one hand, a large amount of capital from the families, enterprises, and the state is invested in education, which makes education into a quite massive consuming market in any society; on the other hand, the investors all expect, in haste, to obtain the repayment of the greatest profits from their investments. Those colleges, specialities, and courses that can produce apparent economic profits are attached unbearable importance; contrariwise, those focusing on individual and social spiritual needs suffer unprecedented absent treatment. In effect, education has completely become not merely “mundane” but also “utilitarian.” Thirdly, it is popularity. Knowledge is power, and scientific knowledge is the strongest power changing the destiny of us individuals and promoting social advancement. In addition, scientific knowledge is objective and value-neutral, so it is absolutely beneficial to all people, being the mundane popular power of salvation. Under the control of this idea, the state advocates to popularize education before people wittingly demand to be educated scientifically and struggle for equal rights to be educated. Popular education is promoted by two forces, “top-down” and “bottomup,” and develops rapidly, having become a global educational idea and movement. Education is no longer the privilege of the few intellectual elites and noble children but has become the “air and bread” of the populace. The “scientific-ness,” “mundaneness,” and “popularity” of modern education under the influence of the modern knowledge form are so to speak the “three pillars” of the edifice of modern education, but also the three fundamental principles and directions of all modern education reforms. Modern education can be said one with meeting the individual and the society’s mundane needs as its main aim, the popularization as its main orientation,

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and rational enlightenment as its main idea. The fundamental spirit of modern education is scientism, utilitarianism, and objectivism. It fights against the metaphysics and theology of ancient education by scientism, the classism by utilitarianism, and the old objectivism by the new one.

4.4 Postmodern Knowledge Transformation and the Crisis of Modern Education Apparently, the transformation of human knowledge is accelerating, which is also the reason why the variance of modern society is speeding up. The primitive knowledge form existed as long as primitive society, and the existing period of the ancient knowledge form also occupied the lion’s share of the history of human civilization, whereas the modern scientific knowledge form was fiercely criticized soon after its emergence and affirmation. As has been stated in the previous chapter, people criticized that the modern scientific knowledge form inherited from ancient knowledge form was “objective” and “absolute” faith which, in their view, gave rise to new knowledge authorities and knowledge hegemony. Scientific knowledge was thus freed from suspicion, but the development of local and individual knowledge was refuted and constrained; people criticized its self-proclaimed “value-neutral” and “culture-unconcerned,” believing that this claim concealed the value stance and social biases of scientific knowledge, as knowledge and power, and knowledge and ideology were de facto closely interconnected; people criticized its “correspondence theory” view of knowledge, holding that there was not at all “objective reality” independent of the knower and the cognitive background, or pure “mirror” reflection, and hence there was no knowledge statement conforming to objective reality at all. The objective reality was not the foundation of knowledge legitimacy, but the rules of the knowledge game or knowledge forms were the very one; people criticized the logicalness and essentiality of its concepts and categories, believing that concepts and categories were all the products of certain cultures or lifestyles and their significance was located in their application; people criticized that it regarded the knower as a completely independent individual, and the production of knowledge as a product of individual spiritual acts, and held that there was not any isolated knower at all but the knowers under a certain socio-historical and cultural background. On the whole, from the criticisms in the past virtually one hundred years, particularly from the criticisms since the nineteen sixties and beyond, people became increasingly aware that the scientific knowledge form had its unconquerable shortages, which were bringing about more and more apparent negative social influences. In the past, people merely recognized the prosperity brought by science to human society, but now they have found the predicament and problems it bought about. What’s more, many problems are not soluble via recourse to the development of scientific knowledge as was proclaimed. This apart, the limitations of the scientific knowledge form

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are also unconquerable via modifying the form that is exactly in crisis and is turning to a new knowledge form, to wit, postmodern cultural knowledge form. The cultural knowledge form as a postmodern one taking its shape will highlight the diversity of the concepts and standards of knowledge and adopt Feyerabend’s “Anarchic Knowledge Programme”; it will abandon mercilessly the objective, absolute, and ultimate knowledge beliefs, and drastically go against knowledge hegemony; it will return the legitimate membership of the knowledge whose rights are “constrained” or “deprived of” by the scientific knowledge form—individual knowledge, local knowledge, tacit knowledge, indigenous knowledge, and the knowledge regarded as “quasi-scientific” or “non-scientific”—and philosophical knowledge, historical knowledge, religious knowledge, artistic knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and so on; it will accept the principles of testability and fallibility and keep open to each criticism; it will encourage people to review the nature of power and the taste of value of each sort of knowledge; it will review the intellectuals’ enlightening ideals and social roles; and it will re-reflect on the relationship between knowledge on the one hand and social advancement and individual development on the other. Like the previous knowledge transformations, this third transformation, marked with the emergence of the postmodern knowledge form, is a deconstruction of the previous modern knowledge form, but it is also a construction of a new cultural knowledge form. As the deconstruction of the old knowledge form, its emergence will surely bring to the intellectual life and other spheres of social life the conversion of discourses, loss of legitimacy, and confusion of orders; as the construction of the new knowledge form, meanwhile, its emergence will surely bring new academic discourses, legitimated rules, and social orders. During the third knowledge transformation of human beings, the modernity of education is confronted with critiques, modern education’s spirit, and ideal suffer suspicion, and modern education is also faced with or trapped into an increasingly severe crisis which is mainly manifested below. First, the crisis of education’s humanistic spirit. Modern education is increasingly concerned with the funds it obtains and its capacity to suffice the mundane development of the individuals and society, is increasingly changing itself to satisfy these mundane needs, and hence it ignores even abandons its traditional humanistic concerns and pursuits. Humanistic scholars, courses, and teachers are in relatively low positions in schools or other spheres of knowledge. The teaching of humanistic knowledge has in a great measure lost its humanity and become instrumental for people to deal with exams or look for a job. The increasingly modernized school education situations are increasingly utilitarian, having lost in general its significance of spirit molding. As a result, modern education having maximally met the needs of individual and social mundane development notwithstanding, it has brought about the individuals’ personal, spiritual, and virtual crises and severe one-sided and abnormal developments produced therefrom, and has cultivated many “empty people,” “onesided people” and “immoral people” who are intellectuals and capable but have great shortages on personality, spirit, and virtue. The shortage as such of modern education based on the scientific knowledge form has exerted negative educational influences in Western society after the nineteen sixties. At present, in Western school

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life, problems like violence, drug abuse, life indulgence, spiritual emptiness, etc. are fairly severe, have exactly threatened students’ healthy development, and hence have evoked the general anxieties in families, society, and schools. Some measures the schools adopt, say, “Students are prohibited to go to school with guns,” “Students are prohibited to take drugs,” “Education of sexual safety must be given to students,” “to help teenage mothers bring up children,” “to increase the number of psychologists in the schools,” and the like can only bring “temporary solutions” in lieu of “essential solutions.” By reason of this, in Britain and America, many families even evade from sending their children to schools, particularly to the public ones, but ask the government to permit their children to receive compulsory education at home. Nonetheless, modern Western families are de facto far from being an “educational pure land” since that which disturbs the parents exists not only at school but also at the Internet at their homes where the children can get it in easier, quicker, and more detailed fashion. More satirically, in the debates pertinent to the abolishment of classic courses and the setup of scientific courses, classists’ predictions as regards the utilitarianism embraced by scientific courses and the severe social sequels turned out to be true one century later. To echo the humanistic crisis as such of modern education, perpetualism educational philosophy raised again the issue of studying classic works. Their reasons resemble those offered in the nineteenth century when classicists used them to defend themselves, only that more contemporaneous content were added in the former. The two extremely brutal world wars supported by modern sciences provided more courage and strength to perpetualists. They contended that the world of modern sciences was one having totally forgotten humans’ spiritual being, a flat, dull, and utilitarian world, and hence it was a wicked and brutal world. Scientific education had made people forget the more noble goals of life than material enjoyment, individual freedom, and sensuous stimuli. They suggested to restart the study of classic works, choose carefully 100 classic works like Plato’s The Republic before filling them into the curriculum system of the schools. Nevertheless, in the era when cold war was quite fierce in the middle of the twentieth century, their suggestions failed to arouse enough concerns and were soon forgotten. That which was remembered was merely their slogan: “Return to the ancient times.” Existentialism educational philosophers held that humans’ being was prior to their nature, so was their significance to their function. Modern education should not merely treat humans as social instruments for training but should treat them as genuine individuals for caring. They pointed out that educators must be aware that the center of education is human beings, absolutely existing humans with consciousness, values, taste, dignity, troubles, and problems but also hopes. Individuals are concerned with their future profession, but also feel, at any time, their existing circumstances; their pursuit of excellence, but also significance, the latter having never stopped but merely being ignored by our society and educators. The teacher-student relations in the educational process were a particular interpersonal relation, whose values were far superior to those of knowledge delivery. The teacher-student relations should not be an instrument to deliver knowledge; just the opposite, knowledge delivery should be the instrument to set up the teacher-student relations. Teachers

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and students should intentionally set up this relation so as to enable everyone to reveal the possibility of his/her existence via this. Only in this way can educators understand their students, can students understand themselves and their situations before becoming people with common senses under certain human living conditions. The values of education do not merely rest in encouraging and helping the younger generation to struggle and compete, but also in guiding them to think about the true meaning of the struggle and competition to the being of themselves and the society as well. Only in this way can they develop into mature individuals from the naive ones, obtain the completeness of being and head for the top state of being, and be brave enough to face the shortages of the self, society, and human civilization, to authentically settle the spiritual crises, and to create a better earthly paradise. Second, education’s crisis of social values. During the process whence modern education was set up, people put on it great expectations, not merely hoping that it might promote the development of social economy, but also hoping that it could promote the process of social democratization and cultural progress. Be that as it may, in the past over a hundred years, people found that albeit modern education with delivering scientific knowledge as its mission contributed greatly in terms of meeting the needs of the market on labor forces, when it came to political democratization and cultural progress, they remained to make satisfying contributions. This is because as a sort of objective authoritative knowledge, the scientific knowledge delivered by school education has itself hindered the progress of cognition, and scientific knowledge form has also rejected all the traditional, civilian, and individual knowledge from entering into the educational system, and hence it has deprived the knowledge of the values of being disseminated and preserved. As a result, the knowledge was soon lost within a few decades. This is a quite severe event. Losing traditional, civilian, and individual knowledge, people are forced to entrust to scientists their knowledge on which the implementation of decisions relies, just like the primitive people entrusted to the “wizards” their hope of obtaining the legitimacy of knowledge and acts, and the ancient people to the metaphysicians and theologists. De facto, albeit in the past millenniums, human knowledge has experienced great changes on both amount and structure, this severe phenomenon of dependence in the intellectual life remains the same. It is not merely that the commoners depend on scientists or intellectuals, but all the more that undeveloped countries depend on the developed ones. This is particularly striking in the modern scientific era. The phenomenon as such has hindered, in essence, the setup of genuine democratic social relations and international relations in so much as compared with scientists, the individual’s role is minute in the whole process of the democratization of social politics, and the same holds to the undeveloped and underdeveloped countries. That is to say, compared with the developed countries, the undeveloped and underdeveloped countries’ roles in participating in international affairs and contributions to the advancement of scientific knowledge are also quite minute. As a matter of fact, the development of sciences and scientific education will by no means settle the problems of dependence in socio-political life or of the gap between the rich and the poor in economic life; rather, the gap is aggravated or further enlarged. The “educational Utopia” formed since modern times and beyond has gone bankrupt.

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Third, the crisis of equal educational opportunities. The equality of educational opportunities is a value presumption of popular education, but it is also a direction of the endeavor of modern education. Equal educational opportunity is manifested in many aspects one of which, also a fundamental one, is to make all the youths of the right age enjoy “the equal opportunities to be educated,” which can usually be measured via indexes like “enrollment rate,” “upgrading rate,” etc. Compared with ancient education in which there were severe class, racial, and sexual biases, it can be said a great process that modern education presents the equality of educational opportunities and carries out popular education. Be that as it may, equal educational opportunities and popular education are based on a fundamental presumption, namely, scientific knowledge is “value-neutral” and “culture-unconcerned,” and hence it is beneficial or, exactly, equally beneficial, to all learners. Only when this presumption is accepted, will the idea of equal educational opportunities and popular education be accepted also. Nonetheless, along with people’s critiques and discovery of the scientific knowledge form, this fundamental presumption does not hold water in that the process of production and dissemination of all the knowledge is not value-neutral but has severe social biases, being constrained by social power, interests, ideology, and gender culture, to name a few. Albeit all knowledge is the product of individual spiritual acts on the surface, it is the result of social construction in essence. Therefore, the question of whether or not the schools’ curriculum knowledge is equally important to every student becomes very important. That is to say, people’s concerns about equal educational opportunities have been shifted to those on quality. The equality of educational opportunities is easy to obtain on quantity, and it however is quite hard on quality. People might ask: Why are there more white heroes but fewer black ones in historical textbooks? Why A.D. chronology is used in world history? Why are the female figures in curriculum knowledge always ideal types of womanhood? Why are the founders of many disciplines the Westerners? Why 1640 is determined as the beginning of modern world history? By means of the sociological analyses with regard to the process of schools’ selection, organization, and delivery of knowledge, people find that in doing so, schools are in fact influenced by the mainstream ideas of values in the society, by social politics, economic, and cultural forms. The “textbook event” in the Japanese Ministry of Education is a case in point. In this vein, people cannot but ask: Is the school an institution disseminating truths or biases? Is it an institution against biases and discriminations or one rationalizing them? Is it an ideology-neutral institution or one producing and strengthening some ideology? Is it an institution of racial equality or one in which there are racial discriminations? Is it an institution of sexual equality or one with sexual discrimination? These questions have destructed in essence the “myth” of equal educational opportunities. People cannot but ask further: Is school education based on civil taxes beneficial to all taxpayers? “Whose school” is it and “Whose courses?” The studies of critical theorists have revealed that school education is de facto an institution of social “reproduction,” and the economic, political, and cultural constructions it produces via the particular allocation of knowledge are in fact the places where the ready-made socio-political, economic, and cultural hegemonies are realized. The

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seemingly equal education is in fact unequal; the seemingly justified school education is in fact unjustified. Indices like “enrollment rate” and “upgrading rate,” etc. have covered this factual inequality and injustice. Struggling for factual educational equality and justice is becoming a constituent of people’s ordinary political struggles in Western capitalist countries. Fourth, the teaching crisis. To educators, the crisis of modern education is most apparently embodied via a teaching crisis which, similarly, is mostly embodied via students’ general weary of learning and poor performance. These two problems are not special to some single country but have transcended ideology and cultural tradition and become worldwide. The severity of the problems has reached such an extent: without the aid of discipline, profession attraction, or other external measures, almost no student will make efforts to study. Some educators and pedagogical specialists in China and Japan contend that the cause to this problem is the heavy course load and overweight of the pressure of upgrading; the fact is, nevertheless, in Britain and America where there is virtually no such load or pressure, the phenomena of being weary of learning and poor performance are also quite striking. It can be seen that there might be a deeper and more general cause to the very problem, and the cause might be pertinent to the whole intellectual atmosphere of classroom teaching and school life. In classroom life, the knowledge that the students get is already decided, regardless of whether or not students like it, which has, first of all, caused the passivity of students on study. One of the teaching techniques is to try every means to turn the students from passive learners to active ones. Nevertheless, under most circumstances, not merely the content of the study is pre-established, but the answers to the questions raised by the teacher in class are also pre-established. The results of students’ thinking are required to be concordant with the answers. Even the so-called “discovery learning” does not permit students to make their discoveries in the true sense of the word; rather, it is merely a variant of “reception learning.” In Chinese elementary education, such situations are particularly severe. In such classrooms, how can there be intellectual curiosity, rational explorations, or spiritual pleasure? It is impossible for teenagers who sit in such classrooms for years to be unweary of learning. More importantly, standardized testing indicates that at the level of achieving high performance, individual ideas are unimportant even harmful, and the only important and useful strategy is to rightly, steadily, and skillfully grasp the textbook knowledge. The origin of such a classroom teaching mode and assessing mode is nothing but the modern scientific knowledge form, the objective, absolute, and general views of knowledge and faiths of knowledge. They exactly deprive the legitimacy from students’ individual knowledge, deny the cognitive values of individual knowledge, and turn students’ classroom learning act into a purely passive receiving activity, which hence results in students’ weariness of learning and the following poor performances. In addition to the weariness of learning and poor performances, modern teaching is also faced with crises from other two aspects one of which is the school curriculum crisis brought about by the limitless increase and rapid upgrading of social knowledge, the other being the relevant crisis of teacher’s prestige and teacher-student relations. As is known, modern knowledge increases in a quite rapid fashion, so is

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the variation of the foundation of modern social professional knowledge. Under such circumstances, the pressure on the reform of the school curriculum is tremendous. In the nineteen sixties, America launched the movement of reforming the structural curriculum so as to deal with the new scientific revolution, but it failed to reach the expected purpose. To this connection, questions as to what kind of knowledge is of the most educational values and how to attain such knowledge in most valuable fashion become sharper than any time before. Additionally, along with the development of computer network technology and Internet communication business, the knowledge that students can obtain from outside the classroom is great on amount, which brings great challenges to the compilation and implementation of the school curriculum. What kind of knowledge can be obtained via other channels? What kind of knowledge is necessarily conveyed at school? When the new type of “virtual school” and “network teaching” are highly developed, is there the necessity for the school as a knowledge-disseminating institution to exist? If yes, on which kind of new foundation will the teacher-student relations be built, and what new mode will be adopted? As school education’s function of social reproduction is revealed and its position of a main path of disseminating modern scientific knowledge is shaken, the teacherstudent relations become increasingly intense. People will naturally ask: What are teachers’ class, racial, and gender stances? Will the teachers foist their class, racial, and gender biases on adolescent students? Will every student be given equal concern and corresponding help? How to interpret the responses of students from different families, social groups, and races to teachers’ conduct? Is there a deeper social background behind the teacher-student conflicts? In Western countries, students often accuse the teachers of social biases, and hence teachers’ right to manage students is greatly constrained. In effect, in ordinary work, teachers are really in the condition that the less trouble the better, their status is low, and the teacher-student relations are quite weak. Western teachers often express their admiration for their Chinese counterparts in that they know that the latter enjoy the respect at school and in society. Nonetheless, in recent years, along with the transformation of Chinese society, particularly with the change of people’s view of values and the emergence of popular media and the Internet, the teacher-student relations in Chinese schools are also confronted with unprecedented challenges, and teachers’ lack of sufficient discipline knowledge and the conflicts around views of values between teachers and students are also frequent. The teacher authority based on scientific knowledge and the mainstream view of values have begun to decline. Under the new knowledge background, how to reconstruct the teacher-student relations as the foot stone of the whole education is a difficult task in front of the educators and pedagogical experts at home and abroad. Fifth, the crisis of educational science or theory. Along with people’s questioning about the scientific knowledge form, the qualities and values of educational science or theory also suffer systematic questionings for the first time. Is educational science genuine? Is educational theory genuine? Is educational science or theory valueneutral or culture-unconcerned? How to examine and assess the progress of educational science or theory? Is educational science or theory really essential to educational practices? Is educational activity one under the instruction of educational

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science or one relying on the educational arts of the educators? As a result, the questions have shaken the scientific nature of educational science or theory and scientific ideals (Shi, 1999). People are increasingly aware that in the strict sense, educational knowledge is not a scientific one, and that the relationship between educational knowledge and educational practices is different from that between scientific knowledge and social practice. The recognition as such has also enabled people to have a clearer cognition of the legitimacy and justification of modern education. That which is needed by educational practices is more than a scientific reason, and they also need a historical and practical reason; that which is needed is more than the efficiency on methods or flawlessness in content, and historical and practical defenses at the level of purpose and values are also necessary. To modern education, the scientific theories of education are necessary but insufficient. The crises of modern education caused by the third knowledge transformation of the humankind are more than the several aspects mentioned afore, and the influences these crises exert are wider than mentioned, namely, they influence every aspect of modern education, from the macro educational decisions to the micro student management, from kernel curriculum reform to the peripheral school supporting policy, and from the reassessment of educational values to the questioning of educational ideas. All these indicate that the enlightenment aspirations that have once been the foundation of the legitimacy of modern education have become disillusion, and educators must seek and set up new educational ideals. Undoubtedly, modern education is now at a critical “turning point,” which is exactly the genuine meaning of the “crisis” of modern education. It shows the direction of future education. The reform of modern education must transcend the established modern educational ideas, and must make reflections once more, earnestly and cautiously, on the new social background and new knowledge form. To begin with, what are the knowledge foundation and knowledge requirements of the development of postmodern society? What knowledge problems and conflicts are there? Why did knowledge creativity become an important constituent of a country’s comprehensive national strength after the nineteen nineties? How to understand knowledge innovation in overall fashion? How to fight against the new knowledge hegemony of developed countries? In the second place, what on earth is the situation of postmodern social knowledge? What changes have knowledge qualities undergone? What changes are there as regards the growing mode of knowledge? What changes are there in the structure of knowledge? What new knowledge forms have emerged? What new properties are there as to the dissemination of knowledge? What new changes are there with regard to the role of the intellectuals? What new changes are there in the value relations between knowledge and society? Thirdly, is scientific knowledge the one of the most educational values? Is scientific knowledge the only knowledge form selected and organized by school curriculum knowledge? What is the difference in quality between scientific and humanistic knowledge? How does the difference in quality influence the processes of scientific and humanistic education, respectively? How to deal with the relationship between

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scientific and humanistic education, and how to reconstruct the school’s scientific and humanistic education? Fourthly, on what kind of foundation of knowledge theories or epistemology should the school’s curriculum reform be built? How to deal with the relationships between scientific and local knowledge, between silent and explicit knowledge, and between knowledge dissemination and knowledge hegemony? Fifthly, how to build a new educational teaching mode? How to settle, on the basis of the new knowledge form, the problems of being weary of learning and universal poor performance? How to build new educational assessing criteria? How to build a new classroom managing system? Sixthly, how to build a new mode of teacher-student relations? How to reform the pedagogic education so as to cultivate teachers suitable for the demands of the new knowledge form? Seventhly, how to deal with the challenges from “knowledge explosion” and the era of network? How to readjust the school’s curriculum structure? Eighthly, how to change the idea of educational theories and set up a new methodology of educational studies? How to set up the substantive connection between educational theories and practices? How should pedagogical scholars recognize their roles? Ninthly, how to set up the educational ideas conforming to the needs of knowledge development, individual happiness, and social progress?

References Boyd, W. & King, E. J. (1972). The History of Western Education. Adam & Charles Black. Field, G. C., A. M. & Litt, D. (1930). Plato and His Contemporaries: A Study in Fourth-century Life and Thought. Methuen & Co. Ltd. Shi, Z. (1999). Jiaoyuxue de Wenhua Xingge 教育学的文化性格 [The Cultural Characters of Pedagogy]. Shanxi Education Publishing House.

Chapter 5

The Change of Knowledge Qualities and Education Reform

In this chapter, I will discuss the relationship between the change of the qualities of postmodern knowledge and education reform. That which needs to be explicated first is that the qualities of knowledge here do not refer to some specific knowledge, such as mythical knowledge, folk knowledge, physical knowledge, or historical knowledge. Instead, they are general qualities of all sorts of knowledge, namely, the qualities shared by all specific forms of knowledge transcending the differences between their respective spheres, stating modes, disseminating modes, and so on, the rules by which the various games of knowledge commonly abide. The qualities as such are the key of the key factors of traditional epistemology or the knowledge forms in our terminology, to which many other factors appertain, directly or indirectly. De facto, whenever people state and determine some general quality of knowledge, say, “objectivity,” they may regard this quality as a judging criterion of knowledge, using it to differentiate between “knowledge” and “non-knowledge” or “quasi-knowledge” of human experiences, hence taking it as a plain trait or necessary condition to define the form of experience as knowledge. From a philosophical perspective, an era or an individual’s view of the qualities of knowledge also constitute their main views of knowledge. To this connection, the change of the qualities of knowledge will surely lead to that of the views on knowledge in an era or an individual, hence influence their whole intellectual life, including the production, statement, judgment, defense, dissemination, and control of knowledge and their life of study and education.

5.1 Knowledge Qualities and Education Before I explicate the relationship between the change of contemporary knowledge qualities and education reform, let us look at the general relationship between knowledge qualities and educational activities. Generally speaking, their relationship is

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very close and influences every aspect of educational activities deeply. Previous educational theories failed to give sufficient explications as their concerns were mainly concentrated on the organization of knowledge, namely, how to deliver the given knowledge to students during the teaching process when it comes to the problems of knowledge in educational activities. In what follows, I will show that even the problems as such are closely related to the qualities of knowledge and are constrained and influenced by the presumptions pertinent to it. This apart, knowledge qualities also constrain and influence the purpose of educational activities, the choice of curriculum knowledge, the teaching process, and educational scholars’ construction of educational theories. To begin with, knowledge qualities and educational purposes are closely related, the former constraining and influencing the latter. As is known, educational purposes are no more than two aspects one of which is to regulate and promote students’ individual development, the other being adapting to and promoting society’s development. The two purposes are by no means parallel or unrelated to each other but share a dialectic relation. On the one hand, the content and direction of individual development are constrained by socio-political, economic, and cultural conditions; on the other hand, society’s steadiness and development rely on individuals of certain qualities and specifications. Logically speaking, education is incapable of immediately meeting the needs of society or of adapting to and promoting its development; therefore, this purpose will only be realized by means of regulating and promoting individuals’ development. To this connection, some educational scholars also call education’s purpose of regulating and promoting individuals’ development the “immediate purpose,” “internal purpose,” or “ontological purpose” of education, whereas education’s purpose of adapting to and promoting social development the “mediate purpose,” “external purpose,” or “instrumental purpose” of education. Students’ individual development is mainly constituted by that of the individual’s qualities of “physique,” “intelligence,” “virtue,” “aesthetic,” and the formation of a nice personality based on them. As to the development of these factors, that of “intelligence” embraces the key significance insomuch as both the reinforcement of students’ physiques and the formation of their virtues, aesthetics, and healthy personalities are based on a certain development of their intelligence. Without the development of students’ intelligence, the reinforcement of their physiques will be based on a sort of mechanic training, the development of their virtues will become a sort of compulsive inculcation, and esthetic education will be simplified into the training of techniques, not to mention healthy personalities. The development of intelligence is no equivalence to the grasping of specific disciplinary knowledge compared with which the former all the more refers to the capacities to remember, appreciate, understand, criticize, and create knowledge. Apparently, the formation and cultivation of such capacities are closely related to the idea of knowledge qualities. Different views of knowledge qualities will surely lead to different acts corresponding to the capacities as such, and hence they will influence the development of the individual’s qualities of physique and psyche, and the realization of the social purposes of education. In the second place, knowledge qualities will influence the choice of curriculum knowledge. As is known to all, the space and time of school education are limited

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hence incapable, and it is also impossible, of delivering all the forms of knowledge of human society, which, a fortiori, leads to the choice of knowledge according to certain standards. This work’s significance is self-evident to the whole educational cause. It can be said that one of the kernel questions of modern education reform is what kind of curriculum knowledge should be chosen, and many other educational questions can be manifested via this one or embodied via the answers to this question. Many factors are influencing the choice of curriculum knowledge such as political, economic, and cultural factors and the properties of students’ individual physical as well as psychical development, or the like. Of these factors, knowledge qualities is an important one allowing no ignorance in that on the one hand, as a standard differentiating “knowledge” from “non-knowledge” or “quasi-knowledge,” knowledge qualities can represent a basic principle to make a curriculum choice, dispelling all “non-knowledge” (different knowledge forms have different ideas as to “non-knowledge”) and “quasi-knowledge” (e.g., daily experiences) out of curriculum content; on the other hand, knowledge qualities can also act as a standard to compare the values of various kinds of knowledge and choose the most valuable knowledge for the curriculum content. For instance, in the primitive knowledge form, “mystery” was the general attribute of knowledge, and hence the knowledge delivered in the ceremonies of orthodox educational qualities was mainly the mysterious one, and so was the case of knowledge of highest educational values, rather than the experiences of ordinary production and life. In the Middle Ages, “divinity” was the general attribute of knowledge, and hence the knowledge delivered in the medieval schools was mainly the religious one, and the most valuable courses were also the religious ones occupying most teaching space and time around which all other courses were set. In this vein, the change of knowledge qualities will naturally lead to that of the school’s curriculum content and structure, notably that of kernel courses. Knowledge qualities influences the teaching process, which is all the more plain insomuch as the latter is a progression based on the delivery and grasping of knowledge. In a certain historical background, how the two actors of teacher and student think about the qualities of knowledge will naturally influence their respective roles, the interactions between them, and even the mode of teaching assessment. For instance, when both the teacher and students take knowledge qualities as “divinity” and “ultimacy,” students’ overall tasks during the teaching process will be reading, remembering, reciting, reviewing, and reproducing religious knowledge, whereas the teachers will be helping students overcome the problems encountered during the process, and he/she might even take necessary means of physical punishment to deal with those who loaf on the work or those inclining to show their suspicion. In front of religious knowledge, the teacher and students do not have an opportunity to think or judge independently, nor is there the necessity. The teaching assessment also centers on students’ capacity to precisely reproduce religious knowledge. Presumably, it is by reason of this that Comenius criticized that the medieval schools were the “slaughterhouses” of children’s intelligence, as in these schools students hardly needed to employ any intellectual talent, except for memory. So to speak, the views with respect to the qualities of religious knowledge hindered the intellectual development of teachers and students, but also the cultural development of the whole

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medieval Western society. In the sixteenth century, Luther initiated the Reformation, presenting bold and detailed questioning as to the traditionally absolute and ossified theological dogmas and, under the influences of a modern humanism spirit, presented the new view of “justification by faith,” upholding that the individual might wittingly face God and understand the creeds. The teaching methods of medieval religion also began to change gradually in Protestant countries as a result of which teachers and students’ individual understanding and explications pertinent to the creeds gradually replaced the mechanic memorization of and obedience to religious dogmas, and became an important form of modern religious education. Knowledge qualities’ influences on educational activities are also carried out via those on educational theories. As was stated in the previous chapter, educational practices are under theoretical instructions and in any sort of educational practice, there are implied theories. Educational theories are, in the most fundamental sense, also the conceptualized and systematized educational knowledge. How to produce and state these sorts of knowledge, how to treat their qualities, and how to apply them to educational practices are all rather important questions to the study and development of educational theories. These questions in a peculiar knowledge sphere are necessarily relevant to the pedagogical experts’ ideas as to the general qualities of knowledge in that the latter is in close relation to the production, defense, judgment, statement, etc. of knowledge, different qualities usually accompanying different forms. For instance, when people regard knowledge qualities as “divinity,” the production of knowledge apparently can only be performed within the milieu permitted by the Bible or theological dogmas but cannot essentially challenge and subvert their existent conclusions. The defense and judgment of knowledge also cannot but appeal to the authority of the Bible and theological dogmas rather than to the observations and experiments as regards natural phenomena. The statement of knowledge also must consistently employ the languages of the Bible and theology for the sake of their legitimacy. In ancient metaphysical educational theories, due to the fact that pedagogical experts identified the knowledge of educational theories with other types of knowledge, believing that they had the qualities of metaphysics, the studies of educational theories were mainly performed by means of the speculations of concepts and categories rather than the surveys and studies of practical educating conditions. What’s more, due to the fact that they regarded metaphysical knowledge as the one of “absoluteness,” “objectivity,” and “ultimacy,” their educational theories were regarded as the revelation of the absolute, objective, and ultimate educational truths. The application of these educational theories to educational practices will not merely lead to instructions to the latter, but also produce a “constraining” even “oppressing” effect on it in that such educational theories as the unique educational truths will necessarily refute the legitimacy of other educational knowledge and their significance on instructing educational practices, hence will necessarily demand that educational practices be essentially subject to the so-called “absolute,” “objective,” and “ultimate” educational truths. Views of the general qualities of knowledge necessarily influence the production, judgment, defense, and statement of educational knowledge, and hence they indirectly influence the unfolding of educational practices.

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5.2 Modern Knowledge Qualities In the sphere of epistemology or theories of knowledge, there are many statements about the qualities of modern knowledge, such as “objectivity,” “absoluteness,” “ultimacy,” “neutrality,” “verifiability,” “certainty,” “conformity,” “universality,” “coherence,” or the like. Of these statements, “objectivity,” “universality,” and “neutrality” might be three fundamental properties depicting the features of modern scientific knowledge from three different facets. In general, objectivity focuses on the relationship between modern scientific knowledge on the one hand and the cognitive object and subject on the other, universality on that between modern scientific knowledge and different cognitive subjects, and neutrality on that between modern scientific knowledge and the social value system. Many other properties are all relevant to these three ones in this or that way hence can be understood and analyzed via being put into the milieu of the latter. Be that as it may, of the three fundamental properties, “objectivity” is the most fundamental one and the other two are based on it or are the explications of it from different facets. In this connection, I will first and foremost analyze the objectivity of modern knowledge.

5.2.1 Objectivity Albeit the “objectivity” of knowledge is rather appreciated by modern people, it is not a modern notion, which differs from people’s common recognition. Indeed, as is stated in Chapter 3, the ancient knowledge form considered “objectivity” as the fundamental property of metaphysical knowledge as well as the theologists did. It should be said that modern scientific knowledge’s faith of “objectivity” is inherited from ancient knowledge form, there are some substantial differences between them on understanding “objectivity,” though. The key of the substantial difference as such lies in the understanding of “object” in that in both forms, “objectivity” fundamentally refers to “a property of an object.” In this line, the difference in understanding the existing conditions of objects leads to the difference of substantial significance in understanding the “objectivity.” Resultantly, the problem of “objectivity” in the sphere of recognition is in close relation to that of “ontology” in the sphere of Being. In the first “Axial Period” of human civilization, as stated by Karl Theodor Jaspers, ontological thinking differed from the ancient mythical one that emerged simultaneously in the East and the West. In ancient Greece, philosophers believed that the world was composed of some most fundamental elements which, together with their acts, generated the world. Hence, these fundamental elements were the noumenon of the world, say, “fire,” “number,” “water,” “idea,” etc. In ancient China, the philosophers also committed themselves to contemplating the fundamental elements or causes constituting the world, and presented ideas like “heaven,” “earth,” “nature,” “Ren,” “li,” “qi,” or the like. On the basis of such an ontology, philosophers in both the East and the West believed that only when people grasped this noumenon of the world

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could they obtain genuine knowledge, or, in other words, only when the confirmation from this noumenon was obtained were knowledge reliable. This is because the world’s noumenon is both the support of the existence of all the things in the lifeworld and that of their movement, change, and interconnections, the ultimate cause of this world. Obviously, knowledge objectivity originating from this ontology has broken away from the mystery, individuality, and indeterminacy of the knowledge of ancient times, opened up the process of “disenchantment” in the history of human knowledge, and turned human’s recognitive route from the “inward observation” of the ancient times to the “outward observation” of the time of civilization.1 In the history of Western epistemology, the first philosopher who performed this epistemological turn was presumably Socrates. He was firmly against the relativism on issues of knowledge and his intellectual “midwifery” was de facto to force people to realize that their knowledge was influenced by common life experiences, customs, myths, etc., and hence it contained inner contradictories and many indeterminate factors. The end of “Socratian dialogues” was to let people realize and abandon the unreliable knowledge hence follow the dialectic path to seek determinate and objective knowledge. As to Plato, he systematically elucidated the ideal of objectivity of the knowledge as such, and defined the objective knowledge as “idea,” other knowledge or experiences as “doxa.” That he was against “dramas” and “myths” was exactly due to the fact that this knowledge was the production of human emotions rather than human intelligence, being the superficial recognition rather than the essential one of things. To put it in another way, the knowledge as such was subjective and conjectured rather than objective and eternal. After the Middle Ages, the ontological thinking mode was stolen from Western philosophical theories to demonstrate the uniqueness, eternity, omniscience, and omnipotence of God. In theologists and religious believers, “God” replaced various concrete material noumena or abstract spiritual ones and became the noumenon of the new world, the support of the latter’s existence, change, and movement. Resultantly, the recognition as regards things in the life-world de facto became the recognition and realization of God’s existence. The epistemological result was: the epistemological path of “outward observation” opened up by ancient philosophers was again replaced by the path of “inward observation.” Be it the object of recognition, the act of recognition, or knowledge itself, it smacks of divinity which is ungraspable via observation and reason alone, and hence belief must be appealed to also, namely, the belief in God. The “objectivity” presented by ancient philosophers turned into the so-called “capitalized Objectivity” in medieval metaphysicians, notably theologists, namely, it reflected God’s spirit and the “objectivity” of God’s existence. 1

The German philosopher Ernst Cassirer had in-depth insights into the change of this epistemological route. He pointed out that this change allowed modern science to come into force and develop rapidly. Nevertheless, he also emphasized that this mere “external observation” had also guided science causes toward a dangerous road and deprived scientific work of the memory of the being of humans, which led to the crisis of modern science. His great contribution consisted of reasonably rising over Kant’s critique of reason regarding scientific knowledge, extending the critique of reason to that of culture, and revealing the close relationship between scientific knowledge and cultural tradition (see Cassirer, 1985).

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After the Renaissance, along with the rediscovery and the consistent explications of classic literature, people managed to rise over the “divine Objectivity” of the Middle Ages and saw another sort of objectivity connected with the existing noumenon of things, and saw the ancient philosophers’ assiduous pursuit of the knowledge of things themselves. Classic humanists believed that albeit nature was the product of God, God washed his hands over it after it was created. Nature had its regularities and behaved according to them. Nature itself began to become the support of its existence and the noumenon of its movement and variation. The process of “disenchantment” paused by the medieval theology was restarted. After the fifteenth century, the large number of studies of natural philosophies and of the history of nature further strengthened this belief of people. In particular, the great discovery of navigation of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries justified with stubborn facts that recognition with respect to nature could only be performed via observing it, and the authority of observation was superior to that of any belief and speculation whatsoever. To the seventeenth century, along with the emergence of the great scientific discoveries in the sphere of astronomy, the new ideal of objectivity of natural knowledge was already unquestionably set up. The metaphysical meditations of or the theological belief in nature was already replaced by the observation of it. Naturalistic thoughts such as “recognize nature,” “follow nature,” “observe nature,” “obey nature,” or the like, were the common ideas and thinking frame of all advanced philosophers from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century. “Nature” was already a new ontology and ontological belief. Just as was pointed out by Bacon, Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything. (Bacon, 1960, p. 39)

To the eighteenth century, the disenchanted concept of “nature” became the philosophical foundation of not merely the researches of natural sciences but also, gradually, the studies of other spheres, the secret of existence commonly pursued by all cognitive spheres, a tremendous semantic domain, and a synonym of the “original appearance” of things. The presentation of concepts like “social nature,” “humanistic nature,” “legal nature,” “historical nature,”2 etc. indicated that the process of “disenchantment” opened up by natural sciences had expanded to other fields of knowledge, the ideal of knowledge’s objectivity presented by natural sciences had also been gradually accepted by people in other spheres of knowledge, and the “ontological objectivity” presented by ancient philosophers and the “theological objectivity” reformed by the medieval theologists also gradually gave way to the “natural objectivity” presented by modern natural scientists and epistemologists, or the “objectivity” in the modern sense. The concept of object was also converted from “noumenon” and “god” into “nature” or “thing itself,” so did the recognition of “object” from 2

These concepts can also be translated by “social essence,” “humanistic essence,” “legal essence,” “historical essence,” or the like. In naturalistic thoughts, “nature” equals “essence.” Therefore, the pursuit of “nature” is the pursuit of the “essence.” This causes the emergence of an “essentialist” view of knowledge and the epistemological route dominating the epistemological sphere since the modern time. It constitutes an important trait of the modern scientific knowledge form.

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“noumenon” and “divinity” to that of “nature” or “thing” itself. This change freed people from the constraint of metaphysical conceptual speculations, but also from that of theological dogmas, and greatly liberated people’s cognitive capacity hence enabled them to obtain, in a short period, great achievements of knowledge one after another, and to open up the route for the consistent progress of human knowledge since modern times and beyond. Be that as it may, the “objectivity” based on modern natural sciences is a rather complicated concept whose fundamental connotation should “correspond to” the attribute of the “thing itself” and the original relationship between things. Expressed in a familiar philosophical language, knowledge or genuine knowledge should “correctly reflect the essential attributes of things or the essential connection between things.” The results of knowledge remaining to reach the criterion of this “correspondence” will not be called “knowledge” but at most “insufficient knowledge.” This is where the difference between “knowledge” and “ignorance,” and between “knowledge” and “fallacy” is situated. “Ignorance” indicates that the interconnection between things fails to be reflected, whereas “fallacy” indicates that the interconnection as such is reflected incorrectly or wrongly, that the result of the reflection does not correspond to the original connection between things but is a subjectively fabricated product. As a consequence, the “correspondence” as such should be the basic meaning of the “objectivity” of knowledge, a basic criterion judging whether or not an experiential statement is “objective knowledge.” Nonetheless, how can the cognitive subject obtain the objectivity as such? Or, what conditions or qualities should the cognitive subject own to obtain the knowledge of objectivity? In the history of Western philosophy, different epistemologies had different answers. Empiricists believed that to reflect correctly the original appearance of things or the original connections between them, the cognitive subject had to recognize things according to their original appearances. Bacon’s remarks cited afore have most plainly shown the stance of empiricism: to correctly recognize nature, people must first and foremost “respect nature” and “obey nature,” be the “servant of nature.” This empiricist view aims to fight against ancient metaphysics’ “false pride” and “false surmise” on the problem of recognition, to abandon the traditional method of recognizing nature from conceptual speculation and logical deduction, and to uphold a new method of observation and experiment. Bacon’s essential end of criticizing the “four idols”—“idols of the tribe,” “idols of the cave,” “idols of the marketplace,” and “idols of the theater”—was to let people overcome the prejudices originating from human tribes, individual natures, linguistic society, and historical tradition for them to avoid the influences of any “preoccupations” when they got in touch with, observed, and understood nature. He believed that precisely due to the fact that human mind was easily influenced by the four idols, the human mind was “a mirror remaining to be polished” hence was incapable of correctly reflecting the natural things and the interrelationship between them. Naturally, he drew this conclusion: if humans wanted to correctly recognize the original appearance of nature and obtain objective knowledge, they had to get rid of the idols and polish their “mirror.” Whereas in terms of objecting ancient metaphysical epistemology, the rationalists shared the same stance of the empiricists, they were sharply different on how to obtain

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the knowledge of objectivity. Rationalists like Descartes, Kant, and others paid great attention to ancient philosophers’ debates as regards knowledge and accepted some of their basic views, believing that the subject could not attain objective knowledge merely by means of sensuous experiences insomuch as human organs were at any rate imperfect and had this or that shortage, which would lead to the fact that people’s sensuous impression of outside things were easily constrained even deceived by various external and internal conditions. To this connection, the subjective condition of knowledge objectivity could not be people’s sensuous experiences but should be their reason. Sensuous experiences merely offered the materials of knowledge, whereas reason provided the form of it. Without the participation of reason, people’s sensuous experiences were usually chaotic, vague, and unclear, and could not be organized into an objective knowledge system. This notwithstanding, the rationalists were incapable of correctly revealing the origin of reason, so they usually treated reason as “transcendental” or “self-contained,” even as humans’ “nature.” As a result, rationalism was also not that exhaustive on expounding knowledge objectivity and could not but stop, ultimately, at some metaphysical presumption or belief. The positivism of the nineteenth century was a new form of empiricism and, like the later critical rationalism, it reflected on the contributions and limitations of empiricism and rationalism, respectively. So to speak, positivism attempts, on the stance of empiricism, to use some views of rationalism as reference; on the other hand, critical rationalism attempts, on the stance of rationalism, to use some wisdom of empiricism. The essential difference between them is, whereas positivists greatly inherited and maintained the ideas of knowledge objectivity, critical rationalism fundamentally abandoned them. After the middle of the nineteenth century, it was under the strong promotion of positivism that the idea of knowledge objectivity presented by the modern knowledge form started to become a belief in all intellectual spheres, a measure for the knowledge content and social values of empirical statements. Since the mid-nineteenth century and beyond, the connotations of knowledge objectivity mentioned above have been broadly disseminated and have penetrated every aspect of the social intellectual life. The series of rules securing knowledge objectivity are also believed by an increasing number of people and dominate the intellectual life of most so-called civilized people, say, scientific research, scientific debates, the assessment of academic articles or works, the promotion of academic post, the choice of teaching and curriculum knowledge, and the like. Along with the increasing obviousness and amplification of the role of scientific knowledge as the expression of the ideal of objectivity in social life, particularly socioeconomic life, people produce a sort of internal, rational-critique-evading belief in the objectivity of the knowledge as such. The broad belief in and pursuit of this knowledge objectivity produces the “objectivism” of knowledge. Objectivism’s epistemological route is against the “subjectivism,” “relativism,” and “irrationalism” of knowledge, and demands that people abandon, during the process of gaining knowledge, all personal ideas, opinions, biases, experiences, emotions, common senses, or something, so as to assure that they gain objective, positive, precise, and definite knowledge. In front

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of objectivism, all traditional knowledge, local knowledge, individual knowledge, and the knowledge that cannot be stated via language are not knowledge in the true sense of the word, and hence none of them is very valuable.

5.2.2 Universality The trait of “universality” of modern knowledge is not strange to each of us. We often say or hear that “Science has no borders” or “The truth is universally applicable” which stresses nothing but the universality of objective knowledge. “Scientific knowledge,” “objective knowledge,” and “truth” are de facto of the same meaning here. In the sphere of pedagogy, not a few people believe that if pedagogy wants to become a genuine science, if educational theories want to become genuine, their knowledge must also be universal. This view was presented during the debates between “national” and “scientific” of pedagogies in the 1980s. In practical educational and teaching processes, the idea of the universality of curriculum knowledge is universally accepted by teachers and students. People believe that curriculum knowledge is universal, and that when we have this view, so do others or foreigners. During the educational and teaching processes, teachers often employ the metaphors such as “the universal law that cannot be changed by people’s will (it should include social will and individual will)” to strengthen this idea of knowledge universality. In effect, in modern people’s minds, only when a sort of knowledge is universal, will it be called “scientific” or genuine. Universality is not merely a “virtue” of knowledge, but it also becomes a standard to judge whether or not the knowledge is correct. Some even use “universality” as a beautiful coat to package their knowledge or ideas. Seen in the sense of basic connotation, the universality of modern knowledge means: a sort of statement of knowledge which, if it is objective, simultaneously transcends the limitations of various social and individual conditions, and is capable of being universally verified and accepted. In short, universality refers to “universal verifiability” and “universal acceptability” based on it. For instance, “2 + 2 = 4” or “Beijing is the capital of China” is a universal statement of knowledge in that it does not change along with the changes of one’s ideology, value conception, living style, gender, race, etc. Relevant to “universal verifiability” and “universal acceptability,” the universality of modern knowledge also means that the standard of producing and defending knowledge is capable of gaining universal identification and respect in that without this universal standard of knowledge, the universal verifiability and acceptability of knowledge statement itself will not be guaranteed. In this vein, this common and universal standard of knowledge should be regarded as a premise for knowledge statement to gain universality. Nonetheless, seen from the history of knowledge forms, in the primitive knowledge from, there was not any universal standard at all. Different primitive tribes had different mysterious interpretations as to the standard of knowledge. In the ancient knowledge form, metaphysicians tried to find a common standard but this was accepted only within their schools and different schools failed to have a universal

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idea as regards what was genuine knowledge. This metaphysical bifurcation with respect to the standard of knowledge was never really settled. Theologists attempted to treat religious or theological knowledge as a universal standard and launched therefrom the persecution of the “infidels” (people with different beliefs and knowledge systems). Nevertheless, religious power was never capable of turning some religion or theology into a universal standard of knowledge. It was until modern times when science sprang up, particularly under the promotion of Comte’s positivism, that people gradually regarded scientific knowledge as the only reliable, and the standard of scientific knowledge—“objectivity”—as a universal standard of knowledge. The logical relation between the “objectivity” and “universality” of modern knowledge is that universal knowledge must transcend various social and individual factors, and only this sort of knowledge is objective. This is because that which is pursued by objective knowledge is the “correspondence” of things themselves or the original relations between things, so it strictly constrains and refutes the interference of social and individual factors for the sake of consistently improving the “universal” level of knowledge. The objectivity and universality of knowledge are in a positive correlation. Similar to objectivity, the universality of modern knowledge extended from the natural sciences to social sciences and humanities. At first, people believed that natural knowledge reflecting natural laws was universal and immune to the influences of social or individual inclinations. For instance, the scientific discovery made by Dick might also be accomplished by Harry thousand kilometers away. Later, along with the realization of the tremendous social values of natural sciences, people hoped that the knowledge of social and humanistic studies might also reach a universal level. In Comte’s terminology, all the spheres of knowledge would ultimately reach the positive level of the objectivity and universality of knowledge, and it was merely the difference of time. In the middle and late nineteenth century, in each knowledge sphere of Western society emerged a positive inclination similar to that of mechanics and astronomy in the seventeenth century, namely, scientists took discovering objective and universal knowledge as their severe responsibility and noble mission. The presentation of Darwin’s theories of evolution and the ensuing Spencer’s theories of social evolution all the more provided theoretical foundations to this belief of knowledge universality. People believed that not only creatures and society evolved according to a fixed order, but all species and social forms can also find their locations in their respective chain of evolution. To this connection, the knowledge standard of each phase of evolution should be universal to all human knowledge forms rather than being restricted to some particular one. The knowledge form at some spatiotemporal point might not reach the newest phase of knowledge evolution, and it however would reach it sooner or later, so the latest knowledge standard was still applicable to it, and was still universal. The presentation of the universality of modern knowledge is epistemologically significant. For the first time, it offers a method of settling the knowledge conflicts in different cultural traditions for people from different cultural backgrounds, albeit this method may not be the best in today’s view. It is not hard to understand that human knowledge form is varied and hence there are often conflicts. In remote ancient

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and ancient societies, the conflicts as such were rather plain. At that time, people regarded their systems of knowledge as the most perfect and others’ as imperfect even vicious. As knowledge appertained to ontological or religious beliefs, none would like to make a concession in the conflicts. The only settlement of knowledge conflicts was war or debate. Nonetheless, neither war nor debate was of use on settling problems ipso facto. The war would only all the more ensure the two parties about their knowledge system; bookish debates would usually shield the genuine problems of knowledge hence reduce the differences and conflicts of it into the high or low of debating skills. As the consequence, before modern time, so to speak, people failed to find an effective way to settle a large number of knowledge conflicts. The springingup of the modern scientific knowledge form enabled people’s intellectual life to break away in great measure from the entanglement on traditional and ideological aspects, and enabled the knowledge system of different traditional and linguistic forms to be compared on the standards of objectivity, and hence it offered an effective method to settle knowledge conflicts, which greatly benefited the communications and conversations between different knowledge systems and the progress of the overall human knowledge. The presentation of the universality of modern knowledge is also beneficial to the formation of a tremendous knowledge community whose members share the same knowledge standards and beliefs, adopt the same cognitive methods and stating modes, and make the same justified defenses for knowledge according to the same proofs. They publish their research fruits in international academic journals to accept the examination of their international peers. They host various international academic conferences, perform active communications and discussions with regard to the theories, methods, and techniques in some knowledge sphere, and organize some international cooperations of scientific research on some key problems. As to the formation of such great knowledge community crossing national boundaries, on the one hand, it is beneficial to the dissemination and maintenance of the standard of modern objective knowledge, and to the establishment of modern knowledge form; on the other hand, it plays rather important roles at the level of reducing knowledge conflicts, promoting knowledge communications, advancing knowledge progress, and cultivating scientific talents. The belief in and pursuit of the universality of modern knowledge gave rise to the “universalism” in modern knowledge life. It claims that only when universal verification and acceptation are obtained will each kind of knowledge be genuine and objective, verified and justifiable hence valuable in the true sense of the word. That against which universalism protests is kinds of local or aboriginal knowledge. Being formed during the historical progression of each nation, they usually were seldom universally verified or accepted but were merely believed or used by people of some area or nation. In this connection, according to universalism, this sort of knowledge is not genuine or objective and should be surpassed or eliminated during the evolution of human knowledge. The universalism of knowledge is in close relation to “West-centralism” in knowledge life insomuch as the objective knowledge standard as such and universal knowledge ideal are all elucidated by the Westerners and closely appertain to the formation of Western modern industrial

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society and capitalism. Proclaiming objective knowledge standard to be “universal” is equated to proclaiming Western knowledge to be universal; bestowing a privilege of global dissemination on universal knowledge is equated to bestowing the privilege as such on Western knowledge; and measuring other non-western knowledge traditions and systems by means of the standard of universality is equated to adopting them into Western knowledge tradition and system. As a consequence, a great danger is produced, namely, the multiplicity of human knowledge even cultural forms suffers threat. The danger has now been increasingly sensed by intellectuals, including Western ones.

5.2.3 Neutrality The objectivity of modern knowledge will surely lead to the “neutrality” of modern knowledge. In other words, the universality of modern knowledge surely takes its neutrality as a premise. Seen at the level of connotation, the neutrality as such is also claimed “value-neutral” or “culture-unconcerned,” namely, knowledge is the product of pure experience and intellect, only relevant to the objective attributes of the cognitive object and the cognitive capacity of the cognitive subject rather than his/her gender, race, and ideology. This is not to deny the differences between the individual identity of the cognitive subject and various interests; rather, this refers to the fact that these differences should be ignored during the process of producing knowledge. Just like what is said by Edmund Husserl the phenomenologist, to gain objective knowledge in the true sense of the word, we must suspend all the views of the cognitive subject and immediately turn to “the things themselves.” Logically speaking, the possibility of modern knowledge’s neutrality is based on the following presumptions. First, modern knowledge is the correct reflection of objective things or “reality,” and objective things do not rely on people’s will, taste, and interests, and hence the same holds true of modern knowledge qua the correct reflection. True “autonomy” and “impersonality” are one of the prerequisites of knowledge neutrality. Secondly, modern knowledge takes individuals’ sensuous experiences as the basis and their principles of reason as the form. Both the experiences and the principles are independent of certain social structures or cultural traditions, and hence they are “pure” and “common,” and the same holds true of modern knowledge based on them. If the knowledge produced by the cognitive subject fails to be neutral, this is not the result of the faults of reality or individuals’ organs and reason, but of the penetration or automatic domination of other factors in the cognitive process. Thirdly, modern knowledge has obtained universal experiential verification or logical demonstration, the proofs or logical rules of which have all transcended the individuals and society, being irrelevant to their existing conditions hence being universal. The knowledge based on universal proofs and logical rules is hence valueneutral and is graspable and applicable by different individuals.

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Fourthly, the statement of modern knowledge employs a sort of digitalized, observable, and reducible words and sentences, and some concepts, symbols, numbers, relations, etc., with which it is concerned are also value-neutral and graspable as well as understandable for everyone. Therefore, modern knowledge extricates from the traps set by various language games mentioned by Bacon and is open to broad dissemination, which guarantees that modern knowledge will not suffer problems of being “untranslatable” or “incorrectly translated” during the process of dissemination. The neutrality of modern knowledge produces “intellectuals” and the epistemological route of “knowledge for knowledge’s sake.” Compared with ancient knowledge, albeit modern knowledge’s role in various social productions and lives became increasingly great, the reversal direction of its development was that the intellectuals increasingly lost the desire of “putting what is learned into practice” of their ancient counterparts, increasingly lacked the reflections on their stances, and immersed themselves into knowledge itself. This is because they believed that the knowledge they produced was the common treasure of the whole humankind and was beneficial to humans’ long-range and universal interests. It is with this noble ardent wish in mind that they often worked selflessly as well as tirelessly, say, Mr. and Mrs. Curie, Marx, and others, all devoted their whole mind and body to science and cared nothing about fame and gain. On account of their working spirit and knowledge ideal as such, people regarded them as the spokesmen of the truth, the representatives of “social conscience” transcending the interests of various complex parties, groups, and individuals. To a great extent, they also considered themselves as “citizens of the world” without nationality, just like the enlightenment philosophers in the eighteenth century. Later Foucault called the intellectual consciousness and role as such “universal intellectuals”. They relied on the neutrality of knowledge, intending to become the spokesman of humans’ overall interests. Be it in the nineteenth century or the twentieth century, and be it in English-speaking countries where empiricism prevailed, or in the European continent where rationalism was in vogue, this sort of consciousness and endeavor were very common. The neutrality of modern knowledge and the emergence of universal intellectuals deeply influenced the disseminating process of modern knowledge and produced socio-political, economic, and cultural results that could not be ignored. Later studies will focus on the analysis of this problem. Here I want to point out that it is the cause originating from epistemology and morality that made modern knowledge, i.e., scientific knowledge, be seen as the new gospel of the whole humankind and be disseminated all around the globe without any obstacle with the expectation that different problems of different areas and nations should be settled. In this way, an unbalanced phenomenon with regard to the production and consumption, concentration, and distribution of knowledge emerged all over the world: on the one hand, developed countries cultivated and absorbed most talents with knowledge innovation capacity in the world, and controlled the production and distribution of knowledge; on the other hand, a large number of talents in developing or underdeveloped countries flowed out, and in many aspects, these countries could not but rely on consuming the limited knowledge offered by developed countries to guarantee the social development and to carry out the social reconstruction. This greatly resembles the unbalanced capital

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situation of the globe: on the one hand, developed countries occupied the most capital of the whole globe out of various causes and controlled the currency and distribution of the global capital; on the other hand, developing and underdeveloped countries were in great need of a large amount of investment for the sake of their socioeconomic construction and reform. Albeit when developing and underdeveloped countries were consuming the new knowledge originating from developed countries, they did not suffer the same slashing political and economic conditions that they faced when they obtained the loans and investments from developed countries, the relationship of dependence was the same. The relation of dependence in the sphere of knowledge further strengthened the political and economic relation of dependence between developing, underdeveloped, and developed countries on the one hand, and it also greatly damaged the developing and underdeveloped countries’ intellectual interests on the other hand, and further reinforced the objectivism, universalism, and Westcentrism of modern knowledge at the same time when it further speeded the ruining process of their local knowledge system.

5.3 Postmodern Knowledge Qualities The transformation from the qualities of modern knowledge to those of postmodern knowledge is an important constituent of the transformation from the modern scientific knowledge form to the postmodern cultural knowledge form. The transformation as such is inseparable from the critiques of modern knowledge qualities, particularly the aforementioned fundamental qualities of modern knowledge; it is, so to speak, directly based on the critique of the qualities of modern knowledge. Insofar as its purpose is concerned, the critique of course includes the negation of the fundamental qualities of modern knowledge, but more than that, it also includes the new explications of the qualities of knowledge. As a result, that will not bring about the “nihilism” or knowledge’s receding about which some have worried; rather, it will only promote humans’ to better cognize and understand knowledge world and knowledge life, and hence it will enable them to better, with more reason, perform the production, dissemination, and consumption of knowledge. In general, the transformation from the qualities of modern knowledge to those of postmodern knowledge is mainly manifested in the three aspects as follows:

5.3.1 From Objectivity to Culturality This transformation indicates that knowledge’s objectivity claimed by the modern knowledge form cannot be realized and that those conditions it needs cannot come true; the qualities of knowledge are inevitably constrained by the cultural tradition and mode in which they are located, and are inseparable from the value conception, living style, language, and symbols even belief of life in a certain cultural

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system, and hence they are “cultural” rather than “objective” in terms of their nature, being “culture-concerned” rather than “culture-unconcerned,” and being of certain “culture-constraint” rather than being “inter-cultural” or “super-cultural.” The critiques of modern knowledge objectivity in the twentieth century were performed in many knowledge fields, and I cannot give detailed accounts and analyses of all of them. That with which I am mainly concerned is this: why the connotations or conditions of the aforementioned knowledge objectivity cannot be established, how people deconstruct the belief of objectivity via critiques of these connotations or conditions, and how they are interconnected with a certain culture. As was stated afore, modern knowledge’s belief of objectivity relies on the existence of objective things independent of the cognitive subject or on that of “substance.” It is the sort of objective things or substance presumption relying on no human subjective will that ultimately supports the knowledge belief of objectivity. In this connection, postmodern critiques of knowledge objectivity first and foremost concentrates on the presumption of objective things or substances as cognitive objects. Nonetheless, the critique as such is hard in that people might easily get enmeshed into the disputes of ancient ontology or the mud of idealism. Therefore, the critics will not waste their time on whether or not objective things or substances independent of human subjective will exist but inquire into this: “Is the ‘cognitive object’ independent of human subjective will, and is it ‘independent’, ‘autonomous’, or ‘in itself’?” To objectivists, this is a fatal question insomuch as what is plain is, be it a thing, a relation, or a question, the cognitive object is never “independent,” “autonomous,” or “in itself” but is closely related to the taste, interests, extent of knowledge, idea of values, living surroundings, etc. To be sure, it is not the cognitive object that “initiates” the interest of the cognitive subject before the latter’s cognitive acts are produced; just the opposite, it is the interest of the cognitive subject and many other conditions relevant to the cognitive act that “choose” and “produce” the cognitive object, “making prominent” the objective from the ignorant, silent, and remote world and turning it into a factor of the complete and real cognitive process. Without the conditions as such, there would be no cognitive object whatsoever, and the cognitive act would get enmeshed into a state of “shooting at random.” Be that as it may, where does the cognitive subject’s interest come from? For instance, this investigation indicates that the investigator is rather interested in the relationship between knowledge transformation and education reform, whereas some other education investigators might be fairly interested in the reform of the curriculum structure. For another example, in the sphere of natural sciences, some might be interested in gene mutation, and some others might have an interest in the change of the global atmosphere and the distribution of eco-disasters, and so on and so forth. Apparently, these interests are not equivalent to the boundless “curiosity” in one’s childhood; rather, they include the understanding of some sort of question and knowledge history, the value expectation of the settlement of some sort of problem, and even the cognitive subject’s realization as regards his/her social responsibilities. Therefore, albeit the cognitive act is individual, the causes of the individual act as such

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are not individual, instant, or transient but social, historical, and profound. Presumably, it is because Engels has seen this that he points out incisively that once there is the need for technologies in society, it will promote the progression of science as ten universities do. Society’s needs for knowledge and technologies or the problems as such presented by the social transformation are the main factors provoking the interests of the cognitive subject and “manufacturing” his/her object. That is to say, the cognitive object is constructed by social factors rather than being “independent,” “autonomous,” or “in itself” away from the cognitive subject. The social factors as such are in the final analysis society’s needs of value or, more precisely, needs of “valuable” knowledge based on certain socio-political, economic, and cultural development. Undoubtedly, as to a recognizer or a person with knowledge as a living means, whether or not the knowledge he/she finally produces is capable of meeting certain needs of social values, he/she must embrace the hope or ideal of realizing the value as such when he/she is producing knowledge. When the cognitive object is “constructed” according to social values rather than being “given” by the outside world itself, the “response” to the cognitive object that modern knowledge’s objectivity ideal seeks for cannot be the pure “substantial” attribute in terms of the result, nor can it be the pure “copying” and “description” of the pure substance at the level of the process. In the objects upon which modern scientific cognition is directed are inevitably “intermingled” the factors of human culture, say, the existent theoretical tradition, the recognizer’s value expectations, metaphysical beliefs, or the like. Only in the background of such cultural factors can the cognitive subject “discover” or “find” the problems in which he/she is interested. To put it in another way, more than the “objective attributes” of the cognitive object, the “social attributes” determined by the cultural context in which the cognitive subject is located is also “seen” by the latter. This is to say that none of the cognitive acts is a purely “external” “responding process”, but rather, it includes a rather complex “internal” “understanding process”—the understanding of relevant cognitive achievements, of new problems and new knowledge values, of the scope of the new cognition, and of the limitation of various methods and techniques, and so on. If the internal understanding as such goes ignored, there would not be any external observation, let alone the production of valuable knowledge. On this account, the “real” foot stone by means of which the objectivists secure knowledge objectivity does not exist, or, at least, it is not steady. That which will replace it is a sort of cognitive object connected with the existent fruits or states of, and “chosen” and “manufactured,” by human culture. Along with the falsification of the presumption of a “reality” independent of the recognizer, other attributes of objective knowledge are challenged. “Correspondence” is the first one. This is because if there is no independent “reality,” there will not be the “correspondence” between knowledge statements and reality. Be that as it may, what on earth is the “correspondence” in the customary sense? In the cognitive acts of science, particularly of natural sciences, it seems that people have really felt that many knowledge statements do not correspond to the existing circumstances of the external world. A seemingly undeniable fact is that in certain conditions, the causal connections between some things or phenomena might constantly emerge hence be repeatedly observed. Isn’t this justifying the correspondence of the original

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connection between some statement and the objective thing? This is de facto a “delusion” of people, a delusion given by the scientific cognitive act to those outside the scientific sphere, or one produced by those outside the scientific sphere due to their insufficient knowledge of scientific cognitive acts. The true story is this: first of all, there has never been a statement of scientific knowledge that is capable of offering a completely precise prediction between some given condition and the expected result, nor has ever any scientific experiment been capable of refusing or refuting any “abnormality.” Those conclusions claiming that they have obtained the “correspondence” are all drawn under the condition that certain abnormal phenomena are “suspended.” If not, no scientific conclusion would be obtained, not to mention the conclusions “corresponding to” reality.3 Normally, scientific experiments, principles, or formulas merely explain what phenomena will appear under certain conditions rather than those suspended problems. In other words, scientists have explicated those suspended problems which however go ignored when scientific knowledge is disseminated in society. To this connection, it is, so to speak, the factors outside knowledge that draw the conclusion of “correspondence” but not the other way round, namely, the conclusion is drawn by the knowledge-discovering process itself. In the second place, the logical method employed to judge whether or not a statement of knowledge corresponds to objective reality is mainly induction. Nevertheless, just as was pointed out by Hume and Popper, the method of induction is of its unconquerable shortages, namely, we can never deduce or represent those phenomena or their connections remaining to appear by means of some existent phenomena or connections between them. The example often cited is this: you cannot conclude that “All the swans are white” merely because all the swans you have seen so far are white. The proposition as such can never be founded on the accumulation of single facts observed. Just as is said by M. Born (1949, p. 7), Induction allows one to generalize a number of observations into a general rule… But while everyday life has no definite criterion for the validity of an induction and relies more or less on intuition, science has worked out a code, or rule of craft, for its application.

Born qua a great physicist prefers to regard induction as a metaphysical principle, an “issue of belief.” On the ground of Born’s discussions, Popper (1963, p. 53) pointed out, going right to the heart of the matter, Induction, i.e. inference based on many observations is a myth. It is neither a psychological fact, nor a fact of ordinary life, nor one of scientific procedure.

3

M. Polanyi points out that 60 years before Neptune was discovered, the astronomers had noticed the perturbation phenomenon of the planet’s movement. This phenomenon could not be explained using the laws of interaction between planets. Despite that, for fear that Newton’s law of gravitation might be challenged, most astronomers suspended this perturbation phenomenon as an abnormal one, hoping to explain it in the future without violating the law. In effect, not only Newton’s law of gravitation, but some other familiar scientific laws, such as Darwin’s biological evolution, Einstein’s theories of relativity, or the like, all suspended some abnormal or unexplainable phenomena (natural or theoretical). However, this often goes ignored by historians of science or scientific education.

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Even if people do not regard induction itself as a “myth,” they might regard the knowledge obtained via induction and corresponding to facts as a “myth,” an “expectation,” or a subjective “wish.” No matter how strong this subjective wish is, how noble its motive is, it is never realizable. This has in essence subverted the views of knowledge of the correspondence theory originating from empiricism, indicating that the “correspondence” people see in daily life does not correspond to the objective qualities of the cognitive object but to the existent cognitive rules or “knowledge games” in a certain culture. In effect, when a cognitive act will end does not depend on the degree of its response to the objective attributes of the cognitive object but on whether or not it has obtained the new knowledge corresponding to the existent rules of knowledge games. More than that, when a new knowledge statement will be published does not depend on the cognitive object but on the game rules of the whole knowledge community. The role of such knowledge game rules play on supporting or restricting the production and dissemination of knowledge is that of the “scientific paradigm” in Kuhn’s terminology without which none will gain the knowledge “corresponding to” the cognitive object. Remaining to recognize or understand such rules of knowledge games or “scientific paradigm,” one will not be qualified for or have the capacity for the production of knowledge. Along with the fact that the “reality” of the recognizer’s object is falsified and the knowledge “illusion of correspondence” based on it is revealed, the “verifiability” relevant to knowledge objectivity also becomes problematic. Being relevant to the defense of knowledge, the “verifiability” means that a statement of knowledge might be verified via observations or experiments. Originally, empiricists used this standard to contrast metaphysical knowledge in that much of the latter based on speculations was “non-empirical” and could be verified as neither “true” nor “false.” The knowledge as such was gradually regarded as empty and useless after the seventeenth century. As a result, verifiability” was taken by empiricists including positivists as an essential principle according to which science was differentiated from metaphysics, and by which the latter was objected and abandoned. Needless to say, “verifiability” is really an effective principle in terms of helping demarcating science and metaphysics, but it is by no means a sufficient one. This is because “verifiability” is itself of severe defects. It is not hard to see that the verification of a knowledge statement depends on the “proof” attained via observations and experiments. Empiricists typically believe that the “proofs” are not problematic and sufficiently effective to some knowledge statements. Nevertheless, the case is not so. In fact, like the cognitive object, the “proofs” used to prove the cognitive results are also “manufactured” rather than being “given” automatically by the objective reality. The rules of productive “proofs” in a certain culture determine the type and mode by means of which people obtain “proofs,” and the mode by which the proofs play their roles. Feyerabend argued, It is this historico-physiological character of the evidence, the fact that it does not merely describe some objective state of affairs but also expresses some subjective, mythical, and long-forgotten views concerning this state of affairs, that forces us to take a fresh look at methodology. It shows that it would be extremely imprudent to let the evidence judge our theories directly and without any further ado. …Taking experimental results and observations

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for granted and putting the burden of proof on the theory means taking the observational ideology for granted without having ever examined it. (Feyerabend, 1975, p. 67)

Feyerabend contended that if theories are not coincident with the proofs, maybe it is not as is expected by people, namely that the theories are wrong, but that the proofs are “polluted” by this scientific ideology. In this regard, all the claimed verifications are suspicious. Popper pointed out that if we must verify the proofs before verifying knowledge statements, we must have another sort of “proof”—“the proof of the proof”—and verify it. In this connection, we will become enmeshed into infinite “regress.” This phenomenon indicates that we will never attain completely reliable and doubtless proofs, and hence we will never claim that a knowledge statement is “verified.” Therefore, verifiability cannot be a trait of scientific knowledge. De facto, since ancient times till now, there has never been a completely verified scientific theory. In lieu of this “verifiability,” Popper presented another knowledge attribute—“falsifiability.” It is Popper’s contention that albeit in the sense of experience any theory is not “verifiable,” it is “falsifiable.” He believed that any theory is the result not of verification but of conjecture. The function of scientific observation and experiment is also not to verify a theory but to falsify or modify it. The progression of scientific knowledge is performed via “non-justified” conjectures and the critical examinations around them. In short, the nature of knowledge is “conjecture” “mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes” (Popper, 1963, p. 30). If in natural sciences, the “reality” of the cognitive object, the “correspondence” between the cognitive result and the cognitive object, and the “verifiability” of knowledge statements have all become problematic, and then these problems are all the more severe in social sciences and humanities. As a matter of fact, since the modern scientific knowledge form was set, it has been trying to foist the aforementioned qualities of knowledge on the studies of social sciences and humanities so as to find the “social laws” and “human laws” hiding behind the social and humanistic phenomena; nonetheless, it has never succeeded. This is because that which constitutes the social and humanistic phenomena are not static matters but living people and their activities. To this connection, just as was pointed out by Dilthey, Mannheim, Gadamer, and others, without understanding the social structure and humans’ subjective world but relying only on external observations, one will never obtain social and humanistic knowledge. In the milieu of social and humanistic knowledge, subjective and cultural factors such as values, taste, social status, ideology, and so on, all the more penetrate in great number into the cognitive process and constitute a necessary condition for the cognitive activities to go smoothly. In Mannheim’s terminology, the necessary condition as such constitutes the “perspective” of cognition. Mannheim believed that perspective meant “people’s observing mode of the object” which determined not merely the mode of thought but also the material content of it. Without this perspective, one would lack the capacity to recognize and analyze things. Mannheim further pointed out that this perspective was in close relation to the social position of the recognizer, the latter de facto determining the former. When people occupied different social positions, they would hold different ideas with regard to the same things, events, or concepts, and

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even discuss about different things and events and employ different concepts. This apart, Mannheim (1936, p. 250) maintained, The approach to a problem, the level on which the problem happens to be formulated, the stage of abstraction and the stage of concreteness that one hopes to attain, are all and in the same way bound up with social existence.

It is precisely because he saw that in this society, there was the restriction on thought that Mannheim pointed out solemnly that each class or group had its interpretations of the world and tried to popularize its interpretations, so generally, theoretical debates might be somehow regarded as an episode of the struggle for power. When social power was controlled by a class, the mode of interpreting the world represented by this class would be in the dominant position, and any voice against it would be prohibited. Be that as it may, the dictatorship of any power would ruin sooner or later and then different interpreting modes and theories as regards the world would begin their fair competitions. This is the key point of Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge which is used by him to protest against the views of knowledge of positivism, phenomenological “absolutism,” and “objectivism” in favor of the one of historicism, perspectivism, and relativism.4 In this vein, be it in the sphere of natural sciences or in that of social and humanistic knowledge, the “reality,” “correspondence,” “verifiability” and corresponding “coincidence,” “impersonality,” and “public communicability” cannot exist. The cognitive subject exists prior to cognitive activities; the society bestowing perspectives and ultimate legitimacy on cognitive activities exists prior to the cognitive subject. There has never been a cognitive subject isolated from social history and reality, and so are cognitive activities, cognitive products, and their defenses. Cultural factors such as power, values, interests, ideology, theoretical tradition, the individual’s inclination to conceptual and categorial systems, etc. all profoundly influence them. Therefore, the postmodern knowledge form holds that it is “culturality” rather than “objectivity” that is the fundamental attribute of all knowledge. Objectivity is itself a product of modern culture and is in close relation to other factors of the latter. On this account, there is not any human knowledge’s objectivity that is absolute and pure and needs no further questioning, and all knowledge should be opened to future critical examinations; meanwhile, there is not any age when people do not need to perform new examinations, modifications, or abandoning of the various sorts of knowledge obtained by their forerunners but develop new knowledge meeting the 4

Mannheim argued that the key point of “historicism” is that there is no human cultural product analyzable and understandable in a permanent paradigm. “Historicism” means complete “relativism.” As to “relativism,” Mannheim reminded people that they did not need to be afraid and pointed out that the essence of “relativism” lied in stressing the difficulty of finding “absolute truth,” whereas “absolutism” and “objectivism” completely ignore this, the latter proclaiming its “own truth” to obtain absolute, unshakable power of thought (Mannheim, 1952, pp. 136–137).

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needs of their age. Knowing this, people will better treat knowledge claiming to be “objective,” go against various forms of authoritarianism at the level of recognition,5 better recognize the knowledge deprived of qualification by objectivity, and better understand their present knowledge life.

5.3.2 From Universality to Contextuality As was stated afore, the universality of modern knowledge is based on the two concepts of “universal verifiability” and “universal acceptability.” Insofar as the relationship between them is concerned, the latter is de facto based on the former, being a psychological result of it. Nonetheless, universal verifiability is based on verifiability, being an extension of the latter on space. In this connection, along with the refutation above against “verifiability,” the “universal verifiability” and “universal acceptability” based on it and the “universality” of knowledge in common sense all become problematic. The postmodern knowledge form holds that that which replaces this “universality” is “contextuality,” namely, any knowledge whatsoever exists in such cultural factors as certain space, time, theoretical paradigms, value systems, linguistic symbols, etc.; the meaning of any knowledge whatsoever is expressed not merely by its statements but all the more by the whole meaning system in which it is located; and without this certain context, there is neither knowledge nor cognitive subject or act. The deconstruction of knowledge universality and the stress on knowledge contextuality are closely related to the development of knowledge sociology, scientific philosophy, and hermeneutics, as well as to the critiques of “West-centrism” with respect to knowledge. As was stated afore, knowledge sociology upholds relativism, historicism, and perspectivism via critiques of positivism and phenomenological absolute objective knowledge, which embraces abundant thoughts of “contextuality.” Scientific philosophy stresses that all observations contain theories and all scientific activities are restricted by the “scientific paradigm” in a certain period, which also indicates that the reliance of cognitive activities on the existent theoretical tradition refers not merely to relying on the existent theoretical views but also to that on the existent conceptual and categorical system and existent study methods and thinking modes. Hermeneutics all the more runs counter to the stance of empiricism, claiming 5

In the West as well as in China, the epistemological authoritarianism existed for a long time in history, which greatly hindered the progress of knowledge. Along with the ruin of the belief of “objectivity,” the authoritarianism in epistemology also lost its essential support. According to Popper, all knowledge, no matter what great soul produced it, is merely a sort of “conjecture” and needs further “examination” and “refutation.” Maybe “God” knows the ultimate secret, but He still has to express His opinion and never has. In this perspective, during the process of recognition and in the sphere of knowledge, people should take a tolerant attitude toward all views, which is not merely a scholar’s “virtue,” but also a condition promoting the progress of human knowledge. People should drastically criticize various “scholar-tyrant” and “scholar-despot” but reflect now and then on their attitude toward different views. This is particularly important for education.

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that there is no need to exclude individual subjective experiences from cognitive activities; rather, the experiences are inseparable. It is individual subjective experiences that constitute the “horizon” wherein the individual raises, observes, and analyzes questions, and it is exactly individual subjective experiences that introduce the truths considered abstract and pure into the historical sphere and become the truths therein. Hermeneutic historical truth differs from the objective truth of positivism on this: it does not terminate all knowledge, but rather, it upholds that all knowledge opens to history, contending that only in the historical process can people attain the legitimacy of knowledge. The cognitive process is also by no means experienced in the form of the individual purely reflecting the external world but is done so by way of the consistent fusion of individual and historical “horizons.” There is never knowledge or recognition without a horizon. Along with the revelation of knowledge contextuality, people start the critiques of the “West-centrism” on knowledge. The critique in turn further reveals the contextual properties of human knowledge, making people realize, for the first time, the multiplicity of human knowledge in a justified attitude. The “West-centrism” on knowledge is a rather complicated attitude toward knowledge and belief in it, caused by many historical and actual factors and expressed in different ways. It holds that only the scientific knowledge emerging in the West since modern times is genuine knowledge and non-Western knowledge is not knowledge in the true sense of the word. In the political sphere, politicians hence regard Western society as “the civilized society” and non-Western ones as “uncivilized” or “uncultivated” even “barbarous societies” considering Western culture’s penetration into the local culture as a process of “civilization.” For a long time, this process was considered inculpable politically as well as morally, and the process per se was regarded by Western and local scholars as a part of the “overall modernization” of human society and the local one. Nevertheless, along with the deconstruction of the objectivity and universality of knowledge, and with anthropologists and philosophers’ increasing recognition of the knowledge system outside the West, people found that the originally inculpable process of “civilization” was de facto one whence people employed one knowledge standard to fight against another, or employed one knowledge system to subvert another. Rather than the development of the local knowledge, it led to the deconstruction of local knowledge’s legitimacy and its being gradually forgotten in social life. This is really a striking finding insomuch as it authentically reveals the severe harm of knowledge hegemonism based on objectivity and universality. Feyerabend called this universal disseminating process of knowledge “science chauvinism,” against which he presented the “anarchistic theory of knowledge.” In his eyes, the only thing that an “anarchist” on knowledge actively objects is “universal standard,” “universal law,” “universal idea,” etc. like “Truth,” “Reason,” “Justice,” “Love,” and the intrusive acts they bring about. Feyerabend (1975, p. 299) criticized the harm of the act as such: The rise of modern science coincides with the suppression of non-Western tribes by Western invaders. The tribes are not only physically suppressed, they also lose their intellectual independence…The most intelligent members get an extra bonus: they are introduced into the mysteries of Western Rationalism and its peak—Western Science…In most cases the

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tradition disappears without the trace of an argument, one simply becomes a slave both in body and in mind.

Under such circumstances, the traditional knowledge of a society is only kept in those backlands where no modern education is given. In the modernized places, that which dominates people’s production and life is de facto modern Western knowledge. In this way, in many non-Western societies, a “knowledge pyramid” is in fact formed whose bottom level includes “local knowledge” or “traditional knowledge” (e.g., traditional medical, legal, agricultural, sociological, pedagogical knowledge, or the like) which can neither be valued by society nor be disseminated via the normal educational system. In most cases, they are in the state of emerging as well as perishing of themselves. At the top of the “knowledge pyramid,” there is “Western knowledge” or “scientific knowledge” which are both the “dominators” and the “lawmakers,” “law enforcers,” and “the biggest beneficiaries” of the knowledge kingdom. People almost hold a respectful attitude toward such knowledge and the producers of it to the extent of bowing in worship. That which lies between the two levels are the various levels of knowledge containing the properties of them both. Listed according to the extent of severity as regards the application of the scientific methods and the extent of approaching Western scientific knowledge, the extent of respect that different levels of knowledge receive also declines from top to bottom. This phenomenon of “knowledge autocracy” centering at Western knowledge system has severely threatened humans’ “cultural multiplicity” and its substance. Since the 1980s and beyond, this question has begun to evoke people’s concerns in many developing and underdeveloped countries, as well as those of UNESCO. The latter organized conferences to discuss the problem of how the educational systems of non-Western countries, notably of the former Western colonial counties, accept and develop “local knowledge,” and the relationship between “local knowledge” and “local development.” Along with the resistance of “local knowledge” ever deprived of the qualification against “Western knowledge,” people increasingly realize the values of “local knowledge” and the complementarity between it and “Western knowledge,” the values of the former to the latter, and they are increasingly capable of accepting the ideas of “knowledge multiplicity” and “contextuality.” Resultantly, in the increasingly frequent process of the communication and dissemination of international knowledge, people are more and more capable of paying attention to the voices from different countries, districts, and cultural traditions so as to avoid the emergence of “knowledge hegemony” or “scientific chauvinism” as regards the studies of many problems.

5.3.3 From Neutrality to Value As was stated afore, modern knowledge’s “neutrality” is a facet reflection of its “objectivity.” Along with the deconstruction of “objectivity” and its being replaced

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by “culturality,” the myth of “neutrality” is also ultimately broken hence shows its original cultural and value properties. In the first place, as was stated above, real “autonomy” and “impersonality” as cognitive objects demanded by modern knowledge’s “neutrality” do not exist. The cognitive object is constructed by the subject and society, and naturally reflects their values and cultural inclinations. In the second place, the “pure” sensuous experiences or rational forms demanded by the “neutrality” of modern knowledge do not exist, either. All the senses are guided by theories, but between “reason” and “culture” there are also rather close relationships. Just as is pointed out by Richard Rorty, there is not a capitalized “reason” transcending all cultural boundaries. There is “Western reason,” and there is also “Eastern reason”; there is “reason in developed societies,” and there is also “reason in underdeveloped societies.” The view that there is only one sort of reason—that formed since modern times in the West— is ridiculous, and is ignorant to the multiplicity of reason. The ignorance as such is also the origin of Westerners’ ignorance with regard to non-Western societies. Hegel’s ironic comment about Chinese people’s lack of reason is a case in point which reversely demonstrates his ignorance as to the relationship between reason and culture. Thirdly, the “universal verification” demanded by the “neutrality” of modern knowledge is also an illusion. On the one hand, there is never any sort of knowledge that has experienced the so-called “universal” verification; on the other hand, it is also impossible that any knowledge might be “verified” at the level of universality. At last, as to the “digitalized,” “observable,” and “reducible” sentences demanded by the neutrality of modern knowledge and the concept, symbol, number, relation, etc. of “value-neutrality,” they are applicable merely to some limited spheres of knowledge; even in the spheres as such, whereas, there are not merely one choice with regard to the applicable stating language. In fact, just as is said by some winners of the Nobel Prize, even in natural sciences and exact sciences, literary language is not exactly useless in terms of stating the results of scientific experiments and understanding their process and significance, and sometimes it may even be the unique suitable language. To put it in another way, a precise language does not constitute the entire scientific language, neither is the preciseness of language the privilege of scientific language. In social sciences and humanities, pursuing “digitalized,” “observable,” “reducible,” and “value-neutral” language is not merely meaningless but also impossible at all. As is pointed out by knowledge sociologists, in the sphere of social thoughts, language is not only the tool of thinking, but it is per se the form of thinking. Different social positions usually employ different linguistic forms, and the same concept or category usually contains different meanings in people of different social positions. The “value” of postmodern knowledge shows that all the production of knowledge is guided by social values the demands from which have replaced the desire for knowledge and become the original drive of postmodern knowledge production. As is pointed out by Lyotard, after the 1960s, that which supported the researches of scientists and researchers was no longer the enlightenment thought of the eighteenth century but the demands for knowledge and technologies from the state and the enterprises. Scientists or intellectuals no longer or did not mainly perform their

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researches for the sake of their interest in knowledge or of human interests but of the purchasing capacity of the market. Lyotard (1984, pp. 4–5) thus argued, The old principle that the acquisition of knowledge is indissociable from the training (Bildung) of minds, or even of individuals, is becoming obsolete and will become ever more so. The relationship of the suppliers and users of knowledge to the knowledge they supply and use is now tending, and will increasingly tend, to assume the form already taken by the relationship of commodity producers and consumers to the commodities they produce and consume—that is, the form of value. Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange. Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself.

Such conditions are all the more evident in some large or significant researches. They demand remarkable input of human, material, and financial resources which, hence, is not determinable at all by scientists as individuals. The research as such has turned, from the individual act of scientists or that of some scientific community to the act of the government or enterprises. The state or the large enterprise is the maker and investor of the whole research scheme and the ultimate enjoyer of the research fruits. During the whole process, scientists are merely the workers purchased by the government or the large enterprise to perform the needed knowledge production. Once the whole research comes to an end, and the “workers” finish producing the knowledge products needed by the investors, they will be fired and cannot but seek for other “employers.” The figure of intellectuals established in the enlightenment period has changed, and the “scholars” persisting in “thinking freedom” and “academic freedom” have disappeared. Not only all the knowledge is guided by values, but all the knowledge per se embodies certain demands of values. This cannot be more evident insofar as social knowledge and humanistic knowledge are concerned since in these spheres there is never a pure fact but the facts constructed by values, never a pure observation but the observations under the guidance of certain value stances, and never a valueneutral stating language but some particular concepts and categories formed in certain histories and cultures. On this ground, social knowledge and humanistic knowledge always contain certain demands for values and Comte and Weber’s “value-neutrality” will never be attained. De facto, to social and humanistic scientists, to claim “valueneutral” speaks lower than to state their cultural stances, particularly value stances, when stating knowledge, so that others might have a better understanding of their studies. This, presumably, is the reason why some scholars engaged in studies on social and humanistic problems will tell their cultural identities when publishing their articles, namely, their background, race, gender, or the like. As to scientists committed to natural knowledge, notably natural scientific knowledge, they do not need to. This however does not indicate that natural knowledge particularly natural scientific knowledge itself does not have a demand for values. As a matter of fact, even in natural knowledge, knowledge and values are inseparable from each other. It is just that the connecting mode between them is more mediate and explicit. Natural knowledge mostly relies on the “knowledge that” in G. Ryle’s terminology, which is different from another kind of strategic “knowledge how.” Be that as it may, just as is pointed out by H. Broudy, they are inseparable from each other, either. On the one

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hand, all “knowledge that” takes certain “knowledge how” as the premise; on the other hand, all “knowledge fact” always “embraces” or “hints” certain “knowledge how,” to wit, certain demands for actions. It is the latter connection that makes prominent the meaning of the value of natural knowledge. For instance, Copernicus’ “Heliocentric Theory” is more than a factual description but “embraces” or “hints” the value demands as follows: “The ‘Geocentric Theory’ is wrong, so abandon it”; “All the experiences based on ‘Geocentric Theory’ are wrong, so abandon them”; and “The religious doctrines based on ‘Geocentric Theory’ are questionable, so question them,” and so on and so forth. Considering that the development of modern natural sciences is increasingly restricted to socio-political, economic, and military demands for technologies, the meaning of the value of natural scientific knowledge becomes all the more evident. The development of the high and new technologies of modern humans, say, new materials, energies, electronic techniques, aerospace technologies, etc., is greatly attributed, so to speak, to developed countries’ political, economic, and military demands for technologies after the cold war, and it also directly serves the demand as such. The value of postmodern knowledge is also particularly manifested in the fact that knowledge is unexceptionally constrained by power factors during the process of its dissemination, and it is unexceptionally part of the overall power practice of society. That which is increasingly is, social power practice is manifested not merely in “corporeal control” but also in “knowledge control.” “Knowledge control” is also manifested not merely in various “literary inquisitions” and censorship of books but also in the control of knowledge standards. Controlling knowledge standards means controlling the production and dissemination of heterogeneous knowledge as a result of which the possibility of the emergence of heretic or rebellious acts will be reduced to the lowest extent. Since modern times and beyond, a large amount of Western “local knowledge” has been constrained and prohibited from being disseminated, which is mainly due to the fact that it does not conform to the knowledge standard of “objectivity,” that Western colonists intend to reach the end of politically controlling the colonial society via controlling the knowledge standard as such. The “rebellion of local knowledge” happening in many non-Western countries in modern times also aims at regaining their “legitimation” and the power to disseminate mainly by means of fighting against the knowledge standard of “objectivity.” Gaining the power to disseminate means gaining the traditional spiritual resources, gaining the sharpest arms to drastically fight against Western colonialism domination, and therefore gaining local people’s self-esteem, self-confidence, and the possibility to develop autonomously. Only in this way can they really extricate themselves from the colonial era. On the whole, people increasingly clearly realize that “knowledge” is inseparable from “power,” namely, the former cannot be separated by the latter, and vice versa. There are never so-called “universal intellectuals” but merely “specific intellectuals.” Such intellectuals no longer consider themselves longing for and embracing truths, nor do they regard the knowledge they produce as humans’ public wealth any more.

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[They are] within specific sectors, at the precise points where their conditions of life or work situate them (housing, the hospital, the asylum, the laboratory, the university, family, and sexual relations). This has undoubtedly given them a much more immediate and concrete awareness of struggles. And they have met here with problems which are specific, “nonuniversal.” (Foucault, 1980, p. 126)

The change from modern knowledge qualities to postmodern ones is of rather important epistemological significance. The first point, also the most important point, is that it helps to drastically purge the “authoritarianism” on knowledge. Since primitive society and beyond, the authoritarianism on knowledge has been dominating people’s intellectual life. The modern scientific knowledge form being opposed to the authoritarianism of the metaphysical knowledge form notwithstanding, it fails to drastically abandon authoritarianism but merely substitutes sensuous and rational authorities for Aristotle and the Bible’s. The authoritarianism as such plainly evokes people’s “zeal” and “superstition” for truths.6 On the one hand, the zeal and superstition as such do not benefit knowledge’s progress; on the other hand, they will become the tools of political government and oppression once combined with hegemonic politics. Postmodern knowledge form’s deconstruction of modern knowledge’s fundamental qualities helps to essentially settle the zeal and superstition as such, which enables people to treat any kind of knowledge with a more “intelligent,” “sober,” and “modest” attitude, and hence it shakes the epistemological foundation of hegemonic politics. In the second place, the change of postmodern knowledge qualities helps to drastically eliminate the “scientism” and “West-centrism” at the level of knowledge, to make much “oppressed knowledge” and “disqualified knowledge” regain its legitimacy, be attached importance by people again, and, again still, play their due roles in social and individual lives. “Knowledge multiplicity” as a constituent of “cultural multiplicity” begins to be recognized by people and reversely strengthens the latter. In the third place, along with the deconstruction of “authoritarianism” and critiques of “scientism” and “West-centrism” by postmodern knowledge qualities, the commoners’ knowledge identity also changes, namely, they are regarded not merely as pure knowledge consumers but also as knowledge disseminators, interpreters, and producers. In fact, along with the deconstruction of modern knowledge’s “objectivity,” “universality,” and “neutrality,” each commoner has become a link of the whole social and historical knowledge chain or network and has the power and possibility to doubt, modify, and refute any kind of knowledge. The populace’s knowledge power in social life begins to gain respect and realization, hence greatly liberate the society’s knowledge creativity and change the knowledge producing and disseminating mode of the whole society. The human “knowledge empire” that has long been based on “objective” and “absolute” knowledge is finally possible to be subverted, and a new “knowledge republic” in which various sorts of knowledge co-exist and various knowledge subjects legitimately co-exist is coming into being.

6

Popper pointed out that Bacon and Descartes’ epistemologies have promoted the progress of sciences but they have also brought about many “disastrous results.” They are virtually the basis of all the zeal for truth and authoritarianism and they even contain “the qualities of religion.”.

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5.4 The Change in Postmodern Knowledge Qualities and Education Reform As was stated afore, knowledge qualities are closely related to educational activities. The change of knowledge qualities will necessarily shake the knowledge foundation of the original education and evoke the crisis of the original educational ideas, systems, and activities based on it, hence promote the education reform in a certain period. The change from modern knowledge qualities to the postmodern ones also evokes the crisis of “modern education” and calls for the reform of it. The crisis and reform as such are multifarious and here I mainly make analyses from the four aspects: educational purposes, the choice of curriculum knowledge, the organization of the teaching process, and pedagogical or educational theoretical studies.

5.4.1 Educational Purposes Seen in the history of educational thought, there have been various statements of the purposes of “modern education,” say, Comenius’ “prepare for the afterlife,” Locke’s “gentleman,” Johan Heinrich Pestalozzi’s “children development,” Georg Kersehensteiner’s “vocational training,” Herbert Spencer’s “prepare for good life,” and so on. Seen from the practical demand of the individual and the state’s development, accepting or performing modern education is considered beneficial to increasing the individual’s employment opportunities and market competitive power, to the state’s economic, political, and cultural development, and the like. That’s why the idea of “popularization of compulsory education” rapidly becomes the consensus of the whole society. In these statements of educational purposes originating from different cultural backgrounds, historical periods even different intellectual spheres, a common nuclear point is this: to turn, via “modern education,” the adolescents into people suitable for the development of “modern society.” The primary point helping them to be adjusted to modern society’s development is to help them grasp “modern” scientific knowledge. In the educational works of the aforementioned educators, almost every one upholds that the school should deliver broad-scale modern scientific knowledge to the adolescent students. In the debates as to the educational values between classic knowledge and the scientific one since the nineteenth century, the government and most populace virtually all take the stance of modern scientific knowledge. It can be said that since the mid-nineteenth century, inside as well as outside the sphere of educational theories, people have formed this recognition: modern scientific knowledge is “objective,” “universal,” and “value-neutral.” The knowledge as such is the “reflection” of objective things, conforms to the factual situations of the latter, and will benefit without any harm all people and societies, and hence it is the knowledge of the most educational values. Therefore, be it the individual or the state, once it grasps this modern scientific knowledge, this means that it grasps, so to speak, the capacity to control objective things and to meet its secular needs, and means that it

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improves its competitive power in the labor market or on the international political, economic, and cultural stages. Given this acknowledgment, scientific knowledge’s values in promoting the individual and society’s development are considered doubtless and as a pure tool to meet the different needs of individuals and society. Naturally, grasping, remembering, understanding, and applying the knowledge become an important means and mark of realizing various purposes of modern education. Nonetheless, along with people’s critiques on and deconstruction of modern knowledge’s objectivity and other qualities based on it in the twentieth century, the educational purpose as such becomes problematic. If modern scientific knowledge is not “objective,” “universal,” and “value-neutral,” can it become the tool purely meeting the needs of the individuals and society’s development? Does the demand that during the educational process students should grasp, remember, understand, and apply knowledge without any question lead to the emergence of “biases” and legitimize them in virtue of education’s force? Is students’ “individual developing” process, which is marked by grasping, remembering, understanding, and applying knowledge, a process “forcing” them to continuously “forget” their local knowledge system and the whole local culture? Does the “state developing” process based on the broad dissemination of the knowledge as such simultaneously embrace a process wherein the state is assorted to a constantly expanding modern capitalism world? At the level of educational relations, is modern education with delivering “objective,” “universal,” and “value-neutral” knowledge as its main task the cause of the coldness of teacher-student relations and the separation of the school from life, education from history? Is it the origin of students’ “one-sided development,” “social utilization,” and the “new hegemonism” in the sphere of international politics? If so, the purpose of modern education—to promote students’ individual development and the state’s development—is an issue meriting serious considerations rather than an indisputable “ideal.” People cannot but ask: on what sense is the “development” of students’ individual development and the state’s development demanded by modern education? What valuable things would be sacrificed as the “price”? What on earth does the developing purpose pursued by this education mean to “individual life” and “cultural life”? What does it mean to the whole “human life”? Seen from the qualities of postmodern knowledge, the ideal of “development” duly pursued by postmodern education should be stated as follows: First of all, insofar as individual development is concerned, postmodern education should attach more importance to the “internal development” marked by the percipient, judging and criticizing capacities for knowledge rather than the “external development” characterized by seeking for the memory, grasping, understanding, and application. This is because since all the knowledge is of the traits of “culturality,” “contextuality,” and “value,” and is of the quality of power practice during the disseminating process, no teaching and learning with respect to knowledge can be performed without any critique, or they will be controlled by various knowledge hegemonies hence lose independence and autonomy on cognition and action, and get enslaved at the level of both thought and action. Nowadays, when knowledge has become a network, facing the innumerable knowledge, information, and strong power of propaganda, the individual all the more needs to cultivate the basic

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percipient and judging capacities of knowledge, and is expected to identify many power demands of knowledge dissemination, so as to keep an intelligent, sober, and autonomous life. More than that, the percipient, judging, and criticizing capacities of knowledge are also inseparable from its creativity. In a knowledge society like today’s, that which determines an individual’s social developing potential usually is not how much knowledge he/she has grasped but how much creative potential he/she embraces. Only when one can constantly create new knowledge, can one constantly adjust oneself to the new work demands and deal with various challenges brought to one’s work due to the change of the surroundings. One’s knowledge creative potential is inseparable from one’s percipient, judging, and criticizing capacities of knowledge. The latter, so to speak, is the necessary premise of the former. It’s not hard to see that a person filled with various unquestionable ideas is barely of creativity. Secondly, in terms of social or state development, postmodern education is supposed to pay much attention to setting and disseminating the idea of “local development” or “internal development” based on “local knowledge” or “indigenous knowledge.” At the level of quality, this “local development” or “internal development” is by no means an “enclosed” development denying all the external developing experiences and modes; rather, it aims at emphasizing that local people have the right of and capacity for self-determination when it comes to its developing direction and paths. On this account, the development as such can be said the “independent” development adopted in accordance with the local historical and factual conditions. To developing and underdeveloped countries, adopting this developing mode means that they must endeavor to extricate themselves from the “dependence” on Western developed countries since the colonial era for the sake of development. This is because after WWII, the history of colonial and semi-colonial countries’ development or modernization has shown that people cannot be developed but can only develop themselves. They can only develop by means of their doings, making decisions independently, improving their understanding of what they are doing and why they do so, increasing knowledge and capacity, and completely participating in the community life in which they live. Or else, “development” will only mean the disintegration of local society, its “re-colonization.” To genuinely realize the “local development” and enable people to have the awareness of and capacity for self-determination, the educational system must on the one hand label anew the “objective,” “universal,” and “value-neutral” knowledge with “cultural,” “contextualized,” and “valuable” and improve people’s critical awareness and capacity as to the knowledge as such to better employ it to settle their problems; on the other hand, it must re-recognize and excavate “local knowledge” or “indigenous knowledge” insomuch as the knowledge as such is the intelligent crystallization of local people in the long period of production and life struggles, the best intelligent instrument to settle the local social problems, and also the best spiritual resource improving the unity strength and cohesion of the local society. In addition, as regards the development of knowledge, postmodern education is supposed to attach importance to the development of knowledge’s “multiplicity”

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and “heterogeneity.” This will help the adolescents to treat all types of knowledge with multiple approaches so that they will not regard some type as “orthodox” whereas others as “quasi-knowledge” or “non-knowledge” hence will drastically abandon the ancient ideal of human history, namely, uniting all the knowledge spheres by dint of some knowledge standard. That postmodern knowledge form substitutes “culturality” for “objectivity” is in fact upholding the multiplicity of knowledge standard and modes, and the fair competence and mutual conversations between different types of knowledge. Only in this way will the long-lasting problem of “knowledge conflicts” be settled or, in other words, will effective methods to settle knowledge conflicts be found and further conditions be created to settle the “cultural conflicts (including gender, racial, mainstream-cultural, and subcultural conflicts, etc.),” “political conflicts,” and even “military conflicts” evoked by knowledge conflicts.

5.4.2 The Choice of Curriculum Knowledge What kind of knowledge is the most educationally valuable? This is a nuclear question of education reform. It is inseparable from another question, namely, “What kind of knowledge is the most valuable?” The answer to the latter question constitutes the premise to answer the former as the knowledge delivered and attained during the school educational process must be of certain values. As is known to all, modern education gives the same answer to these two questions: “Scientific knowledge.” That modern education makes such an answer or choice is roughly due to these two causes: on the one hand, it is from “epistemological” perspective, namely, scientific knowledge is considered as “objective,” “universal,” and “neutral,” as genuine, and as being the objective reflection of the objective world; on the other hand, it is from “economic” perspective, namely scientific is pragmatic, and is capable of bringing practical economic, political, or other interests to people. Seen in the history of education, these two causes were the main grounds for the arguments of those upholding scientific curriculums during the debates between classic and scientific curriculums in the nineteenth century in Western countries; simultaneously, they were also the main grounds for the arguments of their counterpart in non-Western countries, such as China and Japan at the initial stage of the educational modernization when the debates between “local curriculums” (e.g., “Chinese learnings”) and “scientific curriculums” (e.g., “Western learnings”) prevailed at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Out of these two causes, the modern curriculum system with scientific curriculums as the center had rapidly taken the dominant position in the educational system of each country all around the world since the end of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, along with people’s questioning about and deconstruction of the “objectivity,” “universality,” and “neutrality” of scientific knowledge, this sort of curriculum system with scientific curriculums as the center suffers crises mainly manifested as follows: Is scientific knowledge the most valuable to human life? Is

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scientific knowledge the most educationally valuable to human educational life? Is scientific knowledge of the most developing values to students’ individual development? Have the curriculums with the grasping, remembering, understanding, and applying of scientific knowledge as the main purpose hindered the development of students’ thirst for knowledge and creativity? Has the curriculum as such rejected the abundant local knowledge to enter into educational life? Have scientific curriculums formed a universal intellectual and cultural hegemony? Are scientific curriculums merely of instrumental e but not ontological value? Have scientific curriculums caused the tendency of utilitarianism pervading the whole school education? Most crises remain to be sensed by the pedagogical sphere of underdeveloped and developing countries in that the people there are hoping to settle the increasingly severe economic problems and other relevant ones by means of greatly popularizing scientific knowledge and developing scientific causes. Nevertheless, these crises have been plainly embodied in the scientific education of developed countries. What is rather interesting is, after the debates around classic and scientific curriculums in the nineteenth century, people started again the debate as to the relations between “scientific curriculums” and “humanistic curriculums” (history, religion, arts, philosophy, language, etc.) in the school curriculum system at the end of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, unlike the debate in the nineteenth century, this one does not uphold scientific curriculums but reflects on them anew, does not abolish humanistic curriculums but strengthens and improves them. Seen from the qualities of postmodern knowledge, postmodern curriculum construction should pursue the following aims. First, to reform scientific curriculums. Scientific curriculums dominated by the “objective,” “universal,” and “neutral” views of knowledge must be reformed, and people’s new recognition of scientific activities and the qualities of scientific knowledge must be practically and realistically reflected in scientific curriculums, say, “Science is an activity dominated by ideologies,” “Science is a social organizational system,” “Science is a cultural activity,” “Scientific revolution is the alternation of scientific paradigms,” “Scientific knowledge is de facto a series of presumptions or hypotheses,” and the like. In this way, adolescent students will be able to set up from childhood a right view of science and scientific methodology and overcome the influences on their thoughts from “objectivism,” “scientism,” “authoritarianism,” “West-centrism,” or the like. Related to this, the aims of scientific curriculums should also rise over the grasping of specific scientific knowledge, methods, and technologies, and reach the broad, complete, and in-depth understanding of scientific philosophy, scientific history, and the relationship between science on the one hand and society and individuals on the other. The arrangement of scientific curriculums’ content should walk out of the original narrow mode of the subject-separate curriculum but adopt a mode of “big scientific curriculums” with more abundant content. The “big scientific curriculum” as such is characterized not by the amount of content or the simple combination of some scientific disciplines but by the rearrangement of scientific knowledge’s content from the perspectives of society, history, and philosophy, among others. From the rearranged scientific textbooks, students can learn what are originally arranged in the subject-separate curriculums, say, scientific concepts, propositions, formula,

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theorems, etc., but they can also learn the content with regard to scientific history, sociology, philosophy, ethics, etc.; they can learn by far the best scientific concepts, propositions, formula, and theorems, etc., but they can also get in touch with the knowledge having once challenged or is challenging these things. Second, to develop local curriculums. Along with the falsification of the standard of “objectivity” of the modern scientific knowledge form and the presentation of the standard of “culturality” of the postmodern cultural knowledge form, “local knowledge” or “indigenous knowledge” qua a knowledge form obtains its legitimate position. With the in-depth revelation of the relationship between local knowledge and local development, the former’s social values are also rather plainly shown. To this connection, it becomes an important mission of postmodern education to choose, preserve, deliver, and develop local knowledge, and hence the development and construction of local curriculums become an important content of the postmodern curriculum reform. Seen from the experiences of some original colonial countries after the 1980s, the aims of the development of local curriculums include: to make local people aware of their own complete, systematic, and time-honored, but long oppressed and quality-deprived local knowledge system; to show the tremendous contributions of local knowledge during the historical development of local society and to re-evoke local people’s value awareness of their local knowledge system; to reinforce the local adolescent students’ cultural identification via the dissemination of local knowledge; and to reform the curriculums of natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities originating from the West so as to localize them via getting rid of that which will do harm to the local social steadiness and sustainable development. Given these curriculum aims, the development and construction of local curriculums will be performed not only in elementary educational stages but also in higher ones, not only in elementary and secondary schools, but also in normal universities and colleges. The development and construction as such is of critical importance to the people in colonial countries when it comes to their setting up an independent educational system concordant with the development of the local society, plays an active role in improving the educational quality in a large-scale fashion, and is of positive significance to the curriculum reform of China who was once a semi-colonial country. Third, to strengthen humanistic curriculums. Since the nineteenth century, whether in Western countries or in China, under the dominance of the modern scientific knowledge form, humanistic knowledge has been progressing rather slowly, which is essentially out of proportion to scientific knowledge’s speedy development. The phenomenon of “knowledge explosion” in general sense is invisible in the sphere of humanistic knowledge. This is due to its property of self-increasing; on the other hand, it is due to the fact that scientific knowledge form defies and oppresses humanistic knowledge, and regards it as “objective” but not in a strict sense, as the knowledge of no practical usage. That which follows is the decline of the humanistic curriculums in the school curriculum system: the class hours are reduced; it is no longer the nuclear curriculum in the school; the status of the teachers of humanistic curriculums becomes lower and lower; students show less and less interest in humanistic curriculums; and the studies of humanistic curriculums also lack funds.

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Given these circumstances, the humanistic atmosphere of school education worsens and utilitarian demands dominate each activity of modern schools. At the same time when modern schools meet the secular material needs of society and individuals, they more and more ignore the whole society and its individuals’ virtue cultivation, emotion edification, and character training, and the same holds to the cultivation of the adolescents’ correct philosophy, worldview, and view on happiness. Many problems in modern education are, so to speak, relevant to the decline of such humanistic curriculums, and many problems in modern society also appertain to the lack of humanistic knowledge and the decline of humanistic spirit. As the myth of scientific knowledge’s “objectivity” is broken, people finally realize that humanistic knowledge is by no means a sort of “secondary” or “immature” knowledge but one having different cognitive objects, cognitive modes, and expressive modes on the one hand and different human lives and social values on the other. That which is concerned by humanistic knowledge is not to control and overcome the external world but to understand and shape the internal world. Lacking this internal understanding and shaping power, people’s controlling and overcoming the external world will show various abnormalities, will lead to the individual and society’s “one-sided development” and “deformed development,” will threaten the individual and society’s sustainable development, and, ultimately, and will bring disastrous results to the individual and the whole humankind. Faced with the uncontainable utilitarianism of modern times and the predicament in which it enmeshes people, philosophers begin to reexamine modern society’s ideal and individual life’s significance, and begin to clamor for the carrying forward of humanistic spirit and the cultivation of a complete personality and, as a result, the voices of a “return to the ancient time” and “return to the Middle Ages,” etc. are heard everywhere. In this background, educators begin to reexamine the values of humanistic curriculums and offer many active suggestions to the construction of them: interpret to the government and society humanistic curriculums’ significance to social and individual development; substantially add the study funds of humanistic curriculums; take the reform of humanistic curriculums as another nuclear issue of the curriculum reform after the 1960s; increase humanistic teachers’ salaries and recruit high-level humanistic teachers; establish humanistic curriculums as one of the nuclear curriculums of the school; and reform the content of humanistic curriculums so as to add more flavor of the times to them, and so on and so forth. Undoubtedly, these suggestions are important references for China’s curriculum reform facing the twenty-first century.

5.4.3 The Teaching Process Seen in a certain sense, teaching process is the process of organizing students to study curriculum knowledge to realize the curriculum aims, and the main task of the teaching reform is to redesign and reorganize the study of curriculum knowledge so as to reach the new aims. How to organize or redesign the attainment of curriculum

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knowledge is inseparable from the recognition of the qualities of curriculum knowledge. Under the dominance of the modern scientific knowledge form, both teachers and students regard, wittingly or unwittingly, curriculum knowledge as “objective,” “universal,” and “neutral,” and as the objective reflection of the objective world. In this vein, that students grasp the knowledge is itself considered as finding the “shortcut” or “expressway” of recognizing the objective world, and it is believed that teachers’ main task is to help students understand and grasp various “objective,” “universal,” and “neutral” curriculum knowledge. These can be said the two fundamental presumptions of people as regards modern teaching process. On the basis of these two presumptions, modern teaching owns many fundamental properties: teaching’s nuclear or basic task is to correctly and effectively deliver and grasp curriculum knowledge, and other teaching tasks like developing the intelligence, cultivating capacities, performing ideological and moral education, or the like, are considered as based on the delivery and grasping as such, and are even concluded as the grasping and application of some sort of knowledge; the fundamental form of teaching is class teaching which mainly originates from the inspirations offered by the productive mode of machinery industry, from the pursuit of the “efficiency” of knowledge delivery; and the fundamental principles of teaching include “progressive principle,” “intuitive principle,” “consolidating principle,” “the principle of theoretical knowledge dominating,” and so on. The center of these principles is to ensure that curriculum knowledge is effectively delivered and solidly grasped7 ; teaching methods include the “telling method,” “demonstrating method,” “discussing method,” “experimental method,”8 or the like. Any one of them ultimately aims at helping students better understand and grasp the curriculum knowledge; fundamentally, the teacher-student relationship is between a person who delivers knowledge and the learners, and the communications between the teacher and the students mostly focus on the understanding and grasping of knowledge; and the main criteria for the teaching assessment are the memorization, understanding, judgment, and comprehensive and simple application of the curriculum knowledge. The more completely, solidly, and precisely the students grasp the curriculum knowledge, the higher performance they obtain in the exams. These properties and relevant harm of modern teaching are just like what is pointed out by P. Freire the famous modern educator: 7

This is explained in The Great Didactic of Comenius, usually called the “father of class-teaching.” The pursuit of “efficiency” has ignored the individual’s peculiar understanding of knowledge, the values of this peculiar understanding, and, we may even say, the necessity of this peculiar understanding. This is because if knowledge is “objective,” “universal,” and “neutral” there would not be the possibility and power for the individual to make peculiar understandings, namely, what the individual needs to do is to originally grasp the knowledge rather than peculiarly understanding it. 8 Be it discussion or experiment, the questions and the results are predetermined, even the process or procedure is the case. These teaching methods have lost the original connotations of “discussion” and “experiment,” and neither the teacher nor the students may sense the pleasure of any intelligence therein. The truth is, in many college classes, students usually will not open their mouths at all when questions are discussed; rather, most will drop their heads for fear that the teacher might call their name. What dull and depressing teaching!

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Education thus becomes an act of deporting, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. They do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store. …The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adopt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them. (Freire, 1970, pp. 53–54)

Along with the critiques and deconstruction of modern knowledge’s “objectivity,” “universality,” and “neutrality,” the aforementioned modern teaching modes unavoidably lose their legitimate grounds and are trapped into the “teaching crisis” we mentioned in last chapter. Quite apparently, if curriculum knowledge is cultureconstructed, value-interfered, and contextual rather than “objective,” “universal,” and “neutral,” are not the uncritical remembering, understanding, grasping, and simple applying of the knowledge as such delivering some cultural, value, or Western “bias”? Are all the teaching principles, teaching methods, and means of teaching assessment demanding students to abandon or directly depriving students’ “critical mind”? When there is not the critical awareness and capacity of knowledge, is not all knowledge “inert knowledge” in students’ mind, being merely of the value of showing off but never of genuine thinking value? Furthermore, the society based on this sort of teaching will not have universal knowledge innovation awareness and capacity but will forever rely on the knowledge authorities or developed countries in the sphere of knowledge. Along with the transformation of the qualities from modern knowledge to those of postmodern knowledge, the direction of the postmodern education reform should be this: at the level of the fundamental tasks or aims of teaching, we should cultivate students’ awarenesses of questioning, critique, and exploration by means of delivering curriculum knowledge so as to let them know from very young that knowledge is forever progressing and there is no knowledge that needs not questioning or developing, and that new views, methods, and techniques are forever respectable and meritorious. The kinds of fundamental qualities and capacities needed by knowledge innovation are exactly cultivated on the basis of such questionings and critiques of the so-called “objective,” “universal,” and “neutral” knowledge. In terms of teaching organizing mode, we should further reform the system of class teaching and carry out, when conditions are available, “small-class teaching,” “group teaching,” and “cooperative teaching” so as to save more time for discussing, questioning, experimenting, and debating in the teaching process, which will all the more approach the genuine activities of knowledge-finding. Insofar as teaching principles are concerned, we should lay down new principles aiming at inspiring, protecting, encouraging, and guiding students to raise questions and perform brave explorations. As to teaching methods, we should strongly object various forms of instilling method but uphold in a great fashion the methods of discussion, experiment, and practice in the true sense of the word, and improve the consciousness of questioning in the class teaching,

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make full use of students’ “individual knowledge” (i.e., “direct experiences”) and “local knowledge,” so as to turn the teaching process into one wherein teachers and students co-explore knowledge and its significance under the guidance of the teacher by virtue of questions as the core. When it comes to the teaching assessment, we should turn from stressing the memory, understanding, grasping, and comprehensive and simple application of the curriculum knowledge to stressing students’ peculiar understanding, explication, questioning, critique, and application of it. Compared with previous demands, this one is higher but remains to go beyond people’s reach. As a matter of fact, from grade one of the elementary schools, students should have their peculiar understanding of all the curriculum knowledge. It is because the teaching assessment all the time refuses to admit of the peculiar understanding as such, students gradually ignore the tremendous values of this understanding and become accustomed to answering questions according to the standard answers in the textbooks, albeit they themselves are sometimes not satisfied with the answers. We should believe that along with the reform of the class-teaching mode, students will meet this requirement in the teaching assessment.

5.4.4 Pedagogical Studies Pedagogy or the studies of educational theories as a human intellectual sphere are deeply influenced by human knowledge forms at the level of their views on the qualities of knowledge. After the modern scientific knowledge form gained the hegemony in each intellectual sphere, pedagogical studies also took haltingly the “scientific” way. Seen in the history of pedagogy, there were de facto two different roads of the “scientific turning” of pedagogy after the seventeenth century: one was rationalism and the other being empiricism or positivism (see Shi, 1999, Part I, II in Chapter 1: “Historical studies”). Rationalism contends that the scientific turning of pedagogy must be based on “definite,” “real,” and “independent” concepts which are the only ones being capable of constituting “unified,” “unique,” and “complete” pedagogical science. Empiricism or positivism believes, on the other hand, that pedagogy’s scientific turning must take the road of positive science, abandon the traditional “philosophical pedagogy” stressing conceptual speculations, concentrate on the connections between educational facts and the facts, and uphold quantitative and descriptive methods of research, so as to obtain real, reliable, and useful educational knowledge. Under the influences and constraints of the modern knowledge form, no matter what kind of pedagogy it is, the experts all tend to regard their educational knowledge as “objective,” “universal,” and “neutral,” as the pursuit and revelation, in some sense, of an “educational truth” or “educational laws.” Nevertheless, it is a pity that in the past 300 years, by following these two roads, educators failed to obtain any objective “educational truth,” but they also failed to find a recognized “educational law.” To this connection, the academia and the sphere of educational

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practices keep criticizing pedagogy or educational theories. The situation is just as is said by T. W. Moore (1974, pp. 1–2), Practicing teachers as a rule have little enthusiasm for it. They often remember it as an uncongenial college subject, and if they meet it again in their professional work they may regard it as something which has been wished on them by ‘experts’ remote from their workaday classrooms and having to do with proposals which may conflict with well-tried ways…. Quite apart from this teacherly lack of enthusiasm, there have been in recent years reservations about its academic integrity….So, it is claimed, such theories are not really theories at all. The term ‘educational theory’ should be used to refer only to those parts of psychology and sociology which have a bearing on educational practice; any other use of the term is a misnomer. Educational theory, then, is generally under attack.

In response to various “criticisms” and “attacks,” after the second half of the twentieth century, educators started to reflect after the bitter sufferings. In Britain, educators began to debate around educational theories, committing themselves to analyzing the structure, qualities, standards, and role of educational theories. In Germany, metaeducators began to make philosophical analyses with respect to educational knowledge, presented the three educational knowledge forms of “educational philosophy,” “practical pedagogy,” and “educational science,” and try to attribute people’s criticisms of educational theories and original educational theories’ shortages to the failure to distinguish different knowledge forms. Additionally, they greatly upheld people to make scientific studies of “educational facts,” trying to retrieve the whole pedagogy’s reputation via these “scientific studies” in the true sense of the word. In China, meta-education also became a hot topic in the sphere of pedagogy in the late 1980s: some were committed to studying the logical starting point of pedagogy, some others to the classification of educational theories, still others to the legitimacy of pedagogy, and yet others to the analysis of the sociology of educational knowledge. This notwithstanding, be it in British, German, or Chinese spheres of pedagogy, in the academic responses to the “criticisms” and “attacks” on pedagogy, most people still failed to extricate themselves from the traditional ideal of “educational science,” namely, that of “objective,” “universal,” and “neutral” educational pedagogy. Pedagogy was still lost on the road of “scientific turning,” still faced with various reproaches, failing to play active roles in one wave after another of broad-scale education reforms. Seen from the qualities of postmodern knowledge, pedagogy is not at all some knowledge system of “objectivity,” “universality,” or “neutrality,” nor can it reach that. This is because: the educational problems as the object of pedagogical studies are not at all objective but are of temporal spirit, value, and even personality; educational concept is not a sort of objective, non-historical, or value-neutral language of observation and statement but is expressive, historical, and normative, being of its internal value determination; the subject of pedagogical activities is not a purely rational being but one in daily life, being complete, historical, social, cultural, and particular; the mode of educational thinking is not purely logical or inductive but includes a large amount of metaphorical thinking, and hence it is closely connected with the cultural tradition in which the educators are situated; and the knowledge of educational theories is not the unique form of educational knowledge for apart

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from it educational folk knowledge or folk educational knowledge also exists in large amount and plays roles. In effect, the knowledge vacuum left after educational practices refuted educational theories is filled by educational folk knowledge, which hence enables educational practices to be handed down one generation after another. In a word, seen at the level of the qualities of postmodern knowledge, pedagogy …is not a sort of scientific activity with value-neutral and culture-concerning as the premise, factual finding, and knowledge accumulation as the aim, and rigorous logic system as the support, but a sort of value or cultural science with value construction and meaning explication as the aim….In each link of pedagogical activities is value penetrated, embodied, and pursued, and hence they are connected with wider and deeper cultural backgrounds. (Shi, 1999, pp. 187–188)

In this connection, pedagogical studies must abandon the objectivist views of educational knowledge and the route of educational cognition, be aware of their studies and the close relationship between the socio-cultural stance in which they are embedded and ideology, acutely grasp the new trend of socio-cultural needs and ideological struggles, deal with the relationship between themselves and educational practitioners including educational decision-makers with a “rational” and “conversational” attitude, accept different educational views with a tolerant state of mind and perform sincere academic communications and conversations with them, and must make critiques of value and ideology on educational thoughts and ideas from abroad and correctly understand their so-called “worldly meaning.” Only in this way can pedagogy attain genuine development, gain the respect from other intellectual spheres, correctly and effectively play its roles in social education reform, and improve in exact fashion educational practices’ theoretical consciousness and level from one aspect hence turn educational practices into one of value instruction, and of value reflection and construction.

References Bacon, F. (1960). The New Organon and Related Writings. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Born, M. (1949). Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance. Oxford University Press. Cassirer, E. (1985). An Essay on Man (G. Yang, Trans.). Shanghai Translation Publishing House. Feyerabend, P. K. (1975). Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. Redwood Burn. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (C. Gordon Ed., C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham, & K. Soper, Trans.). The Harvester Press, Ltd. Freire, F. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Penguin Books Ltd. Lyotard, J.-F. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (G. Bennington & B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. Mannheim, K. (1936). Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. Routledge and Kegan Paul. Mannheim, K. (1952). Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. Routledge and Kegan Paul. Moore. T. W. (1974). Educational Theory: An Introduction. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

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Popper, K. R. (1963). Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge and Kegan Paul. Shi, Z. (1999). 教育学的文化性格 [The Cultural Character of Pedagogy]. Shanxi Educational Press.

Chapter 6

The Change of Knowledge Increasing Mode and Education Reform

As was stated afore, along with the coming of knowledge economy and society, the importance of knowledge, notably of new knowledge in social production and life, increases day by day, and has become one of the key factors constraining the development of contemporary society. Internationally, the average education years and knowledge creativity of the people in a country have become two important indices to measure its comprehensive national strength. In this connection, it is an important strategic task of many modern countries to greatly improve people’s average education degrees and knowledge creativity, and it is also an important content of their educational reform in the twenty-first century. In China, since the end of the twentieth century, promoted by the government, the scientific sphere, and the business circles, the elementary and higher education reforms with improving students’ “innovation awarenesses,” “innovation qualities,” and “innovation capacities”1 as the core also developed vigorously, which has brought many new demands on the curriculum construction, teaching organizing mode, teaching methods, teaching assessment, and teachers’ qualities in schools of every level and kind. The whole society, particularly the educational sphere, has increasingly realized that “education” or “good education” not merely teaches students about the previous knowledge, but all the more cultivate their awarenesses, qualities, and capacities to make use of all the available conditions to “obtain,” even “create,” new knowledge. The awarenesses, qualities, and capacities as such are the new demands made by the new traits of the development of modern society on modern and future talents’ qualities. Against this background, to answer these questions is of very important theoretical and practical significance: What is “knowledge innovation”? What is human history of knowledge innovation? What new characteristics 1

The three can be said a “trinity”: “innovative awareness” stresses attitude, “innovative qualities” focuses on psychological conditions, and “innovative capacities” emphasize the expression of practical acts. “Innovative awareness” and “innovative capacities” can be, de facto, incorporated into “innovative qualities.”

© Higher Education Press Limited Company 2023 Z. Shi, Transformation of Knowledge and Educational Reform, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9271-1_6

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does modern knowledge innovation have compared with the historical ones? How can the individual carry out knowledge innovation? What kind of preparation can education create for the cultivation of such knowledge innovative talents? What necessary reforms should be introduced in every aspect of the current educational system to cultivate the talents of knowledge innovation awarenesses, qualities, and capacities? What is the support of the reforms? Without the systematic and in-depth analyses with respect to these questions, the education reform with “innovation education” as the theme in the twenty-first century could not obtain sufficient theoretical support, and hence, it would be quite hard for them to reach the expected end. “Knowledge innovation” is, in short, the process of obtaining new knowledge; a history of human knowledge innovation is, de facto, one in which human knowledge increases. On this account, the previous set of questions might be converted into another set relevant to “knowledge increase”: How do human beings obtain new knowledge? How does human knowledge increase? What new properties does contemporaneous knowledge increase have? How can the individual contribute to the increase of human knowledge? How can education cultivate the individual’s awarenesses, qualities, and capacities to produce new knowledge? What kind of reform should the current educational system perform to comply with the requirements of cultivating and improving the individual’s awarenesses, qualities, and capacities as such? The necessity to make this conversion is: it can enable us to obtain more thinking materials in that in the history of thought, there were not many direct discussions about “knowledge innovation” whereas those about “knowledge increase” were more numerous. In this connection, making this conversion also helps scholars and readers to understand the “historicity” of “knowledge innovation” lest they simply regard it as a new problem at present hence help us understand it in a deeper and more profound fashion. This apart, another significance of making this conversion is, it can help, at psychological level, to get rid of people’s awe of “knowledge innovation” formed and deposited in the long period of ancient and modern knowledge forms, and hence, it can enable people to take knowledge innovation as an ordinary process of knowledge increase just like “economic increase,” “populace increase,” or something. In this way, everyone can share the benefits brought by this increase and simultaneously contribute to it. That is to say, rather than being directed upon those intellectual elites or being a topic concerned only by them as the qualified ones, “knowledge innovation” is directed upon all the people and is the problem that needs concerning by all the people, be they statesmen, merchants, or teachers, doctors, parents. At the theoretical level, studies as regards knowledge increase and educational relationships should be an important constituent of many spheres of education studies like “studies of education policies,” “studies of curriculums and teaching,” “studies of education assessment,” “studies of student development,” or the like, particularly of studies of “educational philosophy” or “educational epistemology.” According to my knowledge, nevertheless, current studies on this issue are relatively insufficient in those pertinent to “knowledge and education” in the spheres of education at home and abroad, be they studies of education policies, curriculums and teaching, education

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assessment and student development, or those of educational philosophy or educational epistemology. In these fields, studies pertinent to “knowledge and education” mainly focus on “knowledge qualities,” “knowledge values,” “knowledge classification,” and relevant education problems but fail to pay due attention to the problems of knowledge increase and its relationship to educational practices. The causes may be as follows. To begin with, in the past, albeit the developing ideas or theories of modern states and societies had recognized the importance of knowledge, particularly new knowledge, in their development, they still treated them as a “dependent” and “subordinate” force the playing of whose role was regarded as dependent on capital, resources, energy, land, populace, even other social factors like ideology, etc. rather than an “independent” and “dominant” force. On this account, modern states presenting the task of developing scientific causes and popularizing education (knowledge) notwithstanding, they failed to present the task of promoting knowledge innovation or cultivating relevant talents, which hence led to the fact that the studies of the aforementioned problems lacked the necessary social needs, foundation, or motivation. In the second place, knowledge increase is neither the core problem of previous philosophical epistemology or theories of knowledge, nor that of previous psychology. In the sphere of philosophy, be they empiricism and rationalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or positivism, phenomenology, existentialism, pragmatism, and analytic philosophy in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, they mainly discussed about knowledge qualities or standards which, being closely related to knowledge increase as they may, were not knowledge increase per se. To be sure, positivism presents the three stages of human knowledge’s evolution; it, however, fails to give definite and sufficient explications with regard to the practical process of the development of human knowledge, seeming to believe that it is an undeniable “fortune” that exactly determines human knowledge development from the “theological stage” to the “metaphysical stage” and “scientific stage.” Seen at the level of psychology, the psychological schools during the period from the seventeenth century to the mid-twentieth century, be they associative psychology, psychology of action, rationalist psychology, or functional psychology, Gestalt psychology, behavioral psychology, psychoanalytic theory, they failed to take the increase or development of individual knowledge as a key problem for study albeit they had made some analyses, respectively, with respect to the content, form, function, or structure of individuals’ awareness, and problems relevant to individuals’ knowledge increase. Since modern time, philosophy and psychology as two important basic disciplines of pedagogy have ignored knowledge increase, which will surely influence pedagogy’s concerns about and studies on it. Thirdly, the deficiency of the studies on the relationship between knowledge increase and education in previous educational theories may also be relevant to previous ideas of education. It was traditionally believed that education was mainly the process of delivering and grasping objective knowledge, and the individual and society’s development relied on the delivery and grasping as such, namely, it relied on the knowledge established, fully demonstrated and verified previously. Under the dominance of this educational idea, educationists’ studies on the relationship between knowledge and education

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mainly focused on the delivery and grasping of knowledge rather than its increase. As a rule, they regarded knowledge’s increase either as an event happening outside the educational process or as one performed on the basis of the delivery and grasping of knowledge, as a natural result of the grasping of it. That which merits pleasure is, since the 1960s, particularly the 1990s, be it the developing mode of the state and society or philosophical and psychological studies, or the educational idea itself, it has experienced some great changes, which hence provided the necessary foundation, impetus, or conditions for the studies on the relationship between knowledge increase and education. Insofar as intellectual sphere is concerned, scientific philosophy has made a great number of studies in these respects and knowledge increase and the changes in its increasing mode have become a kernel question of scientific philosophical studies. Cognitive psychology, notably constructionism psychology, remarkably reveals or explicates the psychological mechanism of individual knowledge increase. The development of the sociology of knowledge and scientific sociology has also made in-depth analyses with regard to the increase of knowledge including the scientific one. The change of the increasing mode of human social knowledge since the 1960s has, as it were, constituted an important aspect of the switch from the modern knowledge form to the postmodern one and hence offered an important theoretical source for the reexamination of modern educational reform.

6.1 The Increasing Mode of Modern Knowledge2 As “modern people,” we have some “modern” common senses as regards how knowledge increases, say, “Knowledge increase is promoted by some intellectuals or scientists in each sphere,” “Knowledge increase is the result of people’s constant observations and experiments,” “Knowledge increase is the result of the work of the intellectuals and scientists in each sphere, and there is not a smooth avenue to science,” and so on and so forth. These “modern” common senses are de facto the products of modern knowledge form, also those of modern education relevant to it. They reflect from some facets “modern men’s” views or ideas of the increasing mode of knowledge in the past centuries, and influence in a great fashion the intellectual life of the populace. As in the Chinese context the word “modern (xiandai 现代)” is of the limitless extensiveness to a future time, it is necessary to reiterate that “modern knowledge” here does not merely refer to a temporal concept but to qualitative determinations. On the one hand, “modern knowledge” differs from “ancient knowledge” at the level of quality; on the other hand, they also differ from “postmodern knowledge” at the same level. In terms of the verb tense, “modern knowledge” is always in a perfect tense, referring to humans’ knowledge conditions and ideas of knowledge after the Renaissance, particularly after the seventeenth century, until the 1960s. It does not include the conditions and ideas after the 1960s. To refer to the latter, I employ the term “postmodern knowledge” and, sometimes, “contemporary knowledge.” However, this does not mean that in this “postmodern society,” people’s ideas, particularly their views of knowledge, have completed the change from “modern” to “postmodern.” Historical experiences tell us that this will be a long journey, the completion of which will mark the genuine maturity of postmodern society.

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The qualities or standards are different between “modern knowledge” and “ancient knowledge,” so are the increasing modes between them. People’s recognition with respect to the increasing mode of modern knowledge is at the very beginning inseparable from the critiques of that of ancient knowledge. To put it in another way, people’s explications pertinent to the increasing mode of modern knowledge are exactly based on the critiques of that of ancient knowledge. Seen from the Western epistemological history, these large-scale critiques of the reliability of ancient knowledge and its increasing mode started roughly from the sixteenth century. The sixteenth century can be considered as “the era of suspicions” in Western epistemological history. Just as is said by A. Koyré who has made quite profound studies as to Descartes’ thoughts, It attacked everything: it undermined everything; and nearly everything crumbled: the political, religious, spiritual unity of Europe; the certainty of science together with that of faith; the authority of the Bible as well as that of Aristotle; the prestige of the Church and the glamour of the State. (Anscombe & Geach, 1966, p. viii)

Nonetheless, the suspicion and crumbling as such did not lead to a nihilism in that at the same time when old knowledge and its increasing mode were crumbled, the philosophers presented their “substitutes”—modern knowledge qualities and increasing mode. Given that I analyzed Western philosophers’ discussions of the qualities of modern knowledge after the sixteenth century in the previous chapters, I will not elaborate further on it here. That which needs to be pointed out is, there is a necessary logical connection between the philosophers’ discussions as to the qualities of modern knowledge, on the one hand, and their views of the increasing mode of knowledge, on the other. This is because the knowledge increase in their discussions is a new one of objectivity, universality, and value-neutrality rather than that of traditional metaphysical and theological knowledge. Bacon was concerned with the progress of human knowledge. He was greatly regretful of the situation in which human knowledge was “neither prosperous nor obviously progressive” and was fairly unsatisfied with previous methods to obtain knowledge. He was determined to “open up a new path” for the progress of human scientific knowledge and, thus, he pointed out, The discoveries which have hitherto been made in the sciences are such as lie close to vulgar notions; scarcely beneath the surface. In order to penetrate into the inner and further recesses of nature, it is necessary that both notions and axioms be derived from things by a more sure and guarded way, and that a method of intellectual operation be introduced altogether better and more certain. There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried. (Bacon, 1960, pp. 42–43)

Self-evidently, these are two completely different “paths” and what was chosen and appreciated by Bacon is the latter one, namely, the path of “induction” based

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on observations. To step on this path, whereas, people must: first, abandon “idols of the tribe,” “idols of the cave,” “idols of the marketplace,” and “idols of the theater.”3 These idols are de facto the single ideas remaining to be verified empirically and coming from somewhere outside perception. In Bacon’s views, abandoning these idols is a necessary premise to obtain knowledge in the true sense of the word and to promote the progress of science. Secondly, after abandoning the idols, people should “follow nature” and “observe nature” to accumulate many sensory experiences and induce general conclusions from them. After Bacon, “observation” became the most fundamental method to obtain knowledge. “Observe, observe, and observe” also became the fundamental principle of scientific activities. Thirdly, nature or the thing itself is the most reliable foundation of knowledge and, resultantly, bifurcations as regards knowledge are not settled via debates in words but via further observations and experiments. The knowledge best conforming to the practical conditions of objective things is the most reliable or true knowledge. Locke qua an empiricist shares ideas with Bacon on human intellectual progress, but he had his own thoughts. Like Bacon, Locke was against the traditional ideas of knowledge and traditional methods to obtain it. He was even more drastic than Bacon, completely denying the existence of an “inner idea” or “innate idea” and its epistemological meanings, and maintaining that knowledge or its materials could be obtained from external things. Locke pointed out that some people thought that there were some “innate principles” (Locke, 1974, p. 9), some primal ideas, or characters. They were obtained from the beginning of human mind and were brought to this world together as if they were attached to the human mind. It is his contention that this is completely wrong, as human mind is like a piece of white paper or a “tabula rasa” in which there is not any so-called “innate principle” or “innate idea” at all. Locke believed that humankind had three paths to understand the interrelations between ideas: one is “intuition,” another is “reason,” and still another is “sensation.” The path of intuition means that human mind does not rely on any mediate stage or idea but immediately recognizes the qualities of the interconnections between two ideas hence obtains “intuitive knowledge.” Intuitive knowledge does not need justification or examination; but rather, it is the truth directly recognized by the mind via intuition, just like the eyes can naturally see the light. According to Locke, intuitive knowledge is the most distinctive and certain knowledge that can be found in human mind. The path of reason means that since the relationships between two or more ideas are relatively complex, it is hard to distinguish them and people must rely on other ideas or “proofs” to gradually understand them, which results in “demonstrative knowledge.” Given that the production of knowledge depends on the “participation” of other ideas rather than being immediately recognized by the mind, it is not as “distinctive” and “certain” as intuitive knowledge. Nonetheless, as long as each step of the production of knowledge involves the participation of intuition, the distinction and certainty of knowledge may also be guaranteed. The path of sensation means the mind’s recognition of the qualities of the specific things sensed presently by the sense organs, which is different from the two sorts of recognition of mind as 3

As to the specific connotations of these four idols, please see the relevant explanations in Chapter 1.

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regards the relationship between ideas. In virtue of this path, people can obtain “sensitive knowledge.” When guaranteed by intuition, sensitive knowledge is also distinctive and certain. Apparently, in terms of the relationships between these three paths of recognition, Locke regarded the intuitive one as the most fundamental path and knowledge; as to the relationships between these three sorts of knowledge, he considered intuitive knowledge as the most reliable and as the guarantee of the reliability of the other two sorts. That which is quite clear is, at the same time when Locke criticized “inner ideas” or “innate ideas,” he also substituted “intuitive knowledge” for the “Maxims”4 constituted by the ideas as such when it came to the steady foundation of the progress of human knowledge. On the basis of this recognition, Locke presented two modes promoting the increase of human knowledge: first, we should try to get and preserve the ideas of relevant things in that the ideas coming from the external world are the materials of knowledge and there would not be knowledge without them. The extent of their preciseness and abundance is in close relation to that of knowledge’s exactness and abundance. Secondly, discovering and maintaining those ideas that can be instantly determined can help us recognize the similarities and differences between those ideas that cannot be immediately compared, and hence can help us obtain a large amount of knowledge. Locke believed that human mind should be trained to do that. I believe that the first mode fits perfectly for empiricism, differing from Bacon and others’ for the reason or end. The second mode, however, is inclined to rationalism, being of plain thought of psychological “faculty training,” which hence distinguishes Locke from the pure empiricists at the level of knowledge and its increase. Like Bacon and Locke, Descartes qua a philosopher in the new epoch was fairly concerned with the increase of human knowledge, and he strongly criticized, by dint of his personal experiences, the reliability of traditional knowledge and the mode of discovering knowledge. Descartes believed that the cause of this situation was that people failed to find the right direction. He vividly said via comparison that if the right direction were found, even those who were quite slow would make great progress; whereas if the right direction had deviated, even those who were very fast would make little progress. To find the right direction, Descartes could not but suspect the ideas he had accepted “from the beginning to the end” before presenting a series of “rules” and “methods” aiming at gaining genuine knowledge and promoting the progress of knowledge. These rules and methods were summarized into six demands. First, if there is no definite proof that something is true, then one should never accept it as true. This is the first condition for knowledge to progress, aiming to turn the obtainment of knowledge into a purely rational process devoid of the interference of “authority,”

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Locke used the capital form. I believe that this reflected the authoritative status of the numerous “principles” at the time in knowledge discovery; on the other hand, it also expressed his dissatisfaction and attitude of breaking away from them. Locke’s critiques and satire of the so-called “principles” can be seen everywhere in his “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.”

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“superstition,” “conjecture,” “will,” or something. Secondly, there are only two definite modes to obtain knowledge: “intuition”5 and “deduction” besides which no mode whatsoever should be accepted for they would mislead people’s intelligence. The intuitive mode refers to the distinctive, highly concentrated spiritual concerns that result in the constitution of “fairly distinctive,” “fairly simple,” and “self-evident” hence “undoubted” knowledge. The deductive mode means that necessary conclusions will be drawn via “continuous” and “incessant” movements of thought from any known definite thing. Comparatively, the intuitive mode is more fundamental and reliable. Thirdly, recognition starts from simple questions confirmable via intuition and rises to relatively complex questions step by step. On the other hand, as to the complex and vague propositions, we can simplify them, step by step, into some simple ones before starting from the examination of them and gradually rising to all the other propositions.6 Fourthly, to ultimately obtain knowledge, we must examine in detail all the views relevant to the studies and arrange them in a systematic fashion into a sufficient and ordered form so as to examine them one by one. Fifthly, all our regards should be directed upon the minimum and simplest ideas on which we should long reflect until we are accustomed to having our eyes on and grasping them via plain and distinctive intuition. Sixthly, the mind must accept an incessant training on each problem having been settled by others, and must be accustomed to suspecting and examining the even most trivial experiences of human recognition that we have obtained. These elucidations of Bacon, Locke, and Descartes have become the epistemological foundation of the development of modern knowledge or science, and have greatly normalized and promoted the progress of Western and human knowledge since the seventeenth century and beyond. By concluding these elucidations, we can discover many fundamental modes of the increase of modern knowledge. To begin with, insofar as the relationship between knowledge and the cognitive object is concerned, the increase of human knowledge is a process constantly “reflecting,” “revealing,” or “grasping” the essence of the cognitive object, one constantly obtaining the reliable, distinctive, and definite cognition of the object, and hence one constantly discovering the “secrets” of the world. During this process, albeit errors are inevitable, they must be dispelled, which is possible also. In this way, the increase of knowledge may become a process by which the knowledge of “certainty,” “conformity,” and “coincidence” is constantly “deposited.” D. W. Hamlyn called this increasing mode “architectural mode.”7 5

Descartes reminded people that his “intuition” differed from the ordinary sense, being not the definite trait of the variety of people’s sense organs, nor the imagination or the judgment easily misleading people. The intuition in his terminology is a sort of “spiritual intuition,” a sort of “light of reason.” This intuition also differed somehow from Locke. 6 What is surprising is that this Descartes’ thought resembles that of the Logical Atomism in the twentieth century, so that it conceives the fundamental thoughts of the latter. 7 Hamlyn notes that in modern people’s perspective, human knowledge is a building, being superposed one layer after another. As to those who have added their reservations, they merely superpose one more layer on the existent foundation. The increase of knowledge is just like the building, heightening merely through superposition (see Hamly, 1970, p. 11).

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In the second place, insofar as the relationship between knowledge and the cognitive subject is concerned, the increase of human knowledge contains strict demands on the subject, namely, extricating “illusions,” performing repeated and continuous intelligent trainings, and suspecting and examining all his/her obtained ideas, and so on. That is to say, for the sake of discovering genuine knowledge and the progress of knowledge, people must dispel such irrational factors easily leading to fallacies, e.g., the individual “wish,” “conjecture,” “will,” “idea,” “inclination,” etc., out of the cognitive process, and hence, they turn themselves into a sort of “pure” cognitive subject—“observing subject” or “rational subject” so as to obtain the genuine reality, objectivity, and certainty as regards the cognitive objects. The increase of knowledge is regarded as a process of pure reason, a product of the individual’s “pure,” “transparent” mental state without being “polluted” at all. Thirdly, for the individual to be engaged in knowledge production, and to become a pure cognitive subject in the true sense of the word, he/she must experience a long “preparatory stage” or “training stage,” which is the common demand of empiricism and rationalism albeit they are different as to what to prepare and how to train. Whereas empiricists stress trainings on “observation,” “experiment,” “data processing,” “method of induction,” or the like, rationalists put more emphasis on training people with respect to “rational intuition,” “deduction,” “demonstration,” “refutation,” or something. As to common people, since they are lack of such special trainings, they are incapable of discovering or providing genuine knowledge. On this account, the production of knowledge or scientific cause becomes a “modern specialty” with rigid guild regulations and “exclusiveness.” That is to say, the increase of knowledge or the progress of science is accomplished within each specialty or discipline, and it is a process in which the specialty is constantly differentiated. Descartes described in a quite vivid fashion a “tree of knowledge” of mankind: its root is “metaphysics” or “philosophy,” its trunk “physics,” and other disciplines are all the branches, even twigs, stemming from the trunk. The more human knowledge develops, the more luxuriant is the foliage of the tree of knowledge. Fourthly, the increase or progress of human knowledge needs a “steady foundation” the exploration of which is considered as the main task of philosophical epistemology. Notwithstanding that Descartes presented the renowned “universal skepticism,” he thus argued, Not that I imitated the skeptics, who doubt just for the sake of doubting and affect to be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole aim was to reach ensurance, and cast aside loose earth and sand so as to reach rock or clay. (Anscombe & Geach, 1966, p. 28)

Since modern times and beyond, different philosophers or philosophical schools have developed different ideas as regards this foundation. Empiricists believed that it is “Nature” or “experience” whereas rationalists contended that it is “(rational) intuition” or “transcendental categories.” At any rate, the edifice of knowledge needs to be built on a solid, undoubted, and universally adoptive foundation in that be it empirical knowledge or the rational one, its truthfulness needs verifying or proving, so do the knowledge or methods themselves employed to do the work. Resultantly, this will lead to the consistent “regress” and vicious circle criticized by empiricists.

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Only when the knowledge or methods needing no verifying or proving in itself, or those being “self-evident” by themselves, are found, will the infinite regress and vicious circle be held back, which hence will make possible the building of the edifice of human knowledge. Fifthly, the increase of human knowledge is an “individual” cognitive process. Socio-cultural factors are considered as the “disturbance” in the process as such and the origin leading to “ignorance” or “fallacy.” Knowledge is considered as the product of individual spiritual activities independent of society, the crystal of the individual’s talents, intelligence, responsibilities, and laborious work. The increase of knowledge is an individual process immune to any socio-cultural influence, and new knowledge is forever inseparable from a great name. Presumably, these are the fundamental modes or ideas of the increase of modern knowledge. The above-mentioned “modern” common senses pertinent to knowledge increase all originated from these ideas, and are all the customary and vivid statements of them. Under the influence of these ideas, the history of science or the progress of human knowledge is narrated as a process in which people constantly eliminate errors, obtain truths, and decipher the world’s secrets; the image of scientists or intellectuals is also shaped into a “rational person” transcending the mundane world and being purely committed to “knowledge for knowledge’s sake,” or one “devoting himself to the truth”; the growth of scientists or intellectuals increasingly relies on the trainings of specialty or discipline; “academic freedom” and “teaching freedom” hence become the “privileges” of scientific research institutions and colleges and universities.

6.2 The Increasing Mode of Postmodern Knowledge As is known to all, since the seventeenth century and beyond, Western scientific causes have made rapid progress, having greatly promoted the increase of the total knowledge of humankind. To this, Marx and Engels have both given high appraisals. Connected with the high speed of the progress as such, modern industry and economy have also obtained rapid development, which greatly improved human beings’ living surroundings and conditions. Under such circumstances, modern epistemology set up by Bacon, Locke, Descartes, and others, particularly the ideas of knowledge increase, were also broadly disseminated hence deeply influenced and dominated the intellectual life of the whole humankind. Nevertheless, since the twentieth century, notably the mid-twentieth century, along with the fact that people became more and more clear about the qualities of scientific activities including those of scientific knowledge, people began their critiques on the increasing mode of modern knowledge mentioned afore, and tried to recognize the qualities and increasing mode of human knowledge on the basis of these critiques. Be that as it may, postmodern critiques on the increasing mode of modern knowledge differ to a certain extent from the modern ones on ancient increasing mode of knowledge. As was stated afore, whereas the modern critiques are fundamentally negative,

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the postmodern ones do not deny human progress on knowledge since modern times but merely intend to reinterpret the qualities or causes of the progress as such, and to recognize and re-explicate the mode of the progress of human knowledge. Similar to the critiques on the qualities of ancient knowledge, the reflections and critiques on the increasing mode of modern knowledge are also performed from multiple perspectives. Some start from general philosophy, some others from scientific philosophy, still others from knowledge sociology, and so on. Of the people participating in the critique as such, Scheler, Popper, Karl Polanyi, Kuhn, and Feyerabend are supposed to be the most representative ones who made the most powerful critiques on the increasing mode of modern knowledge, but also offered the most systematic explications as to the new one which can be called the increasing mode of postmodern knowledge. In what follows, with the aforementioned five increasing modes or ideas of modern knowledge as the clue, let us have a look at how they perform critiques and how they present their new ideas. In the first place, is the increase of modern knowledge a process of accumulation? As to this question, both Popper and Kuhn gave a negative reply after studying the history of science in detail. Popper contended that since it is impossible that people obtain completely verified or proved knowledge, all knowledge is merely a sort of “tentative” theory, a sort of “conjecturing interpretation” as regards existent questions, and hence it remains to be further examined or rebutted, or it is open to further examinations and rebuttals. On this account, there is not at all knowledge accumulation founded on the basis of determination. In his view, the increase of human knowledge is de facto a process wherein people constantly pass from “old questions” to “new questions” via “conjectures” and “rebuttals.” This is the “logic of scientific discovery,” also the logic of people’s general discovery of knowledge. It is Popper’s contention that the Darwinist view of knowledge increase is suitable for “scientific knowledge,” but also for “pre-scientific knowledge,” even for “animal knowledge,” and, in a word, for all the knowledge. He said vividly that the process of knowledge increase has been the same from an amoeba to Einstein. To explicate his views in a vivid fashion, Popper employed the formula “P1-TT-EE-P2” to describe the increase in the process of human knowledge. In the formula, “P1” refers to the problem qua the starting point of scientific research, “TT” to the “presumptive” or “tentative” theory presented for the sake of settling this problem, “EE” to the process wherein people “examine” or “rebut” the theory as such so as to eliminate the errors, and “P2” to the new problems produced in the scientific research, also the starting point of a new one. Given that there are more than one sort of conjectured theory presented on each problem during the practical process of scientific research, to reflect this diversity in the evolution direction of scientific knowledge in a more precise fashion, Popper developed the formula above into the following more complex one (Popper, 1972, p. 287):

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In the formula, the endless variations from “a” to “n” indicate the possibility of presenting scientific presumptions from each aspect on some scientific problem, but they also indicate that the increase of scientific knowledge even of all human knowledge is nothing other than a process wherein endless and varied presumptions are presented before being critically examined and rebutted and hence endless and varied new problems are produced. This process is endless so the increase of knowledge is not inclined to a finished state, not is it inclined to the endlessly possible revealing of the world’s secrets or the accumulation of deterministic knowledge; rather, it is merely the increase of people’s “potential satisfaction” as regards new presumptions or theories. Albeit Kuhn was not completely satisfied with Popper’s view on the increase of knowledge or scientific knowledge, he was also against the view of the accumulative increase of modern scientific knowledge. He quite definitely criticized the view of scientific history aiming to describe the “accumulative increase” of modern science: If science is the constellation of facts, theories, and methods collected in current texts, then scientists are the men who, successfully or not, have striven to contribute one or another element to that particular constellation. Scientific development becomes the piecemeal process by which these items have been added, singly and in combination, to the ever-growing stockpile that constitutes scientific technique and knowledge. And history of science becomes the discipline that chronicles both these successive increments and the obstacles that have inhibited their accumulation. Concerned with scientific development, the historian then appears to have two main tasks. On the one hand, he must determine by what man and at what point in time each contemporary scientific fact, law, and theory was discovered or invented. On the other, he must describe and explain the congeries of error, myth, and superstition that have inhibited the more rapid accumulation of the constituents of the modern science text. Much research has been directed to these ends, and some still is. (Kuhn, 1962, pp. 1–2)

According to Kuhn, the increase of knowledge, notably the scientific one, is never a successive process by which old knowledge becomes increasingly obsoleted and a new one is added, but a process in which the “paradigm” of the whole scientific knowledge experiences a drastic change via the phases of the crisis. During this process, the old paradigm is partly or completely replaced by the new one. This change resembles that of “Gestalt” in psychology, and it does not result in the recognition as to some single factor; but rather, it is a change of the whole perspective and cognitive frame, even of the metaphysical foundation of the whole cognitive act. That which is brought by the change as such is not merely the difference in theory itself, but that of the modes of presenting and thinking about questions, the difference of the whole knowledge belief. Kuhn believed that the most important thing that promotes the change as such is the emergence of a “counterexample,” which goes against scientific regulation. At the very beginning, the counterexample as such might be ignored or rejected, but once such things emerge frequently, they will draw the attention of the scientists who then will have a “crisis awareness” with respect to the original paradigm and begin to think about some new substitute for the old one. At the level of the content, the counterexamples promoting the development of science can be some new categories, but they can also be some new methods, beliefs, or experiments. Consequently, for the development of science or the increase of scientific knowledge,

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an important rule is to show tolerance and respect for counterexamples, rather than suppressing or rejecting them. Hence, it is also an important quality of scientists to be bold in and fond of thinking about problems from a completely different perspective. Comparatively, Popper’s theory of knowledge increase is micro and suitable for broader intellectual scopes whereas Kuhn’s is macro, mainly suitable for the sphere of scientific or natural knowledge. Be that as it may, both Popper’s micro mode of “conjecture-rebut” and Kuhn’s macro mode of “paradigm revolution” are based on a large quantity of scientific historical facts, essentially refuse the “accumulative mode” or “architectural mode” of human knowledge increase, and hence, they provide people with new cognition pertaining to the increase of human knowledge. In the second place, is the increase of modern knowledge a rational process? As was stated afore, modern philosophers contend that human knowledge is the product of the pure rational acts of cognitive subjects, and hence the progress of human knowledge is also the result of the development of human reason. For a long time, no one has ever doubted this view, which leads to the fact that in the past several centuries, people have been equating “knowledge dissemination” to “rational enlightenment.” Nonetheless, along with the critiques of the postmodern knowledge form about the fundamental qualities of the modern one, the traits of the reason of knowledge increase have been increasingly doubted by people, the abundance and completeness of individual spiritual world’s participation into the cognitive process have also been increasingly recognized in a distinctive fashion and, simultaneously, the essential shortages of rational training for the sake of discovering knowledge have also been exposed. The famous British physical chemist, M. Polanyi, critically pointed out that it is quite ridiculous that since modern times and beyond, people have been regarding the production of knowledge as a purely rational process. In the process, de facto, individual irrational factors (e.g., metaphysical belief, passion, tacit knowledge, subjective judgment, and so on) are essentially indispensable without which there would not be any scientific discovery. Like Einstein, he also strongly refuted the positivistic view of knowledge and scientific education merely stressing the narrow training of scientific methods but emphasized the tremendous function of scientific esthetic senses and passions in scientific discoveries. Polanyi noted that the ocean of facts is endlessly broad, but to scientists, only a small part of them is of scientific values. He definitely defines this function of scientific passion and scientific esthetic sense as “the heuristic function” and “the selective function.” On this account, scientific passion is not merely a psychological by-product of scientific discovery, but it has also a logical function, which is an indispensable condition and factor of scientific research. In this aspect, Popper has similar views to Polanyi’s. He has once cited Einstein’s words and says definitely, My view may be expressed by saying that every discovery contains ‘an irrational element’, or ‘a creative intuition’, in Bergson’s sense. In a similar way, Einstein speaks of ‘…the search for those highly universal…laws from which a picture of the world can be obtained by pure deduction. There is no logical path’, he says, ‘leading to these…laws. They can only be

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reached by intuition, based upon something like an intellectual love (‘Einfühlung’) of the objects of experience. (Popper, 1959, p. 32)

More than that, Popper also pointed out that the pure rational intuition and empirical observations required by modern philosophers do not exist at all in that they will easily fall in the “net of theories.” According to Popper, any observations and experiments aiming at discovering knowledge embrace theories and are guided by them. Without appealing to his/her originally grasped theories (no matter how unreliable they were), the individual will not determine any scientific problem, be engaged in any scientific observation or experiment, or be capable of explicating any piece of material obtained via observations and experiments. As a consequence, that empiricists demand that people refuse all accepted theories during the process of their observations and experiments is not merely impossible but essentially absurd. Should these be realized, the development of knowledge would be hindered rather than promoted. He says, Knowledge cannot start from nothing—from a tabula rasa—nor yet from observation. The advance of knowledge consists, mainly, in the modification of earlier knowledge. Although we may sometimes, for example in archaeology, advance through a chance observation, the significance of the discovery will usually depend upon its power to modify our earlier theories. (Popper, 1963, p. 28)

A little different from Polanyi and Popper, Feyerabend started from the methodological pluralism of anarchism to protest scientism’s bigotry for reason, contending that non-reason is also necessary for the progression of science, and it is an indispensable condition of scientific progress. That which merits notice is, that Polanyi and others criticize the rationalized process of scientific discoveries or the rationalized ideal of knowledge progress was not aimed at making human knowledge life return to the subjective conjectures, individual likes and dislikes even pure beliefs of ancient knowledge; but rather, it aimed to remind people of the limit of rationalization and its incompleteness on explicating the progress of human knowledge, particularly that of scientific knowledge, and to remind people of the impossibility of a pure observing subject or a rational one. Nor did they aim to connive at the individual irrational factors doing as they will in knowledge life. As a matter of fact, both Polanyi and Popper and Feyerabend stressed that people are self-conscious of these irrational factors and reflect on them, carrying out constant examinations and rebuttals of the knowledge produced with the participation of the non-reason as such, and letting various knowledge forms compete. The epistemological significance of their explications is that they reveal the completeness of human beings’ inner world in cognitive life hence help to overcome the split between reason and non-reason, scientific knowledge and non-scientific knowledge in cognitive activities since modern times and beyond. Thirdly, is the increase of modern knowledge a constantly differentiating process? In the spheres of Chinese pedagogy and philosophy, there is a general idea that the increase of human knowledge follows a “primitive synthesis—modern differentiation—new higher synthesis” path or one referred to as “synthesis—differentiation—re-synthesis.” This view roughly reflects the structural changes during the

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process of the increase of human knowledge, but it is also a generalized answer to the question above. Nevertheless, this is merely the recognition after the middle of the twentieth century. Before, particularly before the twentieth century, the differentiation of knowledge was considered as one of the necessary conditions promoting its advancement. From Bacon and Descartes to Spencer and Huxley, most scientists and philosophers contended that human knowledge progressed along this path. Scientific education and trainings based on the constant discipline differentiation as such increasingly narrowed the horizons of scientific practitioners, so much so that clear-cut barriers were set between different disciplines. These barriers were quite obvious between humanities and natural sciences and some even said that “no common word” existed at all between the two sorts of scientist. After the twentieth century, people began to make constant critiques on this constantly differentiating mode of knowledge development, and re-explicated the function of knowledge or discipline synthesis in the increase of human knowledge, notably that of modern knowledge. Popper sharply criticized the inclination of knowledge specialization since modern times. He compared the “tree of evolution” with that of knowledge increase. He believed that the trees of evolution all started from their roots and were then differentiated into an increasing number of branches. It was like a “tree of family” whose common root was composed of one single cell. The branches represented the later developments, and many branches were further differentiated into more specialized forms to settle some particular troubles and problems. Be that as it may, comparing the tree of evolution as such with the tree of knowledge increase, one would find that the latter was quite different. Popper contended that the increase of “applied knowledge” may be increasingly differentiated so as to settle the more and more specific technical problems, that of “pure knowledge” nevertheless was quite different. That is to say, the increase of pure knowledge is of an inclination of “integration” and “synthesis.” It is Popper’s contention that this inclination started in Newton’s age rather than coming into force after the twentieth century. De facto, Newton’s Law of Gravitation was the result of synthesizing Galileo’s terrestrial dynamics and Kepler’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Popper definitely pointed out that the increase of pure knowledge was a sort of “synthesizing increase.” This notwithstanding, during the development of Western knowledge from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, differentiation was, as it were, still the main trend. Until after the twentieth century, this trend began to change gradually, and Popper’s synthesizing increase became increasingly prominent. In the first half of the twentieth century, albeit there were still some plain traits of discipline in much knowledge progress made by the West and the whole humankind, the synthesis among different disciplines had become fairly obvious; after the second half of the century, various modes of synthesis among disciplines of different levels, qualities, and types had gradually become the important even necessary condition of the progress of discipline knowledge. Under such circumstances, there emerged many “emerging disciplines,” “peripheral disciplines,” “inter-disciplines,” “transverse disciplines,” “big discipline,” etc., familiar to us.

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The cause of this change of the knowledge increase mode may be that the production of modern knowledge is increasingly going beyond the scope of individual interest and becoming a cognitive act driven by social knowledge or technological interests aiming at settling the emergent or long-term problems presented by society, such as the problems of environment, food, health, energy or armament, and the like. The knowledge demanded by these practical social problems cannot be provided by some single discipline but must be co-offered by experts from many disciplines or multi-disciplines and, as a result, a trans-disciplinary knowledge community with a larger scope is formed. The large-scale trans-disciplinary study as such proves, from one aspect, that the disciplinary boundary to which people have been sticking since the modern times and beyond is a “virtual boundary” rather than an effective one. More importantly, from such trans-disciplinary studies, people have found many problems, methods, techniques, and theories that could not have been found or presented in some single discipline, which has objectively stimulated people to further consider some problems remaining to be settled or better addressed in some original single disciplinary framework. Trans-disciplinary comprehensive studies have gradually become the fundamental mode of promoting the advancement of knowledge. The cultivation and training of scientific practitioners have also turned from the grasping of single disciplinary theories and training of single disciplinary methods to those of relevant disciplines. The research team composed of people from different disciplinary backgrounds has also become the most fundamental scientific research form and the most creative research organization. Resultantly, the growing point of human knowledge has turned from inside one discipline to outside, being situated amid many disciplines, and the disciplinary status of the intellectuals has also become more and more vague as a result of which people have difficulty in defining according to traditional disciplines the intellectual statuses of many intellectuals and scientists. Fourthly, does the increase of modern knowledge have a steady foundation? The reliance on and pursuit of the steady foundation of the increase of modern knowledge has led to the “fundamentalism” in the evolving process of knowledge. Bacon, Newton, Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, Laplace, Leibniz, even Kant and Hegel, and other philosophers and scientists are all such “fundamentalists.” To a certain extent, the fundamentalism on knowledge increase is also inseparable from the “objectivism” and “absolutism” of knowledge qualities. So long as one holds the objective and absolute ideas of knowledge, one is simultaneously a fundamentalist. In addition, fundamentalism is also closely related to the idea of accumulative increase. We may even say that to seek for the steady foundation of knowledge increase is to ensure that knowledge may break away from various skepticism attacks and obtain sustainable and steady accumulative increase. Fundamentalism is of two different states of empiricism and rationalism: to empiricists, substantial “nature” and pure “experience” are the solid foundations of knowledge increase, and the “testability,” particularly the “verifiability,” based on “experiences” provides such a method to reach the foundation as such; to rationalists, “(rational) intuition” or “transcendental categories” provide an unbreakable foundation to knowledge increase and answer the question of how knowledge increase

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is possible. On this ground, the critiques on or rebuttals of fundamentalism are concerned with two questions: one is whether or not there is the substantial “nature” or pure “experience” qua the ultimate proof of examining knowledge; the other is whether or not “(rational) intuition” or “transcendental categories” is reliable. W. V. O. Quine’s answers to these two questions were both negative. On the one hand, he believed that there was not the so-called Cartesian “(rational) intuition” and Kantian “transcendental categories”; on the other hand, he did not think that there was experiential proof remaining to be “polluted.” In Quine’s eyes, the so-called “(rational) intuition” is as unpredictable and contradictory as “(sensory) intuition”; the so-called “transcendental categories” such as “time” and “space” are of no definite and unique meanings; the so-called “experiential proof” is nothing but what people hope to see and can see under present conditions. On this account, Quine believed that fundamentalism could not hold water at all and that it merely expressed people’s hope but failed to reflect the facts of the increase of human knowledge. De facto, in addition to Quine, Nietzsche, Cassirer, Rorty, and others have all made essential critiques on such pure “(rational) intuition” and “transcendental categories,” and Mannheim, Scheler, Polanyi, Popper, Feyerabend, and others have all essentially denied the reliability of experiential proofs also. According to them, the steady foundation of knowledge increase expected by fundamentalism does not exist at all. They believed that on the way of pursuing knowledge, people should never expect to increase it like building a house after laying a solid foundation, since the edifice of human knowledge is lack of a steady foundation and “errors” and “revolutions” will constantly emerge in the history of knowledge advancement. Just as is said by Popper, Science does not rest upon rock-bottom. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or ‘given’ base; and when we cease our attempts to drive our piles into a deeper layer, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that they are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being. (Popper, 1959, p. 111)

His words seem to be the exact rebuttal of Descartes’ citation reported above. Be that as it may, if there is no steady foundation for the increase of human knowledge, how can it constantly increase? Is not this again risking to get trapped into skepticism and agnosticism? Popper contended that “optimism” (fundamentalism) epistemology was as wrong as “pessimism” (skepticism). People should be neither too optimistic nor too pessimistic about obtaining knowledge. Albeit we cannot obtain the absolute foundation of knowledge, it is possible that human knowledge advances, which is a result of “critical examination.” Different from the various “examinations” in a general sense, the “critical examination” in Popper’s terminology does not aim at “verifying” or “proving” some knowledge insomuch as the latter is impossible to him. The purpose of critical examination is: how to find and eliminate errors. That Popper regards knowledge increase as a result of critical examination means that we can never obtain objective and absolute knowledge with respect to things so we will forever err and will never evade from that and, resultantly, what is important is to know how to find and eliminate errors, and to believe that people are capable of learning from their errors.

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Fifthly, is the increase of modern knowledge an individual process? Scheler and Mannheim had a strong aversion to the view of regarding knowledge as an individual spiritual process in that they believed that, in this way, the important role of social factors in knowledge increase would be shielded. Starting from the stance of the sociology of knowledge, they contended that not merely the qualities of knowledge were social, but the increase of knowledge was also constrained by social factors. In virtue of the analyses of the origin and development of religious, metaphysical, and scientific knowledge, respectively, Scheler pointed out that humans’ pursuit of scientific knowledge had in effect early started in ancient times but it remained to make great achievements until modern time just due to social needs and constraints, rather than to human reason itself. In ancient society, that which was needed by people was not natural authority but the religious and metaphysical ones, which, as a result, could obtain the support of other social organizations and develop in great fashion. In modern society, nevertheless, along with the development of industry, the advent of Protestantism, and the emerging capitalism, people needed scientific knowledge to improve their control over nature, suffice their constantly expanding material desires, and to refute the metaphysical ramifications of nature, which hence led to the scientific progress with natural sciences as the kernel. Without the changes in social factors, there would not have been the development of scientific causes. On this account, social factors are not “disturbing” during the process of knowledge production; just the opposite, they are playing an active and important role. When discussing the studies of scientific history, Kuhn also pointed out that considering scientific discoveries as the results of the scientists’ individual work will not help understand the genuine process of scientific discovery. As a matter of fact, be they the problems studied, the categories employed, or the methods adopted and beliefs owned, they all originate from the scientific “paradigms” shared by the scientists in different spheres. In this vein, without paying attention to the “horizontal studies” aiming at the relations between some scientist and other contemporaneous ones but merely relying on the “longitudinal studies” of the relations between his scientific discoveries and the relevant theories of the forerunners, we cannot at all correctly and completely understand the process of scientific development. This is also as was pointed out by Bernard Barber the scientific sociologist, “Scientific fruits—scientific inventions and discoveries—are a sort of product with fundamental social traits,” and we cannot obtain “the more scientific understandings of science itself” unless we study science from social perspectives. Nonetheless, the social factors in his terminology have gone far beyond Kuhn’s scientific “paradigm” shared by many scientists but include political authorities, professional systems, cultural values and ideals, and so on. The conditions of modern scientific development also indicate that if a person leaves the knowledge community in which he/she belongs but is completely indulged into individual meditations, if he/she knows nothing or cares nothing about the social technologies, values, or organizations in which he/she lives, even when he/she is engaged in philosophy seemingly completely focusing on individual intellectual interest, it will be quite hard for him/her to obtain creative knowledge achievements, let alone being engaged in studies of social and natural sciences. Trans-disciplinary

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communications and conversations have become an important condition to obtain new knowledge and promoting knowledge increase. More than that, the boundary between the sphere of knowledge and other social areas is being broken in that as is in other spheres, in the sphere of knowledge, “consumption” determines “production,” whether or not the intellectuals can get the “customers’” “order forms” (funds or sponsorship) becoming an important factor constraining the production and increase of knowledge. This demands that the intellectuals be fond not only of studies in their respective spheres but also of grasping the problems socially more valuable and of writing excellent research reports to persuade various fund committees or sponsors to grant funds to their research teams. This is because without financial support, no one will be capable of accomplishing the increasingly complex programs of study based on personal financial capacity. This demands that the intellectuals learn how to get in touch with various groups of social interests, how to bargain with them before agreeing, and, simultaneously, how to coordinate the relations with their companions to form the study force capable of satisfying the clients. During the process of the increase of modern knowledge, as it were, the stress of the individual as a “scientific lone ranger” has been completely out of date, and individual talents, wisdom, responsibility, and laborious work cannot independently create valuable knowledge if separated from the complex relations between the individual and others or society. On the basis of the above analyses and discussions, it can be seen that along with the rapid development of human knowledge since modern time and beyond, the mode of knowledge increase has also experienced great even revolutionary changes. The originally believed “accumulative,” “rational,” “single-disciplinary,” “fundamentalism,” and “individual” modes of knowledge increase have gradually shown their illusion, shortages, and flaws hence increasingly hinder the increase of human knowledge; the new modes of knowledge increase more coincident with the practical conditions of knowledge increase or scientific development—“critical,” “holistic,” “comprehensive,” “anti-fundamentalism,” and “social” or “cooperative” increasing modes are being explicated in a more and more clear fashion and obtaining more and more acknowledgment, and are gradually playing active roles during the process of modern knowledge’s development and scientific advancement. Along with the change of the mode of knowledge increase, the quality structure of the individual demanded by knowledge innovation also experiences many great changes, namely, rich imagination, well-grounded conjectures, brave critiques, bold attempts, effective communications, sincere cooperations, active conversations, etc., together with the background of trans-disciplinary knowledge and methods, good social image and social relations, strong social organizing and coordinating capacity, or the like, are becoming some necessary qualities of the intellectuals when they are engaged in knowledge production in the new historical period. This apart, due to the tremendous influences of new knowledge on each aspect of social life and production, following and maintaining certain forms of knowledge or scientific ethics are becoming the fundamental demands to be engaged in knowledge innovation.

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6.3 The Change of the Knowledge Increasing Mode and Educational Reform With the theories of the increasing mode of postmodern knowledge as the starting point, we contend that in the present innovative educational reform relevant to the state’s knowledge innovative capacities, comprehensive national strength, and social developing potential, particular attention must be paid to the following several aspects: 1. In the aspect of education purpose, we should attach importance to students’ grasping of fundamental knowledge and methods, but we should all the more stress the development of their critical, comprehensive, and cooperative awarenesses as regards the knowledge they have obtained. Due to the influences of the idea of modern knowledge increase, many teachers and educators in China believe that to make students suitable for future knowledge innovation or scientific research, it is a must that they first of all grasp certain fundamental knowledge, methods, or skills (the so-called “bi-foundation”), namely, to lay a solid “foundation.” They also employ the metaphor of architecture that whether or not the foundation of the fundamental knowledge and methods is solid is as important as whether or not the base of a house is solid, and that only a solid and strong foundation can support the edifice of knowledge towering into the clouds. Many of them even deploy the Chinese idiom of “accumulate richly and break forth vastly” to explicate the epistemological significance of stressing the delivery of fundamental knowledge and the training in fundamental methods. In addition, since the typology of knowledge of modern people still follows the mode of that of disciplines since modern times and beyond, and the new mode of knowledge typology remains to be widely acknowledged, the so-called fundamental knowledge and methods also exist in the form of disciplines, manifesting themselves in the fundamental facts, problems, concepts, categories, propositions, principles, methods, to name just a few, of each discipline. In this connection, to grasp the fundamental knowledge and skills is in effect to grasp the items above which, de facto, compose the “fundamental disciplinary structure” presented in the curriculum reform movement of the United States in the 1960s. Admittedly, stressing students’ grasping of the fundamental knowledge and skills of each discipline is one manifestation of the progress made by modern education at the level of purpose, as opposed to the demand that students grasp at least a large amount of disciplinary knowledge and skills, be they big or trivial, which once greatly prevailed during the early stage of modern education. For instance, Jeremy Bentham the British philosopher proposed, in the nineteenth century, a system of scientific curricula virtually covering all the disciplinary knowledge at that time.8 The 1970s witnessed Spencer’s curriculum system which, albeit not that complicated 8

Bentham’s curriculum system involves that at the elementary stage, the students should develop the skills of reading, writing, calculating, and so on; in the first stage, they should grasp mineralogy, botany, zoology, geography, geometry, history, chronology, and plotting; in the second stage,

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like Bentham’s, also included various contents of knowledge relevant to a “satisfactory life,” such as physiology, anatomy, dietetics, politics, economics, music, among others. By the twentieth century, albeit the situation had changed much, namely, only some specific disciplines were set in many schools, say, physics, chemistry, geology, dietetics, etc., there were still problems of clumsy knowledge in each discipline, which cost students much time and energy to study and remember. The situation went worse after the middle of the twentieth century in that the increasing speed of people’s knowledge became increasingly higher, which was vividly called “knowledge explosion,” whereas the curriculum content of the school could not be enlarged limitlessly. As a consequence, to be adjusted to the situation of the emerging scientific revolution, to better improve students’ scientific qualities, and to run the school education in a more efficient fashion, people must re-choose and re-organize the curriculum knowledge. That is to say, it is insufficient to merely allege like Spencer that “Scientific knowledge is of the most educational values,” and people must take into consideration questions like “What kind of scientific knowledge is of the most educational values?” and “How to get scientific knowledge for the sake of realizing its educational values to the maximum?” This is one of the key factors leading to Western countries’ curriculum reform movement in the 1960s whose main result was the birth of the new curriculum mode represented by the American “structural curriculum” stressing that the whole school teaching should pivot around the “fundamental disciplinary structure.” The reformers believed that the fundamental structure of the disciplines for learning would help settle the problem of the limitless expansion of curriculum content, relieve students’ burdens of study, reduce the difference between “advanced knowledge” and “low knowledge,” and would do good to the transference of the obtained knowledge and the training of students’ intelligence. Nevertheless, this curriculum reform having wasted large amount of manpower, material, and financial resources virtually failed at last due to comprehensive causes the epistemological aspect of which was, so to speak, that people failed to correctly recognize the new traits of modern knowledge increase or scientific development but depended on making students to grasp the fundamental structure of the disciplines so as to rapidly adjust themselves to the new demands from knowledge increase or scientific development. Be that as it may, this thought exerted great influences on the educational theories and practices after the 1980s in China. The Chinese version of Jerome Seymour Bruner’s The Process of Education enjoyed a large circulation number, and it seemed that grasping the “bi-foundation” had become an “iron law” in China’s education cause, allowing no suspicion or vacillation whatsoever. It can they should grasp mechanics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, pneumatics, acoustics, chemistry, electromagnetism, electrics, ballistics, archeology, statistics, English; in the third stage, they should grasp mining, geology, architecture, agriculture, bookkeeping, physical economics (applying mechanics and chemistry to the management of domestic causes); in the fourth stage, they should grasp hygiene, including physiology, anatomy, pathological taxonomy, nutriology, preventive medicine, surgery, therapeutics, animal hygiene; in the fifth stage, they should grasp geometry, algebra, mathematical physics, astronomy, technology, or manufacturing principles in general. This is a tremendous scientific curriculum system which, nevertheless, is quite impractical seen from the perspective of education.

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be seen that the key point is, is grasping fundamental knowledge and skills or the fundamental structure of the discipline the right strategy to meet the increase of modern knowledge, or can it become the “foundation” in the true sense of the word of students’ later knowledge innovation? Seen from the aforementioned increasing mode of postmodern knowledge, the idea and belief as such merits reflections. To begin, the increasing mode of postmodern knowledge indicates that so far human beings have not reached any unquestionable knowledge whatsoever, nor have they obtained knowledge that can offer the ultimate explications of the world. On this account, there is not any piece of knowledge qualified for the steady “foundation” of later knowledge increases. In the second place, the increase of human knowledge is not an accumulative process wherein new knowledge is superposed onto the old one, but a process in which the original knowledge is constantly modified even completely abandoned. To this connection, albeit it is important for the individual to grasp and understand the original knowledge, that has merely finished the former half of knowledge innovation, and the more important is to make critiques on and rebuttals of the knowledge and, on this ground, to present new presumptions of knowledge. Without the awarenesses of the critique and rebuttal as such and relevant qualities and capacities, the individual would get trapped into the original knowledge helplessly, and would form the habit of following blindly or echoing the views of others, which would never amount to knowledge innovation at all. Thirdly, such awarenesses and relevant qualities and capacities are not given by birth but come from long-term encouragement and cultivation. If children were demanded from the primary stage that they make full use of their intellectual power to grasp the unquestionable truths, in the long run, they would lose the awarenesses of critique and rebuttal, not to mention obtaining the qualities and capacities relevant to them. The over-stress from the current school education at each level and of each type on the grasping of “bi-foundation” embraces, to a great extent, the risk of depriving students of this independent awarenesses of critique and rebuttal. Nonetheless, there is another intractable problem, that is, whether or not the adolescents have the capacity to make critiques on and rebuttals of the curriculum knowledge. It is generally believed that curriculum knowledge, be it of natural sciences or of humanities or social sciences, has been verified or proved at an experiential, logical, or historical level, so even the teachers have difficulty criticizing or rebutting it, let alone the adolescent students. Thus, is it impractical to uphold the cultivation of their awarenesses, qualities, and capacities to criticize and rebut original knowledge? I don’t think so. De facto, students have this awareness, even the quality and capacity as such. The rationale is, at the level of difficulty, the knowledge shown before them is generally coincident with their cognitive capacity, or at least is understandable to them. A thing understandable to a person is at the same time one that can be criticized and rebutted by him/her. A student in grade one will not criticize and rebut a binomial theorem, but will do so to “1 + 2 = 3”9 ; a senior A child asks his teacher, “Why ‘1 + 2’ equals 3?” The teacher asks him, “Do you know what ‘1 + 1’ equals?” The child answers, “It equals 2.” Then the teacher says, “That’s correct. That ‘1 + 1’ is 2 indicates that in ‘2’ there are two ‘1,’ and ‘1 + 2’ means that two ‘1’ are added to the one ‘1,’

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high school student may not make Kantian philosophical critiques, but he/she might completely express his/her ideas as to what the “objective regularity” is. In practical classroom teaching, these questions embracing students’ particular understanding of the curriculum knowledge and the awareness of critique and rebuttal after them originally exist in great plenty, they, however, got ignored in traditional teaching modes insomuch as they were considered irrelevant to the “grasping” of fundamental knowledge and skills, to the answers to standardized exams, or to their competition for entering into a higher school. As a result, a tragic educational phenomenon appears: the higher the students’ learning grade is, the less awareness of critique and rebuttal they have. In college classrooms, when you ask what is “philosophy,” students would answer that “Philosophy is a science studying the world views and methodology.” They substitute others’ knowledge from the textbooks for their own recognition, and even think that there is no more necessity to ask this question. Resultantly, the teachers and education scholars would have the falsity that the students are lack of the capacity to make critiques and rebuttals due to their age and intellectual foundations. The fact is, even if they are really lack of this capacity, it is never due to these but to our education itself. Sharply speaking, it is our conventional teaching modes based on the view of modern knowledge, particularly that of knowledge increase, that have deprived them of the opportunities and rights to perform critiques and rebuttals, which ultimately turned them into a group either following blindly the textbook knowledge or rashly refusing it in lieu of a group, as was described by Popper, capable of constantly keeping an open mind, making a critical examination of the original knowledge, and therefore promoting knowledge to progress. Postmodern education aims at cultivating students’ critical awareness as knowledge “increases via critiques.” Be that as it may, I would like to stress that “critique” here does not refer to the “negative” meaning given to it in the political struggles in the 1960s; but rather, it all the more refers to a sort of “active” understanding, intending to “reexamine,” “re-defend,” and “rethink about” the original ideas (e.g., facts, problems, concepts, categories, propositions, principles, and methods) and their perspective, proofs, expressing modes, or the like. The result of the critiques is not necessarily the complete abandonment of all the original ideas; rather, it may even all the more verify or prove them. Nevertheless, this is not that important. What is the most important is, during the course, students can learn the thinking modes like suspecting, questioning, looking for flaws, examining the proofs, organizing the defenses, changing the perspectives, and so on. These thinking modes are the most important qualities and capacities for them to be engaged in knowledge innovation in the future. In Einstein’s terminology, they are the “originary” or most fundamental qualities of the individual engaged in creative work. Without these “originalities,” one will not have genuine creative talents, will amount to nothing in the scientific sphere, will only become the “parrot” of the predecessor scientists or intellectuals, and will not constantly upgrade the knowledge foundation of his/her work and life by so how many ‘1’ are there?” The child says, after thinking for a while, “3!” Who can say that this child’s question has been settled? Furthermore, who can see what the child’s question involves? In the teacher’s eyes, however, “is 3” is not problematic at all.

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means of producing various new knowledge before making his/her life and work full of vitality. It is my view that the critical awareness of knowledge is the right thing that can really help students be adjusted to the new demands from the age of “knowledge explosion” on the qualities of the talents. More than that, critical awareness is also a powerful tool helping the adolescent to distinguish and resist the various knowledge hegemonies in the age of the Internet. This notwithstanding, insofar as the production of new knowledge is concerned, being of critical awarenesses is not enough, and one must simultaneously own the comprehensive awareness of disciplinary knowledge and the cooperative awareness with intellectuals from other spheres and members from other social institutions. As was stated afore, the increase of postmodern knowledge is increasingly inclined to adopting a “comprehensive” and “cooperative” mode, and it is increasingly breaking the knowledge and organizational boundaries between the disciplines and becoming a trans-disciplinary even trans-sphere act. In this vein, if contemporary education intends to really improve students’ awarenesses, qualities, and capacities for knowledge innovation, it must stress, at the level of purpose, the cultivation of comprehensive and cooperative awareness, in addition to critical awareness. In the past, education failed to attach due importance to the latter two types of awareness. On the one hand, mutually independent disciplinary curriculum systems and knowledge tradition have divided the whole knowledge world into one after another mutually independent knowledge systems, which hence convinced students that human knowledge was distributed and developed in such a way; on the other hand, traditional class-teaching system ignored, at the same time when it stressed the communications between the teacher and students at the individual level, the significance of the communications among students, which mostly turned the learning activity into an individual one under the guidance of the teacher. What is more, traditional curriculum knowledge also stressed the stating of the individual scientists or intellectuals’ roles during knowledge progression, but it greatly ignored their communications, conversations, and cooperations with their colleagues in the academia, which had also impressed the adolescents that the discovery of new knowledge purely resulted from the individual’s subjective endeavor. In fact, as is said by Popper, Kuhn, and Feyerabend, the progress of human knowledge results from the mutual competitions and conversations between various ideas and methods, without which there would not be any knowledge progress whatsoever. As a consequence, in addition to critical awareness, comprehensive and cooperative awareness should be the purpose for which contemporary education reform strives in that they constitute an important condition of the individual knowledge innovation. 2. At the level of curriculum construction, downsizing the curriculum content is what should be stressed, but the reform of the revealing modes of the curriculum structure and content should also be highlighted; at the level of reforming curriculum structure, the construction of comprehensive and artistic curriculums should be emphasized; at the level of the revealing mode of curriculum content, the traits of story and narration of it should be the top priority.

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Under the influences of the theories of modern knowledge increase and the educational purpose of “laying a foundation,” the contents of the modern curriculum are very clumsy, which causes great spiritual pressure for teachers and students. Some teachers complain that it costs much time to cultivate students’ questioning and critical awareness, and that cultivating this awareness and relevant qualities and capacities would require sufficient time for students to question, think, and debate. The fact is, there are really too many curriculum contents and teachers have difficulty finishing the teaching task and schedule in each class even when they merely input the teachings, so how can there be time to guide the students for sufficient questioning, thinking, and discussing? To be sure, in many classes, no sooner had some questions of educational values been presented, than the teacher offers standard answers and then moves on to the next unit before the students have time to make earnest thinking and discussions. It can thus be seen that downsizing the curriculum contents can help to reduce the teachers and students’ spiritual burdens for the sake of leaving more time for class questioning, thinking, discussing, debating, or the like. Nonetheless, insofar as students’ qualities of knowledge innovation are cultivated, merely downsizing the curriculum contents is not enough and we should simultaneously attach importance to the reform of the revealing modes of the curriculum structure and content. As is known to all, modern curriculum structure generally takes all the disciplinary curricula as the stem and other activity-oriented courses as the subsidiary. Seen at epistemological level, this curriculum structure is closely related to modern knowledge structure, notably the increasing mode of knowledge, being greatly influenced by the ideas of disciplinary differentiation and specialty training. Nevertheless, as was noted above, this sort of idea is questionable in that both in the upsurging and developing of modern science and in the progress of postmodern science, the important role of the “synthesis” in knowledge innovation can be sensed. An individual sticking to some disciplinary sphere and being incapable of finding the interrelationship between the knowledge of one and another disciplines will hardly make scientific discoveries. To this connection, seen from the increasing mode of postmodern knowledge, the justification of such differentiated curriculums has virtually vanished, and people really need to reconsider the structure of school curriculums. As a matter of fact, early at the beginning of the twentieth century, John Dewey had pointed out the damage of differentiated curriculums, contending that they failed to reflect the progressive situations of human knowledge, but also had severely deviated from the practices of school life and “split” at intelligent level the students’ proper life. The settlement presented by Dewey was to take students’ “life experiences” in lieu of disciplinary knowledge as the core. This being a fairly good perspective notwithstanding, Dewey failed to make clear and sufficient formal analyses of students’ “life experiences,” let alone building a new curriculum system on the analyses. As is known, after abandoning the disciplinary curriculums, he set up such courses as “metal processing,” “woodwork,” etc., compromising too much with students’ direct interests but greatly ignoring the high demands of science’s speedy advancement toward students’ intelligent level. His program of curriculum structure was soon refused by reconstructionism, essentialism, etc. Worse still, in the

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structural curriculum reform in the 1960s, it even suffered strong critiques from structuralists who believed that Dewey and the whole progressive education movement were the arch-criminal of American education, and were responsible for restricting the quality of American school education, particularly that of scientific education, to a low level. As a result, people attempted to recover and reinforce the system of disciplinary curriculums and implement differentiated curriculums with the fundamental disciplinary structure as the core. What is interesting is, nonetheless, a decade later, this structural curriculum reform aiming at lifting the scientific qualities and intelligent levels of students again suffered people’s critiques, and it seemed that progressivism started to rejuvenate in the educational sphere. Albeit people did not think that progressivism had been “out of date,” they were alert to its possible influences on the scientific qualities of students and the people all over the country. At the beginning of the 1980s, the US National Science and Technology Commission (NSTC) issued Project 2061, making earnest reflections on American scientific education and presenting a new plan one important point of which was to strengthen the comprehensiveness of scientific curriculums. De facto, not only scientific curriculums but other ones, even those of social sciences and humanities, also need to strengthen the comprehensiveness. Nevertheless, how to do so? How to construct a school curriculum system with comprehensive curriculums as the stem? What disciplines can and should be put together? Given that these questions are very big and complex and have somewhat gone beyond the reach of our discussions at the level of capacity and scope, I cannot but suspend them. That which I intend to stress is, comprehensive curriculums should be the direction of the whole school curriculum reform in that it reflects the trend of the increase of human knowledge, the complexity of the influencing factors on it, and the wholeness of the relationship between knowledge and social life. The construction of comprehensive curriculums is essentially aimed at making students have a clear recognition as to the universality of the intellectual life, liberating their thoughts from the narrow disciplinary horizon, and improving their awarenesses, qualities, and capacities of making knowledge innovations. Seen from the increasing mode of postmodern knowledge, in the contemporary curriculum reform, apart from the construction of comprehensive curricula, which of artistic courses should also be strengthened. This is because just as was pointed out by Einstein, Polanyi, and others, imagination and conjecture are not optional during the process of scientific discovering, nor are esthetic senses and passions merely the by-products of scientific discoveries; but rather, all of them are necessary conditions of the latter. In this line, cultivating students’ imagination, esthetic capacity, and inner passions via artistic education will certainly help them produce knowledge innovations. That is to say, artistic education aims not only to improve people’s artistic qualities and cultivate their artistic talents, but it is also of the function of preparing psychological conditions for people’s knowledge innovation. Artistic education is in effect interlinked with scientific education rather than being the “opposite polar” to the latter. This is manifested in many great scientists who usually have made important contributions to scientific causes but simultaneously have fairly striking artistic accomplishments.

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In the contemporary curriculum reform with improving students’ awarenesses, qualities, and capacities of knowledge innovation as the core, a content of vital import is the reform of curriculum making. In the past curriculum making, curriculum knowledge was composed of some succinct disciplinary concepts, categories, propositions, principles, and the facts, experiences, experiments, examples, and exercises supporting them. The advantage of this curriculum making is that students can easily clearly grasp one knowledge point after another and the interconnections between the successive points. Plainly, this making also takes into consideration the need to highlight the “bi-foundation.” On the other hand, its disadvantages are: it ignores the connections between different disciplines; the various bifurcations on ideas during the process of obtaining knowledge; the arranged knowledge’s insufficiency, and people’s questioning of it. As a result, this making mode impressed the teachers and students that all curriculum knowledge seemed to be the verified and the only possible knowledge. In their minds, knowledge was understood as the static, objective, and absolute truths consisting of some concepts, categories, facts, and the like. Given this knowledge, and under the guidance of this view of knowledge, that which they can do was to understand, remember, and grasp them. As a matter of course, the result of doing so did harm to the encouragement and cultivation of students’ questioning and critical awarenesses. Seen at the level of the qualities and increasing mode of postmodern knowledge, the making of contemporary curriculum knowledge should narrate one true “intellectual story” after another, tell clearly the “time” (When was the knowledge as such discovered or presented?), “place” (In what kind of socio-cultural background was the knowledge discovered or presented?), “characters” (Who discovered or presented the knowledge, and was there the interrelationship between his/her life experiences and the knowledge?), “events” (To what kind of event does the discovery or presentation of the knowledge belong? Are these events the re-explications of the original ideas of knowledge or are they the subversion of the latter?), “process” (What is the process whence the knowledge was discovered or presented? How did it win in the competitions between different ideas or among the various academic and social forces influencing it? Does it bear the “scars”10 left from the opponents’ attacks?), and “results” (How was it accepted and narrated by people? How did it produce other intellectual or social effects? What were the evaluations of it from people of different historical periods or social cultures?) when these stories happened? I believe that in the history of human cognition, there has never been any kind of knowledge falling from above. Each sort of knowledge is of its own story which is surely quite splendid. To show these splendid stories to students will surely attract them and promote them to be wholly concerned with the fate of the knowledge in the stories and will surely encourage them to strive consistently for the justice and good in the world of knowledge. Nonetheless, under the dominance of the modern knowledge form, this story-telling trait has been suppressed even abolished in that it is considered harmful to the image of “objectivity,” “universality,” and “valueneutrality” of knowledge, to the “saint” image of the scientists or intellectuals, even 10

That is, the questions presented by the competitive theory which however fail to be well answered by itself. In other words, its own theoretical shortages.

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to the image of the social groups based on the knowledge as such. In this vein, the progress of human knowledge that teachers and students see in the textbooks is that having been greatly “simplified” or even “distorted.” From this sort of textbook, they can hardly understand the practical process of human knowledge increase, let alone making full and necessary preparations for it. 3. At the level of teaching activities, it is supposed to practically change the views of teachers and students, resolutely oppose the “duck-stuffing” type of teaching, recognize “heuristic” teaching, strongly uphold reflective and cooperative teaching, promote during the teaching courses various forms of questioning, communication, conversation, and cooperation, and to implement teaching assessment aiming to measure an individual’s awarenesses, qualities, and capacities levels of knowledge innovation. Under the dominance of the modern knowledge qualities and increasing modes, the teacher plays the roles of the “deliver” and “interpreter”11 of curriculum knowledge, the “organizer” of students’ obtainment of the knowledge, the “assessor” of students’ grasping of the knowledge, and the “feedback provider” of the relevant assessing information. Additionally, the teacher may also act as the “prompter” of students’ learning motivation, which, nevertheless, is not necessarily attainable by every teacher. Of the roles, the key ones are the “deliver” and “interpreter” of curriculum knowledge. People often employ Han Yu’s “The teacher is the person who delivers the Dao 道, teaches the doctrines, and settles the confusions of the students” in his On Teacher to describe these two roles.12 Other roles are all in close relation to these, or are the expansions of them: organizing the class teaching is aimed at securing the smooth delivery of curriculum knowledge, assessing students’ conditions of grasping the knowledge at helping the teacher better deliver it from students’ practical state, feeding back the information of the assessment to students at helping them to better understand their states of grasping so as to improve their learning methods, and promoting students’ learning motivation at enabling them to be better engaged in the obtaining of the curriculum knowledge, and so on and so forth. Insofar as the two roles of “deliver” and “interpreter” are concerned, they center on curriculum knowledge, “delivering” and “interpreting” it, respectively. Be it delivering or interpreting, it is supposed to be “correct” and “precise” and no error or different interpretation from the syllabus is allowed. The reasons are: on the one hand, the teacher’s errors will usually lead to the students’, and therefore to the 11

The “interpreter” is employed in the ordinary rather than the “hermeneutic” sense of “interpret.” Presumably, “explainer” is more proper in that in the teaching life dominated by traditional ideas of knowledge, the teacher’s views, emotions, and stances are seldom shown, and in a great measure, he merely explains about some curriculum knowledge according to some established procedure. Therefore, in the same class given by different teachers, we can see the difference in methods or techniques and sense the different teaching atmospheres, but we can hardly see the difference in the understanding of the knowledge points. 12 The preciseness of this generalization is questionable since there might be not a bit of distance between Han Yu’s “reason,” “delivering reason,” and our “knowledge” and “delivering knowledge” today.

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circulation of the errors; on the other hand, also the more important reason, under the dominance of modern ideas of knowledge, curriculum knowledge is considered as the model of “objective knowledge” and the “foundation” of students for their future knowledge innovation, so any inconformity to the curriculum knowledge means the emergence of “errors” and the unsteadiness of the “foundation,” which of course cannot be allowed. Under such circumstances, all the teacher’s arts of teaching are directed upon how to deliver and interpret the knowledge in a correct, precise, and effective fashion, and those who can achieve this would become the most excellent teachers. Whereas be they excellent teachers (except for college teachers) or not, after a long-term playing of these roles, virtually all of them will lose their independent capacities for judging, understanding, and knowledge innovating as to what they teach, and hence become “pedagogues” in the true sense of the word. Under the dominance of the qualities and increasing modes of modern knowledge, the student is considered as an “immature” cognitive subject, a person needing to constantly grasp and accumulate knowledge by reason of “lacking knowledge,” even one needing the help, guidance, and training from the teachers due to his/her lack of cognitive capacity. These recognitions or assumptions determine all the roles the student plays in their school life: attending class, listening to the teacher, finishing homework, accepting the teacher’s management, taking examinations, and the like. To ensure that they can grasp what is expected, the school usually formulates a series of rules and regulations, such as “No absence,” “Do listen earnestly,” “Do finish the homework on time,” and so on. During the learning process, like the teacher, the students are deprived of, in principle, the rights to make peculiar understanding, questioning, and criticizing the curriculum knowledge. They must accept the views of the textbook, even of the teacher, and all their learning methods are merely aimed at solidly grasping or skillfully using the so-called objective knowledge. Under such circumstances, the extent of students’ efforts or intelligence determines their academic performances, and those who are neither industrious nor intelligent cannot but suffer the trouble from their undesirable or failing performances. Nevertheless, be they students of good performance or not, due to the long-term passive learning mode and intelligent life, they are easy to get bored with learning itself. Were it not for the sake of the college entrance exam and later professional prospect, no one knows how many students would be willing to stay in the class for learning. This view of teacher and student should change along with that of the qualities and increasing mode of postmodern knowledge. On the one hand, the teacher should no longer regard the students as “immature cognitive subjects” but as those who have certain cognitive capacities and who are rapidly developing, no longer as those needing to constantly grasping and accumulating knowledge by reason of “lacking knowledge” but as those who are identical with the adults and the scientists in owing their knowledge but needing to constantly modify and develop it. On the other hand, the teacher should no longer regard the knowledge in teaching materials as “objective,” “absolute,” and “value-neutral,” no longer as the “foundation” for the students to be engaged in knowledge innovation in the future, but should recognize the materials’ traits of being social, conjectural, and valuable, and should realize that the genuine foundation of the students for their future knowledge innovation is their

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curiosity, desire for knowledge, critical and cooperative and comprehensive awareness, to name a few. More than that, the teacher should realize that at the level of qualities, the knowledge innovation with critiques and rebuttals as the core is not the task for which the students can only become competent in the future, but the one for which they are capable of going in now. In practice, who dare say that children are incapable of presenting their conjectures on the interpretations or settlement of some problem? Who dare say that children are incapable of modifying their conjectures according to new proofs or others’ critiques? Who dare say that children are incapable of accepting reasonable views after making comparisons between different opinions according to certain criteria? In the world outside the school, or, more exactly, in the world outside the class, children are doing these things every day, just like what the scientists do, say, presenting questions, collecting proofs, raising and discussing and modifying views, telling ideas, instructing their behaviors according to the new ideas, or the like. On this account, the teacher should recognize his/her role and behaviors, and reconsider the direction of the teaching arts, so as to orient the whole teaching direction toward the improvement of the students’ awarenesses, qualities, and capacities for knowledge innovation. The “duck-stuffing” teaching mode must also be drastically abandoned along with the change of the ideas of knowledge, teacher, and student. To be frank, albeit the educational sphere has been against this teaching mode from the very beginning, it is still of a certain market. The causes are complex and a key one, I think, lies in the qualities and increasing mode of modern knowledge. If knowledge is “objective,” “absolute,” and “value-neutral,” and is the “foundation” of the students’ future knowledge innovation, what’s wrong with “duck-stuffing”? In effect, under the dominance of modern ideas of knowledge, there is no substantive difference between the “duck-stuffing” mode adored most and the “heuristic” mode to which they appeal. The difference merely rests in the fact that the “duck-stuffing” mode does not care much about methods but merely puts the students in a passive-accepting state whereas the “heuristic” mode stresses the choice of method and let the students accept knowledge in an active fashion. To this connection, at the same time when we drastically abandon the “duck-stuffing” mode, we must earnestly reflect on the “heuristic” teaching understood in the common sense, namely, rather than merely regarding “enlightening” or “nudging” as a condition to make the students better and faster grasp the curriculum knowledge, we should authentically take promoting the students’ awareness of questioning and capacities of independent thinking and judging as the fundamental purposes of the heuristic teaching. Concerning the increasing mode of postmodern knowledge, the newly developed reflective teaching and cooperative teaching in the past few years are supposed to be the relatively ideal teaching modes to cultivate students’ awarenesses, qualities, and capacities for knowledge innovation. Generally speaking, reflective teaching emphasizes guiding and promoting the students to constantly examine and develop their original knowledge foundations, presumptions, and learning backgrounds, which is de facto a process promoting the increase of students’ individual knowledge, but also one wherein the students may set up correct ideas of knowledge increase. On the other hand, cooperative teaching puts more emphasis on the cooperation among

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the students during the learning process so as to turn the following into the fundamental requirements for their learning life or the fundamental conditions for them to present some view: the communications on their respective ideas or view, discussions, conversations, rebuttals, negotiations, reaching coincidence, among others. These fundamental requirements or conditions are also those that they must have or suffice, no matter what kind of knowledge innovation they are going to produce in the future. To conform to these two teaching modes, the teacher should, during the teaching process, make use of this teaching arts to promote every sort of questioning, communication, conversion, and cooperation. On promoting students to question, the teacher should encourage them to present questions in various forms; on promoting the communications among students, the teacher should leave them more time; on promoting the conversations between students, the teacher should guide them to go deep rather than merely stopping at their bifurcations on superficial views or merely sticking to their respective views; on promoting the cooperations between students, the teacher should assign the learning tasks directed upon the learning team and guide them to make labor divisions and cooperations as well as full communications on ideas for fear of the phenomenon of reliance. All these are of vital importance to the cultivation of students’ awarenesses, qualities, and capacities for knowledge innovation. In terms of the current teaching mode, the most urgent and important thing is no more than encouraging students to present various forms of questions, which is the foundation of the communications, conversations, and cooperations among them. Just as is said by Popper, knowledge does not originate from observations, nor from theories, but from questions. The advancement of human knowledge is a process in which the old questions turn into new ones via conjectures and rebuttals. To produce new knowledge, one must be capable of presenting new questions, and to produce profound knowledge, one must be capable of raising profound questions. Those who are not even capable of raising questions will hardly become talents of the awarenesses, qualities, and capacities for knowledge innovation. In the practical teaching process, sometimes the students may raise questions seeming quite “absurd” that, to be sure, embrace their active thinking. To let them raise the questions, to help them express clearly the questions, and to guide them to earnestly discuss, modify, analyze, and settle the questions with their classmates, the teacher will promote their active thinking, and will gradually lead them to the path toward a genuine exploration of knowledge. Let us imagine, if there were a class in which no teaching material or the teacher’s question but the students’ questions are taken as the clue, what a meaningful and attractive class would it be to the students! At last, in terms of teaching assessment, just as was stated in the previous chapter, it should turn from paying emphasis on the memorizing, understanding, grasping, synthesizing, and simple application of curriculum knowledge to attaching importance to the particular understanding, explicating, questioning, criticizing, and innovating of it. To put it in another way, these particular qualities of students should be highlighted. Teaching assessment is the “baton” of the whole teaching work. Only when students’ particular qualities as such are highlighted and valued in the teaching

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assessment, as are their awarenesses, qualities, and capacities for knowledge innovation, can it be expected that the teacher and the students pay emphasis on the cultivation of these qualities in practical teaching process, and can the change of the whole teaching mode be authentically promoted.

References Anscombe, E., & Geach, P. (Eds. & Trans.). (1966). Descartes Philosophical Writings. Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd. Bacon, F. (1960). The New Organon and Related Writings. The Bobbs-Merrill Company. Feyerabend, P. K. (1975). Against Method: Outline of Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. Redwood Burn. French, A. P. (Ed.). (1979). Einstein: A Centenary Volume. Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. Hamly, D. W. (1970). The Theory of Knowledge. The Macmillan Press Ltd. Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolution. The University of Chicago Press. Locke, J. (1974). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (I–II). Dent & Sons Ltd. Polanyi, M. (1958). Personal Knowledge: Toward a Post—Critical Philosophy. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Popper, K. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Hutchinson. Popper, K. (1963). Conjectures and Refutation. Routledge and Kegan Paul. Popper, K. (1972). Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. Oxford University Press.

Chapter 7

Explicit Knowledge, Tacit Knowledge, and Education Reform

There is a strange phenomenon in education reform, namely, people’s educational ideas cannot be fully coincident with educational behaviors. The case is usually this: albeit people have understood or set up in their mind some new educational idea, and are willing to try to reform their educational behaviors according to this new idea, it seems that the traditional mode of the educational act is quite “stubborn” so that the teachers attempting to reform their educational behaviors are often trapped or at least disturbed by it. This troubles education reformers much in that the values of the educational theories they present seem always failing to be realized. This phenomenon is also quite visible in the teaching practices of the education of students in normal schools. Generally speaking, these students have been engaged in systematic studies of educational theories, so when they perform practical practices of education, they are supposed to fully apply these theories to educational practices. The factual experiences of instructing them in practice show that they seem to have difficulties applying the theories they have learned at school to their educational practices. When describing their educational behaviors, most admit that their behaviors are rarely relevant to the theories they have learned, and not a few of them confess that they are imitating their previous teachers, which has greatly influenced the reputation of normal education. De facto, such phenomena exist not merely in the educational sphere, but there is also a large number of phenomena in which practices are separated from theories in other spheres of individual and social activities, which influence the attainment of theoretical and practical purposes. What, then, are the causes to this phenomenon? How to effectively overcome the separation as such widely existing in the educational sphere in particular? In previous studies, people believed that the causes were in the theories themselves. Specifically speaking, it was due to the fact that the theories were themselves not that “scientific.” People’s logic was: genuine scientific theories served as well as originated from practices, so if a theory was incapable of exerting practical effects in practice, it was surely separated from the latter or was “unscientific.” In the history

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of educational thoughts, such criticisms were frequent. Relevant to the “diagnosis” as such, to settle the problems, people have since modern time and beyond been trying to “make scientific” educational theories so as to enable them to produce the widely accepted effects as the theories of natural sciences. Ironically, in the past over 300 years, this effort failed to get the expected effects. In fact, the above criticisms of educational theories still exist today and are quite fierce. To this connection, there is a need to make some new contemplations with respect to the causes to such broad separation of theories from practices. Seen from the perspective of epistemology or theory of knowledge, just as was pointed out in the Introduction, all purposeful practical behaviors of people are dominated by knowledge or, in other words, are constructed by it. There is a set of systematic knowledge foundations behind each sort of purposeful practical behavior. There is no practical behavior without a knowledge foundation. This applies to the educational behaviors of both the teacher reformers and the normal students. Although they fail to perform well the educational practical activities according to the requirements of educational theories, the former are themselves not lack of the foundation of educational knowledge. The point is, that which supports their educational behaviors is supposed to be some educational knowledge different on both qualities and existing mode from what they got from the pedagogical textbooks or the classes of college departments of education. Nonetheless, when they are asked what the educational knowledge is, where it is obtained, and in what mode it exists and functions, they cannot offer clear reflections or answers. Be that as it may, their educational practical behaviors are dominated by knowledge as such. Presumably, it is exactly on this sort of knowledge that the practitioners cannot have clear reflections and answers and are even hindering or refuting the instruction of systematic theories. As a result, they influence the realization of the theoretical values and expected practical purposes in general. In modern theories of knowledge, people call the knowledge as such “implicit knowledge” or “tacit knowledge” and the knowledge capable of offering clear reflections and narrations “explicit knowledge.” In this chapter, I will start from the relationship between these two sorts of knowledge, particularly from tacit knowledge, to analyze the formation of the above problems and others relevant to the education reform, hoping to provide some strategic suggestions in terms of setting these problems.

7.1 Explicit Knowledge and Tacit Knowledge The two concepts of “explicit knowledge” and “tacit knowledge” may not be that familiar to the educational practitioners in China. Historically, albeit people realized early that there was a sort of knowledge “understandable but not expressible” in addition to textbook knowledge or knowledge clearly expressible via language, people before the first half of the twentieth century failed to make rigid logical analyses concerning them. This apart, under the dominance of ancient and modern knowledge forms, it is impossible that people may accept in the true sense of the word

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such knowledge, since it does not conform to their standards. As a matter of fact, this sort of knowledge has long been subjugated in the history of human knowledge and can be said the “exile” in the kingdom of knowledge; that is why no voice of it can be heard within the studies of ancient and modern epistemologies or in the intellectual lives of ancient and modern societies. This is also why we call it “tacit knowledge”—tacit due to the subjugation from the intellectual hegemony. Toward the end of the 1950s, along with the gradual deconstruction of the modern knowledge form, Polanyi first made systematic differentiations and theoretical explications as regards these two sorts of knowledge when he studied the qualities of scientific and general knowledge, particularly when he criticized the positivist views of knowledge formed since modern times. In 1958, he pointed out in his The Study of Man, Human knowledge is of two kinds. What is usually described as knowledge, as set out in written words or maps, or mathematical formulae, is only one kind of knowledge; while unformulated knowledge, such as we have of something we are in the act of doing, is another form of knowledge. If we call the first kind explicit knowledge, and the second, tacit knowledge, we may say that we always know tacitly that we are holding our explicit knowledge to be true. (Polanyi, 1957, p. 12)

Polanyi takes as an example that we may recognize a person’s face and distinguish it from thousands and hundreds of other faces, but we usually cannot tell how we do this. For another example, we may recognize the expressions on any face but we also cannot tell according to what symbols we do this recognition. Still, we will give vague explications even when we are asked to tell. In ordinary life, there is such knowledge that we often employ but seldom explicate clearly, and the case is so in scientific studies having been considered fairly rational. Polanyi points out that in scientific activities, scientists always employ many concepts and make many presumptions, and they may even conceive some beliefs in the activities. Scientific activities cannot live without these concepts, presumptions, or beliefs. Interestingly, nevertheless, scientists do not have clear understandings pertinent to them either, which appears unbelievable when they attempt to systematically state them. Polanyi points out that when scientists accept a set of scientific concepts, presumptions, or beliefs as the explicative framework of their scientific activities, they can be said living in them, just like they live in their own bodies. They are the ultimate framework of the scientific activities, hence they cannot be either affirmed or denied for both will necessarily be performed in another definite framework. That is to say, they are in effect inexpressible. Polanyi hence points out that be it in ordinary life or in scientific activities, unspeakable knowledge largely exists, just like speakable one and, at the level of amount, the former even goes beyond the latter, as it seems essentially uncountable. The two sorts of knowledge constitute the totality of human knowledge. As to the tacit knowledge, Polanyi thus generalizes, succinctly, “We can know more than we can tell” (Polanyi, 1966, p. 4). Polanyi takes this word as the kernel proposition of his whole epistemology or theory of knowledge. The meaning of this proposition is, the knowledge that people obtain via cognitive activities includes that expressed by means of language, words, or symbols, but more than that. In addition to the knowledge mentioned afore, there

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are other types of knowledge which are called “tacit knowledge” corresponding to the former type called “explicit knowledge.” Polanyi makes elaborative analyses with regard to the difference between these two types of knowledge, particularly to the properties of the unfamiliar tacit knowledge shown in comparison. It is his contention that compared with explicit knowledge, the tacit one is of the properties as follows: first, it cannot be logically explicated by virtue of language, words, or symbols. In this sense, Polanyi also calls tacit knowledge “pre-verbal knowledge” or “inarticulate knowledge” whereas explicit knowledge “verbal knowledge” or “articulate knowledge.” He even believes that tacit knowledge is a type shared by humans and animals and is the crystal of the nonverbal intelligent activities of human beings. Secondly, it cannot be delivered via formal modes. As is known, explicit knowledge can be delivered via formal modes such as school education, public media, etc., and shared by different people, being of a sort of “publicity” and “intersubjectivity.” On the other hand, since tacit knowledge cannot be clearly expressed even by the owners or users of it, a fortiori, it cannot be delivered formally in society hence is lack of the publicity, intersubjectivity, etc., embraced by explicit knowledge. Be that as it may, Polanyi believes that tacit is not undeliverable but can only be delivered in an “apprenticeship” way, as it is inexpressible, namely, in scientific studies, it can only be delivered via the newcomers’ natural observations of and obedience to their instructors in scientific practices. Thirdly, it cannot be “critically reflected.” Polanyi contends that explicit knowledge is obtained via definite “deductive” processes and hence people can reflect on or criticize it via reason; to the contrary, tacit knowledge is got via people’s sense organs or rational intuition hence cannot be put in the same case. In this vein, Polanyi calls explicit knowledge “critical knowledge” whereas tacit knowledge “a-critical knowledge.” He regards this trait as the main logical distinction between them. To understand in-depth the difference as such, we need to go further into Polanyi’s theories about “subsidiary awareness” and “focal awareness” (Polanyi, 1957, pp. 30– 33; Polanyi, 1966, vii, pp. 55–60). According to him, human awareness can be roughly classified into two types, i.e., subsidiary awareness and focal awareness, that are different from and connected with one another in human cognitive or practical activities. Focal awareness refers to that of the recognizer or practitioner pertinent to the cognitive objects or the problems to be settled; thus, it can be roughly understood as “target awareness.” Subsidiary awareness, on the other hand, refers to that of the recognizer or practitioner pertinent to the instruments (material as well as intellectual) he uses and other cognitive or practical foundations (e.g., cognitive frame, practical value expectation, metaphysical belief, or the like), so it can be roughly understood as “instrumental awareness.” In virtue of modern psychological views, subsidiary awareness and focal awareness explicate the distribution of awareness or attention; thus, once we focus it on something, our awareness or attention toward other relevant things will be in a “subsidiary” state and, when we recall them afterward, we will feel that we seem to be aware of them but seem again to be not. Nevertheless, here Polanyi by no means intends to explicate the accustomed psychological phenomenon in daily life and that with which he is concerned is the inner relationships between these two acts of

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awareness and their epistemological meanings. In his view, the two types of awareness refute each other, on the one hand, but are connected with each other, on the other. Insofar as they refute each other, if the person who knocks on the nail focuses his awareness on the feeling of his hand, he cannot “knock on the nail” at all. Polanyi compares this relationship to that between “part” and “whole” in Gestalt psychology. If the observer focuses on the “part,” he will not find the meaning of the “whole.” Nevertheless, insofar as they are mutually connected, the meaning of the “whole” cannot leave the part also. In effect, it is the “part” that hints or signifies the “whole.” Seen in this line, the whole exists amid the “parts.” To understand the meaning of the whole, the observer’s attention must slide from the “part” to the “whole”; to wedge in the nail, the person must constantly turn his attention from his hand to the nail and the object in which the nail is to be wedged. Polanyi calls this trait the “from…to…” structure of understanding exactly by means of which all our recognitions and practices become possible. For instance, when it comes to settling some scientific problem, albeit the scientist has focused all his energy on the settlement, besides the attention under his control or awareness, he must constantly maintain “unconsciously” the awareness of the concepts, methods, experiences, individual judgments, intellectual beliefs, etc., he employs and keeps turning his “regard” from these “instrumental” things to the target problem. De facto, it is the latter subsidiary or instrumental awareness that dominates, instructs, or constrains the core or target awareness. Nonetheless, the subsidiary awareness pertinent to the instrument and its hinting or instructing functions to the holistic meaning of the target is unspeakable or hard to tell clearly, so Polanyi calls the cognitive activity occurring in the subsidiary awareness “tacit knowing.” The result of the tacit knowing is “tacit knowledge,” and, as a result of the participation of the tacit knowing in the target problem, “explicit knowledge” is produced. Since tacit knowledge is the result of tacit or subsidiary awareness, it is irrational, uncritical, unaware, non-verbal, and non-public; since “explicit knowledge” is the result of focal awareness or knowing, it is characterized by being rational, critical, aware, statable, public, or the like. According to Polanyi’s analyses with respect to the cognitive structure afore, albeit compared with explicit knowledge, the tacit one has so many disadvantages mentioned above, in his view, it is still a fairly important type of knowledge insomuch as it de facto dominates the whole cognitive activity (including the scientific one) and provides the ultimate interpretative framework even intellectual beliefs to human cognitive activities. As regards this, Polanyi makes detailed analyses and demonstrations. He first points out that tacit knowing or knowledge is of an important role in terms of determining scientific problems. Like Popper, Polanyi also contends that the starting point of a scientific activity is not observation, and only when a problem is genuine, can the scientific study succeed, and can it be of novelty. But how can people find a new, genuine scientific problem? Or, to put it in another way, how to distinguish the genuinely meaningful scientific one from among so many problems? Polanyi contends that we cannot but appeal to tacit knowing or knowledge in that the genuinely meaningful scientific problems are those “hinting” the possibility to obtain the real relations remaining to be understood. The determination of such problems

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of course cannot get sufficiently logical explications but can only appeal to the nonlogical tacit knowing or knowledge. Polanyi then points out that when scientists attempt to analyze or settle the problems, tacit knowledge is also indispensable. Generally speaking, people are easy to imagine the scientific process as a rigid rationalized one. In virtue of the analyses of “scientific techniques,” Polanyi shows that this imagination is incorrect in that to a scientist, the scientific techniques (explicit knowledge) in general sense may be useful, but they are insufficient. To make a scientific discovery, the scientist must produce in the process of scientific researches many techniques even unclear to himself, or he/she must individualize or reify those scientific techniques in general sense like observation, record, description, data analysis, etc., and turn them into his/her peculiar knowledge and an indispensable part of his/her own scientific practical structure. This is like learning to ride a bicycle, namely, albeit a learner may grasp many explicit rules told by others, these are by no means sufficient to him/her and he/she must understand and use them in an individual and genuine fashion during the learning process and further develop therefrom many new rules understandable only to his/her moving body. Without the individualized understanding, application, and new rules hard to analyze, it will be impossible for one to ultimately learn to ride a bicycle. This applies also to a person who wants to become a scientist and make scientific discoveries. On this account, it can be said that during the process of scientific researches, explicit rule knowledge is useful, but the mode in which it plays its roles relies on some tacit rule knowledge. Furthermore, Polanyi believes that during the demonstrating process of scientific theories, tacit knowledge also plays an important role in that no scientific theory whatsoever can refute all the “abnormal” phenomena. To this connection, the process wherein scientists demonstrate a scientific theory is de facto one whence they chose to suspend a kind of abnormal phenomenon to pause a scientific study. The work, whereas, largely comes from one’s judgment based on his own tacit knowledge. It is due to this that in scientific history, people may see the phenomena that many scientists missed the great scientific discoveries. At last, to accept some scientific statement as an “objective truth,” the help from tacit knowledge is necessary insomuch as the scientists and the public must believe that this scientific statement is revealing some “real relation,” being the pure knowledge without the intervention of the scientists’ individual judgments, and its language is also clear and distinct, and so on and so forth. Without these tacit ideas or beliefs, a scientific statement cannot be accepted as a truth, nor will a scientist have the opportunity to claim his/her “discoveries” in public. On the whole, in Polanyi’s eyes, it is by virtue of the force of tacit knowledge that scientists are capable of constructing their scientific knowledge. Nay, it is also by virtue of the force as such that all the explicit knowledge of human beings become possible. Tacit knowledge or knowing is the “guide” and “host” of all human explicit knowledge. As it were, Polanyi’s classical differentiation and discussions as to explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge are mainly in the stage of philosophical discussion and serve

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for the construction of a new knowledge theory—the theory of “personal knowledge.”1 Shortly afterward, nevertheless, these thoughts of Polanyi drew the attention of psychologists and the staff of social management, and hence the studies of explicit and tacit knowledge entered into a new stage of practical as well as experimental studies. The situation was thus described by J. A. Horvath, People know more than they can tell. Personal knowledge is so thoroughly grounded in experience that it cannot be expressed in its fullness. In the last 30 years, the term tacit knowledge has come to stand for this type of human knowledge—knowledge that is bound up in the activity and effort that produced it. The study of tacit knowledge has spanned several disciplines in the social sciences, and its provenance in an earlier, natural philosophy is extensive. (Horvath, 1999, p. ix)

These “enlarged” studies (Horvath, 1999; Reber, 1993; Stadler & Fresch, 1998; Tirosh, 1994) indicate that tacit knowledge does exist in a large amount and, just as was stated by Polanyi, people live in it just like they live in their bodies. Be it in cognitive acts or practical ones, people cannot leave relevant tacit knowledge. To be sure, tacit knowledge constitutes the necessary foundation of people’s cognitive and practical acts in a broad sense, so the understanding of it will help us better understand humans’ cognitive and practical capacities. Theoretically, many important conclusions reached from the enlarged studies as such include: in the first place, at the level of qualities, tacit knowledge is characterized by being “non-logical,” “non-public,” “non-critical,” etc., as was stated by Polanyi, but it is also of the traits of being “situational,” “cultural,” “hierarchical,” etc. The “situational” trait of tacit knowledge means that the obtainment of it is always connected with certain special problems or task “situations,” being a sort of intuitive synthesizing or grasping of them. On this account, the functioning of tacit knowledge is also inseparable from the “representation” or “analogy” of this problem situation. The “cultural” trait of tacit knowledge means that tacit knowledge has more strong cultural properties than explicit knowledge, being inseparable from the systems of concepts, symbols, and knowledge shared by people in a certain cultural tradition. In other words, people in different cultural traditions usually share different “systems” of tacit knowledge, including the tacit “systems” of natural knowledge, but also those of social and humanistic knowledge. In this vein, interpersonal communications are based on some explicit social rules, but they are also constructed based on some tacit social rules granted by socio-cultural tradition. The hindrance to cross-cultural communications does not merely come from those explicit social rules, but all the 1

“Personal knowledge” is not a relatively independent knowledge form but a new expression of Polanyi as regards the qualities of scientific knowledge even all the general knowledge of humans and a new idea of scientific knowledge presented by him over against the idea of purely objective scientific knowledge supported by empiricism and rationalism. Expressed in a proposition, it is “All the scientific knowledge is participated by the persons.” This proposition may also be converted into another one: “All the scientific knowledge surely embraces the personal coefficient.” Plainly, this view differs from the one that tries every effort to eliminate personal factors out of scientific activities, and it even runs counter to the stance claiming that scientific knowledge is the absolutely objective and universal one going beyond persons. This is a fairly radical, even revolutionary view of scientific knowledge.

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more from those tacit ones. The “hierarchical” trait of tacit knowledge means that tacit knowledge is not limited to a single form but can be classified into different hierarchies according to the extents to which people’s consciousness and expressions of it may reach. Based on the experiments, J. Clement classifies tacit knowledge into “unconscious knowledge,” “conscious but non-verbal knowledge,” and “conscious and verbally described knowledge” (Clement, 1994). By dint of this classification, Clement believes that there is a “successive” or “genealogical” phenomenon rather than two drastically opposite poles between tacit knowledge and the explicit one. The understanding of their relationships includes that of the succession between them. In the second place, at the level of function, tacit knowledge’s influences on recognition and practices are fairly complex, far from being that simple and active as was thought by Polanyi. Experimental and practical studies indicate that as to the obtainment of explicit knowledge, tacit knowledge may play a fundamental, subsidiary, even guiding role, but it may also hinder or interfere with the obtainment of the former hence bring troubles to people during the process. In terms of practical efficacy, tacit knowledge may improve our practical judging capacity to rapidly make correct judgments by overcoming the shortages of insufficient information when faced with various complex factors, but it may also lead us to wrong judgments hence bring damage to our practices. Just as is said by R. J. Sternberg, the renowned contemporary psychologist, “Tacit knowledge can be a source of highly effective performance in the workplace. It can also be a source of decline and ultimately of failure. The efficacy of tacit knowledge depends on its being acquired and then being effectively used” (Stenberg, 1999; Stenberg & Horvath, 1999, p. 236). To make tacit knowledge better play its role, scholars unanimously uphold “making explicit” of it for in this way, when it is consistent with the purpose of recognition or practices, it will be applied and preserved; contrariwise, it may be constrained and overcome. D. R. Olson presents a mode of making explicit the tacit knowledge—“symbolization,” namely, by means of a “waking-up” or “recalling” process, people may input the tacit knowledge supporting certain particular recognition or practice into certain “language” or “codes.” In the third place, at the level of type, people have not merely recognized the existence of tacit “procedural knowledge” like how to ride a bicycle, how to greet others, and so on, but have also sensed the existence of tacit “propositional knowledge,” say, “The earth is a hard entity,” “Thundering results from God’s anger,” and so forth; they have not merely recognized that there are some sorts of specific tacit knowledge, like the examples given above, but have also realized that there are some tacit “cognitive modes,” say, the classifying and deductive modes, etc. of tacitness. Compared with specific tacit knowledge, these tacit cognitive modes may exert more profound and overall influences on the individual’s recognition and practices. On this ground, to recognize and understand the individual’s tacit knowledge entails not only their specific tacit knowledge relevant to some cognitive and practical tasks, but also their tacit cognitive modes relevant to the accomplishment of the tasks. Fourthly, at the level of obtaining path, people like Polanyi stress the “experiential” and “practical” paths, particularly those of typical significance. People, however, point out simultaneously that tacit knowledge may also be obtained via the forgetting

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or incomplete memory of explicit knowledge and its defensive reasons. Researchers contend that the “successiveness” between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge indicates that there is a “middle area” between them by means of which the former can convert into the latter and vice versa. Some scholars regard this middle area as the “zone of potential development” (Tirosh, 1994, p. 132) in L. S. Vygotsky’s terminology, namely, the tacit knowledge in this middle area may turn from a “tacit” to an “explicit” state with some external support or as the result of its efforts. Albeit Polanyi and other researchers have in the past over four decades sufficiently explicated the vital significance of the theories of tacit knowledge to people’s cognitive and practical activities, so far people have been ignoring the latter’s existence and functions as a rule. The case is so not only in China but also in the English world. Insofar as educational sphere is concerned, the concept and theories of tacit knowledge remain to draw sufficient concerns from educators and pedagogical experts, and hence relevant studies are rarely seen. Robert J. Sternberg analyzes from the perspective of organizing behaviors the five causes to this phenomenon. First of all, tacit knowledge may conflict with some organization’s existent or acknowledged explicit knowledge, ethics, or behavioral rules, even with the interests of some sort of social organization, and hence it fails to be acknowledged and valued, at least in public. For instance, during the process of scientific discovery, there may be a large number of tacit “non-rational” rules which have been expecting the scientist group’s acknowledgment and attention, as they conflict with the ideal of “reason,” particularly “objectivity,” of modern scientific activities. Secondly, albeit the tacit knowledge inside an organization might promote the self-consciousness and the sensitivity to the organizational surroundings, it might also be taken advantage of to serve people’s private interests hence go astray from the goal of the organization. For example, an employee might learn in daily work how to take advantage of the company’s system for his/her interests which, nevertheless, is at the price of damaging the company’s profits, so his/her tacit knowledge cannot be accepted or encouraged by the company, nor will it be disseminated in the training causes of the latter. Thirdly, tacit knowledge is quite situational on quality, so in some particular situations, it might refuse any useful and acknowledged explicit knowledge, which hence will lead to low efficiency in the activities, to people’s antipathy toward tacit knowledge, and to their attempt to restrict or overcome its functions in daily work. Fourthly, failing to recognize the difference between tacit knowledge and “technological knowledge,” people might often substitute the latter for the former hence ignore the existence of the former. Fifthly, given that the obtainment of tacit knowledge is of great contingency and randomness, an organization is not willing to, and will not, require its employees to spend large amount of time on grasping the knowledge as such. Comparatively, to improve the efficiency of organizational activities, the company would prefer stressing the education and training of its employees on explicit knowledge. Sternberg’s analyses of these causes are suitable not merely at the organizational level but also at the individual one. Be that as it may, at these two levels, there might be other important and profound causes, beyond those mentioned above, that lead to people’s ignorance of tacit knowledge and its functions. To begin with, measured

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with the standard of modern knowledge, tacit knowledge is by no means “knowledge” in the true sense of the word, nor is it the “knowledge” of great values. Under the dominance of such standards, people are easy to have the following ideas (which, presumably, are “tacit” again): to spend time and energy on obtaining tacit knowledge or making it “explicit” is less valuable than getting some genuine and useful “scientific knowledge.” In the second place, the aforementioned characteristics of tacit knowledge determine that this is a sort of knowledge not easy to accumulate, store, and disseminate in a large scale, and hence it is also a sort of knowledge incapable of obtaining the attention and support from social public institutions and powers. More often than not, it keeps a “symbiotic” relationship with the individual thinking and acting process, which, in Polanyi’s words, is a sort of internal thinking process and result.2 Thirdly, relevant to the two causes mentioned afore, the traditional theory of learning has also essentially ignored the existence of tacit knowledge and its functions. According to this traditional theory, learning is a process of obtaining textbook or explicit knowledge, wherein objective, general textbook, or explicit knowledge is substituted for subjective, conjectural, personal knowledge lacking supports. During this process, the individual tacit knowledge will naturally be replaced and overcome. It should be seen that in the past long period, the general ignorance of tacit knowledge and its functions as a result of the aforementioned various causes has not merely hindered people from completely and profoundly understanding the cognitive phenomena or intellectual problems, fostered the prevailing and deluge of objectivist views of knowledge, but has also greatly influenced the relationships between theories and practices, having prevented people from seeing the foundation of tacit knowledge behind practices hence leading them to regard practices as a process that can be randomly “reduced” or “formulated” by “external theories” which, resultantly, greatly influences the realization of practical purposes. Fortunately, with the substitution of postmodern knowledge standard for the modern one, with people’s increasingly deep and overall recognition about the intellectual foundation of practices, and with cognitive psychology’s explications as to “constructionism” theory of learning, tacit knowledge, and its vital significance are recognized by more and more people. Just as was said by Horvath who holds office in the consultive committee of global service of IBM, “If much of the value-adding knowledge that resides within organizations is tacit, then new and powerful applications in the area of knowledge management and professions education are likely to require a deeper understanding of tacit knowledge as a psychological and social phenomenon” (Stenberg, 1999; Stenberg & Horvath, 1999, p. x).

2

Polanyi says, “Tacit knowing is seen to operate here on an internal action that we are quite incapable of controlling or even feeling in itself” (Polanyi, 1966, p. 14).

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7.2 Explicit Knowledge, Tacit Knowledge, and Education Reform When studying explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge, Polanyi has already noticed their relevance to education. On the one hand, he points out that explicit knowledge is disseminated via education; on the other hand, he also points out the function of tacit knowledge in the educational process, contending that only by taking this “latent knowledge” as the foundation can people be aware of their “power of intellect” (Polanyi, 1958, p. 103). We are quite familiar with this first point in that our ordinary sayings, e.g., “Education is the filtering, disseminating, distributing, accumulating, and developing act of knowledge,” and the “knowledge” and “skills” in “the fundamental knowledge” and “fundamental skills” as the task of teaching and education all refer to “explicit knowledge,” only that we fail to make prominent its trait of “explicitness” in that we regard it as the whole of knowledge. This, in effect, also results from the tacit influences from modern knowledge form. With his second point, whereas, we are not that familiar, so it deserves particular heed. Why is it that we cannot realize our “power of intellect” unless we take tacit knowledge as the foundation? Is not it equal to say that the case will be so too if we fail to take it as the foundation in our teaching activities? What would be the result when one (be he/she a teacher or a student) cannot realize his/her “power of intellect” in the teaching activities? Furthermore, for teachers and students involved in teaching activities, how to take the tacit knowledge as the foundation to “be aware of” hence sufficiently “use” and “develop” their “power of intellect”? Seen from the discussions afore with respect to explicit and tacit knowledge, we can definitely say that during the teaching process, both explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge exist in large amount. In terms of type, there is teachers’ as well as students’ tacit knowledge, and there is tacit knowledge pertinent to specific teaching contents as well as teaching and learning behaviors, to the communications between teachers and students and between students, respectively, to the learning of linguistic knowledge as well as social and natural knowledge, to the teaching process as well as the teaching space, and so forth. The existence of a large amount of tacit knowledge in the teaching process is that which went ignored or, at least, to which we failed to pay sufficient heed. If we failed to pay sufficient heed to a large amount of tacit knowledge before, the case is all the more so as regards the recognition and studies of its influences in teaching activities. At the macro-level, like the tacit knowledge in other activities, the one in teaching activities might exert passive as well as active influences on the activities. Actively speaking, it might improve the efficiency of teaching activities; passively speaking, it might lower the efficiency, even hinder essentially the teaching of some explicit knowledge. For instance, if a student once climbed Mount Tai and had an intuitive feeling about the difficulty in climbing and the magnificence of Mount Tai, even if he/she cannot describe accurately this feeling in language, the feeling will help him/her understand the text “Climbing Mount Tai in rain.” The student might be easily guided by the author’s descriptions of experiences familiar to her/him, produce

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a sort of inexplicable excitement hence early recite some paragraphs in the text and exactly understand some words, and the like. If, on the other hand, it happens that he/she has never been to Mount Tai but has climbed many other mountains, the tacit knowledge he/she got when climbing the mountains might also help him/her to learn this text. If the student was born and grew up in a plain area and has never seen any mountain on TV, he/she might have difficulties learning this text, say, he/she would feel it hard to understand “ascend the stairs,” “One encompassing view will make one see how tiny other mountains are,” or the like, or he/she might have difficulty understanding the author’s inner emotions and train of thought, and so on and so forth. For another example, if students have obtained in daily life experiences the tacit knowledge of “Motion is produced by external forces and will disappear along with them,” they would feel it hard to understand the concepts or propositions like “perpetual motion” or “Motion is absolute,” etc., in dialectic materialism. Not only the tacit knowledge but also the tacit cognitive modes will influence the effects of teaching activities. The studies of D. Tirosh and others indicate that if the students understand the meaning of multiplication as the addition of several identical numbers,” they will have difficulty understanding the meanings of such equations of multiplication as “5 × 0” or “5 × 1” as they should not say “0 five is added” or “1 five is added” which is a meaningless sentence. In the same way, if the teacher understands the meaning of multiplication as “the addition of several identical numbers,” he/she also cannot explain the connotations of “5 × 1.13” in that he/she should not say “1.13 five are added,” which is also a meaningless sentence (Tirosh, 1994; Tirosh & Graeber, 1994). The ignorance of the existence and functions of a large amount of tacit knowledge in teaching activities cannot but result in tacit knowledge’s automatic influences on teaching activities. The tacit knowledge beneficial to teaching activities probably fails to be effectively used, whereas that harmful to them hinders or interferes with those activities. In most cases, being unaware of and failing to automatically use their tacit knowledge, the students grasp the curriculum knowledge by means of pure logical forces and industrious efforts forced by external factors (say, disciplines, examinations, employment, etc.). Resultantly, in the students’ minds, there are two intellectual systems unrelated to each other: one is the explicit curriculum knowledge, the other the tacit knowledge opposite to it on the theme. For instance, a child may have grasped the concept of Western “art” and simultaneously have a specific local culture, have grasped “Heat is a sort of energy transmission” and simultaneously believe that “Heat is a sort of warm air,” have grasped the concept of “malaria” and simultaneously use the parlance of “shaking,” and so on and so forth. Apparently, this phenomenon of a “split” in the students’ minds is quite harmful to them to grasp and understand the explicit curriculum knowledge in that the two sorts of knowledge will not “coexist peacefully” but will conflict with one another at each level of thought and behavior, just like their case in the situation of class learning. As a result of the conflicts, the explicit knowledge coincident with the tacit one will be well remembered, preserved, and applied, whereas that failing to conform to the tacit knowledge, or even opposed to it, will be constantly interfered, even distorted, to the extent that it will soon be forgotten or become vague without the

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repeated reinforcement of successive teaching or examinations. This, presumably, is the phenomenon and its cause of what we often hear in the adult world, namely, “I have returned what I learned at school to my teachers.” If the case is really so, that which is “left” in the adult’s world is still the various common senses and tacit knowledge obtained from one’s own living surroundings and life experiences. In this vein, won’t the more than a decade of teachings and many people’s labor cast to the wind? Nay, this is also quite harmful to students who are expected to “be aware of” their “power of intellect” in that the latter can only be realized during the course wherein intellect or explicit knowledge is practically applied. Be that as it may, due to the “split” between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge, and the bigger “compatibility” between tacit knowledge, on the one hand and acts and beliefs, on the other, the students use more tacit than explicit knowledge in their daily studies and lives. To this connection, how can they be aware of their “power of intellect,” or the usage of learned knowledge, and how can they avoid producing the disconnection between “theories” (explicit knowledge) and “practices” (those based on tacit knowledge)? Worse still, it’s fairly hard for them to be aware of their power of intellect, but also to develop it, and it is even harder to constantly modify their tacit knowledge and improve its level by dint of explicit knowledge. Resultantly, the phenomenon of “high performance, low capacity” is unavoidable: “high performance” indicates that they have grasped much explicit knowledge; “low capacity” means that like those who have never been educated or who fail to be equally educated, in practice, they still use tacit knowledge and power. In this vein, is not “the choice, allocation, and dissemination of (explicit) knowledge” the main task of education meaningless? Won’t the “development” of students’ individual wisdom, virtues, emotions, and healthy personalities, eagerly expected by educators and pedagogical experts, become a dream that would never come true? As a consequence, to recognize and understand the tacit knowledge in educational life is a necessary condition for the purpose of the whole education to be attained in the true sense of the word, an important constituent of the teacher’s whole teaching arts, and also an important content and link for people to deepen the education reform and practically improve the teaching quality. Seen at the level of explicit and tacit knowledge, the current education reform is supposed to pay heed to the following several points: First, the teacher must be aware of the existence of the large amount of tacit knowledge in the teaching life, must change the idea that he/she is merely a “deliver” of explicit knowledge and the student is merely an “ignorant” person or “immature” cognitive subject. In particular, the teacher must be aware that the students come to the class not merely with their eyes, ears, and good memory, but also with large amount of tacit knowledge from some unknown regions in their lives, say, “mathematics of children,” “physics of children,” “chemistry of children,” “literature of children,” “economics of children,” “philosophy of children,” “history of children,” and the like.3 Imperfect or unclear as the tacit knowledge is compared with the explicit one, 3

“Mathematics of children,” “physics of children” differ from “mathematics for children,” “physics for children” or “school mathematics,” “school physics,” etc. The former refers to the knowledge

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it is of fundamental function to children’s life and recognition. In Polanyi’s words, it is the “guide” and “host” of children’s explicit knowledge. Without this “guide,” children’s thoughts will get trapped in the “jungle” of a large amount of explicit knowledge; without this “host,” children will be incapable of managing the explicit knowledge in their spiritual sphere, and their explicit knowledge will exist in their thoughts without any order hence will not form a “power of intellect.” To this connection, the teacher must reflect on his/her own tacit ideas on these problems and the inner relations between the ideas and his/her own teaching behaviors, and must make efforts to recognize and understand the students’ so many tacit ideas and the possible influences they might exert on the teaching work. In this sense, we need to recognize the ancient “intuitive teaching principle.” In previous teaching theories, we understood the “intuitive teaching principle” as helping the students, by means of intuitive teaching methods and students’ “direct experiences,” to understand some abstract and explicit textbook knowledge. Given that the students’ abundant direct experiences embrace a large amount of tacit knowledge, the importance attached to these experiences includes somehow students’ tacit knowledge. Nonetheless, in the “intuitive teaching principle,” the educational significance of students’ direct experiences lies in the fact that they are the “instrument” or “ladder” for students to grasp indirect experiences, to wit., textbook knowledge. Once the textbook knowledge is grasped and understood, this “instrument” or “ladder” will be “abandoned” or “removed,” and hence direct experiences cannot obtain sufficient concerns, reflections, and development. This leads to the fact that at the same time when the students grasp a large number of indirect experiences, their direct ones remain at a relatively low or primal level without being duly examined, criticized, or modified, which will result in the appearance of the aforementioned phenomenon of knowledge “split.” Seen from the relevant theories mentioned above, the relatively correct teaching purpose is not merely to obtain indirect experiences or explicit knowledge by means of direct experiences, but, all the more, to examine, criticize, and modify direct experiences by virtue of the indirect ones or explicit knowledge. On this ground, direct experiences will be really coincident with the indirect ones, as are explicit knowledge with the tacit one, rational recognition with the tacit one, which hence will essentially settle the problems of the knowledge “split” in students’ minds and those of the “high performance, low capacity” in practical life. Secondly, the key step to recognize and understand tacit knowledge in educational life is to make it “explicit” for the sake of reviewing, modifying, and using it. De facto, on the one hand, the teaching process delivers, grasps, and criticizes explicit knowledge; on the other hand, it is also a process wherein tacit knowledge is made explicit and is reviewed, modified, and used. The two processes are and thinking mode relevant to mathematics, physics, etc. obtained from their own life experiences, the latter to the knowledge and thinking mode as such required in the teaching process to be grasped. The discovery of “mathematics of children,” “physics of children,” etc. is one of the most significant discoveries of the intellectual sphere since Piaget and beyond. In terms of the quality of knowledge, these “mathematics of children” and “physics of children,” etc. are mostly tacit or implicit knowledge the discovery of which is of vital significance to the recognition of the intellectual phenomena in the teaching process.

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internally unified, being the two facets of a proper teaching process. In terms of qualities, making the tacit knowledge explicit is a linguistic process, but also one of symbolization and self-reflection. At the level of linguistic process, the teacher should firmly overcome the habit of “cramming education” or “What I say goes” but turn the teaching process into a free, sincere conversation between the teacher and the students or among the students. During this process, the two parties will not stick to the answers of the textbook knowledge but try to develop their own understanding as regards the textbook knowledge or the questions they have raised. Therefore, it is in the linguistic form of conversation that each person’s tacit recognition stance, ideas, or mode “appear” along with that person’s specific views and, hence, they are recognized or understood by both oneself and others and, on this ground, are reviewed, modified, criticized, or used.4 If there is no conversation in class, the teacher and the students will not recognize and understand others’ tacit knowledge or theirs. At the level of the symbolized process, the teacher should try to help the students characterize the unspeakable knowledge by means of some particular symbols, like concepts, relations, figures, and so on, to analyze and examine them rationally. Initially, this sort of characterization is quite unsatisfying and the students will usually say “No, no, I do not mean that”; nonetheless, on the basis of the unsatisfying characterization as such, and after careful considerations and repeated modifications, increasingly satisfying characteristics will be obtained, and the students’ tacit knowledge will also be displayed in a relatively proper or clear fashion. At the level of the self-reflective process, the teachers should first reflect on their tacit knowledge, including that of the management of students, teaching, and class, and some specific disciplinary knowledge. Then, the teachers should help the students reflect on their tacit knowledge in the learning activities and teach them to constantly analyze the tacit knowledge they use from their explicit views and ideas. Consequently, the students can constantly raise their metacognitive levels and their capacity to make self-analysis and self-management of their learning behaviors. Relevant to this, in the current education reform, people raise the slogan of making the students “learn how to learn” (from “do not know how to learn” to “know how to learn”). This slogan is beneficial to change the malpractice that traditional Chinese teaching focused too much on grasping knowledge rather than the cultivation of the learning capacity, and it also plays an active role allowing no ignorance on changing the teacher’s teaching ideas. Be that as it may, from the perspective of the theory of tacit knowledge, “to learn how to learn” not merely includes grasping some learning methods, but it also should include making in-depth recognition and understanding of their learning behaviors, which should include the influences of their tacit knowledge in the learning process. In this connection, the cultivation stressed by some education reform of students’ metacognitive capacity should include the 4

In my view, Socratic dialogue is forever an ideal form of teaching, although in factual teaching activities, notably those in elementary stage, it is an artistic state very hard to reach. Be that as it may, the frankness, freedom, and rational spirit for which Socratic dialogue seeks can well be manifested in factual teaching activities, including those in elementary stage. De facto, it is via this frank, free, and rational path that one’s tacit knowledge may be constantly shown in the situations of dialogues.

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cultivation of their capacity to analyze and manage their tacit knowledge and capacity for tacit recognition, rather than being limited to the cultivation of the capacities of explicit knowledge. To reach this end, the teaching practices need the support of the theories of psychology, particularly cognitive psychology, but also philosophy, particularly epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, the former being capable of providing people with some specific cognitive and teaching strategies, the latter with some general principles. As a matter of fact, in Piaget’s genetic epistemology, the specific cognitive strategy as such is closely related to general philosophical principles. He intended to reform traditional philosophical theories by means of psychological studies, but also to promote the development of cognitive psychology through the analyses and critiques of traditional philosophical theories. Thirdly, the value of “practical teaching” should be re-examined. In previous teaching theories and practices, “practical teaching” ran counter to class teaching and mainly referred to guiding the students, via practices, to have deeper understandings and applications with respect to the knowledge they got from the class. It can be said that in the previous teaching systems, practical teaching was attached to class teaching, being the extension and replenishment of the latter. In the current reform relevant to innovative education, the significance of practical teaching is fairly stressed and is taken as a fundamental path to cultivating the students’ innovative awareness, qualities, and capacities, helping to overcome the malpractice of our traditional teaching mode that ignored the cultivation of students’ practicing capacity. Nonetheless, people still have to offer sufficient theoretical explications of the significance of practical teaching so far, albeit they universally believe in its importance and necessity. Considering the theories of tacit knowledge presented by Polanyi and others, the production of scientific knowledge, even all knowledge, is never a totally objective and rational process but entails the participation of a large amount of individual tacit knowledge. Without the participation as such, there would not be any determination about scientific facts or problems, nor would there be the production of any scientific proof or the function of any defense, and hence no scientific discovery whatsoever would be accomplished. The fact however is, the beneficial tacit knowledge to scientific development, say, scientific ideals and beliefs, experiences and techniques, attitudes and spirits, to name just a few, is hard to deliver and grasp via formal educational channels like other types of tacit knowledge; but rather, it can only be performed, in a great measure, via individual reflections, sudden ideas, or the like, in practice and plenty of random communications and consultations between peer scientists engaged in scientific activities. It is by reason of this that Polanyi stressed the role of the “apprenticeship” mode of the traditional handicraft era in modern scientific education. Plainly, when discussing about the “apprenticeship” helping to deliver and grasp tacit knowledge, Polanyi stresses the function of scientific authorities, and the newcomers’ “uncritical imitation” of them, which, it seems, conflicts with his critique on the ideal of objective knowledge. This is because generally speaking, the authority of modern sciences is based on the presumptions of objective knowledge, and if people abandon the ideal of it, as did by Scheler, Popper, and others including

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Polanyi himself, they should simultaneously abandon the belief of scientific authority. Scheler, Popper, and others criticized scientific authority or the authoritarianism in intellectual life, contending that it was the origin of “obscurantism” and “intellectual hegemony” whereas Polanyi conferred a role to scientific authority and, more than that, he stressed its function: Throughout the formative centuries of modem science, the revolt against authority was its battle cry: it was sounded by Bacon and Descartes, and by the founders of the Royal Society in their device, Nullius in Verba. What these men said was true and important at the time, but once the adversaries they fought had been defeated, the repudiation of all authority or tradition by science became a misleading slogan. (Polanyi, 1966, p. 63)

In my view, that which is stressed here by Polanyi is by no means the scientific authority claiming to be the owner of objective truths, but the one stressing the rich and skilled individual scientific experiences of scientists. The refutation of the former should not be accompanied by the abandonment of the latter, or else people would have to spend much time and energy on relevant explorations, which is no different from “going astray” during the scientific process. Polanyi’s criticisms on scientific education are that it merely concerns the delivery of explicit scientific knowledge, including the knowledge of scientific methods, rather than that of tacit scientific experiences and skills which, resultantly, will not do good to the more rapid development of the newcomers. On this account, he attempted to re-explicate the important role of the ancient “apprenticeship” in modern scientific education and to stress anew the seemingly clichés that the newcomers of sciences should obey, observe, and imitate the seniors to obtain a large amount of tacit knowledge critical to knowledge innovation. These discussions of Polanyi have great educational significance. They indicate that to cultivate the awareness, qualities, and capacities of students’ knowledge innovation, education must enable them to grasp a large number of tacit intellectual beliefs, concepts, frames, methods, techniques, etc., in addition to delivering existent and explicit intellectual fruits and methods to them. In class teaching, the former is unavailable in that it is mainly concerned with delivering, understanding, grasping, criticizing, and reflecting on explicit and tacit knowledge, respectively, rather than obtaining new valuable tacit knowledge. To this connection, in both higher and elementary education, to attain the expected goal, the education reform with the awareness, qualities, and capacities of knowledge innovation as the theme must put stress on practical education, namely the colorful scientific, social, and artistic practices, at the same time when it stresses the reform of class teaching. Be that as it may, stressing these practical educations does not merely aim at using explicit knowledge, expressing its value, or overcoming its separation from practices, but also aim to obtain therefrom relevant tacit knowledge unavailable or inconceivable in class. For instance, the micro inventions, experiments, handicrafts, etc., under the instruction of scientists can help the students understand “science” as a series of important static propositions and principles, but also as a dynamic acting process involving various trivial things, during which people may make this or that sort of error. The obtainment of tacit knowledge as such is beneficial to students’ future engagement in

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scientific work and, at least, it will help them form a steadfast and industrious scientific style, which can prevent them from seeking for quick success and instant benefits or giving up halfway during the course of scientific studies. Therefore, the design of practical education must take into consideration the factors of tacit knowledge rather than being merely concerned with the application of explicit knowledge. Fourthly, at the level of the various practical links of teaching, particularly from lesson preparation and teaching assessment, the corresponding tacit knowledge is supposed to be taken into consideration. As is known, lesson preparation usually includes “three preparations,” namely, “the preparation of the teaching materials,” “the preparation of students,” and “the preparation of teaching methods.” The “three preparations” in the traditional sense mainly consider getting familiar with the teaching materials, understanding the students’ existent intellectual foundation, and organizing the class teaching around the grasping of the materials but virtually ignore the students’ tacit knowledge. With the theory of tacit knowledge as the point of departure, the teacher should: when “preparing for the teaching materials,” understand the textbook knowledge and its structure as before, but take into account students’ potential tacit knowledge as regards corresponding problems also; when “preparing for the students,” be concerned with students’ grasped explicit knowledge, but with their grasped tacit knowledge and cognitive modes also; when “preparing for teaching methods,” prepare for the “teaching methods” of explicit textbook knowledge, but for the tacit personal knowledge also, and, not merely for how to help the students grasp explicit textbook knowledge, but also for how to manifest their tacit knowledge and cognitive modes, and for how to examine, criticize, modify, and use them as well. As tacit knowledge mainly originates from the individual’s life circumstances, when preparing for the teaching, the teacher should be concerned with the differences pertinent to tacit knowledge resulting from life circumstances, notably the cultural background, and with the successive differences of students’ cognitive frame and behaviors when they individually interpret or understand the textbook knowledge. Presumably, the acknowledgment of, respect for, and concern about the difference as such is the thinking premise of the authentic application of “the principle of teaching according to the student’s aptitude.” As a rule, the teaching assessment includes an ordinary diagnostic assessment and periodical conclusive assessment. In the past, the teaching assessment was identical or coincident with lesson preparation, also mainly pivoting on explicit knowledge. Starting from the theory of tacit knowledge, in diagnostic assessment, the teacher should analyze, by means of the students’ test papers, works, or other things manifesting their learning results, the influences from the students’ tacit knowledge and cognitive modes on their analysis and understanding of problems rather than merely recording where they have made errors or what knowledge they lack. This is because behind the “errors” or “lack” of knowledge, there might be some passive tacit knowledge shedding negative influences. In the conclusive teaching assessment, the standard of “personalization” should be highlighted insomuch as that which can really measure the students’ cognitive capacities and levels is not their memory, reproduction, and simple usage of the ossified textbook knowledge but their understandings, explications, critiques, syntheses, and transcendence with respect to the textbook

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knowledge at the level of their tacit knowledge. Due to the different life circumstances, there is always a difference between their tacit knowledge and cognitive modes, which determines essentially their personalized color as regards the understanding, explication, critique, synthesis, and transcendence of the textbook knowledge. In this vein, to highlight the personality in the conclusive assessment for the sake of enabling each student to offer correct answers in the conclusive examinations and developing their peculiar recognition around the problems will help to promote their capacities for recognition, particularly for knowledge innovation. Evidently, a person who has never tell his/her peculiar ideas will scarcely have creation; an educational system that never respects, acknowledges, or develops autonomy and particularity will also hardly improve the students’ potentials of knowledge innovation.

7.3 Explicit Knowledge, Tacit Knowledge, and Normal Education The above discussions mainly center on the relationship between students’ tacit knowledge, on the one hand, and the teaching activities, on the other. De facto, as was mentioned afore, during the teaching process, there are not merely the tacit knowledge and recognition of the students, but are also those of the teacher. In addition, students’ tacit knowledge and recognition influence the teaching activities, which is also in the teacher’s case. Furthermore, due to the teacher’s particular function in teaching activities, in a certain sense, his/her tacit knowledge and recognition might exert greater influences on teaching activities than those of the students. In this vein, to the teacher, recognizing and understanding the students’ tacit knowledge and recognition being an important condition of deepening the teaching activities and improving the teaching arts notwithstanding, doing so to his/her own tacit knowledge and recognition will all the more help to reach the aforementioned ends and improve the degree of the rational self-consciousness and reflective level of his/her teaching activities. Seen in the sense of type, the teacher’s tacit knowledge is also varied and complex, say, that about “world,” “society,” “self,” “love,” or the like, being concerned with every theme of nature, society, and human life. At the macro-level, that which will exert immediate influences on the teaching activities, or that which should evoke the researcher or the teacher’s own concerns, can be classified mainly into two types: (1) tacit knowledge with regard to the teaching content, namely, tacit knowledge obtained by the teacher during his/her life and study with respect to the subject content or other contents of activities, say, the tacit understanding of the concept of “history,” the physical concept of “force,” the moral concept of “honesty,” or something; (2) tacit knowledge as regards the teaching activity itself, e.g., that of the fundamental educational concepts like “education,” “teaching,” “learning,” “good student,” “development,” or the like. Generally speaking, whereas the former tacit knowledge will influence the teaching mode of particular disciplines and can be taken

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as “the tacit knowledge pertaining to discipline,” the latter will influence the general teaching mode and can be taken as “the tacit knowledge pertaining to education.” The two sorts of tacit knowledge co-constitute one of the legitimate foundations of a teacher’s teaching behaviors, albeit this legitimacy and its defense are more often than not manifested in a sort of “disciplinary common sense,” “educational common sense,” or “teaching common sense” rather than systematic theory. Like the influences of other tacit knowledge on relevant individual acts, those of the two sorts of tacit knowledge on the teaching behaviors are also quite significant and profound and, as it were, the teacher’s teaching behaviors are in the most fundamental sense being unwittingly shaped. For instance, when a teacher subconsciously believes that “writing” or “a good writing” is supposed to be given like those written by some great authors, e.g., those of the chosen texts in primary and secondary schools, which “organize the frame and design the discourse,” “choose the words and arrange the sentences,” and “express the in-depth meanings via simple words,” he/she will take these potential standards as the crux on training the students in terms of writing, be engaged in choosing the excellent model essays in these respects, pay attention to guiding the students to analyze and appreciate the model essays’ excellent qualities, and require that they “make efforts” thereon. In the class teaching as such of writing, albeit the teacher might often stress the “experiencing of life” and the “expressing of emotions,” he/she usually treats these notions as substandard. More often, the teacher might only apply these standards to the students good at writing because, in her/his tacit knowledge, only the latter is capable of reaching the level, to wit, as are those great or famous writers, whereas common students are merely supposed to reach the standard of organizing the frame and designing the discourse. Another example is that if a teacher tacitly believes that when it comes to teaching and education, “Education is teaching, and teaching is the process of delivering and grasping knowledge,” he/she will put all the emphasis of his/her work on helping and promoting the students to grasp the existent textbook knowledge, and on analyzing as well as explaining the knowledge as such and examining the students’ grasping of it. His/her preparations of teaching, class teaching, and guiding will center on this task, and his/her explanations, demonstrations, questionings, and class management will “naturally” follow this idea. Accordingly, all teaching activities, independently of the stage or subject, are greatly constrained by the teacher’s tacit ideas of knowledge at the level of both specialty and education. Teaching activities without such a constraint do not exist, and the difference is merely on the extent of awareness with respect to it. In a certain sense, the more capable a person is of sensing the constraint as such, the more rational he/she is in terms of performing teaching activities; the less capable he/she is of sensing the constraint, the easier this person is to be entrapped into the customs and conventions of education, and the more ossified, mechanic, and spiritless his/her teaching activities will be and, as a result, this person will be reduced to the tragic level of “delivering ossified knowledge, teaching in an ossified way, and teaching till becoming ossified” mentioned by Mr. Tao Xingzhi before the liberation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Based on these considerations, the education reform must be concerned with the tacit knowledge of the teachers and be considered as an important condition to

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recognize, understand, examine, and criticize the complex tacit knowledge. From the perspective of the relationship between educational theories and educational practices, the education reform is expected to pay particular attention to the latter form of tacit knowledge mentioned above, namely, the “educational or teaching common senses” deeply influencing the teacher’s teaching behaviors in the ordinary teaching life. The interrelation between these notions and the education reform is that, as for any education reform, one of the crucial and kernel links is nothing else than “changing” or “reshaping” to different extents the teacher’s teaching behaviors, the ignorance of which would result in the failure of all the education reforms. Like all other behaviors of human beings, the teacher’s teaching behaviors qua a sort of autonomous human behavior is always dominated, constructed, or guided by relevant knowledge. To this connection, the changing or reshaping of the behavior as such is more than an external process of training, regulation, or constraint, but it is also a process wherein the foundation and beliefs of its internal knowledge are recognized, understood, and reconstructed. In a certain sense, the change in the true sense of the word of the teacher reformer’s external behaviors mainly results from the reconstruction of the foundation and beliefs of his/her internal knowledge which, in the necessity, will touch the tacit knowledge obtained by the teacher in various ways during his/her teaching life. This is because the teacher’s tacit knowledge is a constitution of his/her complete intellectual foundation; on the other hand, in the whole intellectual foundation, his/her tacit knowledge plays the role of “guiding” and “hosting,” as is argued by Polanyi. Consequently, in a certain sense, without the recognition and understanding of the tacit knowledge as such and its functions, the teacher’s teaching behaviors would not be recognized and understood completely and profoundly, which will further lead to the failure to reconstruct well the teacher’s relevant internal intellectual foundation and beliefs to his/her teaching behaviors, and, furthermore, the failure to authentically promote the education reform. Seen in this vein, the crux of the problems I initially presented in this chapter is: during the course of the education reform, albeit some teachers have grasped in certain ways some systematic or new knowledge of educational theories, due to the fact that the teaching educators and the teachers have ignored tacit educational knowledge obtained by them from their ordinary teaching lives (not merely their school teaching lives but also their family ones) and the knowledge’s profound influences on their ordinary teaching behaviors, they are incapable of authentically converting the systematic or new educational theories into practical educational behaviors. De facto, like the students, the teachers have formed in their mind, to a great extent, two systems of educational knowledge: a “tacit system of educational knowledge” and an “explicit system of educational knowledge,” the former being obtained via personal experiences in educational practices, the latter in curriculum subjects of normal education. Albeit the former sort of knowledge is hard to state in a clear fashion, it is highly connected with educational practices, and it itself even constitutes a link or factor of educational practices, embracing a sort of “self-evident” truthfulness, “apparent” legitimacy, and “use-daily-hence-ignore” validity. As to the latter sort of educational knowledge, to be sure, it is better than the former both on logic and on clarity, it, however, would hardly play the expected practical roles if

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it could not reach a certain coincidence with tacit educational knowledge, or could not essentially promote the teachers to reflect on their tacit educational knowledge. As a rule, the result might be thus: at the level of thought, the teachers have grasped many new educational concepts and propositions, whereas in practical teaching life, they are quite easily dominated by tacit educational knowledge hence get enmeshed in the outdated conventions and bad customs of education. For instance, in current education reform, many teachers accept the concept of “student-centered,” on the one hand, but, on the other hand, firmly believe that “The child will not become accomplished without being beaten.” In this line, it is hard to form an autonomous teaching behavior instructed by reason, which is the ambivalent phenomenon we often see and experience in the teacher innovators including us practitioners as well as scholars of education. It is also the origin of the aforementioned phenomenon of theories being separated from practices in the teaching practices of students in normal education. As a matter of fact, albeit they fail to obtain instructions from educational theories, their educational practices are of their own foundation of educational knowledge, namely, the “tacit” or “implicit” educational knowledge mentioned afore. In this connection, to authentically accomplish the education reform and to cultivate highly qualified teachers in normal education, we should not stop at merely studying or applying some explicit educational theories but must reflect on, examine, and criticize the relevant tacit knowledge before making it appear, abandoning the banal things failing to be coincident with the epochal spirit, and combining the part of vitality with the grasping of explicit educational knowledge. This demands, first and foremost, that we should make in-depth study as regards the so far strange tacit educational knowledge, overcome the positivism and objectivism ideas of educational knowledge in the past, regard tacit educational knowledge as an important constituent of the diversified “family of educational knowledge,” and promote the teachers and education reformers to have profound recognition of the tacit knowledge’s functions in educational practices and reform. In the past few years, studies on tacit educational knowledge have increasingly evoked education reformers’ attention globally and they have gradually noticed a large amount of tacit educational knowledge and its vital significance. 1996 witnessed the fact that J. Bruner, the American psychologist and pedagogical expert famous for participating in and leading the reform movement of the structural curriculum in the United States in the 1960s, first provided a precise definition of tacit knowledge and hardly expressive educational knowledge in his The Culture of Education—“folk pedagogy,” and made systematic analyses with respect to its foundation. In Bruner’s eyes, the “folk pedagogy” is based on “folk psychology,” and is the educational knowledge owned even by nannies and mothers. Albeit they and all those who own such tacit educational knowledge are incapable of telling its “principles,” not even its origin, this does not hinder them on their way from skillfully deploying the knowledge to regulating and instructing their daily educational practices. It is not hard to imagine that those nannies and mothers having never learned about pedagogical curriculums also own some type of educational knowledge, or else they would not do anything on educating the children. For instance, they might perform “strict constraint” on the children, believing that “Your future is determined at your

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younger age,” and that the children will have great difficulties getting rid of the bad habits formed in the early age; they might tell the children that “The ripe ears of rice will bow,” and educate them thereon that a person should keep modest and cautious in front of success and honors; they might also require the children to be “industrious” on the study as they know stories about “packing fireflies for light” and “borrowing the reflected light by snow” for the sake of studying at night, and so forth. The educational knowledge contained in these stories or idioms may be fragmentary, unsystematic, or even imprecise, it, however, constitutes the most solid intellectual foundation of family, social, even school educations. As it were, where the systematic educational theories are in short, the tacit folk pedagogy plays its roles; where there are untouched areas by tacit knowledge, the roles played by explicit educational theories are limited. In my analyses of “the cultural characters of pedagogy” in 1999, I have also fully noticed the relationship between tacit educational knowable as such and its systematic educational theories. I called the knowledge as such “educational customs” (Shi, 1999a) and later changed it into “educational folk-customs” (Shi, 1999b). In my view, Educational customs refer to the aggregation of the educational modes, means, systems, idioms, stories, poetries, rites, etc., created, inherited, and enjoyed by the populace during the long period of educational activities, and they are the wisdom of the continual folk education, the lived relics of educational cultures. They are different from the ‘educational functions of folk-customs’ in general folklore studies. Educational customs are particularly concerned with the folk educational affairs like how to be a man, how to educate the children, and the like, whereas ‘the educational functions of folk-customs’ merely refers to the educational significance of folk-customs—as one of the many significances as such. (Shi, 1999a, b, p. 148)

It is my contention that in a certain sense, people engage in educational activities in the net of educational customs, rather than theories. The educational customs in the life-world may seem quite loose and are lack of a logical system, they, however, cultivate people’s fundamental educational beliefs, inform them of the fundamental educational methods, and make clear as well as simple their educational activities. It is educational customs rather than explicit educational theories that make possible the daily educational activities. Insofar as the relationship between them is concerned, I think, there is a “historic correlation” in between, which means that there is a fairly complicated and constantly changing historic relationship rather than a drastically opposition between them. On the one hand, educational customs are, as it were, the “great benefactor” of the educational theories in each phase of the history, having provided profound drives and foundations to the development of the latter; on the other hand, in the new educational theories of an era are always conceived the critiques on the conventional educational customs, particularly some bad ones. The ideal relationship between the two is a “mutually supporting” one in which educational customs.

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need the instructions from pedagogical theories, need to fuse the scholars’ studies into the new customs and become a part of them. In the meanwhile, to walk out of the labyrinth of purely speculative knowledge and to produce social educational functions, pedagogical theories must be concerned with the current educational customs, study how contemporaneous people educate their children, and absorb therefrom that which actively reflects the change of the epoch when simultaneously criticizing that which does not conform to the age. To be sure, the philosophical and scientific foundations need further reinforcement, the foundation of life however should also be found again for the sake of setting up the dialogues with ordinary educational life and educational customs inherited from thousands of years on, and with sciences as well. (Shi, 1999a, b, p. 165)

Seen from the aforementioned relationship between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge, the significance of upholding the dialogue between “educational customs,” on the one hand, and “educational theories,” “folk pedagogy,” and “specialty pedagogy,” on the other, is: in virtue of the dialogue, tacit “educational customs” or “folk pedagogy” may be “made explicit” and hence be examined, analyzed, criticized, and reformed. As a result, educational theories may be authentically turned into a constituent of the educational intellectual frame of the educators. In this way, they may play their due roles in educational practices rather than stopping at the mind or ideas of the educators and hence becoming a sort of sound but useless “knowledge without vitality.” A severe shortage in our previous education reform, particularly the normal education and teacher training corresponding to it, lies in the fact that tacit educational knowledge existed in a large amount and was used everyday but had kept going ignored which, therefore, should evoke our attention in the new century. That is to say, we should take into account the relationship between tacit and explicit educational knowledge and develop a new mode of normal education or teacher training based on tacit educational knowledge. It is my contention that the new mode is thus outlined: To begin, in terms of the goal of normal education or teacher training, we should not only “give” prospective teachers or incumbent teachers certain knowledge, techniques, attitudes, or beliefs of educational theories, but also reveal, analyze, and develop their existent tacit ones. The two sides should be internally unified as seen from the interrelationship between them: tacit educational knowledge would not develop without the delivery and grasping of systematic educational theories; contrariwise, without the revealing, analyses, and critiques of tacit educational knowledge, systematic educational theories or explicit educational knowledge would not convert into the teacher’s genuine thinking wealth, nor would it play the due guiding role in educational and teaching practices. That is to say, the goal of normal education or teacher training is to turn from a sort of “input” or “training” from outside into a “development” from inside as regards knowledge, techniques, attitude, and beliefs. As is said by B. Torff, in normal education “What’s needed is to encourage prospective teachers’ epistemological development” (Torff, 1999). Only when this point is reached can the inconformity between the teachers’ educational theories and the practical teaching behaviors they perform be overcome, and can a new type of teacher conforming to the requirements of social particular educational development be cultivated in the true sense of the word. At the same time, only this sort of teacher is capable of authentically shoulder and finish the important task

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of the education reform. To attain this goal, normal education and teacher training must reform their traditional tacit “view of objects,” namely, they should treat the students of normal education or incumbent teachers not as some people without or lack of educational knowledge, but as those who have owned a large amount of tacit educational knowledge but simultaneously need constantly showing, reflecting on, criticizing, and developing it. As for quality, the change of the view of normal education’s objectives is the same as that of students in the daily teaching process mentioned afore. Secondly, in terms of the teaching methods of the curriculums of normal education, we should attach importance to the teaching and analysis of all the fundamental educational “concepts,” “propositions,” and “principles” presented and explicated by educational theorists, but all the more to the excavation and analysis of the relevant “educational folk-customs” or “folklore pedagogy” in the thoughts of the prospective teachers or incumbent teachers qua the objects of normal education. On this ground, we should guide them to make comparisons and differentiations between corresponding educational theories and educational folk-customs, to reveal and examine their own tacit educational knowledge in active and automatic questionings, discussions, and dialogues, to develop automatically their own educational cognitive capacity, and to constantly construct and optimize their own educational knowledge structure. In this aspect, again as is said by Torff, From the perspective of the folk pedagogy framework, a key goal in teacher education is to put teachers into close contact with their own intuitive conceptions about education. In particular, there is a need to have prospective teachers (a) encounter, reflect on, critique, and evaluate the folk pedagogy; and (b) maintain awareness of folk pedagogy as the backdrop against which educational teachers are of no exception. (Torff, 1999, p. 207).

To reach this end, it is necessary to perform “act analysis” and “product analysis” with respect to the teaching practices of the teacher or others. Act analysis means that we record via videotape the teaching activities of the teacher or others before analyzing their situational acts, finding out the tacit educational presumptions behind the acts, and making comparisons between them and the explicit presumptions on teaching designs of the teacher or others. In this way, we can see, to what extent the teaching situations are dominated by explicit educational theories, and to what extent by tacit educational knowledge, whether or not there is a contradiction between them, and, if yes, to what extent tacit educational knowledge influences the practical efficacy of explicit educational theories. With the help of act analysis, teachers may reflect on the tacit intellectual presumptions on which their teaching designs rely, understand the relationship between tacit educational knowledge and explicit educational theories in practical teaching situations, and, therefore, learn how to make better use of the two sorts of educational knowledge to raise the level of rationalization of his/her own teaching. Product analysis appertains to the teaching results. Generally speaking, all the teachers will feel that some subjects are hard to teach or hard to learn for students which, traditionally, was thought to be a result of the difficulty extent of the subject knowledge itself. Now, from the perspective of tacit knowledge, it might also result

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from the interference of tacit knowledge failing to conform to the subject knowledge. The interfering tacit knowledge includes that of relevant subjects but also the general teaching process. Therefore, when making in-depth analyses with respect to the teaching “products” always being problematic, say, homework, experimental results, or other forms of teaching “product,” corresponding tacit knowledge and its functions might be faced with, which hence helps the teacher to reflect on, criticize, and reconstruct the tacit knowledge as such and finally settle the problems and improve the teaching of relevant parts. Thirdly, in terms of the organizational form of the curriculums of normal education, the teaching practices of the students and incumbent teachers should be attached great importance. As was stated afore, tacit knowledge as a sort of “unspeakable” or at least “inexplainable” knowledge is hard to directly deliver in the modern educational system with “objective knowledge” as the core, which brings about difficulties to the grasping of large amount of tacit knowledge. Be that as it may, theorists have explicated that people can deliver and obtain the tacit knowledge as such via practical and direct experiences, say, “the master guiding the apprentices,” i.e., “apprenticeship,” albeit the tacit knowledge cannot be “formally” or “directly” delivered. This means that students of normal education and incumbent teachers can obtain tacit educational knowledge and recognize as well as sense, via a large number of teaching practices, its significance to education. Seen at this level, the significance of teaching practices in normal education does not merely lie in “applying” and “examining” the existent explicit educational theories learned in the class, but all the more in enabling, via the skilled or expert teachers’ word-and-deed influences on the newcomers in teaching practices, the latter to grasp and understand a large amount of tacit educational knowledge unavailable in class. In this sense, it is fairly necessary to improve and strengthen the instructions on teaching practices in terms of the teaching organizational form of curriculums of normal education, for it constitutes an important link of the complete cultivation and training of teachers, and its significance also goes beyond the ordinary studies of educational theories. The instructions during the practicing process should stress the application or examination of some explicit theoretical educational knowledge, but they should also put stress on the future or incumbent teachers’ learning about, understanding of, and reflecting on the instructors’ treasurable tacit educational knowledge via making full use of this path. In this vein, the interns or student teachers should “all the time” follow the instructors during the practices and discuss with them, whenever and wherever possible, about the problems in teaching; the instructors should permit the interns to observe in an overall fashion their teaching work rather than being satisfied with some simple works. For instance, they should not merely examine the interns’ teaching plans (or schemes), attend their class teaching or observe the educational activities they organize, and present some simple advices before giving the final assessment as to the interns’ performance. The instruction as such may help the student teachers understand the general “procedures” of teaching but will hardly help them to have a fundamental recognition or understanding about the teaching “arts” (whose main body may be nothing else than the unspeakable or inexplainable tacit educational knowledge existing in individual fashion), let alone to automatically grasp and actively apply them.

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This theory has also provided support to the “upsurge of being apprenticed to a master” recently springing in the educational sphere. To improve the young teachers’ teaching levels as rapidly as possible and to shorten their period from newcomers to skilled and even expert teachers, some areas or schools uphold “being apprenticed to a master” inside as well as outside the school, expecting that the young teachers learn from the skilled, particularly the excellent, expert teachers, which resembles on form the “apprenticeship” in Polanyi’s terminology. The young teachers usually work with their instructors, some even acting as the assistants of the latter. For one thing, they can obtain certain educational theories from the instructors; for another, they can get from the instructors a large amount of tacit educational knowledge even inexplicable to themselves. Practices have proved that this mode is really beneficial to young teachers’ development. Seen from the perspective of the theory of tacit knowledge, this “folk” or “non-institutional” mode of teacher training suffices the requirements from teaching work on the large amount of tacit educational knowledge and is of vital significance to settling the problem of the loss of tacit educational knowledge along with the retirement of excellent teachers, as to which it can even be said the only effective mode,5 and hence it helps to constantly reinforce the overall wisdom of educational practices. On the other hand, the springing of this “upsurge of being apprenticed to a master” reflects from a facet the “crisis” of the traditional mode of normal education and teaching training centering on the delivery of explicit and theoretical educational knowledge, which deserves the contemplations of normal educators. Fourthly, on the relationship between the institutions of normal education, on the one hand, and the primary and secondary schools, on the other, we are supposed to strongly uphold the cooperation between them so as to promote diversified dialogues between educational theorists and practitioners respectively. In history, various complex causes led to the “estrangement” between the normal education institutions and the primary and secondary schools, and to the pause of dialogues between the theorists and practitioners of education. On the one hand, being “restricted” or “tempted” by the traditional curriculum setup of higher education, normal education institutions were mainly engaged in the construction of some educational disciplines, and the systemization, theorization, and abstraction of the educational knowledge of 5

In recent years, many places have begun to publish the “education studies” of many excellent teachers, namely, they collected and organized systematically the teaching thoughts of some excellent teachers and tried to sublime them to theoretical height to publicize them more broadly and let more people learn from them. To be sure, there is no blame in doing so and it is even necessary and beneficial. On the other hand, nevertheless, many generalizations and conclusions are reluctant, and, still worse, they have lost the rich personality and verve of the original educational arts of the teachers, becoming somewhat stiff and duplicate. At the level of tacit knowledge, this is by no means due to the generalizers’ own qualities, since a teacher’s splendid teaching arts originally belong in unspeakable and unexplainable tacit educational knowledge, and the result will all-possibly be like this if people including themselves insist on organizing, generalizing, or concluding them. It is my contention that the best method to learn from them is to employ “apprenticeship” to deliver the large amount of useful tacit knowledge from one generation to another via the excellent teachers’ words and deeds and the new comers’ seeing and hearing in practice, and to examine, modify, and develop this knowledge in the new comers’ educational practices.

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some discipline, but ignored to a great extent the analysis of and critique on the tacit educational knowledge tactically functioning in primary and secondary education. This hence left an impression that the whole normal education activity was a “metaphysical” thing merely “sitting and prattling about the general principles.” On the other hand, due to this “metaphysical” impression, educators in the sphere of primary and secondary educations also held, in a great measure, an attitude of “suspicion” even a posteriori “refutation” toward the practical values of educational theories. They were used to believe that educational theories and educators were incapable of settling practical educational problems, and that the only function of normal education was to make one officially qualified for being a teacher, and as to his/her efficiency on the teaching work, it depended on his/her educational “talents” or the “experiences” accumulated during the process when he/she constantly challenged the errors. There even prevailed a parlance of “A good (primary and secondary) teacher is worth a dozen of educators” among the teachers. The most immediate result of the “estrangement” as such led to the pause or obstacles of the dialogues between educational theorists and practitioners, and the fact that for a long time, the educational theorists did not understand the practical situations of education whereas the educational practitioners knew little about the latest development of educational theories. The intermediate but also the most severe result was the lowering of the due functions of normal education institutions at the level of teachers’ specialization. Simultaneously, educational practices were long lacking the support and critical reflections of educational theories, and have stopped in a great measure at the level of “being conventionalized.” In recent years, under the pressure of the strong appeal to the education reform, educators began to pay attention to the practical educational work of primary and secondary schools, and to turn their regard to the practical educational life of the latter. Nonetheless, being restricted to traditional ideas of explicit knowledge, they failed to realize the existence and functions of tacit educational knowledge but often “disseminated” their “new” educational ideas in a “prophet’s” tone. This further produced an “intellectual suppression” on the practitioners of primary and secondary education, making them feel “ashamed” before the theorists and lose the confidence and capacity for “speaking” except for “copying” the slogan-like educational “propositions” smacking of instigation presented by the “educators” in normal universities and colleges. That is to say, they made educational experiments in accordance with these propositions before performing demonstrations from the perspective of a practical educator on the legitimacy and justification of them. This situation is most clearly manifested in the conferences attended by both the educational theorists and the practitioners, the latter’s speaking time was limited on amount and so was the case as to the responses to their statements. In such situations, the “dialogues” between them de facto did not exist, and that which existed was still the unidirectional reliances, say, “producing-consuming,” “delivering-accepting,” of the educational practitioners on the theorists. This relationship is in fact an expansion of the traditional intellectual dependence during the normal educational process on the relationship between the normal education institutions and primary and secondary schools. Seen at this level, albeit the current mode of cooperation and communication is so to speak a progress,

References

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we still should be cautious when making assessment as regards its constructive significance, particularly its functions on authentically optimizing the teachers’ educational intellectual structures and improving their educational efficacy. Seen from the perspective of tacit knowledge, that which is needed by future education reform is a “cooperation” and a “dialogue” in the true sense of the words. The thinking conditions of the attainment of cooperation and dialogue is: the educational theorists must realize that their objects on cooperation and dialogue are by no means those who are “lack” of educational knowledge but who must constantly reorganize or reform their original educational intellectual structures according to new educational problems; that their objects are more than the “instruments” of the theorists’ educational experiments but the subjects of factual educational practices, all their practical educational activities being constructed by their obtained educational knowledge. In this line, when performing cooperation and dialogues with the objects, it is impossible, and unforgivable either, to ignore their educational knowledge, notably the unspeakable or unexplainable tacit knowledge. To put it in another way, the cooperation and dialogues with the objects pivot around the appearing, reviewing, critiques of, and reflections on their tacit educational knowledge. To imitate Mr. Ye Shengtao’s saying of “Teaching aims to let go teaching,” we may say that in primary and secondary schools, the educational theorists’ “Educational experiments aim to let go educational experiments,” to enable the educational practitioners to improve and develop themselves during the educational experiments rather than being reduced to the instruments of the experiments or tragically returning to the “conventionalized” teaching level after an experiment. In addition, from the angle of the educational practitioners, the thinking condition to realize the cooperation and dialogue also lies in the fact that they must realize that what they expect from the cooperation or dialogues is more than the new educational theories, strategies, or methods, but a sort of “opportunity” and “drive” to understand, examine, and critically reflect on their own tacit educational knowledge to lay a solid intellectual foundation for their future turn to “automatic” “mature” educators.

References Clement, J. (1994). Use of physical intuition and imagistic simulation in expert problem solving. In D. Tirosh (Ed.), Implicit and explicit knowledge: An educational approach (pp. 227–242). Ablex Publishing Corporation. Horvath, J. A. (1999). Tacit knowledge in the professions. In R. J. Sternberg & J. A. Horvath (Eds.), Tacit knowledge in professional practice: Researcher and practitioner perspectives. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. Polanyi, M. (1957). The study of man. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Polanyi, M. (1958). Personal knowledge: Toward a post-critical philosophy. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Polanyi, M. (1966). The tacit dimension. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Reber, A. S. (1993). Implicit learning and tacit knowledge: An essay on the cognitive unconscious. Oxford University Press.

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Shi, Z. (1999a). 教育学的文化性格 [The cultural characters of education]. Shanxi Education Press. Shi, Z. (1999b). 教育民俗: 概念、特征与功能 [Educational folklores: Concepts, properties and functions]. 教育理论与实践 [Theory and practice of education], (5), 3–5. Stadler, M. A., & Fresch, P. A. (Eds.). (1998). Handbook of implicit learning. Sage Publications. Sternberg, R. J. (1999). What so we know about tacit knowledge? Making the tacit become explicit. Children’s construction of meaning for arithmetical words: A curriculum problems. Tirosh, D. (Ed.). (1994). Implicit and explicit knowledge: An educational approach. Ablex Publishing Corporation. Tirosh, D., & Graeber, A. O. (1994). Implicit and explicit knowledge: The case of multiplication and division. In D. Tirosh. (Ed.), Implicit and explicit knowledge: An educational approach. Ablex Publishing Corporation. Torff, B. (1999). Tacit knowledge in teaching: Folk pedagogy and teacher education. In R. J. Sternberg & J. A. Horvath (Eds.), Tacit knowledge in professional practice: Researcher and practitioner perspectives. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.

Chapter 8

Humanistic World, Humanistic Knowledge, and Humanistic Education

At present, the loss of humanistic spirit in Chinese society has been shown in every sphere of social life and work: family, school, hospital, factory, commerce, department, etc. Belief suffers satires, ideal is coldly treated, moral is at the edge of crisis, sentiment declines to desire, and responsibility is bound to money, and so on and so forth. All these aspects have severely influenced individual happiness and social development. Nevertheless, that which is more striking is, be it in the academia or in other spheres of society, not a few people think that these problems are “inevitable” phenomena during the industrializing and modernizing process of any society, and hence China is no exception. Their underlying meaning is: all the wishes and efforts pertinent to the settlement of these problems are flogging a dead horse. This is a drastic theory of fatalism and is itself nothing but the reflection of the crisis of the contemporary humanistic spirit. Looking back in history, we will find that the Chinese nation strongly protested against fatalism in favor of learning from the history, being cautious beforehand, and bringing forth the new through the old. To China qua a late developed industrialized and modernized country, it is all-possible and necessary to The problems I originally planned to study were concerning the relationships between knowledge classification, structure, and education reform. This is because, along with the transformation of postmodern knowledge, particularly with the deconstruction of the objectivity of modern knowledge, many human cognitive experiences, originally deprived of their legitimate intellectual status, have entered into the sphere of knowledge and greatly changed the classification and structural state of knowledge forms, which will surely influence educational process’ choice, organization, and dissemination of knowledge, and the organizing modes and value orientation of education. Nevertheless, considering that humanistic knowledge has been oppressed in modern knowledge form (notably people’s ignorance of humanistic knowledge’s peculiar qualities and practical values under the circumstances that the scientific knowledge form believing in objectivity dominated the sphere), in this chapter, I will focus on the qualities of humanistic knowledge and its social and educational significance. I will perform systematic studies in the future on the alteration of the whole knowledge form and structure and relevant influences on educational activities.

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learn from its own and Western developed countries’ bitter lessons, abandon historical fatalism, make full use of advantageous cultural resources, take every means to prevent and eliminate the crisis as such but reconstruct the humanistic spirit of Chinese society, so as to provide stronger and more healthy spiritual drives and ideological conditions to reform and opening since the 1980s. A fortiori, this is a quite tough “cultural programme,” being concerned with many complex problems, needing to mobilize the power of the whole society, and needing the unanimous efforts and arduous struggles of the government, scholars, and the public. This chapter stresses the study of the particularity of humanistic knowledge as a knowledge form at the level of knowledge transformation, trying to liberate humanistic knowledge from modern objective intellectual standards, construct a preliminary theory of humanistic knowledge, analyze the severe sequels brought about by the lack of humanistic knowledge, and therefore provide an epistemological foundation for reference and critique to the cultivation of humanistic spirit. Simultaneously, it tries to offer an inkling of my own ideas as regards the theoretical explorations of humanistic education. As a necessary constituent of the study at work, this chapter will first discuss the distinction between humanistic world on the one hand and natural and social worlds on the other, then outline the overall structure of the humanistic world and, at last, explicate its peculiar position and existential meaning in the overall human world.

8.1 Natural World, Social World, and Humanistic World It is not hard to understand that we are living in a complicated world whose complication has gone far beyond the most scrupulous descriptions that human beings can provide. Be that as it may, no matter how complicated the world is, its image in our mind completely relies on our “existent recognition” of it. Without this recognition, we would lack the most basic imaginative and cognitive capacities as regards this world. On this account, the “world” we talk about within our capacity is de facto “our” world, the one within our cognitive scope and capacity bestowed by the history. We “are incapable of” denying that there are other more pleasing or boring worlds, given that we do not have the evidence to prove that they do not exist. In this sense, we are the law-makers of “our” world, the rod measuring the true and false, beautiful and ugly, and good and evil of it. In effect, this has not been a new idea since ancient, modern, and postmodern philosophers such as Heraclitus, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, and others, have all made incisive and clear discussions from which we can logically draw this conclusion: the world we are discussing about, dwelling in, experiencing, reforming, hating, or loving is per se nothing but “humans’” world or a “humanistic” world. Nonetheless, the world as such remains to be a “humanistic” world in a general sense and this is merely a “general designation.” The “humanistic world” familiar to people is merely a constituent of this overall world or, more exactly, a facet of it, one corresponding to the “natural world” and the “social world.” Undoubtedly, the distinction between the “three worlds” is not a new idea, either. As a matter of

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fact, be it in ordinary teaching activities or in some academic works, people often consciously or unconsciously apply this “trichotomy,” taking it as the framework of their discussions or merely occasionally mentioning it. According to my academic knowledge, nevertheless, in these ordinary applications and a plenty of academic works, people fail to make explications of the logic support with regard to this “trichotomy” of the world structure. To a certain extent, this leads to the vagueness of the distinction between the “three worlds” and to the lack of the clarity and logical self-consistency like Popper’s “three worlds” (world 1, world 2, and world 3). For instance, what on earth are the logical differences between “social world” and “humanistic world”? What are their relations? Some think that the “social world” is a “human” or “humanistic” one and there is no essential difference between them, so there is no point in distinguishing them; some others hold that the “humanistic world” is different from the “social world” and they follow different “laws” respectively, so there is the necessity to distinguish them. However, they fail to give further detailed distinctions between them; still others hold a neutral view, contending that there are similarities as well as differences between these two worlds, and that they interact with one another. Nevertheless, they also fail to tell where the joint is and where the departure is. In effect, if these “three worlds” cannot be explicated clearly on logic, people would not better recognize or understand them hence would not give a solid and defendable theoretical foundation to relevant discussions based on the distinction between the “three worlds.” Insofar as the problems of knowledge at stake are concerned, without full elucidations of the logical boundary between the “three worlds,” we would hardly clearly explicate the properties of “natural knowledge,” “social knowledge,” and “humanistic knowledge” as three different forms of knowledge and their mutual relations. In this connection, we must first of all analyze the construction of these “three worlds” and their mutual logical and factual relations before entering into the discussions with respect to knowledge, particularly humanistic knowledge.1 Seen in the history of thought, the analysis appertaining in a certain measure to the overall world in which people live was already there in ancient times. This is probably because only after the analysis can we have a clearer recognition and understanding of the overall world and can we then better live in and grasp it. As is known, in ancient China, there was the distinction between “heaven” and “human,” from which many theories exploring their relations emerged, say, “the integrity of heaven and human,” “Heaven and human enrich each other,” “telepathy between heaven and human,” and “separation of heaven from human,” to name a few. Some ancient scholars even believed that “The studies failing to mention heaven-human relations do not deserve the name” (Huangjijingshi). There are also some modern scholars thinking that 1

In the discussions above, I stressed “logic” once and again insomuch as the factual “world” based on experiences does not contain the distinction between “natural,” “social,” and “humanistic” entities and the establishment of these three worlds is completely the product of logical construction. To the chaotic world where we live, the significance of the logical construction as such consists in the fact that it offers us the conceptual types for the sake of analyzing and understanding the integral world from different aspects, but also a conceptual frame to the following differentiation of knowledge forms.

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explorations with respect to the relations between “heaven” and “human” constitute ancient Chinese thinking history’s ontology on which other theories like “the theory of human nature,” “the theory of morals,” “the theory of knowledge,” or the like, rely. Here, I will not analyze specifically or criticize these theories but will point out that, at any rate, such early explorations have recognized “heaven” and “human” as two different phenomena of being albeit this will not influence the discussions with regard to their interrelations or inner relations. For instance, in Yi • Bi (gua) 易・贲(卦), it was already so clearly stated: “Observe the heavenly phenomena so as to examine the flowing changes; observe the humanistic phenomena so as to cultivate the populace,” in which “heavenly phenomena” and “humanistic phenomena” were compared. Be that as it may, seen in the history of ancient Chinese thoughts, albeit there was the distinction between heaven and human, the philosophers did not completely use this characteristic in the sense of “natural” substance when discussing about heaven. It can be even said that except for Dao School or the School of Agriculture, traditional Chinese culture with Confucianism as the core used the character in the sense of “moral” rather than “nature.” Hence, “heaven-human relations” mainly refers to a sort of ethical and moral relation rather than a natural one (Shi, 1999, pp. 271–276). In the meanwhile, when discussing about “human,” ancient Chinese philosophers did not concern the originally quite vague boundary between “individual” and “collective” at all albeit there was already the distinction between them. As a consequence, social needs were substituted for the individual ones whereas on the other hand, individual needs were enlarged into the social ones, which resulted in a cultural pattern differentiating no “individual” and “collective” but integrating “state” and “family.” Roughly speaking, in traditional Chinese culture, people had noticed or intuited the phenomena of “nature” and “humanity” (including “society”) but failed, due to various complex causes, to define or differentiate them by means of logical analysis, and they even “humanized” nature. This worldview hindered not merely the progress of natural knowledge but also the accumulation and development of social knowledge, and it even hindered people’s recognition, understanding, and inheritance of the properties of human knowledge. It is until after modern times that this ancient worldview was changed. The main cause was the influence from Western analyzing thinking mode and disciplinary knowledge system. The change as such is specifically manifested in these two aspects: first, people began to dispel the “humanity” or “morality” of the category of “nature” in traditional culture, promote the “naturalization” or “substantiation” of the nature, and to regard, gradually, “nature” as a material reality not depending on people’s subjective will; second, under the influences from Western social sciences, people began to convert the vague notion of “group” in the traditional culture into “society” running counter to the individual, encompassing phenomena like politics, economy, population, etc., and those of moral, religion, customs, etc. Individuals merely existed as constituents of society and their values depended on the contributions they had made to social development. Under such circumstances, “humanistic” phenomena were also taken as constituents of, or, as contained in, “social” phenomena. Additionally, along with the thinking movements from the 1960s to 1970s and the critiques on “humanitarianism,” “individualism,” and capitalism living style centering on

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“individualism” in the “Cultural Revolution,” the elements of “humanity” in social phenomena decreased until they disappeared. This exerted great influences on the development of Chinese society in the last 20 years of the twentieth century. It stands to reason to say that all the crises of humanistic spirit appearing during the high-speed social development have bearings on this. After the 1980s, along with the gradual development of the reform and opening, people increasingly recognized and appealed to humans’ subjectivity. Under such circumstances, “human image” began to stand out of the background of “society,” and humanistic phenomena as one different from natural and social phenomena also began to evoke the concerns of scholars and the public opinion. Some scholars began to present in definite fashion the concept of “humanistic world” and made a preliminary definition of it, hoping to offer a suitable ontological or worldview premise to the legitimacy of human sciences,2 which resulted in the “tripartite” pattern of “nature (natural world),” “society (social world),” and “humanism (humanistic world).” Be that as it may, insofar as people recognized the “three worlds,” particularly the “humanistic world,” there were still many vague points. For example, some scholars simply interpreted the “humanistic world” into “human world,” “humans’ internal world,” or the like, which made it hard to answer the following questions, say, is “social world” a “human world”? What kind of “world” on earth is the “non-human world” and “humans’ external world” corresponding to “human world” and “humans’ internal world”? Does “humanistic world” have “external” constituents independent of the individual? Or is it merely a sort of purely subjective “spiritual activity”? In the West, recognition relevant to “natural world,” “social world,” and “humanistic world” has also experienced a quite complex and long process as to which here I can only give a generalized analysis and statement. As is known, in the first “Axial period” of Western civilization, there emerged a group of natural philosophers who first established the concept of “nature” in a substantial sense and engaged in contemplations pertinent to natural phenomena and the origin of the cosmos. Simultaneously, or a little bit later, there also emerged philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others, who stressed “human,” “reason,” “virtue,” etc., rather than natural phenomena, engaged themselves in philosophical contemplations of social phenomena and human life, and attempted to answer questions like what “justice” is, what “bravery” is, and what “happiness” is, and so forth. The early recognition was interrupted by the successive coming of the Middle Ages whence everything was “sanctified” including nature and the existence of “society” and “human” as well. In other words, there was no distinction between “nature,” “society,” and “man” since they all belonged to “God,” being His “products.” On this account, that which was seen and heard in them was not their own characteristics but God’s decrees and relics. Thus, the Middle Ages lasting more than one thousand years have hindered people’s recognition of both “nature” on the one hand and “society” and “man” on the other.

2

The “humanistic world” at this time included the “social world” in today’s terminology but did not mainly refer to it as, at that time, “society,” as something relatively independent, did not attract sufficient attention and everything was restricted to the ancient customs and systems.

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This phenomenon did not change until the period of “Renaissance.” The Renaissance is a great age in Western cultural history whence two far-reaching trends of thought were born: naturalism and humanism. They influenced each other but had their respective emphases. Naturalism refused to take “nature” as God’s product but held that it was attached to human beings, stressing its “independence,” “materiality,” “objectivity,” and “being in itself.” The emergence of this naturalistic trend started, de facto, the process of “disenchantment” or “de-sanctification” of “nature” in modern philosophers’ terminology. It demanded that people treat “nature” “naturally” and engage themselves in finding out the invariable laws of “nature” itself. As a result, a purely external “natural world” independent of humans was separated from the chaotic religious world of the Middle Ages and was shown to people, providing the philosophical foundation for the development of modern scientific causes. In fact, such demands of naturalism were not limited to natural phenomena but extended to social and humanistic areas. They attempted to study “social nature” and “humanistic nature” hence provided an ideological foundation to the “disenchantment” of social and humanistic phenomena, being of strong humanism color and revolutionary inclination. Compared with naturalism, humanism was the most resounding movement in the Renaissance. The most immediate result of its development led to “humans’ discoveries.” Unlike before, people no longer denied and rejected the notion of human or treated it pessimistically but extolled and praised humans with high enthusiasms, being full of confidence for humans’ prospect. If the naturalism in the Renaissance “gave rise to” a “natural world” in and for itself, it can be said that the humanism in this period “woke up” a vigorous “humanistic world.”3 They stood out of the overall religious world together and became two “new worlds” standing side by side and reflecting each other’s brilliance. Along with the discovery of “nature” and the opening-up of the new sea route in the fifteenth century, with the acknowledgment of humans’ desires, capacities, and values in the Renaissance, and with the “growth of the Common”4 in Comte’s terminology, during the two centuries after the sixteenth century, a group of Western people started to liberate themselves from the “tradition” and hoped to reform society according to their own desires, reasons, and ideals. As a result, there emerged the complicated struggles among “religions,” “nations,” “states,” “classes,” and “parties,” and incessant wars and political subversions running counter to the humanist ideals. 3

Therefore, albeit I accept Zhu Hongwen’s definitions of “humanistic world” in many aspects, I cannot agree with him on defining “humanistic world” as both “the world of meaning” and “the world of values” as the logical boundary between “humanistic world” and “social world” would be blurred and the “problems of values” in social life might be misunderstood as the “problems of meaning” in humanistic world and “the crisis of values” caused by the diversity and conflicts and values as “crisis of meaning.” De facto, this misunderstanding exists also in factual social life, which is also one of my objects of clarification. 4 This path twisted, roughly experiencing the two phases of “natural philosophy” and “natural sciences.” During the first phase, people presented the task of studying the nature for the sake of the philosophical problems; in the second phase, they became authentically interested in cognizing the nature itself.

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The cruel facts broke the moral dreams of humanists, Utopians, and enlightenment philosophers. What is the reason? Are humanism ideals wrong? Bitter reflections made them gradually realize that as to social reform, humanism ideals alone were not enough in that outside or in between natural and humanistic worlds there might be something remaining to be recognized but being independent and unquestionable— “society.” They had an in-depth recognition that “society” was neither an illusive being nor a simple “spiritual product” or “ideal fact” but an “authentic” one, an existent having its peculiar contents and laws of motion like “nature.” The contents and laws as such rose over the scope of individual imagination and speculation and were of the “reality” and “objectivity” like everything else in the natural world. Without well recognizing the reality and regularity of this social being, no one, no matter what he/she is, would be capable of understanding, let alone well reforming, society, but people would suffer various resistances and failures in the social reform. Resultantly, in the eighteenth century, the Westerners found the “social world” between or outside the “natural world” and the “humanistic world” they previously found. In the sphere of thought, it was some sociologists who first let know this discovery. Early at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Comte presented the important concept of “social facts,” contending that they were independent of people’s ideas and judgments and had their own laws of motion, that social facts were more than the object of respect and critiques, but they should also be the object of observation. In front of “social facts,” people should “suspend” all the judgments pertinent to good or evil but understand them as eternally corresponding to a certain social form and changing along with it. So to speak, the discovery of “society” or the “social world” was very important to both the progress of knowledge (particularly the birth and development of sociology) and the reform of society, and even the original “natural world” and “humanistic world” were also understood in a new fashion thanks to this discovery: “nature” was no longer regarded as purely material, nor was “humanity” regarded as all-encompassing and covering all ideas, systems, activities, or products relevant to human beings. Nevertheless, what merits heed is, people’s recognition as regards “society” at that time mainly adopted the stance of naturalism but remained to authentically recognize “society” from “social” perspectives, treating more often than not “society” as another sort of “nature,” as a “thing” or “machine.” After the second half of the nineteenth century, this situation apparently changed. The main causes were that, along with the rapid development of the industrialization and the strengthening of human reason since the eighteenth century, people increasingly recognized the diversity and multiplicity of the world, finding the theoretical limits and practical harm of treating and understanding the “social world” and “humanistic world” by virtue of the laws and methodologies of the “natural world.” Therefore, they decided that there was the necessity to recognize in a different fashion the different worlds composed of different “materials” and “forms.” W. Dilthey, H. Richert, E. Durkheim, and others, made great contributions in this aspect. Dilthey was called “Kant in the sphere of historical cognition.” He devoted his whole life to the differentiation between “natural phenomena” and “spiritual phenomena” and to upholding the independence on content and methodology of “spiritual sciences” for the sake of defending the dignity and independence of human spiritual

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life and protesting against the invasion of the positivist methodology into the sphere of human spiritual life. In his view, “natural phenomena” and “spiritual phenomena” are essentially different phenomena. On the basis of the “dichotomy” of the world, Dilthey believed that the methods suitable for natural studies did not necessarily fit the studies of spiritual or historical phenomena, and hence he presented the methodology of spiritual sciences characterized by “empathy,” “understanding,” etc., making an initial contribution to humanities in striving for a position in the scenario governed by scientism. Nevertheless, Dilthey’s comparisons and analyses show that he merely attempted to differentiate “natural phenomena” (natural world) and “spiritual phenomena” (“humanistic world” in the broad sense) rather than differentiating “social world” and “humanistic world” which, presumably, appertains to the situations of struggle with which he was confronted then. After Dilthey, Richert a representative of Neo-Kantianism distinguished “natural world” from “cultural world.” He believed that “nature” was different from “culture,” the former being the totality of things running their own courses, the latter that which was produced by human beings according to the presupposed ends and was particularly preserved due to its instinctive values. The important contribution of Richert is that he treated “values” as the fundamental criterion differentiating “natural world” and “cultural world,” which criterion is still widely accepted by the intellectuals. Unlike Dilthey and Richert, Durkheim further elucidated, at the end of the nineteenth century, Comte’s concept of “social facts,” contending that “social facts” differed from both “mental facts” and “personal facts.” Compared with “mental facts,” “social facts” were of their objective reality and could be observed and measured from the outside; compared with “personal facts,” “social facts” were based on society rather than individuals, and they originated from interpersonal “public life.” To this connection, as to the facts as such, we could only employ “social” to name them.5 Durkheim’s discussions depicted the fundamental properties of social being, having laid an important theoretical foundation for the separation of “social world” from “humanistic world” stressing more psycho-spiritual processes and individual characteristics. Nonetheless, what is interesting is, after Durkheim, along with the independence of “social world” of “humanistic world,” the latter became harder to grasp than the former due to its own problematic determinations. In particular, after the abstract “theories of human nature” (e.g., the religious theory of human nature, the naturalistic theory of human nature, the rationalistic theory of human nature, etc.) long existing in history were criticized by Marx and others in the middle nineteenth century, the “humanistic world” in the conventional sense lost its most fundamental conceptual support and hence gradually withered until crouched in some obscured corner of the “social world.” During the whole twentieth century, albeit many Western philosophers exclaimed, awed by the disasters brought about by the two most tragic World 5

This word was first used by Cicero, the ancient Roman writer in a speech. In 1369, C. Salutati, a humanist of the Renaissance, found it and applied it in his works. Nevertheless, the person who defined this word was his student, L. Bruni, the famous humanist and politician of the first half the fifteenth century.

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Wars in human history, about the crisis of “Western civilization” with “science” and “industry” as two pillars, and about the forgetting of human beings themselves due to the crisis, albeit they presented various treating measures and remedies, it seemed that few people were really concerned about the almost forgotten “humanistic world” and were engaged in legitimately establishing, via “redefining” the humanistic world, its position in the overall modern world. It can be seen from the above historical review of the distinction between “natural world,” “social world,” and “humanistic world” that the logical distinction remains to be finished till now. Insofar as the “three worlds” are concerned, the “natural world” is the easiest to be accepted and affirmed and relatively unanimously acknowledged once it stood out of the overall religious world in Western Middle Ages or of the overall humanistic world in ancient Chinese society. To be sure, after modern times, people’s cognition of natural attributes has greatly changed, and they have noticed the interrelations between the “natural world” and “humanistic world” or “social world,” modified the absolute reality about “natural world” in the early period, and converted “nature” from a “substantial” category into a “relational” one. “Natural world” as a relatively independent world however is of no problem both logically and empirically. That which is problematic is “social world” and “humanistic world.” In addition, on their relations, the more problematic is the definition of “social world” rather than “humanistic world” albeit the answer to this question should be developed in the overall grasping of the relations between the “three worlds.” On the basis of predecessors’ discussions, it is my contention that the overall world in which we live consists of three different fundamental factors, namely “facts,” “values,” and “meanings.” “Facts” include the various “material realities” observable and sensible by us, such as rivers and mountains, the sun-moon-starplanets, earthquakes and seaquakes, products, to name a few, but they also include the mutual relations and interactions between these material realities, viz., “events” etc. That is to say, “facts” include “‘social’ facts and events” as well as the “natural” ones. They are of the common traits mentioned by Durkheim—“objective reality,” “compulsiveness,” and “integrity.” “Values” are the normative systems designed by people according to their own needs to assess the serviceability of these facts and events, being of the traits of “culturality,” “intersubjectivity,” and “normativity.” Value culturality means that under different cultural backgrounds and traditions, there are different value normative systems and value practicing modes, and that value system is itself diversified and multiple. Value “intersubjectivity” means that albeit value factors are not of objective reality as factual factors, they are not subjective or private compared with people in specific socio-historical conditions. Values exist in the practices of interpersonal communication in the historical tradition and real society. A norm would not be called “value” if it merely functioned in some particular individual. Only when it turns from the individual to society and history and is accepted and acknowledged by others and later generations hence plays a normative role, can it be called a “value.” Value’s normativity means that values are of authentic constraining and guiding functions to people’s thoughts and behaviors and once people violate some value norm, they will be punished in different fashions; contrariwise, when people express some acceptable value, or when they are

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capable of defending it, they will receive corresponding praises. In a certain social context, the application of this normative system constitutes a “value judgment,” the pursuit of its “value practices.” “Meanings” whereas refer to the overall reflections and inner experiences of us qua individuals on and of these value normative systems and the ordinary practical activities under their guide, and the enquiry into meanings is the inquisitive interrogation of the “legitimacy” of a person or the whole social practices’ value normative system and the ordinary practical activities under its guide. Seen in this line, “meaning” can be taken as the individual’s supervision and “reflection” on values, and as the deeper experience of the legitimacy of the individual’s “life-world.” Therefore, albeit there is a necessary logical connection between “meaning” and “value,” the former is not equal to the latter, namely, being valuable is not necessarily being meaningful, being of more values is not necessarily being more meaningful, and people of common value ideas are not necessarily of the common experiences of meaning. “Meaning” is of clear “individuality,” “subjectivity,” and “historicity” different from “value,” and hence it is hard to observe from the outside or to employ the method of type (or “ideal type”) for the sake of analogizing or generalizing meaning; but rather, meaning can only be “understood” via dialogues, empathy, etc., from the inside. The different forms of combination of the three factors constitute three different worlds: the “natural world,” the “social world,” and the “humanistic world.” “Natural world” is purely composed of natural facts and events and was dominated by “blind” natural factors before human factors interfered. After that, the natural world de facto has become a “humanized nature” in Marx’s words since the traces of human value practices can be found everywhere in nature. Be that as it may, the extent and scope that humans’ subjective practices can reach are still constrained by natural laws. The “social world” is new and based on the “natural world,” being a whole composed of various social facts or events including various social bodies, languages, norms, organizations, institutions, activities, among others. Of these factors, it is social value norms rather than other social facts or events that constitute the core of the “social world,” and social value norms function in the formation of the “social world” as natural laws do in the formation of the “natural world.” Albeit any social fact or event has the observable external traits as natural facts or events, the “criterion” differentiating various types of social fact and event is not such observable external traits, say, the number of the attendees, the length of the working time, and the procedures of the production, and so forth, but the activity-subjects’ value demands penetrating the whole process. On this account, if the “social world” runs according to human will, the will is not essentially the “will to truth,” “will to power,” “will to love,” etc., in some people’s eyes but the “will to value,” namely the will to pursue values. Other wills are merely the specific expressions of this one. Hence, we can say that the factor of “values” is the dividing line between the “natural world” and the “social world,” and the former is itself of no value will. “Social” facts or events are essentially different from their “natural” counterparts, namely “social” facts or events are “constructed” by values, being those “of value” rather than the “purely natural” ones. Without understanding such “values” making possible “social” facts or events, we would not authentically understand the latter itself.

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The “humanistic world” is built on the basis of or within “social world.” This world is composed of a series of overall reflections and inner experiencing activities as regards social value norms and their practices, and relevant products, organizations, systems, symbols, or the like. In short, it is composed of social “values” and the “meanings” formed via the overall reflections and experiences with regard to the value as such. Nevertheless, in the “humanistic world,” “meaning” has replaced “values” and become the new kernel factor whereas “values” and value practices are nothing else than the materials for the subject to make overall reflections and experiences. Thus: “meaning” is the dividing line between the “social world” and the “humanistic world.” The “humanistic world” is in the final analysis a meaning world, being of strong “historicity,” “individuality,” and “subjectivity”6 In this vein, the “humanistic world” should not be understood in a general sense as “human world” or “human’s world.” This is because on the one hand, as was stated afore, the “natural world” in a certain measure is also a “human world” and “social world” is all the more a “human” or “human’s” world. The more exact parlance should be: the “humanistic world” is a “meaningful world” rather than a “value world” or “natural world” of humans. “Human problems” should not be roughly attributed to those of the “humanistic world” since the former might appertain to both humans’ “factual problems,” say, “How is human’s musculature constituted,” and humans’ “value problems,” say, “For what on earth am I busy with all these things every day?,” “How should I live through so short a life?,” and so forth. The distinction between the “natural world” and the “social world” made afore is supposed to be widely accepted. As to that between the “social world” and the “humanistic world,” whereas, many problems will appear. In effect, this is really questionable. What is “overall reflections”? What is “overall experiences”? What are “the overall reflections on and experiences of social value norms and their practices”? And what are the products, organizations, systems, etc., of the humanistic world? As to these questions, my explications are as follows. Let us have a look at the notion of “reflection” first. In Chinese, “reflect” (fansi反思) means “think reversely” or “think again” or, in the common parlance, “think by returning to the original place.” For instance, after “the Cultural Revolution” ended, out of some then and future needs, many people said that they needed to earnestly “reflect on” that history and on what they had done in that history, which means that for the sake of some factual or future purposes, they would suspend tentatively their previous thinkings but ask more “Whys” about what they thought and what they did at that time. The “rethinking, reflecting, introspecting” in English resemble the “fansi” in Chinese, also being of the meaning of “re-think,” “think reversely,” or “think inwards” (intro-) . It can thus be seen that the key traits in terms of the usage of “reflection” in Chinese and English contexts are: first, it is suitable for historical events. Second, it questions 6

Humanista (humanist) is not an ancient Latin word but one created by the college students in the fifteenth century to refer to the teachers teaching humanities, such as ancient Greek, Latin, moral philosophy, poetry, history, etc. On word-formation, this word was given with the reference from Cannoista (i.e., the teacher of theology) and Legista (i.e., the teacher of law). From the late Renaissance until the nineteenth century, the meaning of this word suffered further restrictions, mainly referring to the teachers and scholars focusing on ancient Greek and Latin.

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the previous conclusions. Third, it is a sort of re-thinking. On the basis of such crucial traits, “overall reflection” refers to the reflection on the “whole” process of a series of historical events and the relationships between relevant factors, which is different from the reflections on some “isolated” single events. For instance, in daily life, one might constantly reflect on whether or not he did this thing properly or that thing well. Reflections like this are those on specific life events. This apart, in daily life, we may also be confronted with another sort of reflection which, albeit being based on the reflections on specific life events, subjectively attempts to rise over the limits of the single events to reach a sort of more comprehensive, broad, and profound recognition, say, “What does man live for?.” If reflections on single events aim at improving specific single behaviors, those on the whole living style of the human life aim at re-examining and re-establishing the orientation of human life, at bestowing an integrity or overall meaning on the single behaviors with different tasks, qualities, modes, space and time, and the like, so that people can genuinely have an innermost “feeling of belongingness.” Connected with such “overall reflections,” “overall experiences” refers to the individual reflector’s “overall feelings” with respect to the results of the reflection as such, say, “full” or “empty,” “true” or “absurd,” “silent” or “restless,” “harmonious” or “conflicting,” “intimate” or “lonely,” or the like, and they will ultimately produce the overall comments like “meaningful” or “meaningless,” “deserving” or “not deserving,” or something. In this way, “meaning” and the most crucial factor in the definition of the “humanistic world”—“the overall reflection on and experiences of social value norms and their practices,” mean that we should make systematic, in-depth, and sincere considerations anew about the legitimacy of value norms behind the daily practices we have “experienced personally” in history, examine the extent of the legitimacy, assess its practical efficacy, and perform subjective experiences in the existentialist sense as regards the assessment, so as to construct a more legitimate value normative system in the future and re-establish the “coordinate” of life. In brief, the overall inquiries of such problems of value legitimacy are those of “problems of meaning,” the overall considerations of problems of meaning, and the organizations, systems, symbols, and products that encourage, support, express, and determine such overall considerations are those in the world of meaning. At last, the results of such overall considerations are nothing but the “meaning” of life we practically experience. Let me go further. “Meaning” is familiar to everyone, say, what do humans live for? Why must we earn money? Why should we care for others? There can hardly be a definite or acknowledged answer to these questions, given that each questioner or answerer has a different social background and individual experiences, which lead to differences in the overall reflections at the level of background and content. This notwithstanding, people must consider these questions and the extent of the consideration is proportional to the extents of awakening, decisiveness, and profoundness of life. As the result of such considerations, many “spiritual products” emerge, e.g., philosophies, plays, poetries, paintings, music, literatures, sculptures, etc., expressing corresponding themes. In these products, there may be many “natural” and “social” symbols and situations which, nevertheless, are not the aims of the production as such. They emerge totally for the sake of explicating or revealing the situations,

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sufferings, and fates of those who act in them and people’s overall feelings and considerations as to them, namely for the sake of explicating or expressing people’s pursuit, experiencing, understanding, and expression of meaning. This is the “secret” of the birth of all the great works including not merely literary works but also those of philosophy, music, painting, architecture, etc. Due to the fact that meaning is a problem repeatedly thought about since ancient times, some guiding organizations emerged as was required by the time, and a case in point is religion. At the level of origin and essence, religion was originally set by some who have had a good understandings as to meaning for the sake of sufficing people’s inquiry into it. Questions like “Who are you? Where are you from? To where will you go?” are answered by those who set up religions. The followers do not go to the churches, temples, or other religious places for the specific prescriptions of their own actions; but rather, they go there to pray, repent, or seek for help for the sake of the overall meaning of life. Nevertheless, once such organizations rise from a folk institution to a governing one with great power, they will lose their “humanistic traits” to a great extent and convert into “social” instruments seeking for fame and gain. Presumably, the religious corruptions and later religious reforms in the West all originated from this. In addition to religious organizations, school organization is also an institution characterized by meaning inquiry, explication, discussion, and reflection compared with many other social organizations. This can be seen from the etymology of “education.” By origin, be it Chinese “jiaoyu教育” or English, French, or German “education,” “éducation,” or “Erziehung or Bildung,” respectively, it is concerned with the internal “genesis” (Chinese) or “turning” (English, French, or German) of the spiritual world. In terms of qualities, that with which the “genesis” or “turning” of the internal spiritual world is concerned is not the obtainment of the external social values but that of the internal meaning of life. Confucius once said, “Ancient people learned for themselves whereas people today learn for others.” Learning “for oneself” mainly refers to better understanding the meaning of life via learning whereas learning “for others” mainly aims at meeting the external socio-political, economic, and cultural needs so as to obtain what you need from others or society. This word of Confucius is de facto still quite acceptable to date. Similar to religious organization at the level of historical situations, the school organization is, during the progression of civilization, also soon taken by the individuals and the states as an instrument for fame and gain, namely some organizations, systems, activities, etc., of the schools are all designed in accordance with the requirements from some value system. As a result, the space and time for meaning inquiry and reflections decreases, so much so that there is none of them in some schools. If today, we ask a pupil in elementary school about what he learns for, most probably he will answer “for entering into the college.” When asked why they enter into college, college students’ answers are more practical. Apparently, during the process of industrialization and modernization, the schools have been severely “materialized.” Additionally, some other social places or ceremonies originally also capable of performing meaning inquiry, say, ordinary sacrifice offering, celebrations, funerals, oath taking, or the like, have either been abolished or gradually lost their “humanity” and become various routines. Without

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these institutions, organizations, systems, and activities promoting meaning inquiries and reflections, meaning gradually becomes a question hardest for modern people to answer, and puzzlement as regards meaning has also therefore replaced that as regards facts or values and become their biggest internal puzzlement. The “crisis of humanistic spirit” repeatedly announced by people in the twentieth century is de facto the crisis due to the loss of meaning of life. Given the logical connections between “facts,” “values,” and “meaning,” when a crisis occurs in people’s meaning of life, the ruins and chaos of their value world (i.e., “internal split”) will surely happen, and people will surely get enmeshed into various natural and social facts but will not stop themselves (i.e., “materialized” and “bureaucratized”). Insofar as the overall structure of the human world is concerned, the “humanistic world” with “meaning” as the core is forever in the most central and topmost position of the overall world, dominating the “social world” with “values” as the core and, via this world, dominating the “natural world” with “facts” as the core. On this account, if the “trinity” of “natural world,” “social world,” and “humanistic world” constitute the overall world of human beings, “humanistic world” is the “soul” of it. The breakdown and withering of the “humanistic world” brought about by “problems of meaning” and “crisis of meaning” will surely lead to the split and ruin of the whole human world, to sex, violence, lies, evil religions, extramarital affairs, homosexuality, corruption, suicide, and psychological diseases even all the unjustified wars. The loss of meaning is the exact origin of the various “absurdities” and “abnormal states” of the individuals, even of the whole modern human society. At the level of sensory experiences, in such an “absurd” and “abnormal” era, the society people experience is a relatively rich but never happy one, in which they lead a busy-for-all-day life but do not know why, obtain more and more autonomy and rights but begin to feel tired of these from inside, and experience a feeling of becoming more and more lonely and isolated but hence more and more risky even crazy.

8.2 Natural Knowledge, Social Knowledge, and Humanistic Knowledge Meaning cannot be exchanged into value, the lack of the need of meaning cannot be supplemented by the need of values, and, in the same vein, the crisis of the “humanistic world” cannot be settled via the reconstruction of the “social world.” We have no choice but reconstruct the “humanistic world.” Nonetheless, just as what I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, reconstructing the “humanistic world” is a tedious task and mission that cannot be accomplished merely via several slogans or movements, or else the crisis as such in Western developed countries would have already been settled. In my view, like the reconstruction of the “social world,” that of the “humanistic world” needs both enthusiasm, responsibility, and sincerity, scientism and knowledge, reason and wisdom, and, in a certain sense, it also needs the consensus and awareness of all social members. Of all these factors, I believe, the

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most important at present is “humanistic knowledge.” The reasons are twofold: for one thing, passion and reason need the enlightenment from knowledge, reason, and wisdom need the cultivation of knowledge, even awareness and consensus need in a certain measure knowledge as their foundation; for another, as was said by me in the Introduction, the practical activities of human society are constructed by knowledge, any practice whatsoever is one in which knowledge participates, and the extent and scope of human practices are also constrained by the intellectual conditions of humans. That the practices of human society are distinguishable from animal activities is partly due to the fact that humans own abundant, systematic, complete, and symbolized knowledge whereas animals own no knowledge but at most tentative, perceptual, and scattered knowledge embedded in their activities. Therefore, to reconstruct the humanistic world, being in need or lacking humanistic knowledge is inconceivable. In present reconstruction as such, nevertheless, humanistic knowledge is severely in short. What, then, is humanistic knowledge? What position does it take in the overall world of human knowledge? Why is there a lack of humanistic knowledge? What influences will the lack of humanistic knowledge exert on the reconstruction of the humanistic world? How to increase the production of humanistic knowledge so as to change this phenomenon? The answers to these questions are concerned with the classification, structure, and historical evolution of the totality of human knowledge. Since this is also a big question or domain of question, I can only make a preliminary study with regard to some relevant contents to my theme here. There may be many methods of classification with respect to the totality of human knowledge according to different standards. For instance, at the level of whether or not human knowledge is expressible via linguistic symbols, it can be classified into “explicit knowledge” and “tacit knowledge” (Polanyi) as was stated in the previous chapter; at the level of geographical features, it can be classified into “oriental knowledge” and “occidental knowledge”; at the level of developing phases of human knowledge, it can be classified into “religious knowledge,” “metaphysical knowledge,” and “positive knowledge” (Comte); at the level of knowledge organizing mode and social qualities, it can be classified into “knowledge of salvation or of redemption,” “cultural knowledge,” and “practical knowledge’ (Scheler), and so on and so forth. Of the various classifying methods, one is widely acknowledged in the academia and is manifested in such intellectual systems as the setup of departments and disciplines in colleges and universities, the material classification in libraries, and the like. This is the classification of human knowledge into “natural knowledge,” “social knowledge,” and “humanistic knowledge” according to which colleges and universities set up “natural sciences,” “social sciences,” and “humanities” courses, and the intellectuals are correspondingly classified into “natural scientists,” “social scientists,” and “human scientists.” The classification is also manifested in the state’s management of scientific research, say, the management and distillation of scientific research funding in many countries are performed according to the classification of “Natural Science Foundation,” “Social Science Foundation,” and “Humanities Foundation.” Nonetheless, as to this classification, just like that with regard to the “natural world,” the “social world,” and the “humanistic world,” adequate logical elucidations so far

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are still needed, which prevents people from recognizing adequately the particularities of these three sorts of knowledge, notably those of “humanistic knowledge.” As a result, people often ignore, wittingly or unwittingly, the particular qualities and values of human knowledge and the active roles human scientists play in promoting the development of humanistic knowledge and society. In my view, this classification takes into account both the differences on the objects of knowledge (i.e., the “material” standard) and the methods to obtain knowledge (i.e., the “formal” standard), and hence it is a relatively complete and legitimate classifying mode capable of reflecting the overall structure of human knowledge. Insofar as the object of knowledge is concerned, self-evidently, “natural knowledge” mainly reflects people’s recognition of the “natural world,” “social knowledge” of the “social world,” and “humanistic knowledge” of the “humanistic world.” Given the different constituents of the three worlds, different methods are needed to recognize them: the obtainment of “natural knowledge” is mainly attained via “observations” (including both “natural observations” and “scientific observations”) and “experiments” of purely material facts and events, that of “social knowledge” via “observations,” “modeling” (including case studies), and “value analysis” of the social facts and events permeated by values, and that of “humanistic knowledge” via the “overall critiques” and “reflections” on various specific value norms and their historical practices. It is due to the difference as such on subject and method that the fundamental distinctions between the three sorts of knowledge are considerably determined. Primarily, in terms of the relationship between knowledge and the object, “natural knowledge” is a sort of “descriptive knowledge” aiming to reflect via certain conceptual symbols and numerical relations some “facts” and “events” existing at different levels of the natural world. During the reflecting process, the recognizer tries to follow the existent study paradigm so as to make his/her studies acceptable to some intellectual community before becoming a sort of “intersubjective knowledge.” “Social knowledge” is a sort of “normative knowledge” or “prescriptive knowledge” aiming to make, by virtue of certain theoretical traditions and value stances, systematic, typified, and modeling analyses with respect to the status quo and developing trend of “social facts” or “social events,” and to draw or hint relevant practical suggestions or prescriptions. Since that with which social sciences deal is the facts or events constructed by values, during the process of research, both the determination and the analysis and conclusions of the problems cannot evade from being constrained by the researchers’ value background and political stances, etc., which hence makes it hard for social sciences knowledge to reach “intersubjectivity” in the true sense of the word. People of different “social statuses” usually have different understandings of the same social knowledge. Be that as it may, social knowledge will not necessarily become completely personalized insomuch as different individuals in a particular social group usually share the same social knowledge. Reversely, it is due to the fact that they share the same social knowledge that they break the individual limits and form a relatively independent group with many common inclinations of social activities and evaluation scales of values. Compared with “natural knowledge” and “social knowledge,” “humanistic knowledge” is a sort of “reflective knowledge” aiming to reveal, via the overall reflections of the individual recognizer on the value practices

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he/she attended personally in the history, his/her experiences of the meaning of life. As a sort of reflective knowledge, humanistic knowledge is apparently characterized by being “individual,” “metaphorical,” and “multi-natural.” Being “individual” means that all humanistic knowledge is the result of the author’s confrontations in life and inner experiences, and hence it is of clear-cut personalities. The personality as such shows: on the one hand, the understanding of the knowledge as such will not reach a certain depth until one enters deeply into the whole living history and the inner world of the author; on the other hand, the knowledge as such cannot be replaced or duplicated, nor can it be verified or falsified by others’ experiences. Being “metaphorical” means that the experience and expression of the meaning of life are usually not performed via logical or positive channels but via the nonlogical and nonpositive “metaphorical” ones. Without metaphors, humanistic knowledge would become unspeakable. Understanding and creating metaphors is a basic skill for humanistic scholars. Being “multi-natural” means that there may be various experiences and answers to the same meaning and this status will keep open forever. Thus, here “verification” or “falsification,” “modeling” or “typifying” are all unnecessary as well as impossible. Second, relevant to the distinctions above, in terms of the developing mode of knowledge, that of “natural knowledge” is “linear,” “social knowledge” “periodical,” whereas “humanistic knowledge” “spiral.” Natural knowledge is the “description” and “explanation” of the natural world which might err due to the influences from the recognizer’s theoretical tradition or methodology but, seen from the existent history of natural recognition of human beings, it might be constantly modified or abandoned within certain theoretical traditions. On the whole, humans’ descriptions and explanations of nature show an increasingly clear and precise trend. After experiencing the long accumulative stage of primitive and ancient societies, natural knowledge increased in a rapid, consistent, and linear fashion since modern times, and all the more showed a “shooting up” or “exploding” state after the middle twentieth century. As a matter of fact, under most circumstances, scientists engaged in natural scientific researches today need not consider the past falsified or modified theories at all but only need to retrieve and trace the latest research development and read the latest research literatures. The increase of social knowledge differs from this. Social knowledge refers to the analyses and interpretations of certain value stances on the social facts and events constructed by certain values. The analysis and interpretation as such adopted the methods and techniques of natural sciences since the middle nineteenth century, but were also constrained by the objects of study. Essentially speaking, they are constrained by the dominant value ideas (including ideologies) in certain social forms. The presentation of questions of social sciences, the construction of theories, the formation of prescriptions, and the like, as the core of the paradigm of social scientific studies, are all constrained by such dominant value ideas. On this account, only when a dominant value idea is replaced by a new one, namely only when great value revolutions or social revolutions occur, will social scientists present authentically “new” questions, theories, and prescriptions, and will social knowledge show a “developing” state. To this connection, if the development of natural knowledge is of a trait of being

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consistently “linear,” that of social knowledge apparently shows a “periodical” trait of “The pendulum has swung back.” Some dominant social theories or social reform schemes may be quite persuasive in a certain period of time, they, however, will be replaced by new ones afterward. Presumably, there is an interrelation between them on thought, but we can hardly say that the latter is the “modification” of the former. More often, the latter is a drastically different theoretical and value choice, and the chosen theories and value systems are all-possibly those under the subjugation of the original traditional theories and dominant value ideas. For instance, during the forming and developing process of capitalist society, the chosen Protestant ethics, individualism, civil society, bureaucratic system, etc., were subjugated and prohibited under the traditional feudal system in that what the two societies concerned, respectively, were essentially different on both quality and type. This is exactly the principle of knowledge Marx, Scheler, Mannheim, and others, tried to explicate in the sociological studies of knowledge. The increase of humanistic knowledge differs from social knowledge. Due to the traits of being “individual,” “metaphorical,” and “multi-cultural” of humanistic knowledge, its increase is in a great measure incapable of showing a trend of “absolutely increasing”—logically identified phenomenon of new knowledge replacing the old one—along with the flowing of time; but rather, it shows a spiral state of constantly “backdating” and “newly” interpreting, experiencing, and explicating traditional knowledge, having completely risen over the limits of time and space, language, and values. It is by this reason that in the sphere of humanistic knowledge, people often hear the voices of “returning to the ancient times,” “returning to the Middle Ages,” or the like. This is impossible and unnecessary in the spheres of both social knowledge and natural knowledge. For instance, Aristotle’s theories of physics have been out of date, and his theories of politics have also descended to the “notes” of modern theories of politics, but who dares say that his theories of virtue have also been outdated? Third, relevant to the first distinction, in terms of knowledge’s scope of application, “natural knowledge” is of certain “universality,” “social knowledge” of clear-cut “culturality,” whereas “humanistic knowledge” of “individuality” rising over the cultural limits. “Natural knowledge” is a sort of knowledge embracing “intersubjectivity” hence “universality.” No matter who and what kind of social background one has, if one accepts a certain natural scientific paradigm, one should understand some scientific knowledge and make logical or empirical examinations about the truth or falsity of some scientific knowledge. The examination as such may simultaneously also be further verified or demonstrated by others. As a sort of “normative” or “prescriptive” knowledge, social knowledge is, as a rule, related to the particular conditions and problems of the era or society wherein the recognizer is located and is constrained by the social position of the recognizer. In this connection, albeit social knowledge has some universal form, say, it may be read and understood by people of other societies, it is culturally inseparable from the mainstream social values constructing it. If one does not understand these mainstream values, one will not understand the specific contents of social sciences, nor the problems therein. Therefore, the obtainment of social knowledge in other

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countries must be accompanied by the in-depth critiques on the cultural values it embraces, otherwise, people would be trapped into the state of “being colonized” practically as well as theoretically. In this sense, it is impracticable to copy foreign theories of social sciences and attempt to use them for guidance of the local social reform. The requirement of “localization” during the process of studying foreign social sciences is not merely established out of the consideration of advantages and disadvantages, but it is also determined by social knowledge’s own qualities. Albeit humanistic knowledge as a sort of reflective knowledge is based on the value norms of a certain socio-historical period, it, however, starts from the individual background of the recognizer and tries to rise over the limits of the cultural value as such before giving a particular sort of experience and expression of the inner world. On this account, humanistic knowledge is not like natural scientific knowledge following universal paradigms, nor is it like social scientific knowledge restricted to certain values and social stances. Humanistic knowledge is of a clear-cut personal “style.” The reading about humanistic knowledge is not a dialogue of scientific paradigm, nor is it one with an era; but rather, it is a dialogue with a living mind. Humanistic knowledge does not have fixed objects of application, it, however, is applicable to every one inquiring into the meaning of human life: it is applicable to poor as well as rich people, to women as well as men. In this sense, it is of the least limits of the time and bias of class but is of “universality” in the true sense of the word, having constituted the spiritual wealth of the whole humankind. Fourth, relevant to the first distinction, in terms of the examination and defense of knowledge, “natural knowledge” appeals to the “verification,” “falsification,” or “justification” of “experiences” and “logic,” “social knowledge” to some “verification” of social practical effects, whereas “humanistic knowledge” to the “verification” of individual life-world. The truthfulness of “natural knowledge” as a sort of descriptive knowledge lies in whether or not it has relatively precisely or correctly described some natural phenomenon and interpreted some natural event in a certain theoretical tradition. If there are some “abnormal” phenomena that some natural knowledge fails to describe or “causalities” that it fails to predict, natural knowledge then needs to be “modified,” namely people need to present new theoretical presumptions on the new empirical and logical bases. As to social knowledge qua a sort of normative or prescriptive knowledge, its truthfulness rests on the fact that the social practices instructed by it can obtain satisfying results, which corresponds to the saying “Practice is the sole criterion of truth.” If the social reform instructed by a social theory obtains satisfying results, we say that it relatively precisely reflects the mainstream values of that era and is protected by the practitioners; contrariwise, if a social theory is completely impracticable in social reform, or if it is incapable of enabling some aspect of the society to show its benign state, its truthfulness is questionable and the decision-makers will consider other theories or suggestions. Rather than becoming large-scaled social activities, human knowledge as a sort of reflective theory mainly aims at promoting and helping the individuals to reflect on their historical lives and the legitimacy of their values practiced in the historical life, hence forming a new attitude and orientation toward life. In this connection, the truthfulness of humanistic

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knowledge lies in whether or not it can help individuals to break away from the “habits,” “common senses,” and “routines” and take a new look at their living state and reasons, and can provide the latter with new and alternative orientations of life. Therefore, as to certain humanistic knowledge, neither “logical” demonstration nor empirical “verification” or “falsification” should be performed; rather, it can only be appreciated, identified, and acknowledged via the inner world of everyone. If individuals look at humanistic knowledge as they do to natural and social knowledge, they will never authentically recognize the truthfulness of humanistic knowledge. With this analysis, I mean to show that “natural knowledge,” “social knowledge,” and “humanistic knowledge” are three different types of knowledge based on the differentiation of “natural world,” “social world,” and “humanistic world,” and that they are different on many important intellectual properties, which allows no ignorance. It is the existence of these differences that constitutes the “diversity” and “richness” of human knowledge. To correctly recognize and understand, the difference as such is the ideological premise of correctly recognizing and understanding the three types of knowledge and promoting them to better serve humankind, and also the premise of the better performance of the three types of intellectual activities. Nonetheless, in the history of human recognition, due to complicated causes, people failed to have a clear recognition with regard to the difference as such, or, in other words, they failed to bestow legitimacy on it. More often than not, people tried to substitute the quality of one sort of knowledge for that of other sorts of knowledge, to substitute “the unity of knowledge” for “the diversity of knowledge,” and to grade, according to a unified standard, different types of knowledge into a strict hierarchy. In this hierarchy, de facto, some knowledge stayed high as the result of conforming to some standard, usurped the crown of “the emperor,” and governed and oppressed other types of knowledge. Other types of knowledge thus became the “inferior” in the “empire of knowledge,” being incapable of equally sharing the rights to knowledge, being in a peripheral position, and being severely deprived of the space to develop. Therefore, albeit logically speaking human knowledge is generally composed of “natural knowledge,” “social knowledge,” and “humanistic knowledge,” the three types of knowledge have always been unequal to each other in history at the level of the status in the structure of humans’ overall knowledge, namely, there has been a complex process of historical transference. As was pointed out in Chapter 3, in primitive society wherein the “mythical knowledge form” dominated, the “wizard” was the genuine intellectual, the legitimacy of all the knowledge originated from the revelation of mysterious forces, and “mysterious knowledge” and “ritual knowledge” were the kernel knowledge forms. Some experiences of ordinary production, life, and war (the primitive people’s experiences on this aspect are supposed to be fairly abundant) would not attain the reputation of “knowledge” or enter into the public disseminating channels constituted by rituals and myths unless they were integrated into mysterious knowledge, or else they would only run their own courses in ordinary productions and lives. Be that as it may, seen from the myths of remote ages and the epics of some nations, mysterious knowledge in primitive society included some “natural knowledge” as well as some “social knowledge” and “humanistic knowledge” and constituted a relatively rich world of

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knowledge. For instance, in terms of myths, what we can read today includes those reflecting humans’ fighting against nature, those reflecting the early social structures and living systems of human society, and those telling about humans breaking their own secrets and creating histories and cultures. In all the knowledge, nevertheless, that which deserved to be called “knowledge” was mainly the mysterious “humanistic knowledge” which focused on settling the spiritual confusions or problems of meaning that the first generation of humans suffered at birth. The knowledge as such was mainly formed via the explorations of and answers to the relations between “humans” and “nature,” “humans” and “society,” “humans” and “history,” “humans” and “the self,” and between “humans” and the “mysterious forces” transcending the world of phenomenon. In this line, at the level of the knowledge structure of primitive society, “humanistic knowledge” was the most important knowledge form, being at the top, and owning the hegemony of the whole intellectual world. That which was subordinate to it was “social knowledge” and “natural knowledge” between which the latter’s development suffered the most ignorance, being in a “natural” or “folk” state. This is also an important cause to the relatively slow development of the productivity in primitive society. Along with the first knowledge transformation, the “mysterious knowledge” of primitive society was gradually replaced by the “metaphysical knowledge” (in the West) and “moral knowledge” (in China) of the ancient society, which is like the primitive clan leaders were dismissed and exiled, whereas the new feudal emperors ascended the throne and governed the world. Albeit “metaphysical knowledge” and “moral knowledge” are different from “mysterious knowledge” at the level of the subject, origin, standard, or defense of knowledge, they fundamentally belong in the category of “humanistic knowledge” in terms of quality. This is because seen from the origin of metaphysics and moral theories in the history of Western and Chinese epistemologies, the main concerns of metaphysicians and moralists were around the “origin” and “noumenon” of the world or “human nature” and “human life.” These questions were raised and given the values of recognition mainly for the sake of overcoming in essence the superficiality, transiency, and indeterminacy of the human world and human life so that people might find an ultimate support and basis to be human individuals and make ultimate defenses of meaning relevant to that. It is thanks to the large numbers of explorations with regard to such metaphysical and moral questions that around 6–4 B.C., there emerged an “Axial Period” of civilization in the West and the East simultaneously, a period when “humanistic knowledge” developed in high speed. The main mark of that period was the large numbers of explorations with respect to “humanistic world” and “meaning” of human life. Hence, this period may be regarded as the first awakening one after human beings entered into the age of civilization, and into the embryo stage of humanism in the history of thought. When considering about humanistic problems, we should return to this period in many cases and perform mental dialogues with the philosophers therein. Good times never last long. In the West, along with the setup of the Roman Empire, particularly when Christianity was established as the state religion, the free contemplations of meaning of life ended up in converting into the Empire and “God,” which terminated the possibility of people reflecting on meaning in their innermost heart

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since the meaning of life was “given” from outside. Scholars’ explorations of the relationships between “humans” and “God,” “humans” and “humans,” “humans” and “nature,” etc., were no longer aimed at settling problems pertinent to the meaning of life but at demonstrating the existence of God and defending the authority of religious doctrines. In China, along with the foundation of the Han Dynasty and the implementation of the policy of “Confucianism monopoly,” Pre-Qin Confucianism began to convert from a folk knowledge system into an official ideology, having considerably lost its humanistic implications and transformed into a set of unquestionable red tapes and social norms. The learning of classics was no longer aimed at considering human life or elevating the state of human existence, but at gaining external fame and gain. In a word, in Western Middle Ages and ancient Chinese feudal society, albeit humanistic knowledge still dominated in the intellectual life, held the position of intellectual overload, and refuted and subjugated social knowledge, particularly the natural one, it had de facto lost the humanistic qualities and converted into an intelligent “training skill” and “knocking brick” seeking for fame and gain outside the meaning of life. Under such circumstances, in social life, people superficially discussed about the meaning of life, how humans should live, the adages and maxims of the past sages and saints but never practically reflected on their own life experiences, and hence they could not understand at all the humanistic connotations of the classic humanistic knowledge. In Western Middle Ages and ancient Chinese feudal society, as it were, the issue of human life had given way to those of order of the external world (the religious or the mundane world) which was no longer a humanistic one but had become a world oppressing and destroying humanity. The Western “Renaissance” was a new era of human beings’ self-awakening, a drastic rebellion against the Middle Ages. As was stated afore, in this era, the Western world was in a state of “disenchantment” and all the sanctified things in the past over 1000 years began to gradually regain their original colors. At the same time, when people found the “natural world,” they found “humans’ world” and at the same time, when they began to recognize “nature” according to its original appearance, they also began to recognize “humans” according to “their” original appearance. From the period of the Renaissance, natural knowledge began to gradually enter into the intellectual sphere and humanistic knowledge also showed its new development, namely there appeared apparently the renaissance of “humanism,” to wit., the “humanities (studia humanitatis)” we are using today, and many “humanists (humanista)” as well. The “humanities” at that time appeared mainly as a new educational content running counter to the “seven arts” of secondary education (e.g., grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, and music) and the “four branches” (e.g., literature, medicine, law, and theology) of higher education in the Middle Ages, but also differing from the various theological disciplines at the time. People even called them “secular disciplines” which specifically included moral philosophy, poetry, history, declamation, etc. At temporal level, these disciplines mainly selected some writers and works before Augustine; at linguistic level, these contents were all written in “classic” Greek and Latin rather than in the “modern” ones employed by the then theologists. After the lengthy Middle Ages, humanists chose these disciplines as the educational contents for this end: to cultivate “pure human.”

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The key causes of the humanists’ turn from the then culture to the ancient Greek and Roman culture over 1000 years ago are as follows. In the first place, the period around the Renaissance was turbulent and there were consistent social and natural disasters like religious wars, the Black Death, political subversions, and so on. According to the medieval doctrines, these were all caused by people’s “original sins” so they would be ultimately delivered as long as they sincerely believed in God. Nevertheless, the social facts failed to let people see the hope, so a part of sensitive people could not but reconsider about the causes of human sufferings, and turned the hope of salvation from the external gods to the internal self. In this aspect, Francisco Petrarch the famous humanist is a case in point. Like many other people at that time, Petrarch also suffered innumerable tortures and sorrows, say, during only two years from 1348 to1350, the merciless fate deprived him of many close relatives and good friends. Around the Renaissance, as it were, the problem of the meaning of life had been quite striking, and the upsurging of humanism was exactly aimed at helping people to look anew for the meaning and orientation of life, break away from the social and natural disasters, and attain an authentically tranquil, secure, and happy internal life. In the second place, the fact was, on the one hand, spiritual and mental diseases needed treating; on the other hand, the then culture inherited from the Middle Ages had lost its humanistic implications hence could not offer the treatment. Under such circumstances, humanists naturally turned their attention to the remote ancient times, and to the ancient Greek and Roman writers and works. These writers and works were mentioned not infrequently but most of them were merely interpretations out of context and were regarded as important on form more than on content. Therefore, the humanists demanded that people drastically returned to the ancient times, earnestly read and studied the ancient writers’ works, learned from the ancient heroes, treated and cured their and human beings’ mental diseases via their practical behaviors so as to enable themselves and human beings to become genuinely strong from the innermost and fight against the cruelty of fate. With this aim, they believed that humanities were the most valuable disciplines and traditional disciplines like mathematics, geometry, rhetoric, astronomy, and even theology were all futile to settle the problems of the meaning of life; hence, whether these disciplines were learned or not did not matter. To study the classic humanities, people had to grasp ancient “languages,” so ancient Greek and Latin became the rudimental disciplines of all humanities. From the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, with the joint efforts of the humanists, “humanities” achieved success, began to be “institutionalized,” entered into the classic high schools, but also into the schedules of colleges and universities, and finally became the stem or core curriculums there. In the meanwhile, humanistic knowledge was acknowledged in society, say, both in the sphere of law and politics and in religious activities, people were required to grasp classic languages and to get familiar with ancient classics. Nevertheless, it is also from this period on that the humanities born in the period of Renaissance gradually lost their humanistic implications and became ossified. R. E. Proctor analyzed in detail the causes of humanities’

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decline since modern times and onward. He believed that there were two aspects of the main causes, one being internal, the other external. As to the internal causes, they mainly included: first, the “victory of knowledge.” As was stated afore, that the humanists in the Renaissance looked for, read, and studied ancient literatures was mainly due to the fact that they intended to understand the meaning of life and live a happy life by virtue of these literatures. That is to say, they intended to find “knowledge” in the classic literatures, but also, all the more, to attain “virtue,” “wisdom,” and “happiness” therein. For them, classic literature was merely an instrument rather than an end. To attain this goal, nevertheless, they had to do many other works like looking for, copying, and revising the literatures, and sometimes they had to change some words beyond their own understanding and interpretations. In this way, a technique of “textual criticism” rapidly developed from among general humanists and further became “philology” and antiquarianism. Correspondingly, learning and studies of classic literatures also turned from an instrument into an end, which produced a large group of “pedants.” Second, it is the “institutionalization” of classic knowledge in the educational system. Proctor pointed out that, on the one hand, the institutionalization of classic knowledge in the educational system would help to disseminate classic knowledge; on the other hand, nevertheless, it also brought unfortunate sequels, namely anyone might be employed to teach humanities so long as he had once accepted trainings to a certain extent; anyone must follow these fairly low-level teachers to learn these classic languages and literatures once they entered into the school. In this way, the teaching of humanities became an activity accomplishable only by virtue of disciplines, and hence it lost its humanistic meaning. Third, in the sphere of idealogical education, a “formal educational theory” developed, namely people took the study of ancient humanities as a vital way to train the “mental functions.” Fourth, modern languages and literature began to spring up and gradually replaced the classic languages and cultures and obtained the superiority. From the eighteenth century, during the process of the formation of modern nation states, people increasingly realized the important role of national languages and cultures in constructing nation states, and began to stress their status in the educational system. In this background, classic languages and cultures gradually lost their reign.7 In terms of the external causes, they are mainly as follows: first, it is due to the springing up of modern scientific knowledge. As was stated in Chapter 3, scientific knowledge initially focusing on studying nature was refuted and suppressed in the ancient knowledge form. From the sixteenth century on, nevertheless, under the stimulation from a series of political, economic, and cultural conditions, scientific knowledge began to gradually rise over this status and show its particular power. The development of modern epistemology in the seventeenth century all the more provided the rapid progress of scientific knowledge with the conditions of thought.

7

In the nineteenth century, there were heated debates on the learning of classic and modern languages in all Western countries, which resulted in the victory of those who upheld the learning of modern language. For relevant studies, cf. Saffin (1973).

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During the period from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, scientific knowledge not merely increased on amount but gradually set up new intellectual standards for its own development, which led to the birth of the modern knowledge form. The formation of the modern knowledge form essentially deprived classic humanistic knowledge of its legitimacy for the latter essentially did not conform to the standard of scientific knowledge. Nay, the formation as such had also essentially dispelled the meaning of life out of the sphere of scientific problems, as the latter was unobservable or untestable via experiments and was merely a “metaphysical” issue or a “private preference.” Second, it is due to the emergence of new managing modes. In ancient society, management was mainly an individual and empirical act, and the individual’s virtue, wisdom, and managing experiences were very important for him to be a good manager. Therefore, when the educational schemes of humanities aiming at promoting the individual’s perfect development were presented by the humanists, they were warmly welcome by many social managers including some social governors. De facto, all the materials found so far indicate that the educational schemes of humanities presented by the early humanists were fundamentally made for the juniors of the wealthy or dignitary groups in terms of their future engagements, to wit., excellent social managing talents such as lawyers, clergies, or the like. Nevertheless, after the industrial revolution, this situation changed. The industrial revolution led to the setup of the modern “bureaucracy” of the departments of social management which, whereas, presented the demands on the quality of the leaders, namely they should obtain “specialty knowledge” and general “social knowledge” rather than grasping and understanding classic humanistic knowledge. This had essentially led to the weakening even disappearance of the foundation of humanities’ development. Gradually, humanities retreated from social life to the college campus and, along with the scientific curriculums’ entrance into the colleges and universities, they became all the more unpopular and unstressed. Since the Renaissance, notably since the seventieth century and beyond, compared with humanities which experienced the process of resurrection, development, and decline, natural sciences advanced triumphantly all the way and obtained one splendid accomplishment after another, playing the essential role on promoting the development of the industrial society and the reform of modern society. Meanwhile, social sciences gradually developed, beginning to “nibble up” the part of knowledge sphere originally belonging to humanities and applying natural scientific methods to the reform of these intellectual spheres. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Comte presented his “positivism” sociology and defined the research objects of social sciences, laying the main methodological foundation of modern social sciences. At the end of the nineteenth century, Émile Durkheim founded Annee sociologique, further elucidated the fundamental principles of social sciences, and personally applied these principles to the studies of social sciences. In the meanwhile, Weber also explicated his brilliant views of the methodology of “social sciences,” and presented the two important concepts of “value-free” and “ideal type” of social scientific studies. These studies pertinent to the methodology of social sciences played a key role on ultimately establishing the particular disciplinary status and intellectual identity of social sciences, and eventually amounted to the fact that in the first half of

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the twentieth century, social sciences existed as an independent discipline different from humanistic sciences and natural sciences. Nonetheless, the factual case was not that natural sciences, social sciences, and humanistic sciences formed a tripartite confrontation in the sphere of knowledge, but was the establishment of natural sciences’ hegemony, the sublimation of social sciences’ status, and the further decline of humanistic sciences. Along with the establishment of the modern knowledge form and the “science-turn” of social studies, the situation of “humanistic sciences” became increasingly worse. On the one hand, unlike natural sciences, they could not bring new wealth to human beings, nor could they apparently change the external material surroundings of human beings’ existence, so their practical values suffered more and more suspicion from people.8 On the other hand, unlike social sciences, they could not persuade the managers via “unquestionable” data, nor could they serve the managers’ social prescriptions, so they also lost the opportunity to get a large amount of research funding from governmental or commercial departments. In addition, those intellectual spheres as “humanistic sciences” (strictly speaking, they are “modern humanistic sciences”) were themselves lack of universality and inner cohesive force, which led to the fact that scholars in this area were incapable of defending its importance, humanistic intellectuals were apparently refuted even in such knowledge producing institutions like colleges and universities, practitioners of humanistic studies declined sharply on number, and the higher academic positions provided to them became less and less. In fact, until the middle twentieth century, humanities had fallen from the acme of intellectual power to the bottom of the intellectual world, turning from the “famous school” in the Renaissance to a “byway” cared by a few people. According to the extent of importance, the constituents of modern overall world of knowledge formed a new order of “natural sciences—social sciences—humanistic sciences.” The formation of the new order greatly influenced the production and dissemination of humanistic knowledge and the enthusiasm and creativity of humanists on humanistic studies, and it was also one of the key causes to the lack of modern humanistic knowledge. The lack of humanistic knowledge exerted great influences on the reconstruction of the humanistic world. First and foremost, it led to the insufficiency of people’s recognition pertaining to the particularity of the humanistic world. As was stated afore, humanistic world is one of meanings, a world closely linked with human life. Nevertheless, in such an era when materialism, consumerism, and individualism cause a tentative glamor, people fail to find this world and its particularity, let alone to understand the values of its independent existence. It can be said that shaped by the modern knowledge form, people only have two parts in their mind when it comes to the understanding of the world: either an external, objective “natural world,” or a similarly external “social world” of compulsive flavor to the individual’s spiritual life, or a “combination” of these two worlds in some form. As to “humanistic world,” 8

To improve their sci-technological and economic competitive powers, in 2000, US, Germany, Japan, etc., successively implemented the policy of introducing high-tech talents from around the world. They issued particular “green cards” to these talents. Nevertheless, less notoriously, they also introduced many humanistic talents from other countries for the sake of settling the spiritual crisis with which they were confronted.

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it is quite vague in people’s mind, and hence it seemingly exists or may or may not be needed. Given that people fail to recognize its particularity, they are less capable of recognizing the inseparable role of it in the overall construction of the world or its kernel position in the whole overall world and, naturally, they are incapable of recognizing the interconnections between the problems of the humanistic world on the one hand and those of natural world and social world on the other. Confronting the increasingly severe social corruptions, what people think of is merely how to reenforce the strike of corruptions but not how to make sound legal systems to prevent and severely punish the corruptions. They do not think about the humanistic origin of corruptions, nor the necessary relationships between the loss of the meaning of life and corruptions. We can foresee that if people could not correctly recognize the relationships between the humanistic world on the one hand and the natural and social worlds on the other, they would never overcome the crises of natural surroundings, nor those of social morals, politics, and economy. Second, the lack of humanistic knowledge led to the fact that modern people are incapable of correctly and completely understanding themselves. Human beings’ understanding of themselves is one of the most important tasks of human life as it determines human beings’ understanding with regard to the relations between them and others, them and society, them and nature, and between them and the life-world. The more correctly and completely people understand themselves, the more capable they are of setting up the harmonious relations between themselves and others, society, nature, and the cosmos, respectively. On the contrary, if human beings’ understanding of themselves is one-sided or even wrong, this will surely lead to the distortion of the various relations of human life and to the conflicts between people’s internal world and the external one. In ancient culture, both Western and Chinese people’s understanding of themselves was an important educational task. Greek philosophers introduced the proposition “Know yourself,” ancient Chinese philosophers also presented the proposition of “Knowing others is wise, knowing the self bright,” and required people all the time to be of “the brightness of knowing yourself” and constantly “introspect themselves.” Both the presumption of “religious people” in Western ancient society and that of “moral people” in ancient Chinese society tried to answer such fundamental questions as “Who are human beings?,” “What is their mission?,” “How should they spend their lives?,” and so on and so forth. Nevertheless, since modern times and onward, as classic languages are abandoned, ancient philosophers’ contemplations of human beings have also been abandoned, and people only considered themselves scientifically in a world of modern sciences. According to the scientific view, humans are animate organisms, a link in the chain of natural evolution; human is a constituent of social being, being of various social needs; human is him/herself, and his/her rights (the individual power) are inalienable. In this cultural atmosphere, human spirit, temperament, dignity, limits, and the inseparable interpersonal intimacy have all been drowned. People have been “materialized,” but they have also been “atomized” and “planarized.” On the one hand, people’s material desires inflate infinitely and the individual is calculated as a unit of “consumption”; on the other hand, people become increasingly selfish and regard the “self” as the center of the world, and the spiritual connections between human beings

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become increasingly weak. Nevertheless, the individual as an animate organism is finite on life and is always under the omnipresent threaten of “death,” which will not change by reason of the fact that modern people consume more material wealth than the ancient people hence live longer. Be he/she wealthy or poor, a person will unavoidably be confronted with death. The unavoidability of death sheds the “pessimistic” and “void” shades on the whole life of modern people. In the meanwhile, human beings are social and are influenced all the time by the various conflicting forces in society, and hence they all the time face decision-making. Decision-making means that a person must abandon some value objectives in favor of others. There, however, is not a rational process that can ensure that each decision a person has made is reasonable or correct. The case is, more often than not, people will find that they have made a wrong decision whereas they cannot start again but can only make a further plan on this ground since time has passed and all have changed. If everyone can reflect on his/her life in a sober fashion, I wonder how many people would say “If there were an afterlife, I would surely choose another life.” The truth is, “The dead has passed,” and “The past will not come again.” How can it not add bitterness and sorrowfulness to modern people’s life? How, nevertheless, to settle these deep contrarieties in human life? How to live and face such fundamental paradoxes of human life as “finite” vs. “infinite,” “material” vs. “spirit,” “value” vs. “meaning,” “self” vs. “others,” “instant” vs. “eternal,” “reason” vs. “non-reason,” and the like? Natural sciences cannot answer these questions, nor can social sciences; whereas the status quo of humanistic sciences is, it is either “marginalized” or “scientized” (for instance, humanistic knowledge is treated as “scientific” like the knowledge of natural or social sciences). Being incapable of finding the knowledge to recognize correctly and completely themselves, human beings unavoidably live in infinite isolation, vacuity, and loneliness, and let their desires guide their life toward the unknown future. This is the very origin of the meaning crisis of modern people. Third and more importantly, due to the lack of humanist knowledge, people cannot “settle” the meaning crisis with which they are confronted, but they also cannot even “be aware of” the nature of the crisis. In the factual life, people often substitute the material needs for the “spiritual” ones, the “valuable” needs for the “meaningful” ones, and the “self(ish)” needs for the “belonging” ones. People are inclined to believing that so long as one occupies more and more material wealth and social services, accomplishes both success and fame in the social life, literates one’s own desires, and performs one’s own power in a maximal fashion, his/her life will be more meaningful, and he/she will be more capable of getting rid of the confusions and crises of meaning. In fact, whereas, the confusions and crises of meaning cannot be settled via the occupation of material wealth and the realization of the self-values and, as it were, the former is even not regarded as the premise. The confusions and crises of meaning must be settled via human’s own serious reflections. In a person’s life, “Who am I?” “What on earth do I want to do?,” Why do I live such a life?,” “Is it meaningful to live in such a way?,” to name a few, are questions he/she must constantly face and can never abandon. The correct attitude is not to evade from or supersede secretly the questions but to mobilize all intelligent forces and life experiences to constantly reflect on these questions. Those who attempt to

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evade from or supersede the questions will not avoid the invasion of meaning crisis in this way, just the opposite, they are doomed to suffer severer meaning crisis in the future. In modern society, more and more people commit suicide the specific causes of which are varied but share one thing in common, that is, they all feel that their lives have lost meaning hence are not worthy of living any more. De facto, of these people, few commit suicides due to a down-and-out state or pennilessness but more often than not to the fact that they are confronted with a severe crisis of meaning but are incapable of walking out of it. Meaning crisis has not merely deprived the legitimacy of a person’s past life, but it has also essentially shaken the person’s confidence and courage to step into a new life. When a person is faced with meaninglessness both in the past and in the future, he/she will ultimately lose the confidence and courage for life and the only path then would be to end his/her life. When a person cannot correctly think about the meaning of life, he/she might also accept the influences from some heresies and even be captured by them. Heresy is a big spiritual threaten with which human beings were faced at the end of the twentieth century. Its doctrines are absurd and ridiculous. What is striking is, nevertheless, it managed to own the space for subsistence and development and, by means of its ridiculous doctrines, managed to deceive the public so as to build up a false reputation, collect money even teach people how to kill themselves. That the heresy is capable of subsisting and developing is mainly due to the fact that the meaning crisis with which modern human beings are confronted cannot be positively and actively interpreted hence is eventually subject to the heresy doctrines propagating “last phase,” “kill yourself,” among others. It should be said that the prevailing of heresy has sounded the alarm over meaning crisis to the whole humankind and to the government, scholars, and school education.

8.3 Scientific Education, Social Education, and Humanistic Education As was pointed out in the Introduction and the previous chapters, there is a close connection between knowledge and education, the view of knowledge greatly influencing educational views hence educational practices. On this account, given that natural knowledge, social knowledge, and humanistic knowledge belong to three different knowledge forms and have their respective intellectual properties, the “scientific education” (“natural sciences” education), “social education,” and “humanistic education” with the three sorts of knowledge as their respective kernel contents should also have their respective properties. Discussing and differentiating these different educational properties are the fundamental premise of deeply understanding the three different forms of education and improving the validity of them each. The following studies put stress on discussing about the qualities of humanistic knowledge and its influences on humanistic education in the background of comparison,

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and on discussing the relevant problems in current Chinese humanistic education and the main orientation of its future reform. Generally speaking, education is a practical activity improving via intellectual people’s, particularly the adolescents’, capacities to recognize and reform the world which, however, is limitlessly colorful and varied including some constitutes of essentially different factors and qualities. According to the previous views, the world can be roughly classified into natural world, social world, and humanistic world, so the task of education includes to help people, particularly the adolescents, to recognize and reform the natural world, but it should also include to help them do so to social and humanistic worlds. Different types of world demand different types of knowledge and relevant attitudes and techniques cultivated and developed on the basis of it. To recognize and reform the natural world, one needs to grasp the knowledge of nature and acquire corresponding attitudes and techniques, and the same holds to social and humanistic worlds. This demands three different types of education: scientific education, social education, and humanistic education, whose properties are determined by the qualities of the three types of world and knowledge, respectively. First of all, let us consider scientific education. As is known to all, scientific education does not have a long history but is merely around 150 years old since the fragmentary scientific curriculums (lectures) entered into the primary and secondary schools in the 1830s. De facto, even in the middle nineteenth century, the necessity as to scientific education was still in debates. It was in the last 20 years of the nineteenth century that scientific curriculums legitimately entered into the school and college systems of the West. As for China, it was after 1902–4 that the educational system was issued. Be that as it may, due to the revolutionary role of sciences in the development of modern society, once scientific education entered into educational institutions and became a constituent of modern education, it rapidly occupied the nuclear position of modern education, refuted ancient humanistic education, and constituted a core content of modern education. In terms of purpose, the fundamental purposes of scientific education include two aspects: one is to disseminate the fruits of modern scientific researches, enlarge the amount of people’s knowledge of nature so as to improve their capacities to recognize, understand, control, and reform nature; another is to perform the trainings on scientific methods so as to improve people’s capacities to produce scientific knowledge and cultivate new scientific talents. On the one hand, the purposes of scientific education are “material” in that it aims to meet the needs of modern industry’s development and economic increase; on the other hand, whereas, the purposes of scientific coeducation are of their non-material elements. In the present age, along with the development of scientific education, particularly with further studies of the relations between sciences and society, the purposes of scientific education have expanded to the correct understanding with respect to the relations between sciences and society, and the scientific community as well. On the whole, the purposes of scientific education may be briefly generalized as such: to disseminate scientific knowledge, to train people on scientific methods, to cultivate people’s scientific attitude, and to understand scientific activities so as to enable people to better recognize, understand, make

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use of, and protect nature with the hope that a benign and harmonious human-nature relationship can be set up. Seen at the level of curriculum content, the contents of scientific education are mainly manifested in the fruits of scientific studies, including many fundamental scientific facts and concepts, propositions, principles, and formulations generalized and distilled from them. Nevertheless, that which merits heed is, scientific “concept” is of fairly particular traits, namely it is “universal” on the one hand and “denotative” on the other. The term “universal” here means that the scientific concept qua the starting point or media of scientific thinking is “agreed on” by the scientific sphere, is of a strong property of “artificial language,” and hence is lack of the internal connections with the cultural tradition in which the scientific researchers are located, which makes it understandable and available to the scientists and various kinds of researchers all over the world. The term “denotative” here means that all scientific concepts have “characterizing functions,” representing or signifying some attribute of some natural substance. The two traits of the scientific concept determine that a scientific proposition is a sort of “statement proposition” the true and false of which can be further examined and modified via experiential evidences or logical programs. Even some scientific hypotheses being of no propositional nature also often employ this form of statement. This stating form of concept and proposition is usually “absolute,” “objective,” and “value-neutral” which conceals scientific knowledge’s properties of being hypothetic and unaccomplished and conceals the influences on scientific conclusions from the scientists’ private inclinations on theories and methods. As to its influences on educational activities, I have made analyses in Chapter 5. I present it here mainly to remind the readers of this so as to make comparisons with the conceptual and propositional forms of social and humanistic knowledge I will discuss in what follows. Seen from the grading of scientific curriculum contents, on the one hand, we should respect the knowledge’s own logical relations and structure and grade them from ancient times to the present, from the shallower to the deeper, by dint of some special scientific languages; on the other hand, we should adopt the stating mode acceptable to the learners and conforming to their intellectual levels and properties of psychological development. This is what we usually call the unity of “intellectual (disciplinary) logic” and “(cognitive) psychological logic,” also the grading principle in the reform movement of structural curriculums of the United States in the 1960s. Insofar as curriculum types are concerned, scientific education has also experienced a process from branched curriculum to synthetic ones the latter of which is the main mode of present and future scientific curriculums. Nevertheless, the practical as well as theoretical studies with respect to synthetic curriculums remain to be mature. In not a few countries and areas, scientific curriculums still give priority to branched curriculums, not only at the stage of secondary school but also in higher education stage. At the level of scientific teaching, people in the early periods usually adopted the mode of “teaching” plus “demonstrating” or “justifying” whereas later they were inclined to the “discovering models” and “cooperative learning models” developed in the 1960s. In the middle nineteenth century, when scientific curriculums just entered into the curriculum systems of the primary and secondary schools, there was no

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scientific education or teaching whatsoever. Scientific education mainly referred to disseminating via teaching some scientific knowledge or principles to the students and, to enable them to understand the knowledge or principles going beyond their life experiences, the teachers usually employed experimental demonstrations or logical justifications as the aid. The lack of experimental materials and the low qualities of scientific teachers were hence the two main factors constraining the scientific teaching at that time. Until the latter half of the twentieth century, along with the rapid progress of scientific knowledge and the increasing prominence of science and technologies on settling economic crises, enhancing national security, and the like, people began to think about reforming scientific education. The curriculum reform is one side and the reform of the teaching mode is another side. As a result, the now widely known “discovering models” and “cooperative learning models” emerged. Discovering models transfer the crux of scientific education from the teacher’s teaching, demonstrating, and justifying the existent scientific knowledge to the students’ “simulating” of the whole process of scientific discovering. The task of the teaching in the class is no longer explaining, demonstrating, or justifying but raising questions before acting as the “assistant” of the students, providing them with various materials, devices, and other services they need for analyzing and settling problems, and helping them to address the problems via their own autonomous explorations. Of course, the teacher also acts as the “encourager,” “instructor,” and “organizer” who will offer necessary instructions and help when the students are confronted with problems beyond their intellectual reach or when they are slack at the work. “Cooperative learning models” is a sort of scientific teaching model more recently presented. Its main rationale rests in scientific sociology’s revelation of the social qualities of scientific activities, aiming to promote the students’ mutual communications, cooperation, and competition in the learning process. Nevertheless, be it the new or the old model, it demands at last that the students remember and understand some existent scientific conclusions, but also that they be capable of using necessary means to demonstrate, justify, examine, and defend these conclusions, and that they should be capable of using “universal” and “denotative” scientific concepts and explicating the results of “scientific discoveries” by virtue of statements. Let us have a second look at social education. Different from scientific education, social education has a fairly remote history. We can see an apparent intention of social education even in the most ancient institutionalized education form—the ceremony of puberty in primitive society. The humanistic education in the whole ancient society is, de facto, oriented to making the adolescents better “socialized” and become members conforming to the demands from social existence and development. In modern society, along with the subversion of the feudal monarchy and the setup and development of the modern democratic system, the nuclear of social education is citizens’ education, aiming to cultivate the citizens consistent with certain political systems and broad systems of social life of a country, as distinguished from the “subjects” in the feudal times. Insofar as modern society is concerned, a qualified citizen must have the following qualities: first, he/she must be aware of his/her relations to society (the “public sphere”), and of the rights he/she enjoys, the obligations he/she should fulfill, and the responsibilities he/she should shoulder. Second, the

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citizen must be aware that there are social public interests and they are inviolable, and he/she must be able to recognize various actions intending to destroy the interests as such and to adopt the modes permitted and encouraged by society to fight illegal actions. Third, he/she must own certain knowledge helping to recognize, understand, construct, and safeguard social public living areas so as to defend his/her rights, obligations, and responsibilities and form with others a group awareness shared by all people. Fourth, he/she must have the awareness, activity, and capacity to participate in social public life, never forget, in any conditions, that he/she is a member of the social public life, never be depressed or disappointed, and never give up the promises to make every effort of his/hers. Of these qualities, the fourth one is the most important and the other three will be ultimately expressed via being converted to it. Or else one will not be a qualified citizen. A citizen is not merely a subject of social recognition, but, more importantly, he/she should become a subject of social acts which, though, are based on the premise of his/her correct and complete social recognition. Seen from the curriculum contents, those of social education are mainly some ideals, structures, systems, and living styles relevant to social life. They are manifested in some fundamental categories, proportions, conclusions, or rules of act, constituting together social knowledge in our terminology. Nonetheless, just as was analyzed afore, compared with natural knowledge, the social one is of its peculiarities. For instance, insofar as the types of concept and proposition are concerned, there are many differences between social and natural sciences. The concept of social sciences is in essence not “universal” or “denotative” but “cultural” and “functional.” The term “cultural” here means that the concept of social sciences is not accepted due to customs, nor is it an artificial language, but it is selected from among ordinary languages hence has close relations to the cultural tradition and dominant values of society. The term “functional” here means that the concept of social sciences is more than a sort of real value-neutral description but is itself of some implicit or explicit function to make a value distinction and assessment hence to evoke social responses. For example, after the word “class” emerged in the eighteenth century, people “obtained” a new horizon of observing the distribution of social interests, a new conceptual foundation to “re-cognize” the conflicts between various forces in social life, and even the theories to “defend” various social conflicts. In nature, we might say that “natural things” exist prior to “natural concept” whereas in social life, it is hard to say that “social phenomena” exist prior to “social concept.” In fact, “social phenomena” was “created” by “social concept,” or they emerged simultaneously. “Social concept” is of obvious social functions such as “provoking,” “agglomerating,” “alienating,” “oppressing,” “anesthetizing,” etc. Therefore, in natural sciences, it is hard to find Bourdieu’s “symbolic violence” which, whereas, is everywhere in social sciences. It is due to such cultural or value traits of social concept that social propositions are all “normative” rather than stative, including certain demands on act. In this sense, the social propositions as educational contents require people to understand them and, more importantly, to practice them. It is my contention that due to the particularity of the purposes of social education and the qualities of social knowledge, the textbook edition of social education should

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not adopt the model of social sciences, namely it should not be performed around the delivery, understanding, grasping, and exploration of knowledge, all the less around the study methods of social problems; but rather, it should center on guiding the students to participate, according to their age groups, in social practical lives of different scopes and qualities. For instance, to primary school pupils, the main social lives in which they participate are “family,” “class,” “school,” and “community” lives, so the social education in this phase should center on how to guide the pupils to recognize, understand, and participate in these four types of social life, and the social knowledge in need should also be organized according to the four subjects. Of course, as what we do in scientific education, we should also organize the social knowledge in accordance with the needs of primary school pupils’ psychological development in lieu of forcing them to grasp and understand some abstract and macro social phenomena. In terms of the types of social education curriculums, the main mode we currently adopt in China is the disciplinary curriculum, namely, in the primary phase of education, knowledge about social politics, economy, law, social development, etc., is delivered in accordance with classifications, which does not conform to the qualities of social knowledge, and which is, as it were, the result of the influences from the curriculum models of natural sciences. The advantage of this model is that the students can grasp some systematic knowledge including some fundamental social concepts, propositions, and principles, whereas the disadvantage is that the teacher cannot guide the students to form the awareness, qualities, and capacities to practically participate in a suitable social life. The proper curriculum type, in my view, should be the synthetic “activity curriculum活动课程,” namely, we should organize the curriculum contents according to the social life in which the students practically participate. The curriculum as such not merely helps them understand and grasp social knowledge but can also create conditions for them to perceive and apply social knowledge. This curriculum enables the students to authentically know the reason of getting the knowledge, experience the values of social knowledge on improving their practical capacity for social life, and to be aware of the rights enjoyable by them as “social people” and their indispensable obligations and responsibilities. This apart, given that the qualities of social life are inevitably influenced by geographical factors, the same naturally holds true for students’ understanding of social life and participation in it. Social curriculums are supposed to center on “local curriculums,” and the “localness” should also be manifested in the choice of knowledge. At the level of the teaching mode of social education, due to the influences and restrictions of the mode of disciplinary curriculum, the traditional one also focused on the teacher’s teaching of relevant social knowledge. Nevertheless, to help students understand, the teacher might cite some cases relevant to the social knowledge at work and guide them to discuss it. Under single circumstances, the teacher might also arrange some visits. In most cases, however, the teacher would guide the students to focus their discussions and visits on the conclusions from the textbook and expect that they can afterward grasp the textbook knowledge more solidly and understand it more profoundly. During the teaching process, the teacher-student relationship is

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still between the teacher and the learners, the latter being always in a passive position at the intelligence level. In terms of teaching assessment, there are usually two modes of conclusive assessments: the closed-book mode and the open-book mode. The closed-book mode mainly examines students’ capacities to memorize and understand the social knowledge they are taught, and to analyze relevant social phenomena by dint of it. The openbook mode on the other hand puts stress on examining the last capacity mentioned above. The two modes seeming fairly different notwithstanding, they are de facto both performed around the social knowledge in the textbook as a result of which the students might get high performances via learning by rote without improving even an iota of their awareness and capacities for participating in practical social life. Seen from the particular qualities of social knowledge, it is proper for the education as regards social knowledge to walk out of the mode of class teaching and to adopt the mode of “practice teaching” which no longer treats “practices” as an “extension” or “supplementation” of class teaching but as a fundamental organizing mode of social education. Be that as it may, “practical” here is not equal to “social practices” in the ordinary sense, the latter mainly referring to the education on students’ attitude toward and stance about political thoughts whereas the former to the broad “social education” including not merely their ideological attitudes and stances closely related to social life but also their cognition of social organizations and structure and their functions, awarenesses, and capacities to participate in social life, and so on. Additionally, the differences between the mode of practice teaching and social practices are this: practice teaching aiming at cultivating qualified citizens starts from grade one and is arranged periodically and systematically according to the practical situations of students’ participation in social life, and to the traits of their mental as well as physical development, whereas social practices are usually lack of such systematicity and periodicity. Seen from teaching assessment, the key of practice teaching does not lie in textbook knowledge but in students’ attitudes toward and capacities to participate in various types of social life. The purpose of adopting this assessing mode is to guide the students to convert their focus of social knowledge obtaining from “knowledge” to “action,” which hence will help them to become “citizens” not merely on idea but also on action. At last, let us focus on the analysis of the properties of humanistic education. Seen at the level of history, that of humanistic education is also a long one which, as it were, emerged at the very beginning of human civilization. Many discussions of Chinese and Western ancient philosophers like Confucius, Socrates, and others, on education were essentially not completely given for the sake of cultivating social members at that time; but rather, they strongly embraced the thought of humanistic education. For instance, Confucius’ “The benevolent person loves people,” “If I can obtain Dao in the morning, I would rather die at night,” “No groundless conjecture, no absolute assertion, no obstinate stereotype, no subjective dogmatism,” and Socrates’ “know yourself,” “One thing I know, that is I know nothing,” and the like are all of clear-cut color of humanistic education whose aim is to help the individual better recognize the self, understand human life, and determine his/her orientation rather than settling

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the conflicts between the individual and the society or helping the individual “socialize” himself. Even to date, their discussions as such are still of positive meaning of humanistic education and can help people to find the meaning of life in the “boring” and “busy” modern life. In the Western Middle Ages and Chinese feudal society, humanities have developed to a certain extent in many aspects, their main aspects, however, have lost the significance of humanistic education and descended to a sort of “intelligent,” “professional,” and “political” training skill, and the humanistic education with these disciplines as the main content had de facto been in the state of “having a mere nominal existence.” The early Western Renaissance is a period when humanistic education reached its acme. The then humanists not only translated and introduced large numbers of works of ancient writers on human life, humanity, and humans’ mission, but they wrote a plenty of relevant books also. “Affirming people,” “expressing people,” “extolling people,” “praising people,” and “elevating people” had become the themes of all the modes of cultural life—the lives of philosophy, literature, arts, history, education, and even religion (“Protestantism”). Nevertheless, in the late Renaissance, humanistic education gradually became “ossified” due to the “institutionalization” of humanities and other aforementioned causes, and eventually lost the implication of humanistic education, being reduced also to an “intelligent,” “professional,” or “political” training skill full of “conservative,” “aristocratic,” and “decayed” contentions. At the same time, scientific education gradually ascended the historical stage and, with the support from the industrial society, replaced humanistic education and became the main type of school education at the end of the nineteenth century. Humanistic education further declined. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Western sphere of thought first recognized the limits of the “scientific world” and its reliance on the “life-world,” and the tremendous humanistic crisis caused by the “scientific culture” in the West, so they exclaimed “the bankruptcy of (scientific) civilization” as the result of which humanistic education showed some trend of resurrection. In the first half of the twentieth century, there emerged some schools of education thought aiming at reflecting on and settling the problems of meaning of life such as existentialism educational philosophy, Thomasism educational philosophy, and the like. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the Western world suffering two World Wars more clearly realized the important role of scientific coeducation in the social progress on the one hand, and solely recognized the indispensable role of humanistic education in the social development on the other. Some countries thus set up successively some research and teaching institutions sponsored by the state, aiming to evoke the public’s concerns about humanistic education, publish works pertinent to humanistic education, strengthen the trans-disciplinary and trans-regional cooperations of the studies and teaching of humanist education, and to promote the development of humanistic education. The United States even sorted “arts” into the “nuclear” curriculums of the State, which sufficiently indicates their stress on humanistic education. As to China, the whole twentieth century can be said one whence humanistic education was the weakest in history. Before the Revolution of 1911, there was “the debate between China and the West” among the intellectuals of the late Qing Dynasty, which resulted in Zhang Zhidong’s educational policy of “Chinese essence

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and Western utility.” Nevertheless, the “Chinese essence” at that time no longer focused on “human life” but on the “feudal dynasty,” and “the Western utility” was also performed for the sake of helping the feudal dynasty to resist foreign aggressions. After the Revolution of 1911, the “citizen subject” was substituted for the “classicsreading subject” in the school curriculum system, which is the case that social education is substituted for classic humanistic education in today’s terminology. The 1920s witnessed the famous “debate between sciences and Chinese metaphysics (xuanxue 玄学).” Insofar as the content is concerned, there was not much difference between this debate and the “debate between China and the West”; great difference, however, was shown at the level of stance. “The Western learnings” were revered as “sciences” applicable to problems of human life as well as natural phenomena to set up “scientific” views of life; “Chinese learning,” whereas, was degraded to “Chinese metaphysics” and those who upheld the maintenance of the particularity and particular values of “Eastern culture” were derided as “fellows of Chinese metaphysics.” It seemed that this debate had been doomed from the very beginning so that traditional culture and humanistic education further went bankruptcy. More than that, given that Western knowledge standards, classifying system, and disciplinary systems were introduced, the traditional culture lost its legitimacy of knowledge and inevitably became the “footnote” of each “science,” and its integrity and systematicity with “human life” as the essence were also completely dismembered. The founding of the new PRC in 1949 terminated China’s over one century’s history of being insulted by the Western powers and the frequent chaos caused by war and provided beneficial political and social conditions to the systematic reorganization and development of traditional culture and humanistic education. Nonetheless, due to some quite complicated historical factors, the traditional culture and humanistic education still suffered various mishaps in the latter half of the twentieth century. On the whole, in the previous 30 years, only the traditional cultural contents pertaining to “the people” and “the revolution” were excavated and preserved, and many other things were regarded as serving the feudal governing class hence were drastically criticized and abandoned until they disappeared from the school curriculum system; the particularity of humanistic education also failed to be attached due importance hence became the “appendage” of socio-political education whereas politics was taken as the “soul” of a person. After the 1980s, the traditional culture was developed again to a certain extent, or, so to speak, it had a certain space to develop, which was manifested in the fact that large numbers of classics were reorganized and then published, relevant research institutions and works also sprang up like mushrooms after a fine rain, and lectures of traditional culture were also warmly welcome in colleges and universities. All these indicate that in an era of increasing “commercialization” and “marketization,” the traditional culture and the values of humanistic education it embraces are indispensable and irreplaceable. In the 1990s, along with the development of the reform of socialism economic system, notably with the increasingly severe social moral declines, political corruptions and the prevailing of the “vulgar” value orientation in cultural milieu, large-scale discussions around the “humanistic spirit” emerged in the sphere of social thoughts. As an

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important theme of these discussions, “humanistic education” drew the high attention from educators, pedagogical experts, general social intellectuals, press circles, even governmental departments, and showed a tendency of “resurrection” at last. We, however, should also notice that albeit theoretical discussions might produce some practical effects, there is still a long distance from theories to practices. In practical school educational activities, humanistic education remains fairly weak, humanistic curriculums remain in a “peripheral” position in the school curriculum system, many schools still assort “music” and “fine arts” into “three minor subjects” (the third one is “physical education”), and practical problems like insufficient and low-quality humanistic teachers remain severe. In colleges and universities, the most preferable specialties to students are those closely related to the future employment, say, electronics, business administration, finance and accounting, foreign languages, law, medicine, etc., as to some traditional specialties like philosophy, history, literature, religion, education, among others, they become “unpopular.” Albeit “arts” is relatively popular, that to which people pay heed is not its humanistic values but the values of it as a specialty capable of providing modern popular with cultural products. Nay, seen from China’s current policies of education reform, particularly those of the curriculum reform, the construction of humanistic curriculums is also lack of serious considerations and sufficient theoretical support. What is the purpose of humanistic education? This is the first question that needs to be considered in terms of constructing theories of humanistic education and performing practices of it. Of course, the difficulties of answering this question are: first, humanistic education in China fails to become a relatively independent form of educational activities like scientific and social educations, but is as a rule included in social education, the problem of meaning of life being included in those of values of life; in the second place, the humanistic education in the ordinary sense is by no means a single or complete system but is composed of different types of education such as the educations of philosophy, history, literature, moral, arts, etc., being of multiple attributes. Therefore, it is questionable whether or not there is a general purpose of humanistic education acceptable to each discipline. As to the first difficulty, I believe it is conquerable in that humanistic education being covered by social education notwithstanding, it is irreplaceable by the latter. This is because the problems of meaning of life cannot be changed into those of life values. To this connection, it is my contention that in future relevant educational policies of our country, it must be definite that “humanistic education” is an independent educational constituent, which will benefit both social education and the humanistic one. As for the second difficulty, I think it is merely a difficulty or puzzlement of ideas. In effect, the disciplinary educations mentioned above are sorted into humanistic education rather than social education insomuch as they share some educational properties, namely they all inquire into, recognize, understand, express, experience, and reflect on human life, particularly the meaning of life, from different aspects. The greatest works in these disciplinary areas are all concerned about the meaning of life and have all given incisive answers, say, Nietzsche’s The Will to Power in philosophy, Sima Qian’s Historical Records (Shiji史记) in history, Cao Xueqin’s A Dream in Red Mansions in literature, Confucius’ The Analects in the moral sphere, Beethoven’s

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Fate Symphony in the artistic sphere, and so on and so forth. Therefore, inquiring into the purpose of humanistic education in the ordinary sense is of its disciplinary foundation, but will also strengthen the connections and communications between all kinds of humanistic education, and will make prominent the properties of them as humanistic education. In terms of the purpose of humanistic education, the first thing I can say for sure is, unlike “scientific education” and “social education” that help people, particularly the adolescents, to recognize and reform an external world (“natural world” and “social world”), humanistic education essentially aims to help them recognize and reform an internal “humanistic world” closely related to their own living conditions so as to lay a foundation for the individuals to construct a harmonious “life-world.” Second, compared with the purpose of “scientific education” and “social education,” that of humanistic education is to teach one into a “human” rather than a mere “citizen” (or “laborer”). They are two interconnected but simultaneously greatly different educational purposes. At the level of interconnection, “human” and “citizen” are one and the same since each “human” is a “citizen” and no “citizen” is not a “human”; in terms of qualities or character, whereas, they are really different. Some are forced to abandon their internal determination and shape themselves according to the social or external expectations, which eventually turn them into a small part of the machine of society. Such a person can be said a “citizen,” even a “good citizen” (conforming to the demands of the governing class) under particular social conditions; however, this person fails to be a “man” or a “woman” in the true sense of the word as he/she has lost a person’s essential characteristics and become a mere unit of social act or measurement. The differences or tensions between these two educational purposes have been noticed by educators in history. Only in one’s social career could one become an individual. Seen in today’s view, they are what education should attain and are both indispensable. Nevertheless, they are neither identical nor naturally unified but are attained via different educational forms in complete educational activities. More precisely, in a complete education, scientific and social educations turn an individual into a “citizen” whereas humanistic education helps to turn one into a “man” or a “woman.” In terms of the relationship between them, becoming a genuine “man” or “woman” is prior to becoming a good “citizen” but not the other way round. Third, at the level of quality structure, that which scientific and social educations present to the students or help them to form is some knowledge, skills, attitudes of recognizing and reforming nature and understanding and participating in society on the one hand, and the behavioral modes based on them on the other hand. Humanistic education, whereas, gives the students, or intends to help them have, the knowledge, skills, and attitudes, via starting from individual or collective historical life experiences, to perform critiques and reflections on what was mentioned in scientific and social educations. Specifically, the purpose of humanistic education rests in awakening and guiding the “humanistic needs” hidden inside the students, delivering certain “humanistic knowledge” to them, cultivating their awarenesses of and capacities for making “humanistic understanding” and “humanistic concern” about themselves, others and the surroundings, and promoting them to form sublime “humanistic ideals” and “humanistic beliefs.”

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“Humanistic needs” refer to a sort of fundamental human need9 and differ from “social needs” and “material needs.” “Material needs” refer to humans’ needs to get and consume material products; “social needs” refer to humans’ needs to be accepted, respected, encouraged, and praised by society; “humanistic needs,” whereas, refer to humans’ needs produced by themselves as a historical life to “experience the self,” “recognize the self,” “express the self,” “understand the self,” “reflect on the self,” and “design the self.” Given that the core of these needs is to answer what kind of human life is meaningful, “humanistic needs” can be directly regarded as “meaning needs.” “Humanistic knowledge” refers to the knowledge aiming to inquire into and answer the questions of meaning produced in history. In terms of type, it traditionally includes, in the main, philosophical, historical, moral, artistic, and religious knowledge; modern anthropological, pedagogical, culturological knowledge, and part of psychological knowledge can also be sorted into it. Different from “scientific understanding” which is “outward” and “analytic,” “humanistic understanding” is “inward” and “synthetic.” “Humanistic concern” stresses the overall relations between the objects concerned and the concerning subject, which is also different from the “value concern” that puts more stress on the specific “usefulness” of the objects to the concerning subject. “Humanistic ideal” refers to humans’ overall designing of the “ideal image” one holds and one’s whole life, and “humanistic belief” to humans’ indelible firm attitude toward the meaning of one’s existence and one’s fundamental living style. All these constitute the “humanistic qualities” that a person owns or should own. To cultivate these qualities is not to give people the specific capacity for living but to awake, preserve, and develop humans’ “common humanity” 9

Here, I do not agree with the “humanistic psychologist,” Abraham Harold Maslow’s theory of “Hierarchy of Needs.” As it is known, this theory holds that “material needs” are the basic needs of human beings, whereas “social needs” (e.g., the need to communicate), “aesthetic needs,” “need for self-actualization,” etc., are higher-level needs. According to this theory, only when humans satisfy their “lower-level needs,” they will present and realize “higher-level needs,” which is to say that the latter can be delayed. From the specific interpretations of Maslow as regards the different levels of needs, “lower-level needs” are equivalent to humans’ “natural needs” or “material needs” (e.g., food, water, sleep, sex, etc.), middle-level needs are “social needs” or “need for values,” and higher-level needs are “humanistic needs” or “need for meaning.” On this account, his theory of hierarchy of needs, de facto, has constructed a “genetic theory of the individual,” wherein “material” comes before “social” and then before “humanistic.” This theory suggests that during one’s life, the first needs to meet are “material needs,” on the basis of which “social needs” may be considered; “humanistic needs” are the last to be taken into consideration. In addition, Maslow also contends that not everyone’s levels of needs may reach the top stage, which means that maybe some people will never present or seek for the contentment at the level of “humanistic needs.” In my view, this theory is wrong in that it is itself the product of the “fetishism” of modern industrial society and materialism values, reflecting the overall modern worldview and philosophy with fundamental shortages. Apparently, in daily life, we can sense that even the poorest people have “the need for communication” and “humanistic” needs for “self-recognition,” “self-understanding,” “selfrevealing,” and “self-actualization,” etc. These needs are by no means “higher-level;” hence, they are not the needs permitting delaying. They will appear at any age and point of time, accompanying the whole human life. The presentation and satisfaction of them have no causal relation with those of material needs. In this connection, it is my contention that like “natural needs” or “material needs,” “social needs” and “humanistic needs” are also humans’ “basic needs.”.

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or “species characteristics.” The “common humanity” is not the “sociality” restricted to some historical background, less a person’s “individuality,” but the characteristics shared or expected to be realized by human beings and concealed, instead, by various social as well as natural differences. If “social education” expands one’s “individuality” into “sociality,” “humanistic education” can be said guiding one’s “sociality” toward a “common humanity” or “species characteristics,” enabling one, as a member of human beings, to really sense one’s dignity, value, and limits, and to realize as well as shoulder one’s mission in social life. This is an ideal of free education, one having been persistently pursued by great educators since the ancient times. Undoubtedly, if a person only lives in his/her “individuality,” his/her life will be narrow and selfish; if a person only lives in his/her “sociality,” his/her life will be vulgar and depressed; only when a person lives in his/her inherited “species characteristics,” can he/she live up to the flavor and interest of a person, have a genuinely firm attitude toward life, find a definite orientation of life, overcome the alienated and split states of life, and really find the feeling of “home.” That is to say, the ultimate goal of humanistic education is not to add humans’ ownings but to elevate their state, which is the essential difference between humanistic education on the one hand and social and natural educations on the other. Originating from the particularity of the purpose of humanistic education, its contents are also, and should be, particular. Generally speaking, the main content of humanistic education is human knowledge rather than the social or natural one. To be sure, natural and social knowledge can sometimes inspire people to make humanistic considerations, say, some physical knowledge can enable people to produce the ideas of “harmonious” and “wonderful,” and some sociological knowledge can enable people to realize the “rootlessness” of individual life, these considerations, however, are merely the “by-products” of the natural and social knowledge people get and are incapable of meeting people’s needs to systematically and deeply think about the meaning of life. Comparatively, humanistic knowledge is manifested in previous philosophers’ discussions, expressions, reflections, and practical explorations directly pertinent to the meaning of life, and hence it can directly help people to recognize and understand the meaning of life. That which merits heed is, as was stated afore, humanistic knowledge as the content of humanistic education is a particular type of knowledge different from natural and social knowledge in strict sense, and its particularity is manifested in many aspects such as the object of knowledge, cognitive method, knowledge statement, knowledge increasing mode, scope of application, defense procedures, and the like. Provided these particularities, insofar as the choice of the content of humanistic education is concerned, standards like “typical,” “personal,” “liferelated,” etc., should be made prominent. “Typical” here means that the content of humanistic education should include fairly “typical” problems, stories, literary and artistic figures, life experiences, or something. This standard is put forward in that restricted to its own qualities, humanistic knowledge plays its role not by way of “demonstrating” or “verifying” itself to others via certain methods or procedures, nor of constraining and formulating people’s behaviors unquestionably, but of inspiring people to make relevant considerations. Therefore, the more “typical” problems,

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stories, literatures, artistic figures, and life experiences are more capable of attaining this goal. “Personal” here means that the choice of the contents of humanistic education should reflect the knowledge producer’s individual experiences and the social background in which this person is located. We present this standard in that’s humanistic knowledge and the humanistic questions one attempts to explore and answer are all contained in one’s life experiences and social background hence are of strong personalities. In this connection, if the readers do not understand one’s life experiences and social background, they will not understand the mental process whence the producers presented and explored the questions, nor their views, works, and choices of life, and hence they will not stand on the producer’s feet to make their own inner considerations. “Life-related” here means that the contents of humanistic education should approach as well as originate from life, so it is not suggested to choose the knowledge related to theoretical construction employed only by a few pedants; but rather, we should choose the knowledge available to everyone and capable of promoting people to reflect on themselves. Still, out of the particularity of humanistic knowledge, the compilation of humanistic teaching materials (mainly the compilation of those in primary and higher educational stages) is supposed not to circle around “knowledge” like the scientific teaching materials, nor to center on “practices” like the social ones, but to focus on the “reflections” or “introspections” on the meaning of life. For instance, senior children in primary school might rise over specific physiological traits (e.g., height, weight, blood type, skin color, appearance, etc.) and social roles (e.g., students, sons/daughters, young pioneers, males/females, etc.) to present questions like “Who am I?,” which shows that they qua the members of the human family are satisfied with looking at themselves from a scientific or social perspective but have begun to seriously consider about the questions for the whole life from a humanistic angle. As to such questions, seen at a pedagogical level, it is more important to promote considerations rather than give answers. In effect, just as was analyzed afore, there cannot be a “standard” answer to such questions. Thus, it is not enough to merely give a “standard” answer when it comes to the compilation of teaching materials. To be sure, the considerations and discussions of ancient people and others on such questions are valuable, they are insufficient to the students’ questions, though. No one can employ others’ ready-made discussions to deceive oneself on such questions. One needs various systems of human knowledge and various modes to make personal explorations. The only thing that education can expect is that the students may employ the various forms of considerations (e.g., philosophical, historical, artistic, religious, moral, or the like) of ancient people and others to constantly deepen and express their own. To this connection, the compilation of humanistic teaching materials should leave enough space and time to the students to perform internal reflections, so that they can think about their own questions and perform relevant “dialogues” with the forerunners and others. As to the type of humanistic curriculums, the mode of “seminar” is suggested. Seminar is a broadly adopted curriculum type in current Western college education, particularly in postgraduate education. It is characterized by flexible themes, open organizing modes, and freely communicative spiritual atmosphere, being warmly

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welcome by the students. The reason we suggest to take this mode as the fundamental one of developing humanistic curriculum is that such curriculums conform to the nature of humanistic knowledge. As was stated afore, on stating mode, humanistic knowledge is reflective with strong personality and metaphorical traits. The knowledge as such intends to evoke more “reflections” rather than offering a “conclusion” to some question, desire for “dialogues” with people rather than showing the author’s “stance,” and to develop new “biases” or promote new “understandings” rather than reaching a “consensus.” For instance, Socrates has once said “One thing I know, that is I know nothing,” which intends neither to state a “fact” nor to deliver a “norm,” less to invite people to treat Socrates as an “idiot.” When this adage is combined with the divine oracle of “Socrates is the most learned man in the world” and relevant stories, it will offer limitless thinking space to people, evoke and call them to make in-depth retrospections for the sake of constantly changing their own horizons and making preparations for scheming the new life. Without taking into account such open thinking space and the active participation of individual experiences but merely interpreting the epistemological meaning of this adage at the level of logic, people would at most draw the conclusion that “Socrates is a modest man.” It is just because of the lack of the space and participation as such that many humanistic curriculums like philosophy, history, literature, arts, religion, morals, etc., lost the significance of humanistic education. Presumably, this is the essential cause to the loss of the traits of humanistic education after humanities were “institutionalized” in the late Renaissance. On this account, in existent curriculum types, only the “seminar” is capable of maximally guaranteeing the space of free thinking and the participation, reflection, and expression of individual experiences hence amounting to the “humanization” of humanistic education. Due to the aforementioned properties of the humanistic world, knowledge, and education, humanistic teaching also has, and should have, its characteristics. To begin, “inculcation” or “absolutization” is the most harmful to humanistic teaching in that it blocks the space of free thinking and the way of individual experiences’ participation, which will turn the humanistic knowledge closely related to the experiences of existence into ossified “conclusions,” “propositions,” or “doctrines,” and eventually destroy humanistic education. Second, humanistic teaching needs a “sincere,” “free,” and “open” teaching atmosphere which is also fairly necessary to scientific and social educations albeit less than to humanistic education. This atmosphere is a must on promoting the reflections on individual experiences. Only in this atmosphere will students tear some camouflages in life and be directly faced with their experiences of existence, and reveal, express, and reflect on them fearlessly. Any pretension, compulsion, and authority whatsoever should be omitted from humanistic teaching. In humanistic teaching, the teacher should also sincerely face his/her experiences of existence as the students, revealing, expressing, and reflecting on them without considering himself/herself as an “authority.” This is different from the cases of scientific teaching and the social one. In scientific teaching, the teacher should be superior to the students on the grasping of both scientific knowledge and scientific methods, and hence he/she naturally owns the authority of an “instructor”; in the teaching process of social sciences,

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the teacher’s social and life experiences also naturally put him/her in an authoritative position and enable him/her to offer certain instructions to students in many aspects. In humanistic teaching, whereas, the case is different. To be sure, the teacher’s life experiences might be more abundant than the students, and the teacher’s considerations of meaning more than the students, the teacher, however, should not foist his/her own considerations and experiences on the students on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the teacher him/herself remains to get the ultimate answers to many humanistic questions insomuch as there are usually no ultimate answers to humanistic questions which are usually constantly presented according to the alteration of the living background. The teacher him/herself hence is incapable of offering definite “instructions” to the students and what he/she can do is to co-reflect as an experienced learner with the students in such a sincere, free, and open teaching atmosphere. In the third place, the fundamental links of humanistic teaching should include “experiencing,” “empathy,” “understanding,” “dialogue,” and “reflection.” The “experiencing” in humanistic teaching refers to that of “humanistic needs” or “humanistic crisis” producing some humanistic knowledge, but it also refers to a sort of spiritual feeling of the life-world relevant to it. In a certain sense, “experiencing” can be taken as the starting point of humanistic teaching. “Empathy” aims to get rid of, on the basis of experiencing, the temporal, spacial, social, and cultural “distances” between humanistic knowledge or works and the individual, and hence it aims to set up an interrelated “sense of identity” between them. “Empathy” aims neither to abandon the particularity of self-experiences, nor to project them into humanistic knowledge or works to speak for them, but to set up a connection between them so as to eliminate humanistic knowledge or works’ “externality” to the individual, and open up a path for “understanding.” The “understanding” here refers to the further “recognition” and “understanding” on the basis of the “experiencing” and “empathy” of the connecting mode and extent between the humanistic knowledge or works and the individual. Thus, it has strong “personality” and “subjectivity” which, exactly, presents the demand for “dialogues.” Via the “dialogues” between different understanders, the aim of “supplementing,” “constraining,” and “modifying” such “personified” and “subjectified” understanding will be attained; on the other hand, it helps to reach the fusion of “horizons” and open a new space of meaning. On the basis of “dialogues,” “reflection” ultimately realizes the educational trait of humanistic teaching, and promotes the teacher and the students to perform critical examinations with respect to the mode and meaning of self-existence. Finally, humanistic teaching presents high demands on the teachers’ qualities which not merely refer to those of their specialty but to their own human qualities. A teacher with high specialty and human qualities is considerably significant for humanistic education and is an infinite resource for human education. On the whole, due to the differences amidst natural, social, and humanistic worlds and those amidst relevant natural, social, and humanistic knowledge, scientific, social, and humanistic educations are also of their respective properties. To recognize and understand these properties is very important in terms of deepening various forms of education reform and improving their practical educational effects and holistic educational quality. Currently, we should particularly recognize the peculiarity of

References

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the humanistic world, knowledge, and education; liberate humanistic education from several facts, concepts, principles, and technologies; awake the adolescents’ genuine internal humanistic needs; improve their fundamental humanistic qualities; help and encourage them to understand the sublime humanistic ideals and spirit in history; practically reinforce their critical and resisting capacities for the descending humanistic consciousnesses like consumerism, materialism, hedonism, nihilism, etc., and enable them to authentically sense and experience the beauty of humanity and its unalienable dignity. This is of vital importance to the future development of Chinese society as well as the adolescents’ own happiness. If the world lack of the humanistic part were not a complete one, a person lack of humanistic qualities not a complete person, the education lack of the humanistic part would also not be a complete education. Incomplete education will produce incomplete people, and therefore incomplete society and world, which will bring about unpredictable and unremovable disasters to us and the world in which we dwell together.

References Comte, A. (1974). The crisis of industrial civilization: The early essays of Auguste Comte (Ed., R. Fletcher). Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. Huangjijingshi • Observing the Things (Addendum Chapters) 皇极经世・观物外篇. Saffin, N. W. (1973). Science. Lowden Publishing Co. Shi, Z. (1999). 教育学的文化性格 [The cultural characters of pedagogy]. Shanxi Education Press. Zhu H. (1995). 人文精神与人文科学——人文科学方法论导论 [Humanistic spirit and humanistic science—Introduction to the methodology of humanities]. Party School of the Central Committee of the C. P. C. Press.

Chapter 9

Indigenous Knowledge and Education Reform

As was analyzed in Chapter 3, along with the deconstruction of the modern knowledge form with natural scientific knowledge as the model, a large amount of knowledge originally subjugated or deprived of legitimacy enter into the new world of knowledge, becoming a legitimate member of the latter. This changes people’s ideas of knowledge and the basic pattern of the world of knowledge, which increasingly makes prominent the “multiplicity” of knowledge forms; the “tacit knowledge” introduced in Chap. 7 is a sort of knowledge recently obtaining legitimacy. In a certain sense, the “humanistic knowledge” mentioned in Chap. 8 is liberated from the modern knowledge form and regains the legitimacy lost since modern times. In this chapter, I will introduce and analyze the “indigenous knowledge” which is also a sort of knowledge needing to be re-legitimized or gradually re-legitimated in the latest 20 years. Since the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, due to some quite complicated causes, “indigenous knowledge” has gradually drawn people’s attention, which is manifested in the successive setups of many international or regional academic and teaching organizations, the holding of some international, regional, or provincial conferences that focused on the discussion and studies of the concept, quality, function, type of knowledge, and a series of relevant problems, and the publication of a considerably large number of literatures. For instance, 1987 witnessed the foundation of The Center for Indigenous Knowledge for Agriculture and Rural Development in Iowa State University. This center concentrated on the trans-disciplinary studies on indigenous knowledge, the development of indigenous curriculums of knowledge, the training of relevant staffs, and the engagement in some developing programs. It paid particular heed to record and preserve the indigenous knowledge of the peasants all around the world and other village inhabitants, and to provide the knowledge to the experts and scientists studying the problems of development. In 1995, the International Consortium for Indigenous Knowledge was founded at the Pennsylvania State University. This consortium provided in many aspects services pertinent to indigenous knowledge, say, “engaging in the validation of indigenous knowledge,” “producing new research methods for studying indigenous knowledge,” © Higher Education Press Limited Company 2023 Z. Shi, Transformation of Knowledge and Educational Reform, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9271-1_9

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“giving students and faculty both the methodologies for recording indigenous knowledge and the tools for using it effectively,” “promoting diversity by valuing the ways-of-knowing that are characteristic of various cultures,” “promoting interdisciplinary, participatory research and cooperative problem-solving between communities and academic institutions,” “enhancing the internationalization of the curriculum of academic institutions by giving faculty and students ready access to a global network of indigenous knowledge resource centers,” “increasing teacher awareness of indigenous knowledge through a worldwide integrated database,” “encouraging interaction between indigenous epistemologies and Western epistemologies for the purpose of finding new methods to produce knowledge,” and so forth (Semali & Kincheloe, 1999, p. 5). Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and some African countries have also founded similar academic and teaching organizations. Since the 1990s, indigenous knowledge has attracted the thick interest of academic and folk organizations, but also of relevant departments in the UN. Between 1994 and 1995, funded by the United Nations Development Program, conferences pertinent to the preservation and protection of indigenous knowledge were successively held in three areas (Bolivia, Malaysia, and Fiji). In the conferences, representatives of the indigenous societies from different areas reached some consensuses with regard to the problems mentioned above, issued joint statements, and had special discussions around the preservation and protection of indigenous knowledge in short and medium terms, which greatly promoted the identification, researches, dissemination, and application of indigenous knowledge at the global level (Semali & Kincheloe, 1999, pp. 344–359). Until the end of the twentieth century, as it were, “indigenous knowledge” has become a new and peculiar knowledge form, but also an important intellectual foundation for international, national, and indigenous societies to make and install various developing plans and to train the staffs engaged in developing work. This apart, in terms of the indigenous people recognizing the developing drive of the indigenous society, re-designing the system of intellectual production, and deepening the various social causes like education reform, etc., it is also of vital instructive significance. At the epistemological level, indigenous knowledge is the product of postmodern knowledge form, but it has also advanced the transformation of the latter, promoted people to make in-depth reflections on the relationship between “knowledge” and “culture,” and ultimately established the idea of “contextualization of knowledge.” It is a pity that seen from the current materials, until the end of the 1990s, Chinese scholars failed to set up any academic organization or teaching unit focusing on the research and organization of indigenous knowledge, join in any relevant international or regional organization, or to host or hold any relevant conference, which greatly influenced the researches, teachings, and applications of indigenous knowledge in China. Seen from the literature indexes all around the world, Chinese scholars’ contributions in this aspect were fairly limited. Nonetheless, this does not mean that we failed to make studies in this regard. In fact, there are various studies of indigenous knowledge in China, say, those of “traditional medicine,” “Tibetan medicine,” “folklore,” “folk society,” or the like. In recent years, discussions about the localization of social sciences have also been concerned with such problems, they, however,

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were mostly restricted to disciplinary horizons, being closed but having few mutual communications, which brought the difficulty of understanding to the “outsiders,” let alone influencing the public or relevant policies of the government. On the other hand, the disciplines concerned are still limited, people mostly absorb the “scientific” methods, the dominators are mainly “disciplinary experts,” and the objects are regarded as those of completely passive, isolated observations and analyses. Resultantly, the indigenous knowledge obtained is always fragmentary and “fossillike,” which might bring benefits to the construction of the disciplines but is of little benefit to the development of indigenous people and society, or to the authentic revealing of the values, educational values included, of indigenous knowledge. To promote relevant studies in China, notably to promote the emphasis of the domestic educational sphere on the educational values of indigenous knowledge, I intend to succinctly explicate the basic concepts and traits of indigenous knowledge within the theoretical framework of knowledge transformation and analyze the causes to the upsurging of indigenous knowledge studies in the 1980s and its important values to the development of indigenous society. At last, starting from the theoretical horizon of indigenous knowledge and internal development, I intend to present some strategic suggestions meriting further discussions with respect to the relevant problems in the education reform of China in the twenty-first century.

9.1 What Is Indigenous Knowledge Albeit in the past 20 years people have been showing increasing interest in indigenous knowledge and many studies focusing on indigenous knowledge emerged, scholars failed to reach a consensus as to “What is indigenous knowledge.” Often, each individual or institution will give a prescriptive definition of “indigenous knowledge” according to the questions he/she explicates or studies. Different definitions may be the same somewhere but different somewhere else; they may be similar to or different from others on this or that point; the content in one definition may be omitted in another. This situation really corroborates Wittgenstein’s diction of “family resemblance” with regard to definition: it seems that all the definitions belong to one “family,” resembling one another in this or that way but far from being identical. If the onlookers are patient enough, they might find this or that kind of close relations between different definitions. Harold Conklin defines “indigenous knowledge” as “ethnoscience,” viz., a system of knowledge with its particular content and mode formed by a nation during the course of its subsistence, continuity, and development, corresponding to the “Western sciences” or “European sciences” formed and widely disseminated since modern times. This definition attempted to match “indigenous knowledge” to “Western knowledge,” which exerted great influences on all later definitions of indigenous knowledge. I. Illich all the more regarded “indigenous knowledge” as a “science of/by people,” which was similar to Conklin’s “ethnoscience.” “Science of/by people” was defined to match “science for people” which refers to those called “research

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and development” after the Second World War and performed by some large institutions like the government, industrial organizations, colleges and universities, medical centers, armies, foundations, etc. The research fees as such are very high but are all assumed to take the people’s interests into account. “Science of/by people,” on the other hand, refers to the sort of science having no or little fund support, no initiating or sponsoring units, and whose fruits of research are impossible to be published on those important journals. At the level of the research subject, this sort of science is mainly performed by the people in their daily production and life. Apparently, these early definitions put stress on indigenous knowledge qualities of being indigenous or of people for the sake of resisting the intellectual hegemony formed by modern Western sciences in local society. In a certain sense, such definitions may be considered as the resistance of former colonial countries and people against Western intellectual hegemony. Compared with the early definitions with strong political inclination, recent definitions are more academic. M. Maurial holds that (1999) “Indigenous knowledge is peoples’ cognitive and wise legacy because of their interaction with nature in common territory. Indigenous peoples, with a common history of colonization by Western culture, constantly regenerate this knowledge” (Maurial, 1999, p. 62). She further presents the three properties of indigenous knowledge: “locality,” “holisticity,” and “agrapha.” Viergever (1999), whereas, defines indigenous knowledge from the perspective of the production of knowledge as follows: first, “(i) it is the product of a dynamic system (creative and inventive genius of each indigenous people); (ii) it is an integral part of the physical and social environment of communities; and (iii) it is a collective good” (Viergever, 1999, p. 337). This definition can be essentially taken as the restatement of the above two ones, it, however, definitely presents the “perspective” of treating indigenous knowledge. Under the inspirations form Viegever, C. Quiroz defines, from the perspective of the preserving mode of knowledge, “local knowledge” or “indigenous knowledge.” “Local Knowledge systems (LKS), broadly defined, are the systematic information that remains in the informal sector, usually unwritten and preserved in oral tradition rather than texts. In contrast, formal knowledge is situated in written texts, legal codes, and canonical knowledge” (Quiroz, 1999, p. 306). In addition to the above definitions, there are also many other names of “indigenous knowledge” and F. K. Oladele made a relatively detailed collection, say, “traditional knowledge,” “culture-based knowledge,” “community environmental knowledge,” “rural people’s knowledge,” “indigenous technical knowledge,” “folk science,” “village science” (Oladele, 1996, pp. 151–152), and so on. According to my knowledge, there are also “folk knowledge,” “pre-modern knowledge,” “primitive knowledge,” “subjugated knowledge,” “colonial knowledge,” “aboriginal knowledge,” “informal knowledge,” and so forth. Based on the above discussion, I thus define “indigenous knowledge” as a system of knowledge automatically produced, enjoyed, and delivered by indigenous people during the long-term process of their life and development; it is inseparable from the indigenous people’s living and developing surroundings (including natural as well as social and humanistic surroundings) and their history; it is the common spiritual

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wealth of the indigenous people; and it is the intelligent foundation and power sources of the once ignored or subjugated indigenous people on realizing the independent autonomy and sustainable development. This definition intends to cover the following key properties of indigenous knowledge: First, indigenous knowledge is a sort of “local knowledge”; Second, indigenous knowledge is a sort of “holistic knowledge”; Third, indigenous knowledge is a sort of “subjugated knowledge”; Fourth, indigenous knowledge is a sort of “empowering knowledge.” Indigenous knowledge qua a sort of “local knowledge” means: in terms of the production of knowledge, indigenous knowledge is produced by the indigenous people living in a certain cultural space and time according to the particular nature and social surroundings for the sake of their needs; in terms of the dissemination of knowledge, indigenous knowledge is mainly disseminated in this cultural space and time, on which the understanding of the truthfulness of indigenous knowledge also depends; in terms of the enjoyment of knowledge, indigenous knowledge is mainly enjoyed by the people in this certain cultural space and time to set up the harmonious relationship between them on the one hand and nature and society on the other; in terms of demonstrating the legitimacy of knowledge, only in this certain cultural space and time can indigenous knowledge be acknowledged and can some particular demonstrating modes be accepted by people. Generally speaking, no one will deny the parlance that indigenous knowledge is a sort of local knowledge, people’s understanding as to the meaning of “local” differs not insignificantly, though. Some think that “local” mainly refers to the “previous colonial areas” or some primitive tribes, say, some areas in Africa, Asia, and Australia ever suffering the colonial governing or some primitive tribes remaining to be accessed by people. In this connection, “local knowledge” or “indigenous knowledge” corresponds to “Western knowledge” or “colonial knowledge,” being the “primitive” and “irrational” knowledge dismissed by the early colonists. People holding this view mostly come from previous colonial countries, and they employ such a “local” concept to define “indigenous knowledge” so as to reconstruct, by means of the research and teaching of “indigenous knowledge,” the indigenous system of knowledge destroyed by the colonists in the past over 500 years. Therefore, from their perspectives, the definition or understanding as such is of particular meaning and is also beyond criticisms. Be that as it may, seen from general epistemology or theories of knowledge, just as was pointed out by Warren and others, such a simple binary thinking mode is of its great limits. On the one hand, its employment of this simple binary methods denies the possibility that there is “indigenous knowledge” or “local knowledge” inside Western countries, and hence the applying object of the studies of “indigenous knowledge” is restricted to the previous countries or some primitive tribes; on the other hand, it denies the possibility that there is relatively minor or partly tradition of indigenous knowledge inside a relatively major one. In addition, the rough dispelling of the “Western knowledge” manifested in modern sciences and technologies out of “indigenous knowledge” shows that it itself fails

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to correctly understand the “contextuality of knowledge” revealed by postmodern philosophers, and to precisely understand the “local” of “Western knowledge.” De facto, just as was pointed out by L. M. Semali, Thus, this Western modernist way of producing knowledge and constructing reality is one of a multitude of local ways of knowing—it is a local knowledge system that denies its locality, seeking to produce not local but trans-local knowledge. Such knowledge is true regardless of context and is the product of the process known as Cartesian reductionism. Here problems are broken down into isolated components, examined separately from one another, categorized, and pronounced “true.” This validation provides a high status to such knowledge, which is used to wield power over people without access to such knowledge. When these processes occur, Western science promotes a hierarchical and linear form of knowledge production, dismissing questions of context that provide information with meaning and potential application. Questions concerning the cultural assumptions implicit in the production and use of such knowledge are not deemed important in such a process. (Semali & Kincheloe, 1999, pp. 28–29)

In this way, “local” is not merely a trait of “indigenous knowledge,” but also that of all human knowledge including “Western (scientific) knowledge.” So it is improper to take “local” as the property of previous colonial countries or primitive tribes and to match them to “Western knowledge.” To this connection, a relatively suitable understanding is to match “local” to “national” and “international” or “global” rather than to “Western.” Consequently, “indigenous knowledge” as a “local knowledge” can only be produced, circulated, and applied in local places, like the “local food coupons,” rather than circulating in a nation-wide or worldwide fashion. To break its local limits, it must follow the intellectual standards current all around the nation or the world. If the standard as such is that of Western modern scientific knowledge, that which matches Western modern scientific knowledge is “local knowledge” and further “indigenous knowledge.” According to this understanding, the boundary of “indigenous knowledge” is relatively flexible: corresponding to “international,” “national” is “local”; corresponding to “local,” “national” is no more “local”; inside Western countries, say, in the Appalachia mountains or the old urban districts of the US, there is also local or indigenous knowledge; in some places with various and complex population or ethnic compositions, there may be “local knowledge” or “indigenous knowledge” within smaller scopes. This apart, at the level of the existing or disseminating mode, indigenous knowledge as a local one is not necessarily restricted to the “agrapha or oral” methods mentioned by Maurial or others. In effect, in many areas of the world, local knowledge is also recorded and disseminated via words and symbols. Compared with the “locality” of indigenous knowledge, its “holisticity” is virtually uncontroversial. The holisticity generally includes the meanings as follows: first, indigenous knowledge is closely connected with indigenous lifestyle, so much so that it is hard for the “outsiders” to differentiate life and knowledge, and the understanding of indigenous knowledge is not possible unless people go deep into the indigenous life; second, the cognitive mode of indigenous knowledge centers on holistic rather than analytic thinking, being inclined to adopting some question into the scope of a larger one rather than isolating it for single analysis and study; third, albeit indigenous knowledge is varied and covers all scientific species of modern Western sciences,

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it is not that classified as the latter with strict disciplinary boundaries between each other. Contrariwise, the different parts of indigenous knowledge are usually mutually pervasive and share some fundamental categories and presumptions like cosmology, ontology, anthroposophy, etc., with relatively more elements of metaphysics even mysticism; fourth, the preservation and protection of indigenous knowledge cannot be performed via isolation or separation. As was warned by R. Reynar, Releasing these assumptions allows for the alternate conclusion that indigenous knowledge has not developed in isolation from nature, but rather in participation with nature and community. Therefore, detaching indigenous knowledge from its sustentative human/nature context is tantamount to foretelling its death; its roots have been lanced. Indigenous knowledge is no longer indigenous when extracted from its human/nature context; it stands ashamedly naked. (Reynar, 1999, p. 290)

Quiroz also notes, Local Knowledge must be understood within the framework of the cultures of local people; to separate it from its cultural context is to lose sight of the meaning that it has for the survival and integrity of these communities. Therefore, LKS cannot adequately be conserved by setting it aside in a museum, or by recording it on paper or electronically. Like biological diversity, local knowledge can only be conserved by keeping it alive and in use. (Quiroz, 1999, p. 306)

Under most circumstances, there is no strict differentiation between the producers, disseminators, and consumers of indigenous knowledge, each being its consumer as well as the producer and disseminator. Therefore, in indigenous society, albeit there may be some intellectual authorities, say, the authority owned by experienced peasants in the village, there usually will not be a differentiation and opposition between “the intellectual class” and “the ignorant class.” As a sort of local or holistic knowledge, indigenous knowledge has become since the modern times a sort of “subjugated knowledge” in Foucault’s terminology, namely one that has long been deprived of legitimacy. There are two factors with respect to this intellectual hegemony: one is epistemological and the other is political, the two being closely interconnected or the former serving the latter. In terms of epistemological factor, as was pointed out in Chap. 3, there exists a factual multiplicity of knowledge in any era whatsoever but not each kind of knowledge in each era may be of or be granted the qualification of “knowledge” since it is controlled by the dominating or prevailing knowledge form at that time. Be it in primitive, ancient, or modern society, only the knowledge or experiences conforming to the intellectual standards made by some knowledge form can be legitimate and enjoy the power of knowledge. Or else, it will be refuted and subjugated by the intellectual regime and become the “slave” of the intellectual kingdom, lying at the bottom of it. In primitive society, all human experiences, except for mysterious knowledge, were deprived of intellectual legitimacy; in ancient society, except for metaphysical and theological knowledge, all other sorts of knowledge also suffered the subjugation of the ancient knowledge form; in modern society where natural scientific knowledge and the modern knowledge form based on it dominated, the knowledge failing to be coincident with the ideal or standard of natural scientific knowledge was refuted, subjugated, and restricted in

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various degrees. As to the ideal or standards of natural scientific knowledge, they are nothing but “objective,” “neutral,” or “universal” which, exactly, is what indigenous knowledge lacks. In this situation, indigenous knowledge is ultimately deprived of intellectual legitimacy. As a matter of fact, in the eyes of some colonists who entered into the indigenous societies outside Europe, the aborigines there were regarded as “uncultivated,” “primitive,” or “barbarous” just because they were lack of the so-called modern knowledge produced by the Western indigenous society. At first, “indigenous” was closely connected with these pedagogues. With such presumptions and judgments, it would be a moral even holy cause to input into indigenous society the “scientific” or “Western” knowledge. The setup of the educational system of the colonies promoted the legitimation of such subjugation of knowledge, and that which was learned by generations of adolescents was the self-contempt and defiance for their indigenous knowledge and the whole indigenous culture it constructed in addition to the “advanced” Western scientific knowledge. The process accompanying this one namely, that in which the indigenous knowledge was subjugated was the process of indigenous people’s “colonization of mind” strengthening the political and economic colonization so much so that it left a cultural trauma hard to heal to the independent ex-colonial countries. On this account, the “re-legitimatization” of “indigenous knowledge” is in a considerable measure to get rid of the colonization of the mind and to reconstruct the tradition of indigenous knowledge. According to the studies of indigenous knowledge, different from the alien knowledge, particularly the Western one, “indigenous knowledge” is a sort of “empowering knowledge” or one enabling the indigenous people to produce a “feeling of power” in the true sense of the word. The obtainment and increase of the knowledge as such is capable of helping the indigenous people to better recognize the problems they face, better settle them, increase their capacity for self-dependence, and reduce their reliance on alien experts or institutions of development. To the indigenous people, they need the empowerment in that on the one hand, the suppression of Western knowledge on the indigenous one in the long period has led to the severe spiritual crisis and reliance of indigenous people on life and practices, and to their “voicelessness” in terms of the problems concerning their life and fortunes; on the other hand, they increasingly find that the so-called scientific knowledge, mainly from Western society, is ineffective when it comes to settling some severe indigenous problems, and it even plays negative roles hard to eliminate: the “industrialized” or “modernized” process had destroyed the harmonious relations between “human” and “the environment”; “individualism” has destroyed the traditional social intimacy; “utilitarianism” has promoted people to abandon their spiritual pursuits; “West-centrism” has turned the indigenous society into “a forgotten corner.” Under such circumstances, no one is concerned about indigenous history and large numbers of indigenous cultural relics keep disappearing. The alien scholars may apply some ready-made Western scientific theories to indigenous society, turning the latter into the “test field” of the former, or “take away” some indigenous materials, making them into the proofs for them to publish essays commenting on the indigenous society. They do not care for indigenous society but only for their theories and their market values. Indigenous people believe that they, and only they, “share weal and woe” with indigenous

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society so they should own the prior voice at the level of the developing direction and prospect of indigenous society. To authentically obtain and perform this voice, indigenous knowledge is a necessary resource of thought since as a sort of local and holistic knowledge, it is exactly the crystal of wisdom of indigenous people during the process of life and development. Albeit indigenous knowledge does not conform to the prevailing Western international intellectual standards, its legitimacy has gained the verification of the history of indigenous society. To the settlement of the indigenous problems, indigenous knowledge is authentically effective. In the tradition of indigenous knowledge formed in the past several millenniums, there is embraced lived wisdom in the true sense of the word, which cannot be given by Western scientific knowledge or that refusing to admit its indigenousness. Under factual conditions, albeit indigenous knowledge cannot authentically replace the Western scientific one, it can at least provide indigenous people with a perspective familiar to them on defining, observing, analyzing, and settling problems. The reconstruction of indigenous knowledge is an important condition for indigenous society to realize its sustainable and independent development. Similar to the causes to its being subjugated since modern time, the upsurging of indigenous knowledge in the past 20 years or so is also due to epistemological and practical factors. Epistemologically speaking, since the 1960s and beyond, an important transformation occurred as regards the knowledge form of human beings, namely the transformation from the modern knowledge form to the postmodern one, or from the scientific knowledge form to the cultural one. The transformation as such produced great epistemological results which challenged on the one hand the hegemonies of Western knowledge and epistemology formed by virtue of industrial and political powers since modern times, enabling modern people to really eliminate their superstition as regards the “objectivity,” “neutrality,” and “universality” of Western knowledge, and to recognize in a deeper fashion the quality of Western knowledge’s culture and power and its contextuality, and therefore providing the thinking premises to the essential restriction of the global expansion of Western knowledge; on the other hand, it enabled people to fairly treat indigenous knowledge and the relations of power between it and “Western knowledge” or other hegemonic knowledge. Without this transformation of postmodern knowledge, the contextualization of Western knowledge and the legitimation of indigenous knowledge would be impossible. De facto, insofar as the latter is concerned, early in the anthropological studies in the nineteenth century, some anthropologists like Tyler and others had found that those indigenous societies were not in a state of the cultural desert but had their systems of knowledge. Due to the restrictions from the modern knowledge form, nevertheless, it was impossible for them to confess that the indigenous knowledge as such had the same legitimacy as the so-called scientific knowledge, and the typical attitude was that they employed the linear logic provided by Darwin’s theory of evolution to treat it as “primitive” or “pre-modern knowledge,” namely knowledge “being outdated,” “needing to be eliminated,” or at most “remaining to fully develop.” The anthropologists studied this sort of knowledge either out of their curiosity for knowledge or for the sake of reinforcing the colonists’ understanding of and control over the indigenous society. Since the 1960s, it is along with the deepened critiques

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of modern philosophers on the scientific knowledge form set since modern time in the West, particularly with the definite revealing of Foucault and others as regards the relationship between knowledge and power, that people began to notice the problems of knowledge’s culturality, contextuality, etc., and to really treat indigenous knowledge in the framework of knowledge’s multiplicity. Resultantly, this led to the upsurging of the studies of indigenous knowledge in indigenous society in the 1980s. Seen at a practical level, the upsurging of the studies as such appertains to the aforementioned reconsiderations of indigenous society with respect to the social development, and I will make detailed analyses as to this problem in the following section. Additionally, that indigenous knowledge is stressed to a certain extent in the Western society is closely related to commercial or economic interests since in the different traditions of indigenous knowledge in each area of the world, there are preserved larger numbers of things being of commercial values to Western society. Such values are mainly manifested in two aspects: on the one hand, indigenous knowledge enables the Western society to better understand the indigenous society as the commodity goods of the West so that it can provide premises to them on making more effective commercial production and marketing strategies. The localized marketing and managing modes of the renowned Coca-Cola company is a case in point. On the other hand, indigenous knowledge embraces a large quantity of things deserving commercial development and application. As was stated afore, indigenous knowledge qua a sort of local and holistic knowledge is the crystal of experiences during the indigenous people’s long-term process of life and development, reflecting their excellent wisdom in each aspect of life. Once, the wisdom as such is “separated from” the system of indigenous knowledge and is developed into standardized products or serving modes easily salable all over the globe, great commercial profits would be produced. For instance, in indigenous knowledge of medicine of the areas all over the world, there are many valuable things explored and concluded by the indigenous people in the long-term health care. These things, however, fail to be definitely explicated in the indigenous knowledge system, or they do not seek for such explications at all but are satisfied with the effective application in indigenous society. This is also determined by the holisticity of indigenous knowledge. Once, whereas, Western medicine companies or indigenous medical scientists find via Western scientific methods the principles therein, they will set up giant manufacturing lines and rapidly occupy the market originally belonging to traditional medical products and will make great profits on the premise of destroying the indigenous economic interests. The following numbers might give a vivid description of the problems: The sometimes random, sometimes systematic collection of indigenous peoples’ agricultural genetic diversity has yielded considerable economic benefits to the world community, including industrialized countries. Genes from the fields of developing countries for only 15 major crops contribute more than US$50,000 million in annual sales in the United States alone. Roughly one-quarter of pharmaceutical sales in the United States are of drugs derived directly or indirectly from plants. At the beginning of the 1990s, worldwide sales of all pharmaceuticals amounted to more than US$13,000 million annually; a conservative estimate would be that US$32,000 millions of these sales are based upon traditional medicines. (Viergever, 1999, p. 338)

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On the account of the possible giant economic interests brought by indigenous knowledge, I am afraid that so many international research institutions as to indigenous knowledge founded in the United States are not merely aimed at providing services to the experts of development and scientists but, all the more importantly, are directed upon serving the various American companies and enterprises. This, presumably, is the fundamental reason why they can obtain constant economic funds. Under such circumstances, the protection of the copyright of indigenous knowledge is an important part of the international struggle of copyright hence deserves high attention from the developing countries or indigenous societies and their people.

9.2 Indigenous Knowledge and Internal Development With the arrival of the intellectual economic era, struggles as regards problems of knowledge are increasingly becoming an important part of international as well as national political struggles. The presentation of the concept of indigenous knowledge reflects to a certain extent the demands of struggle from indigenous society, particularly the previous colonial one, in terms of maintaining and protecting their particular intellectual rights. Nevertheless, just as was pointed out by many experts—mainly from developing and underdeveloped countries—focusing on indigenous knowledge, notwithstanding that the concept has been presented for about 20 years, the maintenance and protection of indigenous intellectual rights remain to be highly stressed by the indigenous society or the widespread developing and underdeveloped countries. This is quite apparent in China. The causes are multi-faceted and one of the key reasons is that due to people being fancied by Western scientism, they fail to recognize the values of indigenous knowledge, or to realize that indigenous knowledge qua an intellectual resource has its irreplaceable functions during the progression of the indigenous society or the state. On this account, to systematically elucidate the developing values of indigenous knowledge becomes an important procedure in terms of propagating the conception of indigenous knowledge, deconstructing the Western intellectual hegemony, promoting the studies on indigenous knowledge notably those of indigenous society, and making use of, in a full and active fashion, the indigenous knowledge to modify and realize the goals of social development. Since the middle of the eighteenth century, “development” has become a kernel concept and an important metaphor of cultural struggles in Western societies. At that time, “development” meant the self-realization of “humanity,” the evolution of the social system from lower to higher state, and a growing process of humankind. This understanding of “development” puts stress on its cultural meaning. In the middle of the nineteenth century, along with the rapid development of the industrial revolution, particularly with the emergence of Darwin’s theory of biological evolution, the word “development” had more economic and political meanings. To a certain extent, “development” meant “survival” whereas “non-development” “death.” Some even directly changed Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be, this is a question” into “To develop or not to develop, this is a question.” Until the end of the nineteenth century,

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the main Western capitalist countries had finished their modernization processes from political, economic, cultural, military aspects, and so on and had become the renowned “developed countries.” At that time, “development” became the special word employed by colonial or semi-colonial areas or countries to express their social ideals, and the various “theories of development” were exactly directed upon them. The two World Wars occurring mainly between Western countries failed to change the fundamental world pattern formed since modern times, and the “North-South Problem” and “East-West Problem” were still quite severe. After the Second World War, along with the ruin of the colonial systems of the world, the newly independent countries joined the group of countries entering post-modernization and began to be concerned with their “development.” At this time, whereas, “development” or “modernization” was in effect understood as “industrialization” or “westernization,” “science,” or “Western sciences” as an important tool to promote the economic development and social reform, and indigenous knowledge or culture as the main hindrance to the realization of the goals of development. As an important condition of realizing the development of indigenous society, various “cultural revolutions” occurred, not merely in China but also in broad areas of Asia, America, Africa, and Australia. “Development” became a conception transcending the ideology and cultural space and time, and became the gospel of many indigenous societies. Under the dominance of the conception of “development,” Western producing patterns, political systems, ideas of values, and intellectual systems expanded rapidly around the world and formed today’s so-called “global capitalism system.” Be that as it may, in the 1970s, people at last found a striking fact: “development,” “industrialization,” and “modernization” failed to help most previous colonial and semi-colonial countries or areas break away from poverty and, worse still, the difference between developed countries and the developing and underdeveloped ones was enlarged rather than being reduced. In the meanwhile, developing and underdeveloped countries severely relied on the developed ones at the level of politics and economy, and culture as well. Under the impact of Western “cultural industry,” the indigenous ideas of cultural values and intellectual systems inherited and deposited in the past several millenniums suffered heavy damages and lost their identity; as a severe result, indigenous people’s confidence on constructing their society was lost. At that time, “development” was no longer an enthusiastic self-realization but a helpless process of “alienation.” A severe crisis occurred in the developing courses of the third world. In the 1980s, after the UNESCO made earnest reflections with regard to the complex and multilateral developing processes, it presented a new developing mode—“endogenous development”—to be distinguished from the traditional one relying too much on external factors and forces. “Endogenous development” means that if development aims to realize the expectations of the indigenous people, it cannot imitate any external mode but must adopt the goals and methods autonomously chosen by the indigenous people. Any external factor whatsoever is supposed to help rather than hindering or disturbing the realization of the internal developing goals. Generally speaking, the ideas of “endogenous development” are elucidated as follows: first, “development” is a “comprehensive process” but never a unilateral

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economic or political behavior. More importantly, the goals of “development” must be realized on the basis of benign socio-cultural ecology. In an area where the ideas of social values are confusing and morals corrupt, the goals of social development cannot be realized, not even simple economic goals. Western modernization is based not merely on “sciences” and “industries” but also on the “Protestant” ethics in Weber’s terminology. Second, development is a “self-reliant process” during which external aids are necessary but should not evolve into the controls over indigenous politics, economy, culture, and people’s mind, or else the development would become impossible due to the lack of strong internal drive, and the indigenous people would only become the “instruments” of Western countries on realizing their own developing goals rather than becoming the “subjects” of development. Awakening the indigenous people’s own awarenesses, responsibilities, and creativity becomes a key factor of realizing internal development. Third, development is a “sustainable process.” The ecological system on which humans rely is quite generous but also vulnerable and would barely recover once destroyed. To most indigenous people, the land on which they dwell is left to them by their ancestors via generations of opening and struggles, and the futures of theirs and their offspring are all attached to the relationship between the environment and them. They are responsible for adopting a benign ecological environment into the overall goals of indigenous society’s development rather than sacrificing the whole future merely for the tentative interests. Fourth, development is a “grass-roots process.” During the realization of the goals of development, the state’s will and behaviors are fairly important which, nevertheless, should not be merely manifested in organizing the consultations of developing goals, making developing schemes, performing investment on infrastructure projects, and building large-and-middle-sized key enterprises, or the like, but also in concerning the developing awareness and capacities of indigenous people, and in encouraging them to genuinely participate in the development process. Only in this way, can development be manifested in the increase of the GNP and the increasing justification of the whole social structure and the increasing steadiness of the social order which, hence, might resist or eliminate any crisis from inside as well as outside, and reduce the political and social risks of development. To realize the aforementioned ideas, the values of indigenous knowledge are plainly irreplaceable. In the first place, knowledge is one of the key factors of a culture. The tradition of indigenous knowledge constitutes the core of the indigenous socio-cultural tradition, plays fundamental roles in each aspect of the construction of indigenous society, shoulders the important task of legitimating the indigenous social life, and performs the function of cultivating the indigenous people in a broad sense. The increasing loss or marginalization of indigenous knowledge will surely lead to the ruin of the mainstream cultural-valuable system of indigenous society and the disintegration of the traditional lifestyle, which hence leaves room for the Western cultural products on taking advantage of this, and for the “mental colonization” of indigenous people. This essentially destroys the conditions of comprehensive development and turns the development of indigenous society into a purely economic or political process that can never be realized.

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In the second place, to realize an autonomous development, indigenous people must clearly understand the problems from which their society has suffered, recognize the source of the problems, seek for the possible plans to address them, perform the plans according to the practical situations of indigenous society, and modify these plans in accordance with the constantly obtained feedbacks. This process resembles the “conjecture-rebuttal” one presented by Popper when he discusses knowledge increase, and the core of the process is the understanding and tentative settlement of the problems. To achieve these, external knowledge like Western knowledge or indigenous experts’ knowledge alone is not enough. The knowledge still labeled “objective,” “neutral,” and “universal” has inevitably its valuable even ideological biases on the one hand, it is easy to form a suppressive force on the other hand; also, it will eventually put indigenous people into a passive-accepting position. To indigenous people, what is important is not merely treating the external knowledge in a critical fashion but, all the more, being accustomed to making use of and developing the power of indigenous knowledge. In a certain sense, only when indigenous knowledge is genuinely applied and developed, can indigenous people become the hosts of their own development and authentically own the voice on problems pertaining to the orientation, paths, methods, etc., of development. It is just like a person who, if he/she knows nothing about society where he/she lives, will not care about it, but will always and everywhere be indulged in the widest fantasy that he/she can reform this society by means of external knowledge. Needless to say, this person will obtain nothing but setbacks and disappointment. Of course, I do not mean that indigenous knowledge is sufficient to the development of indigenous society and no external knowledge is needed; rather, I merely stress the vital significance of indigenous knowledge and its development to the ultimate establishment of indigenous people’s developing autonomy. In the third place, to realize sustainable development, we must be aware that the causes to various ecological disasters at present are not merely at a technological level but also at a profound ideological or cultural level. Roughly, the essential causes are the mechanic view of the cosmos established by the Western modern knowledge form since modern times, the opposition between “human beings” and “nature,” the “subject-object” binary epistemology, the individualistic view of life, utilitarian values, consumerism attitude toward life, and the resultant immoderate plundering of the natural resources therefrom. On this account, to reconstruct the harmony between human beings and the environment and to realize the sustainable development are more than an issue of technology or capital like greatly developing the technologies of environmental protection and inputting more capital into ecological protection, but all the more an issue of changing the aforementioned views of the world, values, and life originating from the West. Luckily, in much indigenous knowledge, there are embraced active factors aiming to overcome the various cultural shortages mentioned above. For instance, the idea of “the integrity of heaven and humans” in the Chinese traditional culture is of the trait of stressing the harmony between humans and nature, usually treating natural disasters like volcano eruptions, earthquakes, floods, etc., as the punishment for “humans,” particularly the governors’, errors. This view was considered as divination before which, however, merits consideration and reference

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from today’s perspective. In traditional Chinese culture, there were also plain values or philosophy of “valuing justice above material gains,” or the like, which regarded as the essential goal of human life lifting a person’s “moral state” (say, from the “mean person” to the “superior man” until the “saint,” or something) rather than occupying in an undisguised fashion as much wealth as possible. This is of vital significance to overcoming today’s general mood of society that longs for limitless luxury but upholding a “poor” or at least “abstemious” life. For another example, in many areas of Africa, there is universal worship for “nature” which treats “nature” as the “mother” breeding animals, plants, human beings, and all creatures. Since the mother has bred all creatures, she deserves their respect and protection. A song of Ashanti reflects this psyche of the indigenous people: Mother Earth, you who were born on Thursday Accept a drink! The Good Mother whose children never go hungry Accept a drink! The big and small rivers and your children Accept a drink! The fertile forest and your children Accept a drink! The brave wind who carries our lives in your hands Accept a drink! The tireless sun who rekindles our strength in the morning Accept a drink and allow us to live longer! (Abrokwaa, 1999, p. 202) Another ballad more directly reflects African indigenous people’s recognition as to the protection of the environment. Without the Earth, would we have our King? No! Without the Earth, would we have our wives? No! Without the Earth, would we have our husbands? No! Without the Earth, would we have our children? No! Without the earth, would we have our families? No! Without the Earth, would we have our lives? No! Without the Earth, would we have our farms? No! Without the Earth we are nothing—She alone has the power! Do not make her angry, her anger will reach every home! (Abrokwaa, 1999, pp. 202–203) Both to the indigenous society and to the Western one, these indigenous ideas or cultures are never negligible but indispensable to settling the ecological crises and realizing sustainable development. Without them, no matter how much money the international organizations or sovereign countries invest, or no matter how excellent plans the environmental experts offer, the indigenous even global ecological

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problems could not be essentially settled. Therefore, in a certain measure, indigenous knowledge of the environment can promote the sustainable development of the indigenous society, but it can also play a fairly particular role in settling the same problem all over the world. Finally, without the development and application of indigenous knowledge, there would not be the “grass-roots” development. It differs from “top-down” development, which is a purely governmental or expert behavior seldom attaining the understanding and support of the indigenous society, and which has been proved a failure during the international multilateral development. “Grass-roots” development stresses the people’s awareness, understanding, and positive participation, and the government, experts, and indigenous people’s close cooperation, rather than the treatment of the indigenous people with a “bestowing” attitude. To really achieve this, we must change the traditional assumptions with respect to the indigenous people’s knowledge. At the down-to-earth level, due to our traditional stubborn adherence to the standards of Western scientific knowledge, we treated indigenous people as “ignorant” or the people lack of developing capacity, which was too much. This is itself practicing a sort of intellectual hegemony or it is depriving the legitimacy of the indigenous people’s knowledge. Presumably, they really know little about the “scientific knowledge” in “our” terminology, or even cannot understand our scientific language, they are not “ignorant,” though, nor are they “illiterate or uncivilized” with the flavor of contempt. As to their living surroundings, the problems they have suffered, the plans they should and are possible to adopt, they know far more than us. In the city, it is us who laugh at their “silly behaviors”; in the villages, whereas, it is them who laugh at ours. They understand the nature and social surroundings in which they live after their generations of forerunners, but they are also more concerned with the changes of nature and social surroundings in that the latter is closely related to their interests. The reason is quite simple, say, an improper developing plan will not bring any damage to the experts of development but might bring opportunities to them to modify their plans and publish their articles, it, however, will immediately influence the daily life of indigenous people. In this sense alone, their voices on the development of the indigenous society are somehow more valuable and more weighty than ours in what we have done. They are the “experts of development” pertinent to indigenous society. The case in point is, it was the out-and-out peasants of Xiaogang village, Fengyang county in Anhui Province who found or created the mode of “contract responsibility” for the rural reform of China in the 1980s, but not the economists in famous universities or officials in the departments of agriculture. To this connection, to help indigenous people reconstruct the legitimacy of their indigenous knowledge and develop it via rational critical mind will ultimately help them become the developing subjects in the true sense of the word, better recognize their own situations, find out better developing modes, and authentically realize the “grass-roots,” “autonomous,” “comprehensive,” and “sustainable” development. On the whole, if the ideal developing mode cannot but be the “internal development” to those postmodern countries and areas, abundant “indigenous knowledge” then is a sort of particular and valuable “resource” or “cultural capital” that can help the indigenous people to realize their internal development, and hence it should

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be actively preserved, protected, developed, and applied rather than being thrown away like a burden or garbage. L. M. Semali definitely calls this power of “indigenous knowledge” during the course of promoting the development of the indigenous society “the transformative power.” It means that by virtue of indigenous knowledge, the potential power of people in indigenous cultural surroundings can be provoked, the international society’s rigid impression of the indigenous knowledge, people, and society can be changed, the internal development of indigenous society can be transferred, the “nuclear-peripheral” system formed by the global expansion of capitalism since modern times can be authentically changed, and authentically multiple and diversified ecologies of human development can be set up. The developing values of indigenous knowledge are also as is mentioned by D. M. Warren, an expert on long-term studies of indigenous knowledge and development. Nevertheless, both Semali and Warren mainly treat indigenous knowledge from the perspective of “outsiders” who stress its “instrumental values.” As a matter of fact, to indigenous people qua the “insiders,” indigenous knowledge is of not merely “instrumental values” but also “ontological” and “internal” values. That is to say, that indigenous knowledge is important and needs protection, preservation, and development not only because it is “useful” to the international organizations to implement their developing plans or realize their own developing ideals, but, all the more, because indigenous knowledge is itself valuable: it contains the wisdom crystalized by generations of indigenous people in the past millenniums; its existence is the exact proof of the diversity of human knowledge; it is the foundation of the legitimacy of indigenous people’s daily life; it is the source of power agglomerating the indigenous society. Therefore, indigenous knowledge’s loss or being subjugated will lead not merely to the failure of some indigenous developing plans of international society or the falling of the developing goals of indigenous society, but it will also lead to the disintegration of indigenous society and the disappearance of the diversity of the knowledge and the cognitive modes of human beings, which is more important and will directly threaten the intellectual communications of human beings and their future knowledge innovation. Plainly, seen from the history of the increase of human knowledge, without the communications between different forms of knowledge and cognitive modes, there would be neither a change of some intellectual tradition nor the production of new knowledge. Even the “Western scientific knowledge” studied by many researchers of indigenous knowledge as opposite to indigenous knowledge is not a purely Western indigenous product but originates from the “secular sciences” of the Arabians and Chinese in the East in around the eleventh century. At that time, only that which was input from China included “quantitative cartography,” “magnetic science,” “cast iron,” “the mechanical clock,” “harnesses for horses” (Semali & Kincheloe, 1999, p. 25), to name just a few. On this account, the increasing disappearance of indigenous knowledge is by no means some gospel to the future knowledge innovation and future fortune of human beings. In this sense, preserving, protecting, and developing indigenous knowledge helps to resist the intellectual hegemony of Western sciences, guard against and deconstruct the “homogeneity” of human knowledge and, hence, leaves room for human beings’ future intellectual communications and knowledge innovation.

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Undoubtedly, stressing indigenous knowledge’s vital significance in the development of the indigenous, even international societies is by no means degrading, refusing, or standing against the active roles of any external knowledge, particularly the Western scientific knowledge, in the development as such. As was pointed out by some researchers of indigenous knowledge, we should not embrace any romantic fancy about the “re-discovering” and the social significance of indigenous knowledge, believing that it can settle all the problems of development, and hence people need not make efforts to study any external knowledge. This attitude is as metaphysical, wrong, and harmful as that one holding that Western scientific knowledge can settle any problem whatsoever. The presentation of the concept of indigenous knowledge mainly aims at people’s recognition of the diversity of knowledge and cognitive modes and they finding the developing potential and wisdom conceived in indigenous society so that the indigenous people’s self-contempt on developing capacity may be overcome; in the meanwhile, it is also aimed at people recognizing the “locality” or “contextuality” of Western or any external knowledge so that indigenous people’s over-reliance on and over-superstition of the external world during their progression may be overcome. In a word, the idea of indigenous knowledge is presented to help, at the epistemological level, indigenous people authentically become the independent and self-reliant developing subjects rather than turning them into “closed,” “self-conceited,” and “arrogant” people. To attain this goal, we should critically treat indigenous knowledge on the premise of preserving and protecting it (Mwadime, 1999, pp. 252–253), and, on the other hand, we should also critically study Western scientific knowledge and promote the communications and dialogues between two or more sorts of knowledge. In my view, to the indigenous people, under the present conditions of the relationship between knowledge and power, the efforts in these two aspects should be strengthened. The measures are specifically manifested in the following four points: first, we should strengthen the epistemological studies, reveal and propagate the cultural traits of Western epistemology since modern times, and thus promote the knowledge transformation of indigenous society and set up the ideas of the diversity of knowledge and cognitive modes. This task is supposed to be finished mainly by the philosophers in the indigenous society. Second, we should strengthen the collection, arrangement, analysis, and study of indigenous knowledge, develop research methods suitable for it, and enable the indigenous people to recognize and understand in a deeper fashion the significance of indigenous knowledge in the survival and development of the indigenous society. In this respect, social forces like the state, colleges, and universities, enterprises, etc., should be combined to play an active role and to provide sufficient support at the level of policy, funds, and intelligent. Third, we should promote the free communications between indigenous knowledge and Western scientific knowledge, and between indigenous experts and Western scientists, and promote the sincere cooperations between indigenous experts, Western scientists, and indigenous people so as to enable each sort of force to actively participate in the course of internal development with respecting, maintaining, and reinforcing the indigenous society’s interests as the premise. Fourth, school education should play an active role here so as to prevent and overcome the indigenous people’s “collective amnesia” as regards the indigenous knowledge during the process of

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industrialization or modernization. In particular, it should educate the adolescents into a generation understanding the knowledge of Western or any external world, but also a generation familiar with their indigenous wisdom, a generation capable of synthesizing various sorts of knowledge and wisdom and creatively constructing the beautiful future of the indigenous society. That which I cannot but stress again is, albeit 20 years have passed since the concept of indigenous knowledge was presented, the recognition as to its significance is till limited to a quite tiny group of intellectuals and the officials in charge of the project of indigenous society’s development. It remains to be accepted or acknowledged by the UN or international organizations, the decision-making departments of the state or local government, common intellectuals, public opinions, the mass media, the indigenous people, the adolescent students, and others. At the same time, to a great extent, due to complex factors like the economic globalization, the urgency of the indigenous society’s “developing task,”1 the strong intellectual hegemony produced by Western modern knowledge form, and the cultural globalization with Western culture as the core, and the like, the living surroundings of indigenous knowledge suffer greater pressures than before, and the crisis of indigenous knowledge since modern times becomes more serious rather than being reduced. To make an improper comparison, the speed of the disappearance of indigenous knowledge from this plant may be higher than that of the rare species of animals and plants. Take as an example of my own 30 years’ experiences in rural area: during the first 20 years,2 I lived in rich indigenous knowledge, which offered me moral cultivation and productive knowledge, but which also accompanied me through the wonderful adolescent period albeit there was no electric lamp, TV, recreational machine, not even radio or children’s books. Today, however, when I go back homeland, I find that the ballads, games, riddles, stories, and the poor productive knowledge have vanished altogether. “Chemical fertilizer” has replaced “farmyard manure,” and people have forgotten how to “collect manure”3 ; agricultural chemicals have replaced “field management” 1

This sort of urgency is mainly manifested in the economic development; therefore, the most relevant problem of the third world countries is how to increase the GDP to settle the problems of the fundamental life security of indigenous people. 2 I was born in 1967 in Songke village (called “Songke Group” at that time), Shiji town (called “Anfeng People’s Community” at that time), Shou county, in the Anhui Province. My father taught in the primary school in the village and my mother was a peasant. I lived there for 15 years until 1982 when I went to study at Shouxian Normal School, which was in the same town, just 20 min walk away. Thus, I have been living in a rural area even when I studied in school. From 1985 to 1987, I worked in the Sanguancun Primary School of the same town after graduating from normal school, still living in a rural area. In 1987, I passed the college entrance examination and went to Anhui Normal University for further studies. From then on, I left the rural area breeding me in the past 20 years and came to the “city.” During the 20 years of rural life, I learned very much from my parents and the fellow villagers but repaid so little, which, whenever I thought of it, would evoke my guilty from the innermost and tears would trickle down my cheeks. 3 “Manure collecting” needs much fairly complicated knowledge, say, what may be taken as the raw materials, where the right place to deposit them is, when the manures of men or livestock should be added, how to expose them in the sun, to what extent they may be applied, what should be noticed when they are applied (say, the amount, the suitable crops for them, or the like), and so on.

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and no one knows about preventing and settling the problems of the plant diseases and insect pests by means of the comprehensive knowledge about water, soil, sunshine, and the climate alterations in the previous year, i.e., the knowledge explored and concluded by generations of “skilled peasants”.4 If the knowledge as such fails to be collected, organized, analyzed, and reproduced as well as reapplied, I can say for sure that another 20 years later, the by no means useless knowledge would disappear from human’s intellectual horizons forever.

9.3 Indigenous Knowledge and Education Reform Insofar as indigenous society is concerned, to overcome the universal crises of indigenous knowledge at present, it is impossible to merely rely on several intellectuals studying indigenous knowledge without the participation of the state, nor on the indigenous people themselves. This is because as was stated afore, that which subjugates the indigenous knowledge or brings about the “collective amnesia” of indigenous knowledge is not a single person, organization, or the whole Western modern civilization. In fact, the subjugation or marginalization of the indigenous knowledge has constituted a part of the global expansion strategy of Western capitalism, in which there is a very apparent appeal to power. The sovereign countries should keep highly alert or sensitive to this, actively preserve, protect, study, and develop indigenous knowledge by means of the channels like policies on knowledge and sciences and technologies, fund investment, talent training, discipline planning, etc., so as to prevent themselves from sliding, wittingly or unwittingly, into the group of unilaterally maintaining and performing Western intellectual and cultural hegemony. Of the various national behaviors, that which deserves the most heed is national educational behaviors since as was pointed by me in the Introduction, there are close interconnections between knowledge and education, namely education is an important path of the selection, dissemination, distribution, accumulation, and development of knowledge, and knowledge is the important content and carrier of education and, without knowledge, education would become bricks without straws and various educational purposes would not be attained. Therefore, education should naturally shoulder the important task of preserving, delivering, and developing indigenous 4

Here, it refers to those publicly acknowledged “skilled people” on farming. They are of noble character and high prestige in the village. Being not “cadres” notwithstanding, in my memory, they were followed when it came to the arrangement of the farming work, say, when to put the rice seeds, raise the seedlings, transplant the seedlings, weed, harvest, and how to adjust the application of the water in several ponds of the village, or the like. All villagers acted based on whatever they said. When I was young, I often wondered why they knew so much. For instance, how did they know that two days’ (48 h) delaying in putting seeds would hinder the complete budding of the rice? Thinking about this today, I see that they have grasped in their way the complicated knowledge handed down through generations and, more than that, they have brewed them via their own experiences into the (indigenous) agricultural wisdom in the true sense of the word! Today when “developing agriculture through sciences and technologies” are upheld, I wonder whether these “skilled peasants” can still be found.

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knowledge and, simultaneously, the purposes, contents, and methods of education even the teacher’s qualities should also be recognized or re-explicated from the perspective of indigenous knowledge.

9.3.1 Re-reflections on the Relationship Between “School” and “Society” The re-reflections on the relationship between “school” and “society” is closely interrelated with educational purposes and can be discussed in the milieu of the reviews of educational purposes. Nevertheless, since there are fairly direct and important interconnections between the re-reflections as such and the conception of indigenous knowledge, the discussions should also cover this. In addition, the re-reflections as such are concerned with the social functions of education, which is also what we should discuss in particular. Generally speaking, any society whatsoever is an “indigenous society” with its peculiar history of formation and development. On this account, any relationship between “school” and “society” cannot but be that between “school” and some specific “indigenous society” rather than an abstract “general society.” The aim of founding a school in any society is to ensure the continuity of “indigenous society” rather than some abstract “general society.” In this sense, the fundamental function of school education is to deliver some indigenous society’s knowledge accumulated through years so that the adolescents can well grasp and apply it, understand the process of the life and production of indigenous society and, on this ground, produce higher and more perfect life and productive wisdom. This should not be problematic. Nevertheless, since human beings entered into the era recorded in history, “indigenous society” has been an isolated thing, being always in connection with various other “indigenous societies.” The qualities of the connection are varied, being manifested in equal communications and exchanges or severe confrontations or wars. Therefore, to warrant the continuity of indigenous society in diversified and competitive surroundings, the indigenous schools must deliver to the adolescents “alien knowledge” with which the adolescents can know both themselves and the other party when communicating with other indigenous societies on the one hand, and can make use of the “alien knowledge” to supplement the shortage of the indigenous knowledge on innovation or to promote the innovation of the indigenous knowledge on the other hand. Ideally speaking, the school can simultaneously deliver two or more sorts of knowledge to enable them to contribute, respectively, to the development of indigenous society. Nonetheless, just as was analyzed in previous chapters, albeit various sorts of indigenous knowledge exist in human history, they never peacefully and friendly communicate with each other. Some of them always rely on military, political, religious, economic, or other forces to legitimate themselves, claim that the intellectual standards developed from their own indigenous cultures are “universal,” and therefore

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conceal their “indigenousness,” deprive during their own expansion other indigenous knowledge of the natural legitimacy obtained from their respective cultural traditions, and arouse multi-faceted resistance therefrom. These are the intellectual or epistemological struggles always accompanying the political, military, religious, and economic ones in human history, which constitute an inseparable part of the historical struggles of human society.5 Persecuting “heretic” intellectuals, prohibiting and destroying some books or literature, destroying the schools delivering heresy knowledge, refuting some sorts of knowledge from the public propagating channels, and the like are all customary tactics employed by the victorious indigenous knowledge in struggles to consolidate its intellectual hegemony. When the school is controlled by some alien indigenous knowledge in the name of “universality” and becomes the latter’s instrument to implement its intellectual hegemony, imposes its particular epistemology, deconstructs the legitimacy of other forms of indigenous knowledge, and subjugates the indigenous epistemology, albeit the school is still “located” in indigenous society, it is no longer the “indigenous school” but has been “dissimilated” by some alien intellectual power. It is no longer capable of shouldering the mission of inheriting the intellectual and cultural tradition of indigenous society; rather, it has degenerated into a “cultural machine” subjugating the tradition as such and the instrument therefrom subjugating the indigenous people and deconstructing indigenous society. If the adolescents enter into such a school, they could not obtain systematic indigenous knowledge but, contrariwise, they would also feel self-contempt about their own indigenous intellectual tradition in that the tradition does not conform to the standards of knowledge delivered and highlighted by the school hence is not “genuine knowledge.” De facto, in such a school, they can only obtain alien knowledge and the more knowledge they obtain or the better they learn, the more self-contempt they will feel about indigenous knowledge, even the whole indigenous society, and the less willing they will be to “return” to indigenous society, both spiritually and physically, not to mention to shoulder the important task of developing indigenous knowledge and constructing indigenous society. This, probably, is the essential cause of “the separation of the school from (indigenous) society” we criticize in the common sense in that its essence is the incapability of meeting the intellectual needs of the indigenous society to continue and develop, or of cultivating talents to emotionally and intelligently acknowledge, accept, consider about, and devote themselves to the development of indigenous society. As to the “dissimilation” on the relationship between school education and the indigenous society, Feyerabend also pays great attention in his Farewell to Reason. He keenly observes that the “compulsory enrollment,” “reading and writing capacities,” and “‘objective’ knowledge,” etc., irrelevant to the background and the problems of indigenous society turn the indigenous epistemology into a meaningless one having virtually no position 5

As to the struggles pertinent to the knowledge as such, systematic studies are needed. In this era of “economy of knowledge” or “society of knowledge,” it is particularly necessary to make systematic studies. Indeed, they are more than a part of political, economic, and other social struggles; they have also constituted a nuclear of such social struggles. Presumably, we may call these studies “politics of knowledge,” which should be a part, even a key part, of the stylish “politics of culture” at present.

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at all. It is these things that separate indigenous schools from practical life and subject the latter to the standards of disciplinary knowledge (Feyerabend, 1987, pp. 3–4), namely to some particular indigenous knowledge and culture. Due to such schools, the indigenous society does not obtain the new opportunity to develop but loses completely the possibility of developing internally. Seen at a global level, the “dissimilating” phenomenon of the relationship between school and indigenous society started accompanying the colonial domination of European big powers around the world since modern times. During the five centuries’ colonial period, on the one hand, the colonists believed that their knowledge was authentically objective and universal but treated all indigenous knowledge as “primitive” and “pre-modern,” even drastically refused to confess that there was knowledge among the colonial people; on the other hand, to consolidate their colonial domination, they were urgent to weaken the resisting awareness of the indigenous tradition against the Western domination, particularly the adolescents’ identification of their indigenous social traditions, the possibility that they might obtain from indigenous society any knowledge for resistance. With this epistemological arrogance and avarice for colonial interests, they founded “(Western) schools” in indigenous society. The languages used in the schools were totally Western languages, the teaching contents Western knowledge, even the teachers the “oversea teachers” directly sent there from Europe. At first, such schools were resisted in the indigenous schools, and the indigenous people regarded them as “hells absorbing the indigenous adolescents’ souls.”6 The colonists soon dispelled the resistance. They first tempted the adolescents from first-class indigenous families, and then attracted those from relatively wealthy families via the former’s influences and, at last, they enrolled all adolescents from the whole indigenous society. In such a school system, the standards of the “most excellent students” were never suitable for those students familiar with indigenous knowledge but for those most “similar” to the colonists at the level of language, emotion, and knowledge; the most promising students were also never those capable of or willing to reconstruct indigenous society but those capable of and willing to serve the suzerains’ interests. Indigenous schools’ fundamental functions of delivering indigenous knowledge and meeting the intellectual needs of the continuity and development of indigenous society had virtually come to nothing; but rather, they had become the instruments of controlling and subjugating indigenous knowledge, exploiting indigenous society, and legitimating and perpetuating this exploitation.

6

Here, it is mingled with the naive imagination, which, in today’s perspective, is accompanied by some truthfulness revealed via metaphors. Roughly, “people deprived of the souls” can be said those “talking rubbish” or “behaving strangely” seen from the indigenous common sense. Once, the indigenous adolescents enter such schools; however, they will become such people, saying every day the words (English) inconceivable to their parents, publishing some ideas (sciences) running counter to common sense, even doing some impenetrable things. Is not their state showing that they have been deprived of souls by the “ghosts?” If the school is not the “hell” where the ghosts are entrenched, is it the “heaven” where the angels enjoy the happy reunion?

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Let us further understand, via Semali’s reflections on his own experiences of accepting the colonial education, the “dissimilating” relationship between school education and indigenous society and the above roles played by indigenous schools. I was born on the slopes of the Kilimanjaro in Tanzania….I grew up in a large peasant family: father, mother, and ten siblings.…I recall vividly the many days I accompanied my mother and father to go to work in the maize (corn) fields. I listened to them telling stories about their youth and about their challenges in life. My mother never passed the opportunity to alert me about the different plants which were treatments for snake-bites, spider bites, and many other remedies for headache, stomachache, and so on. My father often warned me to remember not to cut certain trees or shrubs for feeding the animals.… All this information was learned effortlessly and stored in memory as a way of survival in wild and cruel terrain. Then, I went to school, a colonial school, and this harmony was broken. The language of my education was no longer the language of my culture.…My struggle began at a very early age constantly trying to find parallels in my culture with what was being taught in the classroom. In school we followed the British colonial syllabus. The books we read in the class had been written by Mrs. Bryce, mostly adapted and translated into Kiswahili from British curricula. We read stories and sung songs about having tea in an English garden, taking a ride on the train, sailing in the open seas, and walking the streets of the town. These were, unfortunately, stories far removed from our life experiences. As expected, we memorized them even though they were meaningless. It is important to note here that the English language was highly rewarded. It was the measure of intelligence and ability in the humanities, the sciences, and all other branches of learning. English became the main determinant of a child’s progress and one of the criteria for promotion up the ladder of formal education. A Eurocentric knowledge system, therefore, attempted to replace local practices, history, language, and cultural values while claiming that such replacement was vital because of the claim made that many indigenous communities did not have written languages. What is often overlooked in such claims is that the dissemination of books and other literacy materials was done and continues to be done not entirely for altruistic reasons but also for economic and political reasons intended to erase and subjugate indigenous knowledge systems. (Semali & Kincheloe, 1999, pp. 8–10)

Apparently, Semali’s educational experiences are familiar to most colonial people. It is exactly due to the profound recognition of such experiences that since the colonial era and onward, there have been many indigenous philosophers and educators advocating to reform the colonial schools, to “indigenize” and “localize” them for the sake of genuinely serving the welfares of the indigenous people. After World War II, as the previous colonial countries achieved their independence one by one, this requirement became all the more urgent. Ki-Zerbo the famous contemporary African historian appeals in his Educate or Perish to African educators to be immediately engaged in designing “an education of Africa and for Africa.” He hits the nail on the head by pointing out that to African societies, school education has lost its functional roles; to African people, what is important is to return to their “roots,” store and re-cultivate their belief in African culture (Brock-Utne, 2000, pp. 140–160). He cites a widely spread saying in Africa to indicate his attitude: “When you are lost, you’d better return to the starting point familiar to you and start again.” After the 1980s, corresponding to the “globalization” or “internationalization” of the education reforms in Western developed countries, “indigenization” and “localization” have become the orientation of the education reform of the developing and underdeveloped countries: many countries and areas have founded “Indigenous Education Committees,”

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made indigenous educational plans directed upon the schools at each level and of each class, reform the systems of curriculum, teaching, and teacher training, etc., left from the colonial era, and so forth. “To reconstruct indigenous society” and “to promote the internal development” have become the important missions of these countries in terms of the education reform.

9.3.2 Indigenous Knowledge and Educational Purposes In the “indigenized” or “localized” education reform, that which first draws attention is educational purposes, namely what kind of people will the indigenous education cultivate, or, what qualities of the adolescents ought to be cultivated to conform to the development of indigenous society. The inquiry into this “what ought to” question is closely related to the reflections on the “what is” question of “What kind of talents the indigenous education has cultivated or what qualities it has cultivated.” As to the “purpose as it is” of “modern education,” its gist is to cultivate people to stand off indigenous society, rather than loving and being engaged in the reconstruction of it. The “purpose as it is” in question exists in Chinese educational systems. In our own words, when the students return to rural society after failing to enter into colleges or universities, “They cannot catch up with their parents in terms of farming, nor can they catch up with their sisters-in-law when it comes to breeding pigs.” For the sake of living, they cannot but learn from their “parents” and “sisters-inlaw.” Some chose to leave the rural areas for the cities to “be a migrant worker.” Nevertheless, after enduring contempts in the cities when working there, most of them go back home, not with lofty sentiments and aspirations of reconstructing their homeland but with a bit of pretension, superficiality and rudeness given to them by the several years’ “marginalized” life in cities. Isn’t it? Say, they disdain from the innermost their fathers’ careers, regarding the fathers’ honest labor and frugal life as not worth a penny, even feeling ashamed to be associated with their fathers. This is the key reason why they promised to leave their homeland by virtue of the ladder of the school. Many years later, these people living in the domestic or foreign metropolises will only have a little nostalgia for their homeland. Even this little bit of nostalgia is due to the fact that their parents or other relatives are still alive, or else it might or might not exist. Isn’t it? Say, the school let the adolescents know from very young that the most luxurious, wealthy, modernized hence most pursuitworthy places are the cities, the metropolises, the abroad rather than the homeland breeding them. The homeland, particularly the countryside, is always connected with “poverty,” “backward,” “ignorant,” “dull,” “primitive,” etc. Of these people, those having “worst prospects” stay in the countryside, those having better prospects stay in towns, those much better in middle-sized and small cities, and most people dream of entering into big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, etc. If there is the opportunity to go abroad, particularly to go to “developed,” “modern,” “open,” “free,” and “rich” European and American countries, and find a job there, it would be the thumping wish and the honor of the whole family (clan). Naturally, the people capable of

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walking “outward” or “upward” according to such educational footsteps are less and less, their diploma higher and higher, and their distance (spatial and mental) from their homeland also further and further. Overall, in a certain sense, the most excellent talents, the relatively excellent talents, and the capable talents in rural areas have all “flown away” through the channel of school education, and the rest are relatively weak people either on “intelligence” or on “will and quality.” These people are the only “educational products” left by the school education system to rural society. They are filled with resentment, disappointment, dissatisfaction, and self-pity as to their own “failure,” so after they get married and have their own children there, they breed and cultivate their children as their parents did, hoping that the children will not share their fate. After the circles as such, the school systems have put out large numbers of talents grasping modern Western scientific knowledge to the developed areas or countries, promoting their prosperity, but have drastically forgotten indigenous society. The “popularization” of Indian higher education after the 1960s and the “enlarged enrollment” in China from the end of the 1990s have merely added the numbers of the youths legitimately leaving their homeland via examinations but failed to essentially change this “purpose as it is” of modern education or overcome school education’s alienation, forgetting, even certain subjugation of indigenous society, failed to cultivate large numbers of talents loving and reconstructing indigenous society, or failed to holistically improve the quality of all the citizens of the society on performing internal development. As a severe socio-political result, along with the constant disappearance of indigenous knowledge and the constant flowing away of indigenous talents, the reliance of the underdeveloped or backward indigenous societies (areas or countries) on the developed or advanced external societies (areas or countries) at the level of intelligence and talents and the political, economic, and cultural reliant relations based on this are increasingly enlarged and consolidated; the binary opposition between “South and North,” “East and West,” “urban and rural” within international and domestic spheres become all the more severe; the fair, justified, and legitimate new political, economic, and cultural orders at home and abroad cannot be set up; and “internal development” can only become another new “Utopia” of indigenous society in the last 20 years of the twentieth century. Insofar as China alone is concerned, if the groups of “elites” cultivated via school education all admire the life in Western society and big cities, if school education leads to hundreds of millions of peasants’ “self-contempt” and “self-renunciation,” if it brings about the “talented” and “untalented” people’s knowing little even nothing about their indigenous knowledge, how can China’s future developing goals be warranted? How can “the grand enterprise of reviving China” of the Chinese nation be realized? Is it enough to merely introduce some foreign-funded projects, build several “high and new technology development zones,” or hatch several “high and new technology industries”?7 7

Here, I do not intend to deny the tremendous significance of these strategic policies. In virtue of the interrogative syntactical structure, I want to stress that to China the big agricultural country of around 1 billion peasants, if we fail to put stress on the construction of the rural society, changing the peasants’ spiritual state, or developing the intelligence and wisdom obtained by them in life for

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In a nutshell, we must learn from and use for reference the experiences of other countries of the third world and, in the education reform of the twenty-first century, reconsider the purposes of our education, and reconsider the formats and quality requirements of the cultivation of talents. Starting from the perspective of “indigenous knowledge” and “internal development,” it is my contention that the purposes of our future education should highlight or stress the following several points. First, as to the overall format of cultivating talents, the talents cultivated by our school education are supposed to love, understand indigenous society and be willing to contribute their intelligence and wisdom to its development, rather than being those detesting and rejecting indigenous society, knowing nothing about it, and straying away from and avoiding it like a plague. Specifically, albeit the few “elites” we have cultivated may stay far from indigenous society, they are willing to and capable of promoting its healthy development by means of their own forces; as to the common citizens we have cultivated, albeit they fail to go out of indigenous society, they will never feel self-contempt or self-renunciation for living in it. Rather, they will re-employ various intelligent resources on the ground of indigenous knowledge created by their ancestors to reconstruct constantly the intellectual foundation of indigenous society, constantly look for the problems therein and make use of various intellectual resources to observe, analyze, and settle these problems hence authentically realize the “autonomous,” “grass-roots,” and “sustainable” developing purposes. Second, of the quality structure of the future talents, at the same time when school education attaches importance to the cultivation of the “international” or “global” awareness of the adolescents, the same importance should also be attached to the cultivation of their “indigenous” or “local” awareness; at the same time when we attach importance to the delivery, grasping, and critiques on “Western” or “scientific” knowledge, we should also do so to the “indigenous” or “folk” knowledge, and guide the students to set up the ideas of “intellectual diversity” and “epistemological diversity”; at the same time when we cultivate their capacity to “be faced with the world,” we should attach importance to improving their capacity to communicate and perform dialogues with the history and tradition of the indigenous society; at the same time when we cultivate their confidence and courage to participate in various international affairs, we should also cultivate their confidence and courage to be faced with the factual backwardness of the indigenous society and to be more actively engaged in constantly reconstructing it; at the same time when we cultivate their personalities and autonomy common to modern people, we should also cultivate the due feeling of identification, adaptation, and belongingness as to indigenous society of which they the sake of turning them into the authentic “hosts” of the development of indigenous society, and of actively, automatically, and enthusiastically participating in the construction and development of rural areas, the developing goals of Chinese society and the realization of Chinese nation’s “reviving enterprise” would be undoubtedly influenced. This is not my peculiar idea but a national consensus. What I would like to add is that, during the process of rural areas’ development and reform, the external sci-technological knowledge is necessary but not sufficient. Those engaged in the work and development of rural areas must learn to excavate, preserve, develop, and apply the indigenous knowledge in rural society, which is the treasurable lesson bestowed on us by the decades of developing experiences of the many third world countries all around the globe.

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are members so as to strengthen their inseparable cultural and mental connections with it. At this point, I cannot help recalling the “life education” carried out personally by Mr. Tao Xingzhi in the “great education of the people” more than half a century ago, and feeling that there are interconnections between the previous contents and the spirit of life education. As it is known, the gist of “life education” is that education should be “connected through marriage” with life, the school should cooperate with “(indigenous) society,” traditional disciplinary boundaries should be broken, and “the integration of teaching, learning, and doing” should be performed so as to constantly cultivate and improve the (indigenous) people’s “living capacity.” That Tao Xingzhi presented this life education “originating from, going through, and returning to life” is mainly due to the fact he found that the then Chinese education “took the wrong way”: it merely taught people to leave the countryside for the urban district, to have meals but refuse to farm, and to wear but refuse to plant cotton, which resulted in the fact that the rich became richer, the poor poorer. So, it was the “gold stick” or “gold ring” of the young wealthy masters and ladies but not the “shabby coat” or “corn bread” of the poor children. In brief, traditional school education forgot the “indigenous society” or “rural society.” Therefore, he advocated the rural education of “Life is education” and “Society is the school,” presenting the lofty educational ideal of founding a million rural schools and reforming a million villages. A contemporary scholar thinks that this educational practice and theory of Tao Xingzhi is the product of small-peasant economy which only reflects the demands of the minor producers or “peasants,” so it is not “modern education.” Originally I agreed with him, even had “made the final judgment” in public; at present, nevertheless, I feel that this view is not necessarily fair and it depends on the perspective or stance of the speaker. From the perspective of developing national industry, cultivating a large group of scientific talents, and rapidly improving the national power to resist the Western big powers, Mr. Tao’s advocates are really quite “backward” since we can say for sure that according to his methods, little (Western) “scientific knowledge” would be delivered and few (Western) “scientific talents” would be cultivated even after several decades. More severely, that will really “harm the country and the people.” Nevertheless, from the perspective of settling the separation of the school from the rural society and promoting the internal development of the “indigenous society” or “rural society,” Mr. Tao’s ideas are really incisive and profound. School education forgot rural life in the past, but isn’t the case so today? Seventy years have passed since he presented this idea. How many talents have been cultivated by Chinese schools in the past seventy years! To be sure, earthshaking changes have occurred in Chinese society, whose economic strength, sci-technology innovation ability, comprehensive national strength, and international political status have all improved greatly. Nonetheless, how about our rural areas? How about the local society breeding our lives? Is it proceeding at the same pace as the cities? Is it filled with vitality and energy as the cities, being as charming to the youths? Or, is it a place where the youths will not feel tired of staying or will not feel disappointed or contemptuous of returning? Have so many “peasant children” like me who strived to enter into the college or university hence had a

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“bright” prospect offering some “repayment” after they left the countryside where they were bred? To what extent can they or are they practically dominating their fates? To what extent have they actively, automatically, and effectively participated in the reform and development of rural society? To what extent are they constantly “reconstructing” rural society? To what extent are they enjoying the bounties from modern school civilization? If, since the 1920s and beyond, Chinese schools, at least rural schools, had really shouldered the mission of cultivating rural social viability, started from the existent intellectual tradition in rural society, constantly examined, applied, reformed, and developed rather than abandoning, ignoring, subjugating, and mocking at them, they would have cultivated generations of laborers loving, understanding, and constructing the countryside, constantly improved the developing capacity and level of rural society, and laid a more solid foundation for the taking-off of the Chinese nation. Seen in this perspective, aren’t the theories and practices of rural education “beneficial to the country and the people”? Does not it have something in common with the appealing to “indigenization” and “localization” from the schools of the countries in the third world now? Is not the education “producing strength” rather than “reducing strength” of it upholds the “empowering education” advocated by Freire? On this account, its spirit deserves re-explications from the relationship between indigenous knowledge and internal development.

9.3.3 Indigenous Knowledge and Curriculum Reform Curriculum reform is the kernel link of all education reforms. To reconstruct the relationship between schools and indigenous society from the perspective of indigenous knowledge and internal development, to cultivate new talents with indigenous consciousness, knowledge, attitude, belief, and living capacity, and to promote the internal development of indigenous society, we must reanalyze and review the existent curriculum contents and structure, adopt in a proper fashion the indigenous knowledge into the curriculum system, and construct a sort of “indigenously-informed curriculum” called by experts focusing on indigenous knowledge. Needless to say, this idea of curriculum runs counter to our “modern” one which has been treating curriculum as a system of “scientific knowledge.” In this connection, it is impossible that modern curriculum system can embrace the “local,” “holistic,” and “subjugated” “indigenous knowledge” which, as a matter of fact, according to the “modern” view of knowledge, is not “knowledge” at all hence is not qualified to appear in the school curriculum system. On this account, to authentically develop the “indigenously-informed curriculum,” we must first and foremost definitely protest against the intellectual hegemonism originating from Western modern curriculum ideas, upgrade our curriculum philosophy, and recognize, understand, and design curriculums anew with a prospect of intellectual and epistemological diversity.

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C. Quiroz contends that the “indigenously-informed curriculum” helps to drastically settle the problem of high dropout rates in indigenous society. He thus says, High ‘drop-out’ rates from the schools in general, and from vocational schools in particular, are caused by a diversity of factors. One of these factors, perhaps one of the most important, is the lack of relevance of the topics taught at the school. There is the need, then, to ensure relevance of the student’s experiences, interests, capabilities, and cognitive development, all of which are usually very different from the context in which the new concepts, skills, and attitudes introduced at the school were first developed. Subjects should be related more closely to the learner’s societal or cultural environment so as to minimize as much as possible the conflicts that might arise from their view of the world and that of the subjects being taught. (Quiroz, 1999, p. 307)

This view of Quiroz particularly merits heed for it inspires me deeply: presumably, there is also an important connection between the “conflict” between the teaching contents of the school and the cultural or intellectual system of indigenous society on the one hand, and the fact that millions of students in our rural areas dropout from school every year on the other. Previously, people assumed that the problem of dropout students in rural areas was caused by the “poverty” of their families. Due to poverty, their families had great economic difficulty in affording their education; on the other hand, the families hoped that the children might return home to be “assistants” or earn some “lived money” by “doing work for others.” Therefore, the key measures of settling the problem of dropout students included three points: first, to develop the rural economy and improve the peasant families’ affording capacity for education; second, to reduce the fees of the students from poor families; third, to reinforce the legal enforcement efforts of the compulsory education law so as to prohibit the phenomena of hiring children workers in society. Once, these economic or legal measures were implemented, the problem of dropout students was really settled to a certain extent. Be that as it may, along with people’s further studies as regards this problem, they found that these measure seemed helpless when it came to the essential settlement of the problem since a great part of the dropout students did not leave school by reason of their families’ failure to afford their fees of study but because they themselves had been “tired of” the school life, and their parents also felt that their children were hopeless on entering into the schools of a higher grade. “Upgrade or drop out” seemed to have been a consensus among the students and the parents according to whom “going to school” would be of no significance if the students failed to “upgrade,” so it would be better to dropout early and help the parents or to learn some skills from some folk “craftsmen.”8 That is to say, in their view, “school knowledge” is of little relation to rural life so to learn or not to learn, to learn much, or to learn little will not be necessarily related to their future life. In this vein, whereas to “us,” “to drop out” is to “destroy one’s own prospect,” it is “to find a prospect” to “them.” Therefore, we should reconstruct the curriculum system of the indigenous schools so as to set up, via the application of indigenous knowledge, 8

In the areas around Shou county of Anhui Province, the term “craftsmen” refers to people having some other skill besides “farming” (this is the obligation of the “peasants”), say, the “carpenters,” “masons,” “barbers,” “cobblers,” “electrical repairmen,” or others.

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the internal connections with indigenous life, which might help to prevent and settle the problem of “drop-out” from another perspective. Be that as it may, how to construct a curriculum at stake remains in exploration. Concluding the experiences of each area’s indigenous curriculum construction and the indigenous educators’ elucidations in the past decade, and taking the current framework of curriculum reform of China as the reference, I contend that there are mainly the following several trains of thought with respect to the construction of the “indigenously-informed curriculum.” In the first place, we should reform the original disciplinary curriculums centering on Western scientific knowledge, highlight their historical background and cultural context when arranging the contents, and dismiss their “objectivity,” “universality,” and “neutrality.” In this way, the students might recognize and understand their “indigenousness” and internal appeal to power, stop their blind worship on thought for the knowledge as such but attain it in a critical attitude rather than merely grasping, memorizing, demonstrating, and applying it; when arranging the contents of curriculums, we should highlight the intellectual and epistemological diversity, particularly indigenous knowledge and epistemology’s contemplations of and answers to relevant questions, so as to offer a relatively broad horizon and opportunity to the students to compare and distinguish various intellectual systems and epistemologies, and strengthen their recognition of the particular values and inherent shortages of each intellectual system on analyzing and settling problems, notably their recognition of these problems of the indigenous ones. As a result, they might be neither self-contemptuous nor blindly optimistic. For instance, the “biology” curriculum reform of Tonga in the 1990s put stress on adopting indigenous biological knowledge into the curriculum, trying to reform its content and structure since the colonial era. Like many other areas around the Pacific Ocean and Africa, since the colonial era and beyond, Tonga’s indigenous schools had been teaching Western bilabial intellectual system in their biological curriculum, and copying the contents of Western biological textbooks from the concepts and categories to the classification and to the observing, anatomical, and applying techniques and methods, and the like. As a result, much trouble emerged, say, some species mentioned in the textbooks were lack in Tonga’s indigenous society whereas those it owned and what were also important could not be seen in the textbooks. Sometimes, one and the same creature might have different names in the class and in life, respectively. Worse still, the biological classifying standards and methods adopted in the curriculum failed to be coincident with those in the indigenous practices, say, the biological classification in the former was performed according to animal, plant, and smaller outlines whereas that in the latter according to the intimacy between animals, plants and between them and human life. For instance, in the Western biological textbook, “fish” and “waterweed” belong to different species whereas in the indigenous intellectual system, they were the same species in that “Fishes live on waterweed,” and “the cognition of fishes” could not leave “the cognition of waterweed.” Obviously, copying Western systems of curriculum knowledge does not help Tonga’s adolescents improve their capacity of indigenous life but will only degenerate it. The new curriculum reform plan attempts to arrange in parallel the two different

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biological intellectual systems (“Western biology” and “Tonga’s biology”) so that the students can understand and recognize their indigenous biological knowledge at the same time when they grasp the Western one. In the second place, we should develop independent “local curriculum” focusing on the studies and researches of indigenous knowledge, which differs from the “national curriculum” with the studies and researches of “Western” or “external” knowledge as the core. This train of thought no longer “absorbs” indigenous knowledge into the modern disciplinary curriculum system but develops it into a single curriculum series. The reasons are these: due to the peculiar properties of indigenous knowledge, if it were adopted into the disciplinary curriculum system by force, it might destroy the integrity between indigenous knowledge and society hence lead to the loss of the vitality of indigenous knowledge. This risk is less severe than developing according to the peculiarities of indigenous knowledge and indigenous curriculum system in isolation so long as this system is connected with the needs of the students’ life. For instance, to meet the needs of the students’ social life, we can teach them some indigenous sociological knowledge; to meet their aesthetic needs, we can teach them some indigenous artistic knowledge; to meet their needs to understand their homeland, we can teach them some indigenous knowledge as to geography, plants, animals, climates, among others; to meet their needs to help their parents within their power, we can teach them some indigenous productive knowledge, or the like. Given that the knowledge as such is not provided by curriculum experts or scientists in the common sense but by the indigenous people, the arrangement of the knowledge is not performed merely by the curriculum experts and psychologists but results from the cooperative participation of students, their parents, and indigenous experts. In terms of the type of curriculum, these curriculums center on activities and are unfolded around some practical life and productions, being manifested in learning in doing and doing in learning, and the improving of the level of doing on the basis of teaching. In terms of curriculum management, the management of these curriculums is also not carried out universally by the state but centers on the local educational department, and the participation of the indigenous experts, the parents, and others is encouraged. At the level of the curriculum construction of colleges and universities, such indigenous curriculum constructions centering on indigenous knowledge can connect the practices of the local area, start from the construction and development of the disciplines, and open some curriculums or seminars with the collection, arrangement, study, and dissemination of indigenous knowledge as the core. For instance, the Agricultural College of the Central Luzon State University in the Philippines once invited an experienced peasant to make a sort of experiment of an agricultural ecological system named “aquatic product-vegetable-fruit-rice-duck streamline.” The experiment was in fact a set of ecological agricultural mode groped by this peasant on the basis of years of experiences on production, cultivation, and planting, including, or embodying rich indigenous knowledge and wisdom. That the Agricultural College invited him to preside this experiment and the seminars organized around it was aimed to do what follows: to make the teachers studying agriculture be sensitive to the indigenous knowledge and provide them an opportunity to study and research in

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the neighborhood; to let the students understand and respect the indigenous knowledge and learn how to get more of it from the rural surroundings; and, all the more, to strengthen the peasant’s confidence of the values of the indigenous knowledge on settling the indigenous agricultural problems but, simultaneously, to remind him to keep a sober and critical attitude toward the knowledge so as to constantly develop and consummate it by means of modern sciences and technologies. The practices proved that this experiment was quite successful and each participant in this experiment and the seminar got a more intuitive and vivid recognition of the “ethnoscience.” Third, we should develop some “particular curriculums” or “extracurricular activities” relevant to indigenous knowledge so as to guide the adolescents to understand its qualities and applications in various ways during their colorful student life. Since the development as such may be performed by the school even the teachers themselves, it is suitable for it to be manifested in “school-oriented curriculum.” It can be adopted in the whole curriculum scheme of the school so that the connections between the school and indigenous society may be strengthened. For instance, in China, due to the fact that indigenous knowledge remains to be adopted into any type of curriculum construction, no one knows what effect or response there will be. In other areas of the world, some are afraid that such “curriculums including indigenous knowledge” might suffer resistance from the students and their parents and might reduce the educational quality. According to me, in effect, this worry is uncalled-for in that albeit full experiential and theoretical supports are in short, and there is not little difficulty in developing such curriculums aiming at promoting the students to understand, love, and construct indigenous society, they can help to remove the estrangement or opposition between education and life, the school and society, students and parents, knowledge and practices, or the like, to improve the students’ capacity for practical life, and to cultivate their confidence and independence. Therefore, how can they be resisted by students and their parents? How can the educational quality be reduced? If such curriculums will reduce the educational quality, what then is the standard of it in people’s mind? If such a curriculum reform were to be implemented in our country, some might worry that the children’s “upgrading” would be influenced. Be that as it may, if a student can understand the diversity of the knowledge as such, break the boundary between “indigenous knowledge” and “scientific knowledge,” constantly absorb spiritual nutrition from them in a critical fashion, and increasingly improve his/her living capacity, how can he/she be one having no interest in study? How can his/her upgrading be hopeless? Of course, all these are merely conjectures now and the ultimate conclusion must be proved by future experiments of curriculum reform.

9.3.4 Indigenous Knowledge and Teaching Reform Seen from the perspective of indigenous knowledge, teaching’s main task should first and foremost not be restricted to the delivery and grasping of Western knowledge or other external knowledge, but should be put on this: to create a diversified intellectual

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and epistemological surrounding by virtue of the indigenous knowledge; to guide the students to “recognize,” “understand,” and “respect” the diversity as such and increasingly improve their cognitive capacity by means of the diversified knowledge and epistemology. This is exactly what should be reinforced in our primary and secondary school education. A plain example is, the students are easy to “uncritically” accept the knowledge from the textbooks or the teachers. Once, their own ideas conflict with their parents’, they will defend themselves by saying “This is said in the book!” or “Our teacher says so!” meaning that “The book says so” or “The teacher says so” is the only correct mode and any other parlance or recognition is wrong. De facto, this is not the students’ fault but is due to the fact that the intellectual hegemony in modern schools and their subjugation on indigenous knowledge have cultivated the students’ “blindness” or “prejudices” on recognizing problems, namely they do not know about the diversity of the cognitive modes and that of knowledge produced therefrom, nor do they know that they can learn more from their indigenous society. Connected with such teaching tasks, the teachers are supposed to abandon and change their “tabula rasa presumption” as to the students, no longer regarding them as people “knowing nothing” or “knowing little” but those having grasped a large amount of indigenous knowledge and constantly applying it. Nay, the teachers should recognize that indigenous knowledge grasped by the students being different from the so-called scientific knowledge of the textbooks notwithstanding, it is as legitimate but merely employs a different path to the legitimacy from that of the textbook knowledge. To this connection, the teachers should respect the knowledge students got from indigenous society, regarding it as not merely a sort of material promoting the study of textbook knowledge but also the foundation or source promoting the students to reflect on textbook knowledge. Particularly, the teachers should notice that the differences or conflicts between these two sorts of knowledge by no means indicate that the students’ own indigenous knowledge is “wrong” or “improper” hence must be removed, but merely show that there are differences or conflicts between different epistemologies and intellectual systems. The existence of the difference or conflict as such “creates” an “opportunity” for the teaching rather than “producing” a “hard point.” The teachers can seize this opportunity to guide the students to make in-depth comparisons between these two intellectual systems and epistemologies, understand the interrelations between them and the indigenous social contexts on which they rely, respectively, so as to become independent critical learners and the ones capable of interacting with various sorts of knowledge and epistemologies for the sake of creating new cognitive modes and intellectual systems. To achieve these during the teaching process, the teachers must firmly abandon the indoctrinating teaching method. Seen from the perspective of indigenous knowledge, indoctrination is a poor teaching method, but also a tool helping the hegemonic knowledge to realize its intellectual power, subjugate the indigenous knowledge of the students, and perform “brainwashing” or “thinking colonization” on them. As was analyzed in the previous chapters, indoctrinating teaching is closely related to the modern view of knowledge upholding “objectivity,” “universality,” and “neutrality,” to the global expansion of Western knowledge and epistemology, and to the ignorance of the indigenous knowledge and its epistemological values. Given that

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we have recognized the illusiveness of the ideal of modern objective knowledge, the inseparable relationship between knowledge and culture, and the indigenous characteristics of all knowledge, the teachers are supposed to firmly object indoctrinating education and to treat it as the most evil teaching method. That which can replace this teaching method is supposed to be such a teaching surrounding: an “open,” “loose,” “equal,” and “diversified” teaching surrounding into which various sorts of knowledge may enter in different ways and are encouraged to do so and communicate, compete, and perform dialogues with each other so as to ultimately determine, by means of comparison, the scope and limit of the truthfulness and values of each sort of knowledge, and to cultivate a rational attitude toward any sort of knowledge. In the teaching reform starting from indigenous knowledge, the roles that the teachers play are numerous. Even under the circumstances wherein the abovementioned curriculum reform remains to start or to be completed, they are still capable of guiding the students to recognize, respect, and obtain more indigenous knowledge within the framework of modern curriculum systems. The “foxfire project” in Georgia in the United States, can be exactly a “masterpiece” of a teacher, and it is also possible that a teacher can promote the ecological agricultural experiment of the Central Luzon State University in the Philippines. In common teaching activities, it is also not necessarily impossible to awaken the indigenous knowledge grasped by students, a premise, however, is a must, namely the teacher him/herself has recognized the values of the indigenous knowledge and epistemology, the values insofar as the students’ physical and mental development and the indigenous society’s continuity and changes are concerned. Or else it will smother up and produce little substantive effect like any other education reform. Therefore, education and teaching reform starting from the perspective of indigenous knowledge surely present new requirements to the normal education system. Seen from the goals of teacher cultivating or training, normal education is supposed to be aimed at turning the future or professional teachers into “disciplinary experts” (good at the specialties they teach) in the common sense and “educational experts” (understanding and grasping certain educational theories, methods, and techniques), but also into “experts of indigenous knowledge.” They should be more sensitive to the existence of indigenous knowledge, attach more importance to preserving, protecting, and developing the values of indigenous knowledge, and know how to study and analyze the indigenous knowledge of the community in which the school is located. On this ground, they must become epistemological experts, being capable of epistemologically understanding the locality or relativity of any intellectual system, and of abandoning the “objectivity,” “universality,” and “neutrality” claimed by Western or scientific knowledge, so as to clear the way for the indigenous knowledge to enter into the education curriculums. Insofar as the curriculum setting of normal education is concerned, the contents of “national science” and “folk pedagogy” should be integrated into the original “specialized courses” and “pedagogical courses,” so that the conception and belief of intellectual and epistemological diversity can be set up first. In terms of teaching method, be it the study of specialties or of pedagogical courses, a critical reflective attitude should be upheld and learning by rote be firmly objected; as to teaching practices, the discovery and application

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of indigenous knowledge including indigenous educational knowledge should be taken as an important constitute, so that the future or professional teachers’ capacities in this regard can be practically improved. On the whole, all the requirements presented from indigenous knowledge as the point of departure on the reform practices of general education are applicable in the normal education reform. Indigenous knowledge should also become an important perspective of the normal education reform in the twenty-first century.

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