Freedom, Reason And Innovation

The utility value and practical sense of science not only endow it with the social position it deserved, but also the great productivity created by technology as a medium has enriched and improved human beings'material life to a great extent. However, people have not recognized the promoting function of scientific spirit and cultural connotation to human beings and social civilization. Therefore, re-understanding science and scientific spirit is of great importance to people's living, development, freedom and liberation, and it is more significant to improve the all-round progress and development of culture. Science of today develops gradually from the science of Renaissance, which appeared in the form of renaissance of ancient Greek natural philosophy. Hereby, modern science originates from ancient Greek natural philosophy and it is the extension of western traditional culture. Scientific spirit nurtured by western traditional culture connects science and traditional culture together. As Bernard Barber said in Science and the Social order, science is the direct descendants of skills and great achievements, which is formed when Greece and western society in the Middle Ages made rational thought to non-experience problems. This standpoint actually throws light on the cultural origin that engenders scientific spirit: one is the constant development of rational thinking; the other is to attach importance to philosophical tradition of experience and nature. Philosophy is the foundation of science and science is born out of natural philosophy. Through its critical reflection, philosophy crystallizes the scientific spirit contained in the scientific activities. Free suspicion and criticism is premise to scientific spirit. Any preexistent condition and limitation run counter to scientific suspicion and critical spirit. Suspicion is the fundamental difference of science and religion, as science cannot eliminate suspicion. Without suspicion, science is close to religion. People can judge and think independently with suspicion, getting rid of credulity and blindness, and approaching scientific sense. The area of scientific discovery always expands to the unknown, thus the advancement of science calls for exceeding the existing theory. If there is no critical sense, which is the soul of scientific development, science will lose creating vitality. Therefore, scientific sense is critical, scientific criticism must be rational and criticism without sense is unscientific. As a kind of intelligence activity, the purpose of science is to obtain truth knowledge of the nature and to seek for universal principle to master phenomenon and experience. The realization ofthis depends on scientific accuracy to a large extent, thus mathematics is a rational method to fulfill scientific accuracy because extensive phenomena can be deduced logically and quantificationally, and correspond with experience through mathematic thinking and calculation. The analysis of the scientific spirit contains the rationalistic spirit, so science cannot accept an entirety without analysis. Only by analyzing the entirety beyond perception, rational entirety can be reached from its components to realize the understanding to essence of entirety. Scientific experiments are needed to check whether scientific concepts, science hypotheses and so on possess truth and reflect the truth of objective world correctly. By scientific experiments, right scientific concepts and science hypotheses can be approved and established, and wrong ones are proved false and abandoned. Exertion of rational means such as accuracy, analysis and experiment guarantees the truth of science. . Science is humanistic from its origin to spirit. Along with the development of social history, science also begins to ask for the recovering of humanity when it helps improve humanity and raise level in the scope of social progress. In the nature, beauty and truth are an integral whole; to mankind, aesthetics and truth seeking also exchange, complement and benefit each other. Obtaining enlightenment, producing creating inspiration and discovering natural rules from the visual threshold of beauty, have become a conscious and purposeful activity. It unifies two different cognationactivities-truth seeking and beauty seeking-that are opposite before, experiencing natural beauty, predicting and judging natural laws corresponding to truth. Being a kind of free creating activity, scientific research shows the tolerance of scientific spirit because any behavior to make frame for scientific research is the exhibition of intolerance. Tolerance of science and absolutism are opposed to each other like water and fire. In a society that absolutism prevails, tolerance of science cannot get support, so it is impossible for science to develop. The forming process of science as theory thinking and basic method can be observed by its exceeding to common thing way. The development history of science is the history of scientific thinking method and scientific concept system's formation and confirmation, expansion and deepening, and innovation and revolution. The net of concept and category made by scientific theory constructs the "stairs"and "fulcrum"of human knowledge, which impels the constant development of human knowledge, namely self-surpassing of human consciousness. Comprehension of scientific spirit needs to investigate the relationship between scientific spirit and scientific doctrine, and humanism and Marxism. The scientific doctrine worships science, laying claim to the accurate demonstration method, emphasizing science's demonstration spirit partially, and considering that science shows sense perfectly; put forward by humanism that originates from the Renaissance, humanity is not the exclusion tosense of people, but dual affirmation to people's sense and non-sense and publicizing of rational spirit. The modern humanism classifies as non-rational will, emotion and desire, and does its utmost to exclude science. Hence the sharp opposition of science doctrine and humanism the since modern age results mainly from limitation of scientific development and people's misunderstanding to scientific spirit. Scientific spirit of truth seeking, kindness seeking and beauty seeking is a kind of humanistic spirit, or the essential component of humanistic spirit. Marxism regards science as the basic power for human beings'self-liberation and reappearance of people's inner strength, enhancing scientific spirit greatly by thoroughly fearless spirit of dialectical materialism. Constructive function to scientific world and people's spiritual world is the important function of scientific spirit. The scientific spirit acts on activity body of scientific cognation so as to realize the unification of discovering truth and pursuing freedom, objective explanation and rational criticism, and obeying rules and free creation; meanwhile, it can guide people's spiritual life, making mankind get away from the enslavement of social relation and acquire people's liberation, freedom and all-round development. Becoming "the strong lever of social reformation is the revolutionary strength in history". In the different historic ages of human civilization, the science spirit also has the different contents and different forms. Modern science expresses and shapes the scientific spirit that takes sense asits core. The scientific spirit of this era is to develop people's rational authority, establish people's centerpiece position, exerting people's centerpiece motivation function and presenting free critical spirit, truth seeking spirit, fact seeking spirit and free discovering spirit of modern science. Corresponding with that people call scientific spirit "rational"spirit, modern scientific spirit reflects modern science's understanding to the relationship between nature and human being. The world in the scientific scope reveals the shadow of people, showing self-critical spirit, tolerating spirit, beauty pursuing spirit and creating spirit of modern science. The after-modern scientific spirit is a kind of complicated situation. "After-modern"proposes some "time spirits", such as seeking differences, advocating multi-culture, relativity, uncertainty, inconsistency and so on. It means although after-modern scientific spirit contains general truth seeking spirit, fact seeking spirit, critical spirit, and creating spirit, it has the tolerating spirit of "from absoluteness to relativity"and "from single meaning to multi-meaning", namely real encouragement to critical and creating spirit; it also possesses the historic consciousness of "from accuracy to faintness", "from certainty to uncertainty"and "from analysis method to system method", namely looking on the world from the opinion of people's practical activity and historic development. Scientific spirit is of great importance in the history of western modernization as it is scientific spirit makes many western capital countries complete their respective modernization. Reflecting on...