On Production Mode Of Scientific Knowledge And Its Evolution

Toward the knowledge-based society, how to understand science and its social function becomes again an important theoretical and practical problem.Science is essentially a practical activity with historical constructivity. Science is not only a scientist's personal cognitive behavior, but also a social production activity and institution with the function of producing scientific knowledge. The production mode of scientific knowledge is the core factor, which influences the development of science and the capabilities in producing scientific knowledge. So performing systematic researches on the production mode of scientific knowledge and its evolution is a vital step to understand science and its development courses.The production mode of scientific knowledge embodies not only the general characteristics of material production modes, but also the intrinsic qualities of spiritual production activities. It embraces four different elements, namely, cognition methods, technical means, organization forms and institution arrangements. Through their interaction with each other and historical relation and coordinative evolution, the system structure of the production mode of scientific knowledge is generated. The production mode of scientific knowledge and its evolution occur in the complicated context of interactions among the corresponding resource, demand, rational cognition and value judgment. It is the"generation","creation"and"invention"basing on scientific practice. The contradiction between the increasing demands of scientific knowledge, and the internal demands for regenerating of scientific knowledge and the capacities of producing knowledge in the special production mode is the essential impetus of evolution of the production mode of scientific knowledge.As a natural historical process, the evolution of production mode of scientific knowledge undergoes three main development stages. In the traditional society, the"philosophical reflection-based"and the"experiential rectification-based"production mode of scientific knowledge were dominant ones, and the production of scientific...