On The Evolution Of Knowledge Production Modes Of University

University is a place where profound knowledge is centered around. With the arrival of knowledge-based economy, the university moves to the center of the society from the edge of it, thus bearing much more pressure of producing knowledge than any other time. Under this circumstance, how to seek more academic resources and how to promote knowledge production have become the themes of the current university innovation. The mode of production is at the core of the innovation of knowledge production of university, and differentiates universities of various eras. Therefore, against this academic backdrop, the research on knowledge production modes of university is conducted as a response to both theory and practice.The knowledge production mode is a unified whole of productivity and production relations. In terms of productivity, embodied by the cognitive dimension, it is consisted of cognitive mode and means of cognition; while regarding production relations, represented by the organizational dimension of university, it is made up of organizational structures and system arrangement. The evolution of knowledge production modes is demonstrated by the interaction between two dimensions: cognition and organization. As an organization of knowledge production, its uniqueness is mainly reflected in the following three respects: it is a unified combination of teaching, research and social service; it has an organizational structure on the basis of disciplines; it features the system arrangement with academic freedom as its Meta rule. All these characteristics of university organization have a great impact on the evolution of knowledge production modes of university.According to the evolution of western knowledge production modes of university, it has undergone three phases of transitions: study-oriented mode, laboratory-oriented mode and enterprise-oriented mode. The study-oriented mode, which lasted from the medieval times to the modern times, is the preliminary knowledge production mode of university. It is a philosophical and speculative mode of cognition and confirmed philosophical knowledge achieved through logic means mainly by individuals. Due to this mode, universities have developed self-organization on the basis of academic freedom, research and study organizations based on lectures, research and teaching methods centered on logic deductions like dialectics, and academic freedom combined with religious beliefs that stimulate and standardize the knowledge production of university. The laboratory-oriented mode of knowledge production marks the arrival of modern universities. On the dimension of cognition, it is a cognitive mode of pure science, emphasizing the significance of basic research, and strict scientific training to students in the light of teaching. On the dimension of organization, universities have formed inter-disciplinary and inter-departmental organizational structures. Besides, the separation of postgraduates' education results in a combination of teaching and scientific research in new forms, Thus, the knowledge production of university is no longer individual-oriented, but a collective production in the academic community: The university, government and society have entered into a relationship of group contract; while academic freedom combined with social responsibility has become the stimulus and guiding principle for knowledge production of university. Despite the brief periods the enterprise-oriented mode enjoys, it has profoundly changed university patterns. Specifically, universities have established new cognitive modes, enhanced the communication among basic research, research of application and development research, and expanded the room for and improved the ability in knowledge production of university, thus combining study with research and production closely together. With a view to organizational structure, universities have set up complicated organizational structures among disciplines, departments and groups based on research projects. Both driven and restricted by academic freedom, social responsibility and benefits, fueling enterprise culture has become a new university culture, while universities, government and enterprises have changed the mode of binary opposition, and combined organically into an innovative system of the nation.The evolution of knowledge production modes has three characteristics: First, it is self-creative. Second, it involves inheriting and surpassing in different stages, which brings about continuous rises at the level and complexity. Third, it is a mutation in gradual changes.The evolution of knowledge production modes of university is a self-organized process in which universities adapt to the changes of external environment through internal dynamic mechanism, and in turn increase their orderliness and organize their structural evolution. The internal dynamic mechanism includes positive feedback and negative feedback, which, on the one hand, facilitates the development of knowledge production of university to a higher level, and on the other hand, keeps the objectives of knowledge production of university. In a broad sense, the self-organized evolutionary and restraint mechanism of knowledge production modes of university mainly involves three aspects: systematically restraint mechanism- the society's unspecific intervention in knowledge production of university; materialistically restraint mechanism- the society's supply of room for needs and resources for the knowledge production of university; culturally restraint mechanism- the society's forming of self-organized evolutionary cultural value of knowledge production modes of university.The traditional Chinese theory of knowledge has never been isolated from the theory of essentialism and that of practice. Instead, relying on the external objectives, that is, saintly mind and emperor appearance, it aims at the perfection of individual morals internally and the political aspirations externally. Due to the ethnical and political features, traditional Chinese universities, either official schools or old-style private school, were contained in the structure of integration, not an independent organization. Court-style is an appropriate metaphor for traditional Chinese universities' knowledge production modes, laboratory-oriented and enterprise-oriented knowledge production modes of universities are transplantation of borrowed foreign modes, rather than of Chinese origin. On the whole, it is not a continuous process of change, but a process from sudden changes to gradual changes.Through the analysis of Joseph Needham's Problem in the past and the modern system wall, it is apparent that the evolution of knowledge production modes of colleges in China is the systematic arrangement restricted by other organizations, not relying on the self-organized mechanism. This explains the crisis of knowledge production of universities in China and makes the internal sub-systems' interaction in knowledge production of universities a disorder, thus losing the internal dynamics of self-development. In conclusion, the real orientation of knowledge production modes of universities in China lies with the self-organization from herter-organization.