The Science Fiction Of Late Qing And The Transformation Of The Episteme

Science Fiction was born in the West in19th century, which was a branch of modern novel and based the literary imagination on the principles and common sense of modern science. It was introduced to China by translation in late Qing and regarded as a new genre in that period.China has experienced the great transformation of episteme in modern times including the transplanting of the western learning and the reconstruction of traditional Chinese learning. In this process, the transformation from Four-Branch Classification to Seven-Branch Classification was the most important change in the knowledge structure and culture reform. As a unique genre, the Science Fiction of late Qing helped the formation of the concept of "novel" in modern sense and took a role of dynamic factor in the interaction of multiple knowledge categories.From the perspective of linguistics, the transformation of episteme is an overall change of vocabulary and conception, which builds a new correspondence between words and tings. Numbers of loanwords of modern science in the text of the late Qing SF gave rise to the semantic change of the classic Chinese and built a new order of knowledge and culture. The new Chronotope of the SF in Late Qing embodied a modern view of world and created new narrative pattern, which was a constructive element in the transformation of the episteme. The development of this genre witness the change from "shuobu" to "novel" and from "gezhi" to "science", providing factors of modernity that connected with the reconstruction of the episteme. The Science Fiction of Late Qing took part in the modern transformation of knowledge fields, such as "science","literature" and "history", contributing to the establishment of the modern episteme.There was a relationship of mutual development between the SF of late Qing and the transformation of episteme in modern China. The SF of late Qing was a part of this historic process as well as a driving force, but it was marginalized when the culture transformation came into end because it couldn’t find a place in the new episteme as a transitional genre. However, the modern notions of literature and science as well as modern narrative factors presented in the text have been constructed into modern episteme and influencing the cognition of the world and ourselves.