Scientism And The Historical Limitation Of Novels Of May 4th Movement

"Democracy" and "Science" are two banners of New Culture Movement of the May Fourth. In fact,most domestic scholars prefer to study the former instead of the latter,and they paid less attentions on the problem and meaning of "Science". In fact, if we donot talk about "science", many phenomenons of the May Forth Moverment can not be thoroughly explained. This thesis try to interpret the impact of the "science" on the May Forth Moverment Fiction from three parts, and thus the historical limitations of this:Chapter 1. The reflection of the May 4th Movement in New Literature from the scientific point of view. May 4th New Culture Movement is essentially a movement in which we use"scientific spirit" to effect the old literary. We can see the worship of Western logic,the analysis of the ways of thinking and the linguistic characteristics from the advocation of "Colloquialism".Using "The Popular Dialecfto replace "classical Chinese texts" actually means trying to find a language that is more close to the experience world. The May4th new novels which established on this language concept focused on the imitation of experience of the world very much.Most of the initiators of May 4th New Culture Movement had all studied abroad,and received formal Western science education. Their understanding of "science" is much more profound and precise than all the late Qing Dynasty scholars. Out of the worship of Western modern science ,they generally view the novels as a kind of "science". This is not only performed in theory but also in their creation .Generally speaking,we can find the root cause of a series of changes of May 4th novels in the problem of "science".Chapter 2.The scientism and the utilitarianism in novel of May 4th Movement. During the period of May 4th Movement , "Science" refers to systematic knowledge of natural science and its theory, law, etc. On the one hand, and on the other hand it means general scientific method, which not only aims at nature, but also can be extended to social scientific area such as humanities, etc. and thus forms certain standpoint, attitude and so-called "scientific spirit".Science then gains cultural utilitarian value of critical or constructive feature, and is used into modern movement of thought enlightenment in reforming the Chinese society and renewing the nation's conscience. In novel writing it mainly has two demands, which are: firstly, novel description should be objective and applied to scientific knowledge in content, which then can be used to explode superstition; secondly, a novelist should study or discuss real life problems in "realistic scientific spirit" in exact way and reform society with his or her novels. "Science" and concerning terminologies such as "research", "record", "analysis", "field observations" are widely used in literary study. Scientific attribute of literature is emphasized to a great degree. Novel is used to "compare with" social science, which exposes great disadvantages of novelists of May 4th Movement in knowing their art self-sufficiency and brings about big lose to the novel produce of May 4th Movement in art feature.Chapter 3. The scientism and misread toward realism by the novel of May 4th Movement. Although realism advocates of May 4th Movement have no complete comprehension about the rich connotation of European realism in 19th century, but they come to an astonishing agreement in "literature reflect real life" and "literature concern about social life". Western realism writers study the art law of "realism" repeatedly, which however escape from notices of the new novelists of May 4th movement. Under the influence of "scientism" the advocates of new literature of May 4th movement only emphasize the relations between realism and positivism science in western realism theories, and then emphasize that novel should "reflect reality objectively" and "study real life" (the former is spirit of finding truth scientifically and the latter is actual use of scientific study spirit in literature), on which realism theory of May 4th Movement is formed. So the deficiency of realism theory of May 4th Movement is bigger than in western realism theory. On the one hand, realism theory of May 4th Movement itself has the source of making novels "formularization". On the other hand, realists of May 4th Movement emphasize too much on the times and the society. Their strict expectation on real society deters themselves from imaging a colorful world and result in the same. Realism of May 4th Movement reject escape and illusion. They face with hopeless life directly, and put the ideal opposed to the reality, which then lead to an absent ideal in novels of May 4th Movement.