The View Of Science Of Fang Dongmei’s "Science,Philosophy And Life"

As one of the representatives of the modern new Confucianism,Fang Dongmei summarized deeply the scientific understanding of the metaphysical school in the scientific-metaphysics debate.His scientific view was embodied in the early classic"Science,Philosophy and Life".Researching the scientific view which contained in the book,can both provide the beneficial thought nourishment for the current development of the philosophy of science with Chinese characteristics and promote the scientific acceptance of research of the spirit of Neo Confucianism.The book originally was divided by Fang Dongmei into six chapters,and combined with the philosophy in discussion.It take out the view of Science from the book and re divide it into four chapters in accordance with the logical structure of the content of it to carry on the elaboration.It is arranged in the second,third,fourth and fifth chapters.The first chapter mainly clarifies the related problems of "Science,Philosophy and Life",including background and the logic structure of it.The second chapter discusses the science’s meaning,origin and characteristics.Fang Dongmei’s use of Science in the book has different usage in different places,but the usage is mainly concentrated on the significance of the natural sciences.He thought that the origin of science was from cognition to environment,through the myths and knowledge,with attributes of concrete and abstract,progress and conflict,accordance and speculation,utilitarian and harmfulness.The third chapter discusses the view of natural science in ancient Greece.The ancient Greeks had extremely rational spirit of science,and developed their naively validated universe view of materialization,which not only affected the Greek cultural activities that their all cultural creation was permeated with traces of materialization,but also made the Greeks to look at the world with a law of the unity and harmony of the order.But the universe view of materialization ignored the delight of life,resulting the humanism of reactionary in later Greek history of thoughts.The fourth chapter discusses the view of science on universe in modern European.Fang Dongmei divided the natural science of modern Europe into modern material science and modern biological science.Modern material science has made great advances in astronomy,geography,mathematics,chemistry and physics,which formed materialism that was the liberation of Greek universe view.But after confirming the importance of materialism and the progress of the mathematical,Fang Dongmei opposed the duality philosophy of material-spirit.The subsequent rise was biological science,which took the view of dynamic universe as their view of science,and corrected the mechanical method of material science.Fang Dongmei also promoted the evolution of biological science to the whole universe,then that formed the universe evolution.The fifth chapter discusses the modern European psychological science view.Psychological science developed from mechanical psychology to dynamic psychology.Mechanical psychology,its mechanism was brought about from the material science,originated from the theory of "the equality of things".With exerting equality,the theory of mechanical psychology became the basis of the theory of revolution.With persisting individualism,the theory of mechanical psychology became the foundation of the social revolution.The dynamic psychology criticized the mechanical theory of psychology,played the dynamic character,grasped life on the whole,and reflected true life.This is a general picture of the western science history which elaborated by Fang Dongmei.The direction of thought is from the physical to the people.Fang Dongmei looked upon the Western science in the view of coherence,advocated practicality of Science,but strongly opposed scientism.