“科学方法”输入后的中国现代史学之走向

"Scientific Method"and Chinese Modern Historiography

胡适等人倡导的"科学方法"对中国现代史学的影响深远,它不独在"拉近"传统学术与西方现代科学的心理差距、扩大现代科学方法的感召力、吸引学术界更多人士自觉接受现代逻辑方法与科学理性精神的洗礼等方面起到了有力的推动作用,更值得重视的是,它提示的现代人文学术研究参照自然科学的成功经验、注重外延性拓展的新思路,由此直接开启了从北京大学国学门、中山大学语言历史研究所到中央研究院历史语言研究所倡导的重视田野考察和现代多学科交叉研究的史学发展新路径。但是,也应当看到,这一现代史学建构路线理论上也存在一些弱点:一是混淆了自然科学和人文科学的界限,特别是把"近代史学"的工作范围牢牢框定在史料学的领域,以致限制了历史视野及其研究事业的合理拓展;二是模糊了传统考据学(朴学)方法与现代科学方法的区别,这在一定程度上又削弱了学术界对传统方法的自觉改造和更新意识。

The paper starts from the interpretations of the meaning of ＂scientific method＂ proposed by Hu Shi and other scholars, and examines its interrelation with the trendance of modern historiography. It has great impact on modern Chinese academic field, such as ＂shortening＂ the psychological distance between the tranditional learning and the Western modern sciences, enlarging the attraction of modern scientific methodology, as well as absorbing in more and more academias to accept willingly the modern logical methods and rational spirit. It is more import to mention that it has opened up the successful experiences which the modern humanites have borrowed from the natural sciences, and the new way of thinking which forcuses on the extensional development. Therefore it directly founded the new historical horizon of high- lighting fieldwork and multipledisciplinary. However, there are some theoretical shortcomings in this structural line on which the modern historiography was founded.. It blurs the distinctions between the natural sciences and the humanities,and confounds the methods of Qian-Jia textual historiography with the modern scientific methods.