从“空间”视角看海洋科学综合发展新趋势

Towards a comprehensive development of the Marine Science: A reflection from the spatial perspective

不仅是海洋科学,空间在地球科学（地学）的研究体系中一直处于核心地位,其既可作为研究对象,也可作为分析手段.空间的概念并不起源于地学,哲学、物理学和社会学等均按照自身的学科特点对空间进行了定义,以致其内涵呈现出百家争鸣之态.

Space is one of the key topics in Earth sciences. However, it has been conceptualized in various ways and examined via different research methodologies, resulting in distinct paradigms in different sub-disciplines. This study specifically analyzes various ways in which the idea of space has been perceived in all sub-disciplines in Earth sciences and the corresponding research paradigms. This paper pays particular attention to how space could be conceptualized in Marine Science and comes up with several suggestions about improving the understanding and research paradigms of it. Space not only is the platform where a wide range of non-human activities take place, but also has some social, political, and economic meaning. In this sense, space in the Marine Science should have a dual nature. As it is widely acknowledged that marine space is mainly treated as the site where natural processes happen, including physical, chemical and biological processes, and this emphasizes the objectivity of it. Apart from that, this paper also believes that marine economy, industry, politics resource, and so on, are the typical examples to explain marine space as a process element, mainly showing its sociality, since all these activities have profound interactions with human, such as ocean economic zones, the Blue Economy, coordination of land and marine economy, and so on and so forth. On account of different attributes mentioned above, Marine Science adapts both quantitative and qualitative methods of empirical and systematical paradigms to analyzing specific problems. Furthermore, boundaries have been more and more indistinct nowadays and it is necessary to use more than one paradigm to explain a particular attribute of space, meaning that those paradigms need to be combined to study a particular aspect of space, thereby blurring the boundaries among them. For example, analyzing the objectivity of marine space regularly requires quantitative methods of empirical paradigm. However, interactions of natural processes in different locations, or natural procedures and human rely on qualitative methods of empirical paradigm. Besides, considering marine space as a social process element requires qualitative methods first to identify the social significance, and then to apply quantitative methods to solve certain problems. In order to improve concepts, attributes and paradigms of space in Marine Science, this study comes up with several prospects. First of all, there are still some methods that can be used to explore the objectivity of marine space, including promoting spatial-temporal detection, majorly focusing on improving the observation and the ability to exploit the deep sea. Secondly, it shows the importance of studying the sociality by applying both quantitative and qualitative methods of empirical and systematical paradigms, for instance, by paying more attention to marine climate and the interaction between the ocean and other spheres on earth and studying the land and the sea from a coordinating perspective. Next, technological breakthroughs are needed since they can make sure all the suggestions mentioned above can be fulfilled. Finally, considering that geography has already done some researches on the symbolic meaning of space, Marine Science can also explore this field to enrich the concepts of space in its own discipline. In the end, this study also offers some policy suggestions for improving comprehensive research abilities for marine science based on space from a view of national strategy. In the first place, it is necessary to assemble different panels of experts, laboratories and research funds on a national level to strategically guide the development of Marine Science. Then, we show that promoting the participation in international research projects to acquire advanced concepts and methods can improve our understanding of Marine Science. Finally, more money is needed to invest in cultivating young talents, by which there can be more decent researchers with professional skills to prosper this discipline.