迪昂与民国时期中国学人的科学论

Pierre Duhem and the Theory of Science of Chinese Scholars During the Republican Period

就科学论的贡献和水准而言,迪昂丝毫不逊色于马赫、彭加勒和皮尔逊。可是,由于迪昂在学生时代推翻了学术权威贝特洛居功自傲的最大功原理,遭到这位大权在握者的打击报复,致使迪昂在生前和死后的半个多世纪都无法实至名归。因此,民国学人对迪昂的了解和评介不多,仅仅受到少数学人的注意,而且只涉及到科学理论的目的与结构、假设和自然秩序、科学与形而上学的关系这几个很有限的论题,还误以为迪昂是观念论者。其实,迪昂是旗帜鲜明地反对观念论的;迪昂哲学是以本体论背景上的秩序实在论、方法论文脉内的科学工具论、认识论透视下的理论整体论为网络,编织而成的斑驳陆离、别出机杼的多元张力哲学或多元张力论(pluralistic tensionalism)。中国学界与世界学界大体同步,从二十世纪八十年代起才开始下工夫研究迪昂,陆续有论文和专著问世,弥补了民国学人的缺憾。

In terms of contribution to and achievements in science studies,Pierre Duhem was no less important than Mach,Poincaréand Pearson.However,Duhem did not receive due recognition during his lifetime and for more than half a century after his death due to acts of reprisals from the powerful academic authority,Berthelot,whose greatest merit principle had been overthrown by Duhem when he was a student.Consequently,Duhem was little known and commented on by Chinese scholars during the Republican period.Only a small number of scholars paid some attention to him,dealing only with such limited topics as the purpose and structure of scientific theories,hypotheses and the natural order,and the relationship between science and metaphysics,with the misconception that Duhem was a conceptualist.In fact,Duhem’s philosophy is distinctly anti-conceptualist;it is a dense and distinctive pluralistic tensionalism,woven together in a network of ontologically-grounded realism of order,methodologically-framed scientific instrumentalism,and epistemologically grounded theoretical holism.Chinese scholars,largely in tandem with scholars from other countries,began to seriously study Duhem from the 1980s onwards,and papers and monographs were published one after another to make up for the lack of scholarship during the Republican period.