Today we move on to the second aspect of modernization and the transformation of the structuring values of modernity: science. What we’re going to be talking—not just about science, but also about the discourse or the ideological use of science, which is usually referred to as scientism. Our guide will be Grace Shen. Her chapter name is “Scientism in the Twentieth Century.” We’ve just seen how economics was described as “operating ‘scientifically’ and against any ‘subjective’ or ‘feudal’ practices.” That perfectly sets the stage for understanding the role played by “Mr. Science and “scientism.” Early figures discussed by Grace Shen —some of them we’ve already heard of, Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀, Hu Shi 胡適; she mentions as well Ren Hongjun 任鸿雋(1886-1961), who is a politician and above all an academic —“routinely,” she says, “promoted the scientific method (<i>kexue fangfa</i> 科學方法), scientific spirit (<i>kexue jingshen</i> 科學精神), scientific attitude (<i>kexue taidu</i> 科學態度), scientific authority (<i>kexue quanwei</i> 科學權威), and of course science itself, without ever mentioning ‘scientism’ among the many other ‘isms’ they espoused.” Why? Well, the term “scientism,” wei <i>kexue zhuyi</i>（唯）科學主義, was not used in Chinese before the appearance in 1989 of the Chinese translation of D.W.Y. Kwok’s <i>Scientism in Chinese thought, 1900–1950</i>, published in 1965. So the term only exists in Chinese since that translation appeared in Chinese in 1989. From then on, it “became,” says Shen, “inextricably linked in mainland China to the Republican era as a transitional moment between the feudal and misguided past and a pervasively science-inflected future. Increasingly, the term also lent itself to tracking Chinese polemics between ‘scientism’ and ‘humanism’ (人文主義 or 人本主義).” And that’s what we’ll be talking about at the end of this particular chapter: scientism vs. humanism. Grace Shen says, “Though the term scientism covers a diverse set of sometimes contradictory orientations, its most characteristic function is to point to the construction of an image of science that has been positioned as the epistemic and moral reference point for all other human activity.” Epistemic? Role or way to knowledge. The moral reference? That is to say it becomes the structuring value —that’s the whole point of the discourse built on science as scientism. That is, “scientism” refers to the use of science and scientific authority in the “culture wars” of modernity. The aim of this ideological use of science is to push traditional religions out of the public sphere—as we’ve said— of “objective truth” into the private sphere of “subjectivity” understood as “mere opinion.” It is, in other terms, a foundational expression of the current paradigm shift, insofar as that shift consist in the “construction” of modernity in terms of “science vs. religion.” What is interesting is that neither early Chinese interest in science nor the first Western purveyors of modern science participated in this construction. To begin with, the Jesuits in China saw science as “a kind of natural theology that would guide Chinese to the truth of the Christian gospel.” Just a note here: The earliest definer of the scientific method, Francis Bacon, says explicitly that we have to read the book of Nature just as we have read until now the book of God, that is to say the Bible, with the same care and attention and objectivity that had been applied to the Scriptures, we now turn our look to what was called general revelation as opposed to specific revelation when we look at the book of Nature, and so that’s what is behind the Jesuit idea of science as a kind of natural theology that would guide the Chinese to the truth of the Christian gospel—a preparation for it. Likewise, early “Protestant translators were deeply steeped in the nuanced version of the ‘book of nature’ idea embodied in William Paley’s <i>Natural theology</i>, published in 1802. So this made it quite natural for people like Zhang Zhidong 張之洞 to use the <i>tiyong</i> 體用 construction, distinction, that we’ve already talked about, with “Chinese learning as essence中學為體,” <i>ti</i>, literally body substance, and “Western learning as the application西學為用,” the yong. <i>Tiyong</i>, this basic combination that goes back to Daoxue of the Song dynasty. By “Chinese learning” was meant “Chinese ethical principles of human relations and Confucian teachings,” so basically the Confucian tradition of ethics, while by “Western learning” was meant less science than its applications. A concrete example of this non-conflictual approach between science and religion may be seen in the essay “Renxue” 仁學, that is to say study of <i>ren</i> or benevolence, by Tan Sitong 谭嗣同, whose dates are 1865 to 1898, in which he links <i>ren</i>, benevolence, the supreme Neo-Confucian ethical value, indeed the supreme Confucian ethical value, with the then “cutting edge” idea in physics of “ether,” translated <i>yitai</i> 以太 in Chinese. <i>Yita</i>i is essentially a modern substitute for the Neo-Confucian use of Qi or “matter-energy,” especially in such as Zhang Zai that we’ve talked about. So “ether,” as in Zhang Zai, “ether” was for Tan “the basis of an egalitarian political and social agenda for reform.” Egalitarian! We could say that this is the first, thoroughly congenial encounter of Mr. Science and Democracy. Indeed, Tan’s attempt at synthesis —in effect a new rationality that incorporated science— went far beyond the mere wedding of science and Confucianism, for Tan also saw benevolence, <i>ren</i>, as the equivalent of Mozi’s universal love, <i>jian’ai</i> 兼愛, Buddhism’s compassion and mercy, cibei 慈悲, the Christian Holy Spirit, <i>linghun</i> 靈魂, and “the power of ‘chemical’ affinity,” <i>aili</i> 愛力, “and gravitational attraction,” <i>xili</i> 吸力. So a massive synthesis incorporating these ideas from the sciences of his time and the whole ethical tradition, not just of the Chinese but also of the Christian tradition, the Buddhist tradition. So Tan Sitong can be considered a form of “positive” scientism, that is to say discourse based on science that incorporates science into the structuring values of the new times. It in fact reveals perfectly where the future fault line will be found, when all the religious or humanistic components are pushed out of the equation, out of the public space. And here we are back to Yan Fu. To do that, to push the religious traditions out of the equation, was not his intention when he was promoting Social Darwinism, but it was very much the result because Yan Fu sought to replace the Chinese with a Western “essence,” a Western <i>ti</i>, so completely reversing things. That is, he used Western learning to attack Chinese ontology, epistemology, and ethics. I quote from Grace Shen: “Yan Fu noted that the wealth and power of Western nations sprang from their respect for the truth” —understand objective truth as opposed to subjective truths— “which in turn was a function of their basic freedom.” Why so? Well, because if you are devoted to the discovery of objective truth, then you cling to that no matter what the authorities say, what the ideology is, what the orthodoxy is, okay? So he sees this respect for truth as intimately linked to a basic freedom. “He clarifies,” continues Shen, “that Chinese people privilege orthodoxy and conformity, whereas Westerners follow their interests; Chinese maintain taboos, while Westerners are critical; Chinese value erudition while Westerners prize new knowledge.” In the name of John Stuart Mill’s “radically inductive logic” —that is to say everything has to be based on observation and induction from what is observed, okay?— Yan Fu attacked Chinese “intuitionism.” Something that we’ve seen indeed all the way along, especially perhaps in <i>Zhuangzi</i>, but it’s really a part of, well, say Mencius’ “four sprouts,” that <i>liangxin</i> 良心, which intuits what to do, what is the right thing to do. So Yan Fu attacks Chinese “intuitionism” as a mode of knowledge, of accessing knowledge, of interacting with the other world, precisely the <i>gan</i> that we have seen as such a fundamental concept all the way from the Warring States down to Zhu Xi, <i>gan</i>, to be moved, to be stirred, and therefore to understand something, like Zhuangzi standing on the bridge over the river and saying: I know that the fish are happy, because I’m standing here on this bridge. So Yan Fu attacks this “intuitionism” in the Chinese tradition and uses Social Darwinism—the survival of the fittest— to stir the Chinese to wake up to the need to make fundamental changes in their value system. In other words, he too was making use of science for extra-scientific—political—ends. “Ultimately,” says Grace Shan, “in Yan Fu’s writings and translations, authority stemmed not from the sciences themselves but from the teleology (the goal) of nationalism and the necessity of immediate action.”
