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Date(s)： 2019/04/11
Time： 10:00~12:00
Venue： Archives 2nd Conference Hall
Speaker：Prof. Sean Hsiang-lin LEI (Associate research fellow)
Disscussant： Porf. Huang Ko-wu(Distinguished research fellow)
Organizer： IMH
Abstract An intriguing but little noticed, puzzle exists in the historiography of science in modern China: While Tianyanlun (On Heavenly Evolution), the Chinese translation of Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics, is widely celebrated as THE most influential book in modern Chinese intellectual history, it received little credit in the history of modern science in China. Taking this puzzle as a clue, this paper argues that the publication of Tianyanlun by Yan Fu in 1898 was a watershed event since it popularized a distinctively novel vision of Western science. As indicated by the Chinese title, On Heavenly Evolution, Tianyanlun addressed the key concerns of Chinese literati, showing that the Chinese have failed to comprehend the “Way of Heaven (Tian),” namely, competition. In order to connect science with Tian, the “cosmic foundation of morality,” Yan Fu strategically downplayed the Western notion of “nature” throughout his book, even though its central thesis was based on Darwinian “natural selection.” When the May-4th intellectuals in the 1910s endeavored to replace Yan Fu’s “science without nature” with a more radical, modernist vision of science, they strove to “naturalize” the notion of Tian. Following their lead, historians thereafter have dismissed Tianyanlun as not truly a work of “natural” science but merely “social” Darwinism. By way of situating this foundational text/event in the context of science, this paper shows how the history of science can offer insightful and fresh perspectives on issues crucial to modern Chinese cultural and political history, such as the emergence of “the natural” and “the social” (as actors’ categories), the transformation of Tian, and the contentious relationship between science and morality.