講題一：The Conceptual Basis of post-WW II Social Sciences in Early Modern & Modern European History and its Inadequacy for Understanding the Contemporary World（立基於歐洲近現代史的戰後社會科學概念，以及其在理解當代世界時的缺失）

日期： 2024/10/28

時間： 10:00~12:00

地點： 檔案館第二會議室

主持人： 雷祥麟教授（中研院近史所研究員兼所長）

主講人：王國斌R. Bin Wong教授（Distinguished Research Professor, UCLA）

主辦單位： 近史所

Abstract,
The post-WW II social science propositions asserted to be necessary to achieve a modern economy, a modern society, and a modern political system are the completed distillations of early modern and modern Western European history. The process of distillation began with the grand social theories formulated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but the magic elixir of social sciences was fully distilled in the first two to three decades after WWII. The social sciences offered to countries in non-Western world regions the promise of how to become modern—for instance in economics, Nobel laureate Douglass C. North stipulated the economic and political institutions necessary for initiating modern economic growth, while in terms of society and culture, Max Weber’s early 20th-century explanation of the religious beliefs beneficial to the development of capitalism simultaneously explained the failures of religions in non- Western world regions to foster cultural sensibilities to promote capitalism. Post-war political scientists formulated their broad understanding of the political modernization that they and their governments advocated on the basis of the historical experiences of Western societies that had achieved power and wealth. What these social science propositions failed to explain was how paths of historical change emerged in societies that were part of non-Western world regions and thus indicates some of the reasons the social sciences have had problems explaining the changes taking place in our contemporary world.