Reflect And Attempt:Review Of Historical System Thoughts In New Period(1980——1989)

The thought of system theory is one of the strongest historical thoughts in1980s. With the modernization started, the introduction of the system theory has two different backgrounds:on the one hand, political history was faced with a serious crisis. Because of the excessive politicization and abusing over the Cultural Revolution, history had been turned into tools for political struggle; and the allusion history was widely accepted and practiced. This situation was destructive to the history research. Historians feel bored about the dogmatic and political history in the new stage. This is why the system theory takes place. On the other hand, a wide variety of foreign thoughts flow into China after the Reform Policy which provide enormous theoretical guidance for the development of Chinese historiography. Interdisciplinary research, and especially the connection of history and natural science have attracted increasing attention of Chinese historians, and it is the consensus shared by all historians that history research should focus on establish methodological system and explore new methods besides materialist conception methods.The first appearance of system theory into Chinese historical fields is an article named The Structure of Chinese Feudal Society:an Ultra-Stable system, which was published in1980by Jin Guan-Tao and Liu Qing-Fong. It was the first try to apply system theory and cybernetics to history research, which shocked the history research in the new period. In the first instance, system theory was used to inquire the long-term of feudal society, and Chinese feudal economic was precisely described and analyzed. The first try to introduce system theory caused two different voices; praise and criticism coexisted, which is an stimulate and promote for researchers to explore from an academic way the feasibility, the advantages and disadvantages and other issues of the introduction of the theory.System theory came to its climax from1984to1986. Natural science became a remarkable learning, as the science foundation of Information Age, system theory, cybernetics and information theory became the centre of attention. It includes four sides. The study of applying system theory to Chinese feudal structure became more and more mature, and system theory was used in some other fields such as The Thoughts history and the political history. Historians were devoted to the discussion about the relevant issues of system theory, such as its validity, how to import system methods into history research, its relations with Marxist historiography and so on. Academic publications strongly supported this discussion and published great quantity of articles. Academic forum and seminar had been summoned one after another. The hot atmosphere was intensified by debate among different opinions. In this period, theoretical probe of importing system theory into history was on the state of tending to mature.From the second half of1987, the heat of the system theory begins to cool down, and became increasingly dim until withdrawal from academic circle in1989. In this period, achievements of applying system theory were running low; investigation on the theory was at a standstill. The situation of historians’ adherence on the system theory is gone. The Ultra-stable theory of Jin Guan-Tao was severity criticized with the called anti-Marxism, the system theory thoughts at last evaporated.System theory thoughts were an initiatory attempt to combine the natural science and history, its experience and some inspirational theory legacy has been summarized. The principle of whole and comprehensive characteristics of system theory has been the basic idea of history research, meanwhile infused new connotation into Marxism history. This is enough to make the thought of system theory in the1980s have its own position in the development of the new era of Chinese history.