| This paper (On the Views of Science Social Functions during the First Half of 20th Century in ChinaYis based on the originated historical documents and the combination of ideology history and social history according to the Marxist historical viewpoint and method. It mainly studies the disputes among Chinese intellectuals, who disagreed with on each other about the relations between science and the nation, science and life, science and culture, science and the society. These disagreements brought out great good and bad effect on the Chinese ideology. Hence, the author puts forward his own suggestions about how to define rationally the social functions of science.Firstly, the paper describes how and why the science conception an changed so frequently in China in the first half of 20th century. At the period of 1900-1923,the science conception of "machine" or "skill" changed into the Theory of Evolution, which was soon replaced by natural science. After the famous debate about science and metaphysics in 1923, the Chinese conception of natural science, Marxist social science and the new Confucianism humanities stopped to be replaced by each other but began to exist and develop simultaneously. They all agreed to use science to save China, but they had different opinions on the contents and values of science, especially about how to prepare the social and cultural conditions for science development.Secondly, the paper probes into the process of cognizing the science function and the process of cultural consciousness. In modern China, the Chinese believed that science could save the country, could reform life and society. Chen duxiu, the leader of the New Culture Movement, declared that Mr. Democracy and Mr. Science "can secure any diseases in Chinese politics, morals and learning. In 1930s and 1940s, more and more Chinese began to concentrate science function on culture. They regarded science as a judge to tell whether a nation is civilized or savage, and concluded that "the only aim of the cultural movements in the past years is to make China scientific." Because there were different science definitions, the scientific culture they were working for had different contents and objectives, which appeared as scientism or cultural consciousness.Thirdly, the paper points out the key points and ideological and characteristics of each school of thought about the cognition on science function. In the first half of 20th century, according to their different attitude to Chinese and Western cultures, Chinese intellectuals were separated into three schools of thought, the Western who insisted on westernizing China and based science on the modem natural science from the West, the Marxist who based on science on scientific socialism, and the New Confucianism who based science on traditional Chinese classics, especially TheGreat Learning and The Doc trine of the Mean. As for the science function, they all looked forward to prosperous and universal science in China, hoped to save China with science and aimed at constructing scientific culture. Comparatively speaking, the Western focused on scientific methods, positivism, pragmatism and devoted themselves to imitating the West to alter the nature; the New Confucianism focused on the spiritual values of science and emphasized specially the teaching function of traditional ethical principles, while Marxist held on the theory that productive forces dominate the production relations and devoted themselves to reforming the society with science.Fourthly, the paper shows the author's personal suggestions of the rational cognition of science functions. The conclusion of this paper is that we should not only confirm our science cause by constructing scientific culture, strengthening science education and confining properly the functions of science, but also connect science with modernity by learning from experiences and from other countries, by criticizing the scientism rightly, by defining science comprehensively and systemically.
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