Science Society Of China And Chinese Science And Culture

In summer of 1914, a few Chinese students studying in America, feeling the backwardness of the science of China, founded the "Science Society"in Cornell University, the next year it was reorganized into the Science Society of China, becoming a science society in the true sense. In 1918, the Science Society of China returned home, its institutional framework being perfected, and its causes being carried out one by one. In 1960, it finished its historical mission and was disbanded. The Science Society of China was the most influential, extensive science society with its mass and comprehensive character in the era of the Republic of China. Of the Science Society of China, the dissertation inspects the overall development course, scientific thought and practice as well, through synchronical and diachronical analysis, trying to discover its historical position and function in the course of the Chinese and Western cultural communication and the Chinese science's modernization turn. The development of the Science Society of China experiences a hard process of preliminary preparation, foundation, growth, frustration, and disorganization, which is a process of surviving in setbacks. In the aspects of aim, inner structure, cause planning etc., it takes models from the societies of the West, importing the system of democratic election and mechanism of academic exchanges. In the development course of more than forty years, the Science Society of China actively focuses on giving publicity to the science of China, the exploration of scientific mechanism, the reform of education, the construction of the discipline etc., therefore directly pushes forward the systematization of the science of China. In the aspect of ideological cognition, the Science Society of China understands science more completely and reasonably. It can take the scientific ground in the debate between science and metaphysics, in the scientizing movement, and always remains the independence of self-development. The dissertation basically confirms the positive function of the Science Society of China, and discloses its historical experience and lessons.