The Evolution Of Knowledge Concept And Knowledge Structure Of Modern Times In China

To be accepted by people, the academic ideology of social elites must be socialized in a form of knowledge, and become a spiritual force of social reforms. So, along with the drastic social changes in modern times of China(1840-1919) is the change of knowledge in a public sense. Changes happen in both traditional Chinese knowledge modernization and Western knowledge sinicization. Both traditional Chinese knowledge modernization and Western knowledge sinicization include the change of knowledge conception and structure.Ever since the Opium War, when China is in its hard time, the idea of “being practical” emerges and the economic theories based on traditional historical knowledge are reviewed. Meanwhile, with a military motivation of defeating the big powers, Chinese people’s attention is attracted by “Western technology” represented with gunboats and “Western information” in terms of history and geography. The Westernization Movement dreams of military self-improvement and hence has economic demands of getting rich. Western natural science and social science knowledge such as international laws is gradually introduced into China. After the Sino-Japanese war, Chinese pioneers begin to introspect the disadvantages of the feudal system, and finds that system modernization has become the demand of the time. In response, knowledge in the Western social science has been imported on a large scale while traditional knowledge is put under further criticism.After the foundation of the Republic of China, the state is of a republic system in name yet with a feudal autocracy as before. This reality is understood to be caused by people’s poor ideological quality,which brings about a problem of modernization of people’s quality. With the grasp of western scientific spirits and scientific system, scrutinizing the traditional knowledge under the heading of “world knowledge” becomes a habitual behavior. Western scientific principles work as rules for measuring traditional knowledge, leading to transformations of traditional knowledge in both conception and structure. The transformation of traditional knowledge, together with the eastwards spreading of Western knowledge conception and structure,forms a modern Chinese knowledge ecological system. Eastern knowledge and Western knowledge eventually integrate into a knowledge repertoire dominated by Western knowledge. This evolution process as a historical choice has its rationality,yet apparently with some deficiencies worthy of serious reflections.