Study Of Scientific Humanity

Study of scientific humanity has its important practical and theoreticalsignificance. With the great progress of human society brought by natural science,unprecedented plight of human development becomes to appear, including the humandeviation from nature, human deviation from human and human deviation fromthemselves. Thus, we must ponder what is science and how should science develop inorder to seek for resolution strategies. Theoretically, the considerable discussion on therelation between science and humanity and the postmodern anti-science thoughts haveput the problem of scientific humanity to us. Especially the postmodernism, usingscientific humanity as its sharp weapon, opposes and resolves scientific rationality,scientific objectivity and scientific methodology, and subverts the traditional view ofscience, making us have no choice but to face scientific humanity and rethink the issueof scientific outlook.Since the emergence of modern science, scientific humanity has been studied bythe scholars of different schools from various angles. Logical positivism establisheshuman status in science through confirming experience but rejects human subjectivityin scientific cognition which in fact negates the humanity of science. Popper asserts themetaphysical factor of irrationalism is the main impetus of scientific revolution.Lakatos brings metaphysics into the core of scientific research program and takeshuman factor for the inner part of science. Kuhn puts forward the essence of normalform is faith, choice of which is subjective and arbitrary. He then regards the humanityas the essence of science, affirming the humanity of science while negating science.Sutton tries to erect a kind of new humanism, taking science for its centre, throughemphasizing scientific spirit is the life of science. Polanyi’s tacit knowing theoryaffirms the participation of subjective activity in the scientific cognition process whichunifies science and humanity. Merton studies the social conditions of scientific activityfrom the perspective of sociology and raises that science is a social cause as well as a social constitution. SSK of postmodernism believes the formation of science hasnothing to do with nature, rather being constructed by scientists in the laboratory. Allthe views above have failed to find out the bases of scientific humanity.Bases of scientific humanity lie in the practical mode of human existence. Practiceis all the social active activities of human, through which human reform the materialworld objectively for their own survival and development. Human practice to nature isnot to adapt to nature automatically like other animals, but to reform natural objectsconsciously in accordance with people’s scale. To fit the goals and the needs of humanbeing, people transform being in itself into things for us. Human is a kind of objectivebeing which distinguished themselves from any other kind of animals. When theyproduce their physical materials, their own physical life and they themselves areproduced at the same time. Human essence is not born, but comes into being anddevelops only when people cognize and reform natural objects. People establish theiressence by putting their essence power into the external objects.As a practice, science possesses all the features of practice such as pointing tonatural, servicing human, reflecting people’s initiative, social and historical. Science isalso a kind of particular practical activity. Science is the basis and precondition forother human practice. As the highest liberating power, it is the highest expression ofinitiative. Science has the special significance to the establishment of the humanessence.Scientific humanity expresses itself in three aspects, human aspect, metaphysicalaspect and emancipatory aspect. Human aspect means science is related to human andis social. Metaphysical aspect means the guiding function of scientific spirit andconcept. Emancipatory aspect means science has powerful function of materialliberation and spiritual liberation. Among them, human aspect is the basic aspect ofscientific humanity whereas emancipatory aspect is the highest expression of scientifichumanity. Three aspects of science humanity are different dimensions of scientificpractice. Human aspect is the primary aspect of scientific humanity which is the basisand precondition of the other two. It is narraw humanity. Metaphysical aspect is themost typical expression of scientific humanity which expresses a kind of idealism metaphysical pursuit. Emancipatory aspect is the highest form of scientific humanitywhich is related with human essecnce.Marxist philosophy reverted abstracted human existing in ego consciousness,absolute spirit or sensitive intuition to real living human who engaging in creativeactivities and developing himself by practicing. Marxist philosophy made sensitivehuman activities as its starting point. In practical theory people in social practice arerealistic. People’s material production can conduct only when related with other peoplein society. The content and forms of human spiritural activities are from and decided bymaterial productive activities. In practical theory, human is creative and transcendentalexistence. People create themselves and set up their essence by reforming objectivenature. Human essence is not constant, but created and developed from time to timewhen human reforming nature. In this sense, the realization of human essence is a kindof creative and transcendence activity. Human’s creativity and transcendentual is theessential connotation of humanity.Human is the starting point and the final goal of Marxism. Marx and Engelsstudied science naturally and necessarily when they did researches on human being,human society and human liberation. Marx pointed out that nature science washumanity and for human. To understand human, we must understand nature sciencefirst. Natural science and human science would be one subject. The unity of science andhumanity is the conclusion of practical theory.Scientific humanity means science socialization and science technicalization.Science must go into the realistic life through the industry and change the relationshipbetween people by combined with the productive relationship. Science technicalizationcarries out scientific instrumental value. The realization of scientific instrumental valueis both the fundamental factor of human’s freedom and liberation and the physicalmeans to realize scientific objective value. But the instrumental value is not the onlyvalue of science. Only when people guide and restrain the instrumental value of sciencewith the objective value of science, can scientific activities benefit human developmentand bring out human essence. Therefore, there is no neutral science but science carryingvalue. Scientific humanity broke up the concept of objectivity without people. Instead,the concept of objectivity contains subject participation was brought out. Subjectcannot be eliminated from the scientific cognition activities and scientific practiceactivities. Objectivity couldn’t appear spontaneously. It appears only when the subjectparticipate and reveal actively. The subject is the premise and guarantee for scientificobjectivity. This concept of objectivity realized the unity of scientific objectivity andscientific humanity.In the narrow sense of humanity, science and humanity are much more different.They can profit from each other and tolerance, but not to achieve truly fusion. In thegeneralized sense of humanity, science shows humanity, it is the basic way to realizehumanity. Humanity is a part of science that should be contained in scientific meaning.And humanity is the highest goal of scientific cognition and practice activities. Scienceand humanity are unified.Marx had pointed out that the elimination of alienation and alienation are the sameprocess. The appearance of human’s survival and development dilemma is inevitably inthe process of human development. It won’t disappear automatically but to be destroyedby the development and industrialization of science and technology.