Life Enculturation And Knowledge Evolution

The late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China,as a period of social and cultural transformation in modern times,have left extremely rich cultural heritage for today.The question to be discussed in this paper is how the early years in learning life of modern scholars has influenced the academic purport and cultural practice of individuals in a transitional era where the old meets the new.In view of this,this paper holds that during this historical period(1880-1911),some modern scholars have conducted knowledge accumulation and evolvement as well as constructed their own rich cultural world by accepting the multi-dimensional immersion of life in their early cultural learning.In this process,the knowledge and emotional preparation provided by early learning life,public communicative patterns and habits,cultural psychology patterns,as well as embodied ideas and cognition constituted the connotation of this cultural world.It was this cultural world that promoted the individual to realize the identity transformation from traditional gentry to modern intellectual in the drastic social and cultural changes of modern times,or it provided nourishment for the individual modern scholar to grasp the historical opportunity of the transitional era and make contributions in historical and cultural aspects.Through describing the learning life occurred in home and school space,the material environment and embodied practice,Chapter 1 to Chapter 4 of this thesis interprets how early learning life has influenced the individuals in their contribution to different aspects of the culture transformation era.The interpretation is conducted in the aspects of knowledge and emotion,communicative pattern,cultural psychology and embodiment notion respectively.From the knowledge preparation provided by early learning life,the accumulation and evolution of old learning and new knowledge have different influences on different modern scholars,following different paths and ways.For Jiang Menglin,his multi-source knowledge system led him to a "multi-line" theory of cultural recombination,which is a mixture of China and the West.Different from the path of reconciliation between China and the West,Hu Shi's interpretation and transformation of the academic tradition of China is a single line extraction type of transformation.As far as Liu Yazi and Gu Jiegang are concerned,the tradition of the old learning in the early years has provided the scholars with important enlightenment and initiation.For the emotional preparation and nourishment brought by the home life,the memory of the family life bonded with the old learning and new knowledge provided the emotional savings and transition for the young scholars to leave their homeland and family and create a new life.On the level of communicative action pattern,the public communication in the early school life made a generation of scholars in the transitional era learned public communication patterns of behavior and habit.The public communicative behavior habit helped individuals constantly blend into the urban public space,so as to complete the person's identity exchange from traditional gentry to modern intellectual.At the same time,to a certain extent,they promoted and sublimated the rational connotation of publicity of the urban communication living space of a modern republican society.The various material-body environment is everyday life constitute the"heterogeneous collection" on which early cultural learning depends.Through immersion in it,in the early years,modern scholars acquired different cultural psychology model(embodied in cultural psychology,aesthetic psychological images,and psychological images of "the integration of object-self"),which stimulate the formation of cultural ideas,become the artistic inspiration of literary creation,or trigger cognitive and emotional impulse of industrial civilization.The body practice in the early years of learning and living gave the modern scholars in the transition era the interwoven body concept,and this concept and force conflict converges and influences their cultural thinking and practice about the body.To sum up,this paper uses the historical narrative method of education to reveal how the early years in learning life influenced the cultural practices and contributions made by scholars in the transitional era,and provides a micro perspective for observing the cultural and social changes in the modern society.