The Three Stages And Meanings Of The Viewpoint Of Science Of Liang Qichao

This thesis is mainly about the research of the main content, characteristics and meanings of Liang Qi-chao's view of science. In the opinion of this thesis, Liang's view of science can be divided into three stages of development, that is the early stage, the middle stage and the late stage. From the early period of 1890's to 1898, it is the early stage of Liang's view of science. In this stage, on the basis of furthered undersdanding of science in modern China, Liang has accepted science from many different levels, not only from the superficial level of technique, but from the deep level of academic theory. However, on the whole, Liang's view of science in the early stage is limited in the traditional mode of thinking, and thus has the problem of dualism, which especially reflects on his attempt to mix Western learning and Chinese learning, science and morality. From the end of 1890's to about 1920, Liang's view of science has come into the middle stage. During this stage, affected by the translated western books of Japanese, Liang's view of science has obvious tendency of scientism, which mainly embodys on the following aspects, such as the generalized understanding of the theory of evolution, advocating the use of the methods of natural science and attempting to reform the sphere of learning and knowledge by the methods of natural science. The late stage of Liang's view of science begins from his travel to Europe in 1918 and becomes mature in the following period of the argument about science and metaphysics. In this stage, Liang has made a deep and whole reflection and criticism about the tendency of scientism in his former stage, such as the function of scientific methods, the effect of the law causality and the reasonability and justification of the knowledge of science. Just on the above basis, Liang's view of science has transformed from scientism to humanism.In the three stages of development of Liang's view of science, on the one hand, there is the disruptions of thought, for example ,each stage has different contents and characteristics; on the other hand, there is the continuity of thought, for instance, as a whole body of thought, each stage of Liang's view of science has a coherent clue, which is to pay close attention to the problem of modernity.The three stages of development of Liang's view of science have significant meanings in the history of thought and philosophy in China. First of all, they have furthered the understanding of science in modern China. Furthermore, the transformation in the late stage of Liang's view of science has in great degree influnced the development of Chinese philosophy in 20th century.