Hu Shi's Science View And Its Contemporary Revelation

Hu Shi is one of the leading figures who publicize 'Science' energetically during 54 periods, and also the first who introduces the Pragmatism into China. He adheres to a scientific and rational attitude for his lifetime, and has an examining eye on conventional thought, culture, institution, custom and figures over again, instead of following or believing blindly. Furthermore, he bends himself to the generalization of science. Thereout, there is a set of systematic idea about 'Science View' derived from his scientific practice behaviors.In his explanation of Science, he emphasizes that science is just a method, an attitude, or a spirit. Science does be for cognizance rather than application. So it is characteristic of demonstrativity, rationality and catholicity, and provided with oneself value.The core of Hu Shi's Science View is scientific spirit and scientific method. In his view, scientific spirit (including independence spirit, showing-doubt spirit, seeking-essence spirit and innovation spirit) is essentially a method of thinking independently, and an attitude of refusing to follow others blindly and judging independently; a method from doubts to thinking, and an attitude of no-believing anything without really being testified; a method of daring hypothesis and careful crosscheck, and an attitude of attaching importance to fact and evidence and seeking a true practicality; a method of innovating fearlessly and an attitude of exploring bravely. Hu Shi's academic career is spread out from an opinion-'method', moreover, the pragmatistic method is the scientific method he advocates for his life. He applies the method of western natural science to social science, such as literary history. At the same time, a slogan of pursuing one's study—supposing daringly and checking carefully, is put forward by him. According to his theoretical substance and the actual requires of Chinese society, he selectively develops Dewey's pragmatism and make it behave with special Chinese modality. The pragmatism with Chinese features has outstanding characters of simplizing the whole system of Pragmatism by Methodology. He has mastered Pragmatism by suspecting, experimental and historical method, instead of in-depth investigation into its history background and thought origin. His methodology consists of three steps, viz. suspecting, hypothesizing, and demonstrating. This is the soul of his pragmatistic methodology. In his eyes, finding hypothesis and proving hypothesis are two primary process in scientific method. He thinks that in the course of founding hypothesis, deduction and summarization are exercised by each other, and summarizing, or deducting, or summarizing again, all these is absolutely necessary. We can find he is a hypothesist in methodology, from his slogan and his statement about scientific method.Towards cultural construction and social development, the systematic study on Hu Shi's Science view will perform an important revelatory function in contemporary China.