Because of different meanings, the definition of historiography can be summarized into two kinds in connotation.
History in a broad sense is the unity of "history has two meanings" produced by the simultaneous training of "history", including: (1) the objective existence and development process of human society in the past completely independent of human consciousness; (2) Historians create spiritual production practices and products by describing and exploring this objective existence, process and its laws. The narrow sense of historiography does not include the former, especially the latter. History in a narrow sense is the unity of spiritual production practice, and what it creates belongs to ideology. As far as its nature is concerned, there are different definitions of "activity", "learning" or "scholarship", "knowledge system", "science", "art", "semi-science and semi-art" and "synthesis" due to the different angles and starting points of historians' investigation.
Before the birth of Marxist history, people's definition of history was generally broad, that is, the definition of history and the definition of history were often consistent, and few people made a strict conceptual distinction between them. "History" and "history" in English are the same word: history. According to the fourth edition of Oxford Advanced English-Chinese Learning Dictionary, the first meaning of history refers to "history"-the study of past events; The second meaning is "history"-a thing of the past, especially a recognized thing in the overall sense; The third meaning actually comes from the first meaning-a systematic description of past events. So "history" and "history" are its original meanings.
The process of Chinese and western understanding of historiography is basically the same. The concept of "historiography" in ancient China also developed from the understanding of "history", or it was originally included in "history". According to Mr Qu's research, generally speaking, the meaning of "history" in ancient China has experienced the development process of historians, history books, historical events and historiography. The concept of historiography may have originated from the year when Zhao became king in the Sixteen Countries Period of the Eastern Jin Dynasty-319 (Taixing two years in the Eastern Jin Dynasty). At that time and in the next century and a half, people did not give a clear explanation of its connotation. However, getting rid of the dependence on Confucian classics and becoming a completely independent department in official studies is of great significance to the development of ancient historiography in China. Later, there was the content of compilation and philology; By the time of Ganjia in Qing Dynasty, historiography was endowed with historical narrative skills and historical understanding methods. To sum up, in ancient China, the highest level of people's understanding of the concept of historiography was that historiography was a specialized and technical knowledge about how to recognize, describe or compile past events. This understanding is similar to the definition of "history is art" by modern western historians. In the history of the development of ancient historiography in China, the "history" as the objective existence of human society in the past and the "historiography" as a kind of special knowledge that people know and describe its activities and results have finally achieved a preliminary separation, which is the result of thousands of years of exploration by ancient historians and one of their greatest achievements in historiography. It is precisely because "historiography" is born out of the hard shell of "history" that, in the eyes of contemporary historians, "history" and "historiography" are two concepts with different connotations and essences, and the answers to what they are belong to different ontological categories. But when people define them, they are like a double-faced monster-they are used interactively and intertwined. Therefore, the definition of historiography is not much better than that of the ancients, and it is often impossible to completely divide the duality of Cleo. When they define "what is a historian" or "what is history", they are actually defining "historiography" instead of "history". Sometimes they combine training at the same time, which has two meanings. If we analyze it from the perspective of historical ontology, people will inevitably regard its definition as an ideological definition of the concept of "history", thus drawing the conclusion that its historical view is essentially an idealistic historical view. If we analyze the actual content of their explanation and the overall context of the text, it is not difficult to see that they have defined the connotation of historiography in a narrow sense. For example, Liang Qichao, a master of modern Chinese studies and the initiator of the "new historiography" revolution, wrote at the beginning of his book "China Historical Research Law": "Who is a historian? Describing the continuous activities of human society, checking its total achievements and finding its causal relationship are also a reference for the activities of modern ordinary people. " The "history" here obviously refers to "historiography"; Moreover, the book "China Historical Research Law" is also a question of how to study history, not what history is. Of course, most historians adopt the traditional method of simultaneous training. As Du said: "Generally speaking, the so-called history is nothing more than events that actually happened in the past (in short, the past) or records of events that actually happened in the past (past records)."
The definition or interpretation of historiography today can be said to be different.
"activity" theory. Mr. Qu said in the book "Outline of the History of Chinese Historiography": "The comprehensive activity of knowing, recording and writing the history of human society is historiography." Mr. Qu's definition is consistent with the content of his book. Because in ancient China, historiography mainly existed in the form of cultural accumulation activities attached to political activities, which has been fully proved by the system of historians and museums. Although historiography began to become a specialized knowledge in the period of the Sixteen Countries in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, although there were many private acts of writing history in the development of ancient historiography in China, the characteristics of "comprehensive activities" with both cultural activities and political activities have not changed.
"Learning" theory. In the book Introduction to History edited by Mr. Wu Ze, the definition of history is: "History is the study of the development process and laws of human society."
History is half science and half art. The origin of this statement is more complicated. Whether history is science or art, or both, can be traced back to the Roman Empire in the 2nd century. The first person to identify this problem was Lucianos (about 120- 180) in Greece and Rome. About 125- 192. The old translation of Lucian is now based on Lucian and Lucian's English version). Luki Anus wrote about 80 essays in the traditional dialogue style, covering literature, art, philosophy, rhetoric and religion. Among them, there is a monograph on historical criticism, On Writing History, which can be positioned as the first monograph on historical theory in the history of western historiography. Luki Anus put forward the epistemology and methodology of historical ontology from the aspects of historical task or purpose, essence, value and cognitive method, the subjective consciousness structure of historians, the collection and processing of historical materials, the expression forms of historical works, and the general standards for judging the quality of historical works. And reveals the authenticity and essential characteristics of history relative to literature and art (such as eulogy, poetry, drama and other forms of expression). He believes that although history is supplemented by appreciation, it also needs to use appropriate literary expressions, such as "beauty of style", "beauty of truth" and "beauty of organization", but these are not things that constitute the essence of history; Judging from its characteristics, essence and purpose, history is a practical knowledge, not an appreciative knowledge like poetry.
In Luki Anus's view, "it is indeed a great disaster of historiography to make no distinction between poetry and history". Luki Anus's analysis of the similarities and differences between "poetry and history", "history of practice" and "history of appreciation" has opened the door for later historians to argue whether history is science or art. In modern western countries, whether objectivists put forward that history is empirical science, "history is science, neither too much nor too little" or relativists put forward that history is art, "history is half science and half art" and so on.
In the field of contemporary China history, historical theorists have taken over the issue of Luchian Nast. Historians who insist that history is scientific, on the one hand, along the cognitive path initiated by Luki Anus, determine authenticity as one of the essential characteristics of history from the difference between history and literature; On the other hand, along the dialectical, historical and materialistic cognitive road initiated by Marx and Engels, from the perspective of historical ontology and historical ontology, this paper profoundly expounds the objective reality of historical research objects, thus laying a solid foundation for history. Other historians who hold relativism or even eclecticism view of history also continue Lu Ji-Anus's cognitive path, but the difference is that what was excluded by Lu was smuggled into the content of historical essential characteristics, making it something contained in historical essence, and then on this basis, the old tune of "half ... half" was essentially repeated. Mr. He Zhaowu's historical theory is a "super-science that is both scientific and unscientific", which can be regarded as a "half-part" ... half-part "theory in contemporary China edition.
At the end of 1980s, Mr. He Zhaowu put forward the famous proposition of "pseudo-problems in historical research", arguing that "historical science should be modernized" and "all specious pseudo-problems in the past should be re-criticized and clarified by historians". This theory has had a considerable influence in the history circle of China. As a "pseudo-question", he first clarified the long-term stagnation or long-term stagnation of China feudal society. In the 1990 s, his clarification work quickly traced back to the category of historical ontology and historical ontology, saying, "Is history a science?" As a quasi-pseudo-problem-He Laoshi didn't directly identify it as a "pseudo-problem", but thought it was a manifestation of "only scientific viewpoint", so we called it a quasi-pseudo-problem-to clean it up. From his published articles, such as Reflection on History, Duality of History, Duality of History, Historian, History and History, and Preface of History and History collected in his academic and cultural essays, etc. It is not difficult to find that his history as a humanities subject is "super-scientific".
"History itself contains two levels. The first level (history I) is the understanding or recognition of historical facts or materials, and the second level (history II) is the understanding or interpretation of the first level (history I). "
"The data given by History I can be' reality', that is, the view that everyone agrees (or can agree) ... History II is essentially a process of thinking structure ..."
"History II also includes two parts, namely, rational thinking and empirical ability, and the combination of the two becomes historical rationality. Rational thinking is the reason why it agrees with science; Experience ability is the reason why it is equal to art, and it is also the reason why it is different from science ... Therefore, history is both science and not science; It needs both science and non-scientific things ... that is, our sensitivity to the spiritual experience we need to know history is essentially similar to the sensitivity of art. "
"The key to history becoming history lies in history II, not in history I. History is science and history is philosophy."
"To treat history scientifically, we must recognize the non-scientific components in history." Otherwise, "history is not even science, let alone humanities (it is both scientific and non-scientific, so it is super-scientific, but not anti-scientific)."
He Zhaowu's Reflections on History and On the Duality of History are as follows. After his dichotomy of "history ⅰ" and "history ⅱ" was put forward, some young historians got inspiration from it, and then distinguished the so-called "history ⅲ". It can be seen that dichotomy has contributed to the refining of history: it has opened up a road of structuralism or hierarchical research in the study of historical ontology. As for whether the concept of history itself can make such a fine and distinct hierarchical distinction, no one has delved into it.
Throughout Mr. He's related discussions, it can be summarized as follows: history is the most essential and core part, which is composed of people's research, understanding and experience of history. It is a humanities subject with science, philosophy and art, but it is not science, philosophy and art, nor is it empirical.
This historical interpretation is actually a debate between Luji and Anus. Different from Lu Ji, Mr. He combines Lu Ji's "practice theory of history" and "appreciation theory of history", making history androgynous. In other words, through sex-change surgery, history returned to its naive and uncertain childhood from the scientific age at the end of the 20th century.
According to Mr. He Zhaowu's related exposition, the duality of history is rooted in the duality of history. The so-called "history has its duality argument, that is, as a natural person, human history obeys natural and inevitable laws, but as a free and self-disciplined person, he is the master of his own history and decides his own orientation". In this way, the general connotation of the historical definition that people usually understand-the objective process of human society-is greatly simplified as human history, and not only the "class" disappears, but also the connotation of "society" is removed. Both the so-called duality of history and the so-called duality of history are actually rooted in the duality of "people" in the sense of individual attributes. When explaining what history is, Mr. He overemphasized the "freedom and self-discipline" of "people" who were completely individualized by him. When discussing the characteristics of history, we equate the general characteristics of humanities with the characteristics of history. "So this is the reason for crying!"
"scientific" theory. 1902, John Bagnell bury (1861-1927), a British positivist historian, was an important representative of the Cambridge school of history. Acton (1834- 1902) was appointed as a professor of modern history at Cambridge university. In his inaugural speech "Historical Science", he ended with the following sentence: "History is a science, neither more nor less." This is a famous saying quoted by historians when discussing what history is. There are three representative views on "science" in the field of contemporary China history: the theory of "science" in a broad sense; The theory of "concrete empirical science with particularity, comprehensiveness, wholeness and authenticity"; "Integration" theory.
The general theory of "science" is the most common definition of history. For example, the new edition of Ci Hai published by 1999 has a chapter of "history": "also known as" history ". A branch of social science. The science of studying and expounding the specific process of human social development and its regularity. " Another example is the definition of historiography in the preface of Wu's Introduction to Historiography: "Historiography is a science of reflection, a science of exploring various specific historical studies and their internal laws."
The theory that "concrete and empirical science has particularity, comprehensiveness, wholeness and authenticity" In the book Theory and Method of History, Mr. Li discusses what is the history of science and its fundamental difference from general history in terms of "history is the basis of science", "characteristics and tasks of historical science" and the research object of historical science. According to his exposition, history can be divided into two types: one is the general history before the emergence of Marxist historiography, which is not a science, but at best a specialized knowledge system that describes and studies the objective existence and process of human society in the past; One is the history of Marxism, which is the only history of science so far. To be exact, the history of science is a concrete empirical science with distinctive and important characteristics such as particularity, comprehensiveness, integrity and authenticity, which is "under the guidance of the general laws provided by Marxist philosophy and through the analysis and research of countless historical phenomena, events and historical figures of all nationalities and countries in the world".
Different from most historians in the past, Mr. Li correctly distinguished historical science from philosophy, especially Marxist philosophy of historical materialism, general social science, literature and other disciplines from three aspects: research object, task and characteristics, thus determining the objective and realistic special research object for historical science and stipulating its special tasks. The definition of historiography or historical science given by most historians always confuses the research objects and tasks of historical science and historical materialism philosophy. For example, the item "History" in the Dictionary of Historical Theory published later by Li Zhu comprehensively and systematically reflects the research results of China's historical theory in the new period. This paper absorbs the connotation of the concept of historical science in Li's two articles "History is the Foundation of Science" and "Characteristics and Tasks of Historical Science". But at the same time, it still regards the research object of historical materialism philosophy-"the history of human social development"-as the only research object of Marxist historical science. The research object and task of Li Zhuzhong's historiography-"under the guidance of the general laws provided by Marxist philosophy, through the analysis and research of countless historical phenomena, events and historical figures of all nationalities and countries in the world, we can understand the special laws and characteristics of its historical development"-is regarded as one of the main tasks of Marxist historiography after a slight change in expression; "Revealing the universal law of the historical development of human society from primitive society to socialist society", "Pointing out the direction for socialism and * * * productism in historical progress, and providing scientific theoretical and historical basis for the proletariat to understand and transform the world" are all included in the main tasks of Marxist historical science. The content of this article is actually a "mixture" of related contents of pear and bamboo on the basis of the content of "History" in Ci Hai. While undertaking his own special tasks and studying special categories, science history completely undertook all the tasks and research objects of historical materialism philosophy. What is the burden of historical science? "Integration" theory. In the discussion of what is history in the field of historians in the new period, Mr. Wang gave a new and distinctive definition of history. In the article "Contemporary China Historical Thoughts and the Development of Marxist Historical View", in view of the fact that "people usually think that history is a historical work, or rather the historical knowledge expressed in these historical works", this intuitive understanding of history is "not comprehensive and profound". From the perspective of "broad understanding", a brand-new, "comprehensive, profound" and clear definition of history is given: "History is the spiritual production practice and product created by historians as the research subject and interacting with historical objects through certain ways and means of thinking and understanding, that is, historical knowledge." In this statement, Mr. Jiang did not involve the concept of "historical existence", but from the full text of Mr. Jiang, he regarded the concept of "historical object" as a historical existence in the sense of "historical existence". Therefore, according to his related exposition in the article, we can draw the following conclusions: "Historian" and "historical existence" are two prerequisite elements of historical research activities as spiritual production practice; Historical thinking mode, historical cognitive means, historical object, historical research spirit production practice (historical research activities) and historical knowledge are the five basic elements of history. The historical definition defined by Mr. Jiang is indeed more comprehensive than the existing historical definition. Mr. Jiang called it "neo-Marxist historiography", and defined it as "an integrated science based on science, which inherently combines positivism, abstraction, value and artistry" according to its integration in historical understanding and comprehensive characteristics in the object field.
Although most of the above definitions or explanations of historiography are determined by people who are close to or exist in the history of literature, in logical order, they are basically consistent with the natural historical process of historiography's own evolution and people's understanding of it in the history of thought. "History has two meanings" and the theories of modern people's activities, learning or learning, knowledge system, super science or semi-science, semi-art and science can all be regarded as the objective existence facts corresponding to history for the first, second, third and fourth times in its development process. Among them, the general "science" theory and the other two historical explanations in the "science" theory reflect two different periods in the fourth development era of history respectively; As for the latter, more precisely, it is a manifestation of the objective existence of contemporary historical practice in the form of historian theory, that is, it is the theoretical result of historical theorists' abstract understanding of contemporary historical practice. However, there are different opinions in China historians today, which is only a practical reflection of the confusion caused by the increasingly complex and diverse chaotic reality of historical practice in historians' minds; Moreover, their respective definitions of history are largely influenced by the academic background of the definer and the specific content of the research object.
In the definition of modern historiography, as far as the development of China's future historiography is concerned, the more meaningful ones are: He Zhaowu's "super science", Li's "concrete empirical science with particularity, comprehensiveness and authenticity" and Jiang's "integrated science". Among them, although Li and Jiang's two theories were obtained in different ways from different analytical angles and the same angle, their understanding of historical characteristics is basically the same, so they can be further integrated into one school. As far as the current research situation is concerned, if it is possible to form a theoretical school with China characteristics in the future study of China's historical ontology, then they are undoubtedly the theoretical basis for the establishment and development of the school worthy of citation. The historical definition of this book will be determined on the basis of Li Hejiang. Because history is not only an activity, not only a specialized knowledge or knowledge, not only a knowledge system, but also a special subject with scientific research objects and tasks. For China's Marxist historiography, it is not only a general science, but also a complete science in the sense of scientific knowledge.
For a historian, history can be a skillful or skilled professional means to make a living, a way for him to learn the necessary cultural qualities from history or to know himself from history, and a beneficial spiritual activity for him to improve his cultural and artistic experience and appreciation ability. Of course, individual historians can also be non-Marxist historians and use other historical views other than Marxist historical materialism to guide their own historical research; Moreover, not every historian and every specific historical practice must undertake the task of revealing the special laws of the historical movement of a certain nation or country. However, such things only come from the subjective understanding of historical subjects, the particularity of this form and means of understanding and the particularity of historical application, or the special phenomena that happen to individual historical subjects, which come from the characteristics of a certain stage of historical development, rather than from the research objects and tasks determined by history itself, let alone from the reality of today's historical development, and cannot be the basis for denying that history is a science.
In terms of characteristics, although history has more or less the general characteristics of other social sciences and even humanities (such as literature and art), it has become an independent science not because of these general characteristics, but because it is rooted in its own research objects and tasks, which distinguishes it from other social sciences and humanities. The most remarkable and important thing is that it has special characteristics compared with philosophy, and its comprehensive and holistic characteristics are compared with general social sciences, history,
Therefore, any definition or explanation that historiography is unscientific cannot be used as the basic material to redefine historiography.
History is a science. There are generally two reasons for its scientific nature: one is the objective reality and authenticity of its research object. The objects of historical research-historical phenomena, historical events, historical figures, etc. All the nationalities and countries in the world, as well as the facts and processes of the historical movements they formed, are all objective realities of historical existence, which are objective reality and authenticity, regardless of the subjective will of historical acquaintances. The first is the task it undertakes. The task of history is to reveal the special laws and characteristics of the historical development of all nationalities and countries in the world. Historical research is a cognitive activity aimed at exploring the special laws of historical development of human society. Only by these two articles, history has the scientific nature of general science. The general basis for judging the scientific nature of a subject is: (1) "The object of study must be objective reality, because as long as it is objective reality, it may have its inherent development law"; (2) It "must be a cognitive activity aimed at exploring the development law of the object". History clearly meets these two requirements. But this kind of history can't be called a real historical science, because it only has the necessary premise to become a science, but it doesn't have the sufficient premise to become a complete form of scientific knowledge. To become a complete scientific knowledge form, a discipline needs to meet the requirements of the third level: "A complete scientific knowledge form is based on the premise of revealing the laws of things and then explaining the reasons of things according to the laws of things themselves (that is, their internal relations)."
So far, such a truly scientific history in the sense of scientific knowledge form is only Marxist history. "The emergence of Marxist historical view is based on the establishment of Marxist historical materialism. This view of history provides scientific theoretical guidance for history, which makes it show tenacious characteristics different from other historiography in the past and shows distinctive scientificity. " The important feature of Marxist historiography in thinking method is that we only know history from the history itself, not from the clouds in the sky or people's hearts. In other words, Marxist historiography first determines the objective nature of historical research objects, and studies the whole history of human society as a natural historical process, thus realizing profound changes in the starting point of historical research. "It firmly believes that as long as we proceed from tenacious facts, we can truthfully reveal the truth of history." Secondly, "the practical application of Marxist historiography to historical materialism has obtained methodological guidance for studying the inevitable relationship between historical phenomena, thus making historiography truly an empirical science that studies the regularity of things and describes the real historical process according to its laws." "To make history a science, the most important foundation is to explore the laws of historical movements of human society. However, the history of philosophical development so far shows that only Marxist philosophy (specifically, historical materialism) has truly revealed the basic laws of human historical movement so far. So, the problem is simplified to this point. Only under the guidance of Marxist historical materialism can history become a real science. " Accordingly, the scientific nature of China's history not only has the general requirements that the scientific nature of a discipline must meet, but also belongs to the category of Marxist history. In other words, the scientific nature of Marxist history fundamentally determines the scientific nature of China history.