Introduction to R&D

What is R&D

• Science as the achievement of human spirit: knowledge system
• Science as an activity of human knowledge creation: scientific activity
• Science as a form of social organization: social system
• Science as the first productivity: scientific productivity
• Science as a method: scientific method
• Science as a culture: scientific culture
• Science as a dialogue between man and nature: Scientific Dialogue

The purpose of scientific research is to reveal the internal general laws of the research object and put forward a set of abstract theories that can fully describe and explain the research object

Developing theory is the most fundamental purpose of scientific research. Although, in the process of scientific research, we should comprehensively describe the basic situation and change process of the research object, this description is only to find out the causal relationship from the development process of things and abstract the theory that can express the universal law from the specific phenomenon.

Science as the achievement of human spirit: knowledge system

Ancient Greece believed that science was a kind of knowledge. επιστημη, scientia in Latin, refers to learning or knowledge. English science, German wissenschaft and French scientia are derived and transformed from this.

Plato once said: people often call science knowledge according to custom. In fact, we should give it another name. He advocated changing it to “reason”. In fact, his “reason” and “knowledge” are not much different.

Aristotle thinks that scientific knowledge is a kind of “knowledge about arguable things”.

Hippocrates: “I will try my best to cure your disease, but I am a scholar, and I pursue knowledge, not wealth and power.”

When western learning spread to the East in the 16th century, Chinese scholars corresponded science to “learning from things” and referred to it as “learning from things”. “The book of rites · University” says: “the knowledge is based on the object, and the object is based on the object”. Zhu Xi noted: “the so-called person who wants to achieve knowledge in the form of things is the one who wants to achieve my knowledge. He who wants to achieve knowledge in the form of things is the one who has no reason.” I.e. close; Poverty is the reason why people study things by contacting them. Until the second half of the 19th century, Japan still used the “Ge Zhi Xue” and changed its name to “science” when the industrial revolution arose.

In 1885, Kang Youwei first introduced the word “science” to Chinese people. In 1894-1897, Yan Fu translated science into “science” in his translation of the theory of heavenly evolution.

Science as an activity of human knowledge creation: scientific activity

Science should also be understood as a practical activity that forms and produces scientific knowledge and uses scientific knowledge.

Marx pointed out in 1844 (volume 25,120,97) that any individual activity belongs to social activity, and clearly proposed that scientific activity is a kind of social labor. “General labor is all scientific work, all discoveries and all inventions.”. Science belongs to general labor and is the field of spiritual production.

Dampier: “science can be said to be an organized knowledge of natural phenomena, and it can be said to be a rational study of the relationship between various concepts expressing natural phenomena.” (History of Science, 9)

Mason: “science is the continuous development of interrelated technology, experience and theoretical knowledge about nature accumulated in human history.”

Science as a form of social organization: social system

The so-called scientific social system refers to a social phenomenon that the scientific cause has become a relatively independent social department and professional department in the social structure. It reflects the relationship between science and society from the social role of scientists, scientific profession, scientific community and its activities and norms.

In 1919, M. Weber first took science as a social profession and studied people engaged in scientific activities as a social role.

In Science in History (1953), Bernard pointed out that the scientific system is a social fact, and the state of a country’s scientific system has become an important symbol to measure a country’s economic, political and military strength.

Science as the first productivity: scientific productivity

Productivity is the ability of people to conquer and transform nature to obtain material materials. Including labor materials, labor objects and workers.

Science as a method: scientific method

method, μετσοδοѕ, i.e. along the (correct) road. Hegel expressed the method as “the means and tools for people to grasp the object actively”. In logic (II, 532), it is written that “in the understanding of exploration, the method is also a tool, which is a certain means of the subjective aspect, and the subjective aspect has a relationship with the object through this means”.

In Bacon’s New Tools, science lies in sorting out perceptual materials with rational methods.

Pierce believes that science is a way to dispel doubt and obtain stable ideas.

Merton: science is “a unique way to prove the reliability of knowledge”.

Mason: “the scientific method is mainly a means to discover new phenomena and formulate new theories. Therefore, it is constantly expanding the human knowledge system. As long as the scientific method can be applied, the old scientific theories must be overthrown by the new theories.”

Therefore, the so-called scientific method is how to realize scientific knowledge, and it is the sum of the ways people follow and use various ways and means in scientific knowledge activities.

Science as a culture: scientific culture

“Culture” comes from the Latin “cultus”, which refers to the things developed by human cultivation, cultivation and education. It is opposite to the natural things.

Science is a branch of culture. There are two understandings of culture:

• “In a broad sense, it refers to the sum of the material and spiritual production capacity and the material and spiritual wealth created by human beings in the process of social practice”;
• “In a narrow sense, it refers to spiritual production capacity and spiritual products”.

Science is a very special culture. Although it grew up in the national cultural environment, once the scientific achievements are recognized, they are universal, public and unbiased, so they are supranational; Once it becomes an independent component of the cultural system, it has its own unique spiritual temperament:

1. Positive spirit;
2. Rigorous and accurate analytical spirit;
3. Open spirit; (borderless, no ultimate truth);
4. Democratic spirit (anti authority and superstition);
5. Creative and enterprising revolutionary spirit.

Science as a dialogue between man and nature: Scientific Dialogue

In the final analysis, many characteristics of science are derived from the interaction between man and nature. Therefore, Marx regards science as “the theoretical relationship between man and nature”, that is, the view that science is the dynamic understanding and reflection relationship between man and nature, and is a more general, abstract and profound philosophical generalization of the nature of science.