In the original concept, the "Humanistic Reading Thought Map" was just an attempt to collect publishing suggestions - the industry needed to understand what shining works the academic community had found, and the academic community also hoped that the publishing industry would pay attention to the jade they found. So in the last month of 2021, Book Review Weekly gathered the strength of the entire editorial department to ask the following three questions to the humanities and creators who are in contact with us:
Questions you will continue to think about in 2021;
Which work you are following in 2021 that has not attracted sufficient attention or has not been introduced for publication;
What kind of original Chinese works do you expect to see?
In the end, we get far beyond the level of "recommendations". As the New Year approached, the editorial board withdrew a total of 74 responses, with a total word count of more than 50,000 words. The words with both emotional and speculative density weave a reading thought map that presents the connection between tradition and modernity, the future and the present, and their reading and inquiry in the dimension of their own lives or research record 2021, although meandering and turbulent, but still full of desire for sincere love and the need to reshape the connection between people.
This is Zhu Ziqiang's answer to the above three questions.
Zhu Ziqiang is the dean of Xingyuan College of Ocean University of China, the director of the International Children's Literature Research Center, a professor and doctoral supervisor.
1. Questions for continuous thinking
Because of my academic thinking on children's literature research, and because I myself have been teaching the core general education course "The Way of the University" in the school's Xingyuan College, in 2021, I will continue to think about the importance of the scientific cultivation of humanities scholars and the integration of humanities and sciences.
When I wrote "On the Interdisciplinary Paradigm of Chinese Children's Literature Studies" (published in Chinese Literature Studies, No. 4, 2021), the term "paradigm" as a key word was taken from Thomas Kuhn's influential book The Structure of the Scientific Revolution. For the development of scientific research, the "paradigm" is an extremely important concept. Although Kuhn's concept of "paradigm" is proposed for natural science research, natural science research and humanities research have similarities, such as both have disciplines, research methods, reasonable problems, and need to construct theoretical systems, so Kuhn's "paradigm" is undoubtedly a concept that can be transplanted into the humanities.
At the beginning of the occurrence of the discipline of Chinese children's literature, there was a potential "paradigm" represented by Zhou Zuoren's research. In the process of extracting and manifesting this potential paradigm, I discovered the "natural science" in the humanities and discussed "scientificity" as an important connotation of the interdisciplinary paradigm of Zhou Zuoren's children's literature research. I pointed out: First, in Zhou Zuoren's knowledge system related to the study of children's literature, there is biology belonging to the natural sciences, as well as knowledge of psychology, cultural anthropology, mythology, children's studies and other disciplines with natural science connotations; second, Zhou Zuoren creatively transformed the knowledge of natural science into the "ideological revolution" in the field of children's literature as an organic part of the "ideological revolution" of the May Fourth New Literary Movement, and put forward the "child-oriented" view of children that became the ideological cornerstone of Chinese children's literature during the period of occurrence Third, Zhou Zuoren consciously regarded science as a correct way of thinking, believing that "scientific common sense" made people stand on the position of correctly looking at things and thinking about solving problems.
Known as an epoch-making scientist, Di Lishi had a great influence on Zhou Zuoren's thinking. Zhou Zuoren has dozens of articles mentioning the influence of Misty on his own thinking, scholarship, and even his outlook on life. He made this assessment of Therashi's academic research: "His advantage is that he can integrate the art and science, so that he understands everything and has no disadvantages of bias." To "understand everything," science is an extremely important dimension, and the absence of this dimension produces "the disadvantage of bias." "Integrating art and science", Zhou Zuoren's words deserve to be carefully remembered by humanities scholars.
2. Books worth paying attention to
Because I study children's literature, and because I take a general studies course, "The Way of the University," two lectures on the issue of "tradition and modernity," I attach great importance to the study and reflection on the issue of "modernity." In a sense, the emergence of this new system of the modern world since the Enlightenment is also the result of the scientific revolution. Science is a culture, science is a worldview. The true humanities cannot place themselves outside of the scientific culture and live and die without contact. The same is certainly true of individual humanists.
In 2021, I continue to read a number of scientific works related to the humanities, including the book "Mathematics and the Quest for Knowledge" by mathematical philosopher M. Klein, which I think is particularly worthy of serious reading. The book describes the development of mathematics, the most powerful tool for exploring the physical world, and discusses the relationship between mathematics and knowledge exploration.
Mathematics and the Quest for Knowledge, by M Klein, translated by Liu Zhiyong, Fudan University Press, May 2005.
We understand that Galileo deviated from Aristotle's seemingly correct paradigm of physical explanation of the occurrence of phenomena, quantifying physical phenomena and expressing them in mathematical formulas. Newton inherited and carried forward this important paradigm of modern physical sciences by Galileo and wrote the great work "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy". Because Newton applied mathematical principles to physics, he made the "most famous contribution" of "unifying phenomena in the heavens and underground", changing the previous "chaotic" worldview and helping us correctly understand the physical world in which we live. For myself, under Klein's guidance, I was learning to understand the nature of things through understanding mathematics as a tool of knowledge.
3. Expected original works
In 2021, as a judge, I participated in the judging of the 11th National Outstanding Children's Literature Award, the Cao Wenxuan Children's Literature Award, the Qin Wenjun Children's Literature Innovation Award and other awards. In the field of novel writing that I have focused on, I have seen both gratifying achievements and the crux of the future.
I believe that "growing" writing is the "lifeblood" of the development of Chinese children's literature and art, and I look forward to China's original children's literature, especially the creation of long novels, to achieve overall breakthroughs and progress in "growth" writing in the near future, because in the dimension of narrative literature, whether it is an individual writer, or a group of writers in a country and a nation, the ability to "grow" to write is its core artistic ability, and even the ultimate artistic test.
Specifically, I hope that our novel creation will be structured less "juxtaposed" stories and "loose" stories, and that we will make a contribution to the writing of "developmental" stories. "Growing up" writing prescriptively defines the structure of the story. Although the "development" story does not necessarily lead to the writing of "growth", the writing of "growth" must necessarily use the "development" story.
Author | Zhu Ziqiang
Edit | Lu Wanting, Li Yongbo, Luo Dong
Proofreading | Xue Jingning