Climate change has become the focus of attention in the world today, and the resulting extreme weather events not only endanger human life and property, but also affect human history and cultural development. Therefore, more and more scholars and researchers in humanities and history have devoted themselves to the discussion of this field. On December 16, 2023, the 9th session of the "International Frontier Academic Paper Reading Conference on the History of Science" organized by the Department of History of Science and Technology and Archaeology and the Center for Cross-Cultural Science and Technology Exchange and Silk Road Civilization of the University of Science and Technology of China was held online. With the theme of "Understanding Climate: A Cultural and Historical Perspective", this study was led by Bo Chen, a Ph.D. student at Peking University, Guo Qing, a Ph.D. student at Nankai University, and Qiu Zhenwu, a Ph.D. student at Tsinghua University and a lecturer at Nanjing Normal University. The panelists were Erling Agøy, a research fellow at the Joseph Needham Institute at the University of Cambridge and a visiting research fellow at the University of Oslo, Qiao Yu, an associate professor at the School of History at Capital Normal University, and Sun Mengmeng, a special research assistant at the School of Humanities at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
博尔琛分享了Mark Carey教授的文章“Climate and History: A Critical Review of Historical Climatology and Climate Change Historiography”。 文章探讨了气候历史研究的四个重要领域，分别是气候重建、社会影响与响应、气候知识的使用和滥用、气候文化的建构与感知。
Climate reconstruction is a research method that recreates past climate information through natural archives or social archives. Scholars from the fields of climate history, historical climatology, and paleoclimatology are involved, making it an interdisciplinary field. Climate reconstruction can help us understand the historical process and law of climate change, and provide a basis for studying the impact of climate on history and social development. Social Impact and Response is the study of how climate change affects all aspects of human society, and how human society responds to climate change. It can reveal the interaction and interdependence of climate and society, making climate one of the many variables that coexist with technological, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental forces. Nonetheless, scholars have sometimes criticized such research for sliding into "climate determinism", making it necessary to study the use and misuse of climate knowledge. These studies can shed light on how different social groups consciously or unconsciously use the knowledge of climate science to pursue their own interests and goals. The authors analyze how climate knowledge has been used to justify or rebel against unequal institutions and phenomena such as colonialism in different historical periods and contexts, and how Western climate knowledge has been combined with indigenous ecological knowledge. Of course, the generation of climate knowledge is inseparable from people's construction and perception of climate culture. It is a research approach that examines how climate change affects human cultural expressions, knowledge systems, and worldviews. It can show the process by which climate and culture shape and influence each other. Thus, the author argues that the historical study of climate change is not only a scientific question, but also a social one: the study of climate history should conduct more socio-historical and cultural analysis to shed light on how real people respond to climate change and how social relations, power dynamics, and ideas respond to this response. Finally, Borchen asks the question: how should climate historians incorporate both social and cultural values in the historical context of social history and new cultural history?
Zhu Kezhen is the founder of Chinese historical climatology
Guo Qing shared Fiona Williamson's article The "Culture Turn" of Climate History: An Emerging Field for Studies of China and East Asia. This paper focuses on the development and application of the "cultural turn" in climate history in East Asia. On the basis of the instrumental and weather records of East Asia over the past few centuries, scholars such as Zhu Kezhen have developed a wealth of historical climate research, but these studies often focus on the collection and reconstruction of historical climate data, the connection between major events and climate, and the impact of extreme weather on social change. In addition, because these quantitative studies are confined to nature archives and tend to simplify the relationship between climate and society, they sometimes even turn to "climate determinism". Therefore, the study of climate history should pay more attention to social archives and introduce the methods and perspectives of the humanities. On this basis, some scholars have enriched the background information on the climate impact society, provided richer perspectives and dynamic analysis, and constructed a resilient rather than mechanical response to climate change. These studies challenge the original conclusions that climate causes famine and war, reveal the hidden role of climate change in history through case studies, combine historical narratives with climate reconstruction, and further explore climate from a social perspective. Along this path, the Cultural Turn promotes a cultural understanding of climate and enriches the concept of climate, exploring the interconnections between climate and socio-cultural and popular belief systems. Fiona further illustrates how culture understands climate and how the two archives are combined through two case studies: typhoons in coastal areas constitute a special climate culture that becomes a key part of the mix of local and cultural narratives for both foreign and local observers, and the prevalence of praying for rain in ancient and modern China shows that culture is aware of climate. These two cases illustrate the powerful application of "social memory" to climate in processing, interpreting, and managing weather in popular culture and traditional societies. Fiona concludes by noting that the urgency of the real world calls for a "cultural turn" and advocates for a more comprehensive study of climate history and a larger synthesis of research.
In addition, the reader also evaluates the objectives of the article and analyzes the interlocutors of the article and their academic tendencies. At the end, the reader raised his own questions: how to define natural archives and social archives, what is the relationship between climate cultural history and climate reconstruction in the study of climate history, and what position should climate cultural history occupy?
美国科尔比学院科技史学者James R. Fleming的著作——《修复天空》（ Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control）
Qiu Zhenwu used the book "El Niño in World History" as a wedge to open the reading of James R. Fleming's article Climate, Change, History. Qiu Zhenwu introduces and analyzes Fleming's life and interdisciplinary research history, and provides a brief review of his books such as Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control (2010) to help the audience better understand the author's academic path and academic perspectives. Qiu Zhenwu analyzed that Fleming first briefly sorted out the concept of climate and the development of climatology in the article, but he believes that climate is not only a scientific issue, but closely related to economic, racial, historical and other issues, especially emphasizing the relationship between climate and history. In Fleming's view, there are three main paths to the study of climate history: chronoclimatology, the annalist school, and as a subfield of the history of science and technology. However, Fleming has a unique perspective on climate history and critically proposes his own view, arguing that climate history "is not a narrow case study or grand narrative, but a 'big picture histories' of significance, breadth and history, not all environments and histories, but atmospheric environments in specific social and cultural contexts". Clearly, Fleming's understanding of climate history is neither subordinate to the history of science nor distinct from environmental history, but has its own characteristics.
As the last lead reader, Qiu Zhenwu briefly summarized the commonalities and differences of the three articles. For example, both Fleming and Fiona emphasize the difference between "climate history" and "historical climatology" in terms of what constitutes climate history, while all three scholars are positive about the cultural turn in climate history, but in terms of geography, Fiona emphasizes the "Asian turn" in climate history, Fleming seems to be quite critical in his attitude towards environmental history, while Fiona positively affirms the contribution of environmental history, and in terms of the "Anthropocene" Anthropocene's concern to study climate history is the consensus of all relevant scholars. In addition, Qiu Zhenwu also shared his own views, arguing that it is necessary to distinguish between "historical climatology" and "climate history"; the role of environmental history and history of science should be recognized and drawn on in climate history and meteorological history, among which the history of environmental thought also conforms to the "cultural turn" of climate history and meteorological history; the in-depth study of local knowledge can help reveal the tension between the global and the local; and the academic development of meteorological history is also different from that of climate history.
Subsequently, the panelists supplemented and expanded the sharing of the three readers.
Ao Youhua first analyzed the background, methods and views of the first article, and believed that the author of this article has a very full introduction to Latin America, mentions many terms of climate history and environmental history, and has a wide introduction to the research field of climate history, which has a good enlightening significance for the research of later researchers. Secondly, he also pointed out the points of improvement in the article, such as the lack of coverage in China and the oversimplification of some issues, and expressed his appreciation for the reader's ability to supplement some of the content of the paper in the explanation. At the same time, Ao Youhua also pointed out some methods that could be studied, and wanted to know which aspects of the text were related to the reader's research. In commenting on Guo's reading, Ao Youhua said that it is important to understand the climate characteristics of East Asia, but that current research is focusing more on the ocean, but in fact, inland climate issues are also worth paying attention to. As scholars, we should pay attention to the interconnectedness of natural and human factors in climate history, and can link social change to climate history in research, while examining historical concepts, concepts and Xi. Finally, he also offered some reflections, such as how to use different archives, how to choose the right analytical framework, and so on. According to Ao, the third article is more like a summary paper, and the biggest contribution of this paper is to let people know that the cultural history of climate is important and to inspire future researchers. However, the author's interpretation of the word climate is from a Western historical perspective, and in fact East Asia and China have a completely different picture of the concept of climate, and the concept of climate in different regions is influenced by their respective cultures. Ao Youhua also responded to some of Qiu Zhenwu's questions, arguing that climate history should be a subset of environmental history, and that because of the close connection between terms and concepts such as weather and climate, the history of climate culture can also be regarded as the history of ideas or science, and there is generally no need to make strict distinctions.
Qiao Yu pointed out that the production of natural knowledge about climate is uncertain, and the study of climate history is of great significance, which is not only a critique and supplement to traditional historiography, but also a breakthrough in anthropocentrism. Climate history thus becomes a key to understanding history, focusing on the interactions and co-evolution of humans and nature, and how these changes affect the course of historical development. She believes that the study of climate history is also divided into internal and external history, and the study of climate history provides a broad academic space for professional historians, so that they can supplement the study of internal climate history, and bridge the gap between rationality and reality. Regarding the topics covered in the paper, Qiao Yu also talked about her research on the climate history of Australia during the colonial period, which explores the process of scientific knowledge of traditional meteorology, and she believes that it is possible to observe how the socio-economic economy affects the development of meteorological disciplines from this perspective.
Sun Mengmeng cites Mike Hulme's article Climate and Its Changes: A Cultural Institutional to supplement and answer Borchen's question. She argues that climate, which allows humans to culturally live with the weather, introduces a sense of stability or normalcy to the unstable and unpredictable weather experiences that should be too chaotic and troubling. Therefore, climate and culture are a binary rather than a binary opposite, and the binary communication between climate and culture becomes a necessary part of understanding the concept of climate or culture. What Is Local Knowledge? The article Digital Humanities and Yuan Dynasty Disasters in Imperial China's Local Gazetteers provides an example to answer questions about the distinction between natural and social archives. She pointed out that the transformation from natural archives to social archives does not lie in the type and content of archives, but in the perspective of observation and interpretation. For example, in this research paper on local history, disaster records are not seen as real events, but as a discourse, a manifestation of local knowledge of an epistemological practice. She argues that this shift in perspective can help us better understand the political and cultural nature of disasters, rather than simply attributing them to natural factors. Regarding the relationship between climate cultural history and climate reconstruction, Sun Mengmeng believes that the cultural turn of climate represents a paradigm shift and a change of perspective, and its concerns and research problems will be completely different. The perspectives, issues, and philosophical foundations are different, so it's hard to blend the two.
During the panel discussion, several readers responded to the speakers of the reviewers. Borchen argues that the essay covers a wide range of areas of climate history, but is also outdated, so he cites a number of later books to supplement it. This paper enlightened him in the direction of his research and made him think further about the significance of the cultural turn in the study of climate history. Guo Qing talked about personal experience, and believes that our lives are full of experiences of climate, which are fully expressed in Chinese culture. He also put forward some thoughts on the general agreement between climate reconstruction and climate cultural history based on his own experience, and believed that more humanities scholars need to devote themselves to the study of climate history. Qiu Zhenwu affirmed Qiao Yu's thinking on the scientific knowledge of traditional meteorology, and believed that the characteristics of climate history and meteorological history themselves have opened a window for the research of humanities and social science scholars, and have become interdisciplinary fields worthy of in-depth exploration.
Subsequently, participants freely explored how to cite climate reconstruction and the work of natural scientists using historical archives. In response to a question about local history, Qiu Zhenwu said that the different scales and visibility of historical research affect our perception of the relationship between climate and history. On a large scale, the close relationship between climate and society is more significant, but on a small scale, in terms of more micro and detailed studies, perhaps climate factors are less important. So the key to the problem is the treatment of scale, and Deborah Coen's book Climate in Motion is worth considering. Ao Youhua argues that when we rely on social literature for research, climate reconstruction can help examine our research on specific events, so as to obtain a synthesis of social archives and natural climate history, but the discussion of such synthesis is still quite tricky. Sun Mengmeng believes that the combination of natural archives and social archives is essentially a combination of two perspectives, and it may be difficult to analyze cultural and historical perspectives on the basis of climate reconstruction. Guo Qing believes that there is a misalignment between climate reconstruction and social culture, and that people's actual perception of climate is not necessarily consistent with the trend of climate change, and that this dislocation will exist a lot when analyzing small-scale problems due to the resolution of climate reconstruction. Qiao Yu concluded that there is a consensus on climate reconstruction on a large scale, which is an important basis for humanities scholars to study. One of the purposes of historical research is to puzzle pieces, and misplacement provides clues to this puzzle. The reconstruction of climate and the reconstruction of history are two different depictions of the world, influencing each other.
Finally, the audience asked Sun Mengmeng and Ao Youhua questions about digital humanities and how to connect traditional Western culture with traditional Chinese culture. Sun Mengmeng believes that the given historical research of digital humanities provides a quantitative analysis method, and there is also a difference between large-scale and micro-analysis in the scale, and if the two can be organically combined, it will promote the depth of problem analysis. She recommends some articles that use relevant methods for this purpose. Ao Youhua believes that there are both differences and commonalities between the climate culture of the West and China. For example, Norway and China have a folk custom of predicting climate change in the coming year based on sunshine at a specific time. In order to study this issue in depth, researchers from different fields need to work together.
Literature Read:
1. Carey, Mark. "Climate and History: A Critical Review of Historical Climatology and Climate Change Historiography." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change3.3 (2012): 233-249.
2. Williamson, Fiona. "The “Cultural Turn” of Climate History: An Emerging Field for Studies of China and East Asia." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change11.3 (2020): e635.
3. Fleming, James. "Climate, Change, History." Environment and History20.4 (2014): 577-586.
(The author holds a master's degree from the Department of History and Archaeology of Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China; and a Ph.D. student at the School of History, Nankai University)