In the thirties and forties of the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution promoted the tremendous material development of the German Empire, and technological innovation and industrial development posed a great challenge to the humanities, which were not very useful in practice. In such a historical situation, it is particularly necessary to correct the name of history. Practitioners of history have begun to think holistically about the professionalization of the discipline of history. The process of academicization of historical thinking, the institutionalization of practitioners and institutions has been further developed. Among them, the ideas of Johann Gustav Droysen (1808-1884) are the most representative. He spent more than 20 years on the question of "how to study history?" and revised his teaching handouts many times to write the guiding manual "Theory of Historical Knowledge." This quotation, which justifies the name of "Historik", reflects the 19th-century German scholar's holistic thinking on history:
"The theory of historical knowledge is not an encyclopedia of historical science, nor is it philosophy of history (theology), nor is it the physics of the moral world, nor is it the poetics of historical writing. The task of history is to act as an organism of historical reflection and research. ”
Droyson systematically defines Historik from different dimensions. The Historik in his eyes is like the water in the eyes of Thales, the number of Pythagoras, the fire of Heraclet, the gas of Anaximenes, the fire and water of Empedocles, the atom of Democritus, the ideas of Plato, the existence of Parmenides, the ontology of existence by faith, the organic unity. In distinguishing from the other, he drew on a specific dimension of the theory of historical knowledge—from an epistemological point of view, distinguishing history from the encyclopedic concept that was popular at the time; From a methodological point of view, it is also compared with the philosophy of metaphysics (theology) and physics (natural science) that uses laws to explain natural phenomena. In terms of historical narration, it is again distinguished from poetics.
An "encyclopedia" is a compilation of knowledge that aims to comprehensively summarize an entire body of knowledge or a specific field in a systematic or alphabetical order. Since the Renaissance, people have not been satisfied with the abstract knowledge accumulated in the Middle Ages, but have turned to classical texts for essence and method, as exemplified by the compilation of the Latin (1536) and Greek (1575) dictionaries. Together, the two dictionaries laid the foundation for an alphabetical lexicography paradigm. This process also reflects a change in the pursuit of knowledge: from abstract truth to textual verification.
With the prevalence of rationalism and empiricism in the natural sciences and science and technology in the 17th century, the subject matter of encyclopedias shifted from early religion and ancient knowledge to modern topics characterized by practicality and secularity, such as the Encyclopédie, or a systematic dictionary of science, arts, and crafts (1751-1777), co-edited by Diderot and D'Alembert.
The idea of encyclopedias is also reflected in ancient historiography. The Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Encyclopedia of Classical Antiquity, later referred to as RE), founded in 1837 by August Friedrich Pauli, is a case in point. As we can see from the title, this is not an encyclopedia in the general sense, but a "real" encyclopedia with obvious disciplinary characteristics. A solid academic stance and the way specific articles are edited have gone beyond the "thorough thoroughness" of earlier knowledge. The original intention of the series was to provide reference books for professional practitioners. After 1864, it was expanded under the leadership of Toifer to become a broader and comprehensive encyclopedia of ancient knowledge.
The response of the historical community to this trend of thought has been multifaceted. The names of the courses are evident from the fact that Friedrich Wolf named the course "Encyclopedic Philology" and August Burke named the course "Encyclopedia and Methodology of Classical Languages".
Droysen, on the other hand, distinguishes this tradition of organizing knowledge from historiography, making it clear that the idea of an encyclopedia of knowledge is different from that of history. In other words, encyclopedias emphasize the cluster of knowledge and the form of knowledge editing, while history emphasizes discipline, historical methodology and integrity.
Droyson also made a distinction between history and philosophy (theology) and the natural sciences. The juxtaposition of these three disciplines is equally intriguing, and it is also a serious proposition in the history of disciplines/scholarship. He pointed out that the methods of understanding the world in philosophy (theology), physics, and history correspond to specific scientific methods: the metaphysical method, the physical method, and the historical method; relying on logical, physical, and ethical tools respectively; In the end, these specific cognitive paths—finding, explaining, and understanding—are used to achieve the goal of understanding the world.
Philosophy and theology are grouped together by Droysen because they share a metaphysical approach. Both of them pursue the original problems of the world and adopt a way of thinking that traces the origins. In 19th-century Germany, one of the important features of the humanist movement for revitalization with retrospectives was to trace back to its origins. The retrospective of the sources and the full understanding of the (ancient) sources have contributed precisely to the development of rational methods of understanding, editing, and interpreting ancient texts. Droyson said that "the interpretation of historical materials, like historical research, is not the search for the beginning of things", which means that the methods of historical and philosophical (theological) pursuits (such as the search for the essence of happiness, truth, etc.) are different, and it is also a distinction from the methods used in the Renaissance.
The path of tracing back to the source gave rise to a research method that was popular in German academia at the time, called Quellenforschung, which refers to the examination of the sources of handed down documents. Skepticism has been stimulated by scholars shifting their causal explanations of diachronic processes to literary interpretations of synchronic structures.
Natural science is born out of philosophy, and early natural science research is often referred to as "natural philosophy". It was not until the Enlightenment that science was gradually separated from philosophy and theology, and then in the 19th century, the methodology of science in the modern sense was formed. Physik, as Droysen calls it here, is a discipline that studies the material world in a broad sense, rather than a physics discipline in a narrow sense. This experimental science, which began in the time of Galileo and Newton, has many branches in the 19th century, and their common methods of emphasizing experimentation and finding accurate values have already had an impact on history and other humanities. Especially in the field of historiography, such as the objectivist historiography represented by Ranke, which emphasizes the criticism of historical materials and requires truthful and straightforward narration, the positivist historiography represented by Hume and Comte, which emphasizes the determination of facts and the discovery of laws, and Hegel's four-stage view of historical development, which emphasizes the unity of the integrity of history and the individuality of history, are all related to it.
Droyson, on the other hand, argues that the natural sciences explain the causal relationship between the two by specific laws of the same kind of phenomena, which is not applicable to the interpretation of the history of the occurrence of the moral world.
In Droyson's time, the typical representative of the application of the empirical concept of "science" in historical research was the Englishman Buckle. In 1861, he published a two-volume History of English Civilization, which was later regarded as a manifesto of positivist historiography. "It is the duty of the historian to show that the course of history of all peoples is regular, and that only by revealing the causal relationship and elucidating this law can history be elevated to science," Bakker said. Droyson, for his part, argues that "Buckle does not thus elevate history to a science, but places it in the circle of the natural sciences." On the contrary, he already has an understanding of the ontology of history: "The study of history occupies a certain share in contemporary spiritual activity, it actively discovers new things, re-explores what has already been circulated, and presents new discoveries in an appropriate way." "Compared with the research methods of natural science, the research methods of history have moved from individual perception and individual induction and summary to universal application, which is a process full of analysis. Droyson argues against absolute causality, or even a universal law to explain all cases:
"Historical research is not a work of explanation, not an explanation of how the past determines the future...... It's like an analogue of eternal matter and material change. ”
Droyson's remarks are a norm for historical interpretive thinking. At this time, the emphasis on the materiality of Physik has indeed given birth to a shift in the methods and paths of historical research. In Germany, for example, the pursuit of "objective" research on the expressions of ancient life has sparked a craze for the study of antiquities. This tendency was even more pronounced and highly controversial in the Third Humanist Movement launched by Jager; Another example is Burke's Sachphilologie ("Object Philology" or "The Language of Things").
In addition to pointing out positively the differences between history and physics, Droysen places special emphasis on the morality of the human world. If the moral world is constructed experimentally, then the same results can be replicated according to a fixed value. In this case, every living person living in the moral world is free from freedom, responsibility, and moral constraints.
The history in Droysen's mind is a world that, like the human body, emphasizes sensory cognition and consciousness construction. Therefore, even if people today talk about the ancients, the past of the ancients is also reflected in the hearts of today's people. It is precisely this kind of moral world constructed by the senses and consciousness that allows fellow human researchers to achieve a certain degree of empathy with the ancients. And it is this natural difference of individuality and commonality that allows researchers to "show their talents" and use their own methods. The way of understanding history requires a certain intuition, like a mind catcher, to understand the past. This process and the results of its creation are as creative as mating and conception. As Droyson puts it: "The essence of interpretation is to see the truth in past events, and all the sufficient conditions that contribute to this reality and to reality itself." And what is seen is determined by the richness of the moral world and the personality of the researcher.
When it comes to "output", Droyson also distinguishes between history and poetics, which are aesthetic and literary styles of writing.
Historical research has a scientific proposition and a systematic approach, while historical writing (Geschichtsschreibung) is defined as the linguistic intermediary of historical knowledge. The writing of history in the modern sense began in ancient Greece, which is different from the earlier narrative of the praise of rulers by ancient peoples such as the Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, and Persians. A major feature of modern historiography is the attempt to capture the intent and credibility of statements in the process of criticism of texts, and Droysen lived precisely at a time when modern historiographical ideas were formed.
Classical writers themselves did not consider themselves historians/scientists in the modern sense of the word, but philosophers, writers, and rhetoricalists. In the 19th century, Droyson had already noticed the difference between poetic writing and historical writing, and he listed different academic propositions, such as interrogative tendencies, narrative tendencies, pedagogical tendencies, and discursive tendencies based on discursive patterns.
At this point, Droysen explains to the reader his grand system of knowledge of Historik. Readers can see the systematic thinking of historians in the 19th century, and the general thinking of craftsmen who are obviously different from the subdivision of disciplines—only scattered knowledge, fragmented experience and understanding, and it is difficult to form a system. Of course, it cannot be ignored that the success of the discipline in the establishment has contributed to the inheritance of the discipline. Droysen's methodological and systematic Historik has also been passed down in the academy as a pedagogical theory, and the evolution of historical research has finally broken away from the dependence on the individual talents and skills of researchers. This kind of systematic thinking is of great significance to current practitioners of historical research.
Historians in the 19th century were extremely cautious about applying the methods and paths of natural science. Today, although we live in different times and need to answer different academic questions and methods, how to maintain the true character of history in the interdisciplinary environment is still worth thinking about for every historian. To maintain the essence of the discipline of history, it is important to formulate research questions. Computer science can be a way to help answer historical questions, but it can't replace the questioning—and that's perhaps where AI can't replace historical researchers.
Text: Zhang Hongxia Author's Affiliation: School of History and Culture, Northeast Normal University
Editor: Li Chunyi, Liu Di