PART I
Scientific Knolwedge, Ideology and Modern Western Literature
317
It was Francis Bacon (1561-1626) who had proclaimed that the destiny of sci-ence was not only to enlarge men's knowledge but also to "improve the life of men on earth." In his Novum Organum, or "The New Instrument of Learning," Bacon made observation the essential process of his new method. He felt that only observation, long continued and carefully directed, was capable of producing certainty about the operations of nature. As against the true intellectual mean produced by careful obser-vation and controlled experiment, he set the frivolity of skeptics and the unwarranted confidence of the dogmatists. This argument rises to its height in what he called
"inductive reasoning" which is a logical process in which a conclusion is proposed that contains more information than the observations or experience on which it is based.
The truth of the conclusion is verifiable only in terms of future experience, and cer-tainty is attainable only if all possible instances have been examined. By using inducive method of interpreting nature and organizing knowledge, the results of experience are studied, and a general conclusion regarding them reached. This method was the oppo-site of the procedure of reasoning deductively from a given postulate by means of the syllogism which was the universal practice among the Scholastic philosophers of his day.
(1)
(1) M且 Abrams ， General Editor ，即她'rton Anthology of 品rglis!J L舟。'rature， third ed. (New York: W.
w
Norton & Company), pp.l562-75.
The significance of Bacon's theory may be identified by the following three characteristics: (1) scientific knowledge can 可mprove" the the life of men on earth; (2) scientific knowledge can be obtained and systematized with inducive method; (3) one should carry out the obtained systematized scientific knowledge for the benefit of men.
These concepts, later in the nineteenth century, influenced the shaping of ideology pro-foundly.
Another important factor which influenced the development of nineteenth-century ideology is the new theory of taxonomy advocated by Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), the French zoologist and statesman, who established the sciences of comparative anatomy and paleontology. "One day, towards the end of the eighteenth century,"
Michel Foucault writes in his book The Order of the Things, "Cuvier was to topple the glass jars of the Museum, smash them open, and dissect all the forms of animal visibility that the classical age had preserved in them川2) Cuvier applied his views on the correlation of parts to a systematic study of fossils that he had excavated. He re-constructed complete skeletons of unknown fossil quadrupeds. These constituted aston-ishing new evidence that whole species of animals had become extinct. Furthermore, he discerned a remarkable sequence in the creatures he exhumed. Cuvier assumed a relatively short time span for the Earth but was impressed by the vast changes that undoubtedly had occurred in its geologic past. His work reinforced the theoretical foundation of French Revolution and gave new prestige to the old concept of catas-trophism according to which a series of "revolutions," or catastrophes--sudden land up-heavals and floods--had destroyed entire species of organisms and carved out the pre-sent feaures of the Earth.(3)
(2) Michael Foucaulit, The Order of the Things, (New York, Vintage Books, 1973), p.226.
(3) fbi，說， pp.227-229.
中國新詩運動與意象派:詩學、科學及意識型態之宰制 319
Cuvier also showed that animals possessed so many diverse anatomical traits that they could not be arranged in a single linear system. Instead, he arranged ani-mals into four large groups of aniani-mals (vertebrates, mollusks, articulated, and radiates),
each of which had a special type of anatomical organization. All animals within the same group were classified together, as he believed they were all modifications of one particular anatomical type. Although his classification is no longer used, Cuvier broke away from the eighteenth-century idea that all living things were arranged in a contin-uous series from the simplest up to man. Fifty eyars later, Darwin's doctrine of evolu-tion eventually clarified this quesevolu-tion by showing that similar animals were descended from common ancestors and that diversity meant that hereditary changes had occurred.
However, Cuvier's life work may be considered as marking a transition between the eighteenth-century view of nature and the view that emerged in the last half of the nineteenth century as a result of the doctrine of evolution.(4)
Cuvier's contribution in"natural history is the beginning of the way that modern man looks at the world and its representations." observed Steven Henry Madoff, "The dynamic rise of science, which fragmented all things into their parts, is the first step toward our subjectivity."(5) Different ideologies have found their basises to grow and develop ever since.
Some historians have called the nineteenth century the age of ideology. The word first made its appearance in French as ideoJogie at the time of the French Rev-olution. It was introduced by a philosopher, A.L.e. Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836), as a short name for what he called his science of ideas, which he claimed to have adapted from the epistemology of the philosopher John Locke and Etienne Bonnot de
Condil-(4) fbI;說， pp.230.
(5) Steven Henry Madoff,"What is Postmodern About Painting: The Scandinavia Lectures," Arts 九lagazL缸，
Sept. 1985 (v.60, No.1), p.116.
lac, for whom all human knolwedge was knowledge of ideas. As a matter of fact, he also owed a lot to Francis Bacon and Georges Cuvier. Before Destutt de Tracy, theo-ries, systems, or philosophies advocated by philosophers, scholars and thinkers were es-sentially explanatory, but Destutt de Tracy claimed that his ideologie was a science with a mission. Action plays a very important part in his theory. It aims at serving men, even having the power to save them. It will rid men's minds of pr只judice and preparing them for the sovereignty of reason. This is indeed one of the most impor-tant features of Bacon's theory.
Destutt de Tra句 and his followers devised a system of national education that they believed would transform France into a rational and scientific state. Their teach-ing combined a fervent belief in individual liberty with an elaborate program of state planning. Napoleon at first liked his idea ve可 much， but later he found that his theo-ry was dangerous to his regime, he turned against it. "Ideology," however, has been from its inception a word with a marked emotive content, though Destutt de Tra可
presumably had intended it to be a dry, technical term. He assigned the word with high moral worth purpose and a strongly laudatory character. The word, from its very beginning, has played a double role of a term both laudatory and abusive not only in French but in German, English, Italian, and all the other languages of the world into which it was either translated or transliterated.(6)
Ideology may mean any kind of action-oriented theory or an attempt to ap-proach politics in the light of a system of ideas. Destutt de Tracy's original concep-tion may be clarified by the following five features: (1) it contains an explanatory the-ory of a more or less comprehensive kind about human experience and the external world; (2) it sets out a program, in generalized and abstract terms, of social and polit-ical organization; (3) it conceives the realization of this program as entailing a struggle;
(6) R且 C凹， ed 門 Ideology， Politics and Political Theory, (New York: Vintage Books, 1969),pp.25-62.
中國新詩運動與意象派:詩學、科學及意識型態之宰制 321
(4) it seeks not merely to persuade but to recruit loyal adherents, demanding what is sometimes called commitment; (5) it addresses a wide public but may tend to confer some special role of leadership on intellectual.(1)
On the basis of these five features above, one can recognize the following s抖，
terns of ideas, one way or the other, as diverse as Destutt de Tra旬's own science of ideas, such as the Positivism of the French philosopher August Comte (1798-1857), or Communism and several other types of Socialism, Fascism, Nazisrr. and certain kinds of nationalism. Nevertheless, for some people, the "ism" they held is nothing but abso-lute truth, they refuse to admit what they believe in is only one kind of ideologies.
The word ideology in he sense derived from Destutt de Tra旬's understanding has passed into modern usage. However, it is important to notice that there has been a particular sense that is given in Hegelian and Marxian philosophy, where it is used in a pejorative way. Ideolo自， there becomes a word for what these philosophers label
"false consciousness." Hegel argued that people were instruments of history, they enact-ed roles which were assignenact-ed to them by forces they did not understand; the true meaning of history was hidden from the ordinary men. Only the philosopher could 凹，
pect to understand things as they were.
This Hegelian enterprise of interpreting reality and reconciling the world to it-self was condemned by certain critics as an attempt to provide a new kind of ideology of the status quo, in that if all the individuals were indeed mere ciphers whose ac-tions were determined only by external forces, then there was little point in trying to change or improve political and economic circumstances.(8)
Wilhelm Friendrich Hegel (1770-1831), the German Idealist philosopher who developed a dialectical scheme that emphasized the progress of history and ideas from
(7) fa鼠， p.24.
(8) j訟法， p.98.
thesis to antithesis and thence to a higher and richer synthesis. The philosophical sys-tern he created influenced the development of Existentialism, Marxism, Positivism, and Analytic philosophy. It occupied a special importance in the transition from the En-glitenment to the Romantic Age. In 1817, he published his Encyklopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, a compendium of his dialectical system.
For Hegel, there is a unifying metaphysical process underlying the apparent diversity of the world, which he called the dialectic. This process is essentially the necessa可 emer
gence of higher and more adequate entities out of a conflict between their less devel-oped and less adequate anticipations. This process can be seen to be operating both at the most abstract levels of thought as well as at the level of simple phenomena.(9)
According to Hegelian point of view, history can be seen as a passage from primitive tribal life with all its inadequacies to the more adequate, fully rational state.
Hegel applied his sytem in detail to religion, politics, logic, aesthetics and ethics, pro-ducing one of the most comprehensive philosophical systems ever devised. Shortly after Hegel's death in 1831, two competing schools of Hegelianism emerged. On one side there were the Right, or Old Hegelians, conservative and Christian. The other were known as the Left, or Young Hegelians who interpreted the Hegelian dialectic in a revolutionary and atheistic sense, arguing that existing reality, including the prevailing political and religious order, was inadequate and needed to be made more rational through revolution.(10)
Other radical Hegelians, such as Karl Marx, sought to locate the Hegelian di-alectic not primarily in the psychological realm, nor in the realm of abstract thought, but rather in the material conditions of historical evolution. In this analysis, the notion
(9) Herbert Marcu 詞， Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Thea研 (New york, Oxford Univ. Press, 1941), p.SS.
(10) 必鼠， p.73.
過
中國新詩運動與意象派:詩學、科學及意識型態之宰制 323
of the inadequacy of certain entities leading to the realization of more adequate ones was interpreted specifically as the evolution of primitive economic systems and class societies toward more sophisticated one. This dialectical process culminated, not in the triumph of some nebulous absolute, but in the revolutionary transition to classless so-clety.
Besides Marx, Auguste Comte also owed a lot to the theories created by Hegel.
Comte (1798-1857), French philosopher, known as the founder of sociology and Posi-tivism--a system of thought and knowledge proposed as capable of providing a basis for political organization in modern industrial society. In 1830, Comte began to devote to the publication of his book COUTS de philosophie positive in six volumes and spent twelve years to complete the task by 1842. It is a complete system of philosophy de-signed for the modern industrial world. His "law of the three stages" maintained that human intellectual development had moved historically from a theological stage, in which the world and man's destiny within it were explained in terms of gods and spir-its, through a transitional metaphysical stage, in which explanations were offered in terms of essences, final causes, and other abstractions, to the modern positive stage.
This last stage was distinguished by an awareness of the limitations of human knowl-edge. Knowledge could only be relative to man's nature as a species and to his vary-ing social and historical situations. Absolute explanations were therefore better aban-doned for the more sensible discovery of laws--the regular connections among phenom-ena. Comte classified all positive knowledge in his "hierarchy of the sciences," making clear the methods of each and emphasizing especially the new unifying science of so-ciology.(11)
Comte applied the methods of observation and experimentation used in the sci-ences to philosophy, social science, and religion, and hoped that through the use of
(11) Arline R. Stand 旬， Al侈"liste 白mte， (New Yark司 Vintage Books,1981),pp.23羽.
such methods, rather than through idealistic appeal to absolute principles, social reform might be achieved. The philosophy of positivism only admits knowledge gained by the scientific method as real or positive. Comte's doctrine had a significant influence on the thought of his time. Many writers were influenced by him. For example, Taine and John Stuard 扎1ill often showed the effect of his ideas in their own philosophical writings.(12)
Another writer who was known as a figure in the shaping of modern ideology is the German philosopher and moralist Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) who is remem-bered for his influence on Karl Marx. He advocated materialism in his book Uber Philosophie und Christentum (1839) and claimed "that Christianity has in fact long vanished not only from reason but from the life of mankind, that it is nothing more than a fixed idea. In his most important work Das Wesen des Christentums (1841) which strongly influenced Karl Marx, he posited the notion that man is to himself his own object of thought and reduced religion to a consciousness of the infinite. That is, it is "nothing else than the consciousness of the infinity of the consciousness; 肘， in the consciousness of the infinite, the conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his own nature." The result of this view is the notion that God is merely the outward projection of man's inward nature. He analyzed the "true or anthropological essence of religion," discussing God's aspects "as a being of the understanding," "as a moral being or law," "as love," and others, he argued that they correspond to different needs in human nature. He examined the "false or theological essence of religion," contending that the view that God has an existence independent of human existence leads to a belief in revelation and sacraments, which are items of an undesirable religious Mate-rialism.(13)
(12) 必鼠， pAD.
(1月 George Lichtheim, Tbe 白1f1C!中l ofIdeoA瞥; (London. 1967), pp.45而D.
中國新詩運動與意象派:詩學、科學及意識型態之宰制 325
The man who had a profound influence not only on the ideological develop-ment of the nineteenth-century but also on human concepts of life and the universe is the English naturalist Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882). He was the original ex-pounder of the the。可 of evolution by natural selection. In 1859 he published his Ori-gin of Species in which he explained his idea since known as Darwinism. The book's importance is still felt today, and is recognized as the leading work in natural philoso-phy in the history of mankind. (14) Darwin's biology almost reduced mankind even ft汀，
ther into "nothingness." His book was interpreted by the nonscientific public in a vari-ety of way. "Some chose to assume that evolution was synonymous with progress, but most readers recognized that Darwin's the。可 of natural selection conflicted not only with the concept of creation derived from the Bible but also with long-established 品，
sumptions of the values attached to humanity's special role in the world."(15) Human beings, horses, dogs, lions, rats, and whales are all but mammals. This new knowledge was to encourage writers to record human experience with a biological point of view and to start a new trend of literature.
Inhertied the legacy of Destutt de Tracy, Cuvier, Hegel, Comte, Feuerbach and Darwin, Karl Marx (1818-1883), the German socialist, with Friedrich Engels, formulated the principles of dialectic materialism or economic determinism in their book Dialecti-cal Materialism published in 1842. Marx used Hegel's concept of the dialectic to ex-plain history as a series of antitheses and syntheses; but whereas the Hegelian dialectic describes the conflict of ideas leading to the development of reason and freedom, the Marxian dialectic operates in terms of economic forces. As a radical Hegelian, Marx sought to locate the Hegelian dialectic not primarily in the psychological realm, nor in
(14) M.H. Abrams,ed., The Norton Anthoh句ry ofEngJi~hLiterature, fifth ed., (New York司 W.W. Norton &
Company, 1986), p.924.
(1月 Il鼠， pp.924-25.
the realm of abstract thought, but rather in the material conditions of historical evolu-tion. In his analysis, the notion of the inadequacy of certain entities leading to the 時，
alization of more adequate ones was interpreted specifically as the evolution of primi-tive economic systems and class societies toward more sophisticated one. This dialecti-cal process culminated, not in the triumph of some nebulous absolute, but in the revo-lutionary transition to classless society.
In 1847, Marx and Engels published Communist Manifesto in which Marx main-tained that economic structure is the basis of history, and determines all the social, political, and intellectual aspects of life. The evils of capitalist society cannot be abol-ished by reform, but only by destruction of the whole capitalist economy and estab-lishment of a new classless society.
Because of his revolutionary activities, Ma血 spent most of his life outside Germany, and his major work, Capital (1867, 1885, 1895), was written in London, where he also organized the First International, an association of European socialists, in 1864. His ideas had great influence on Mikolai Lenin and the developments of Russian and Chinese communism. As an ideology, communism has been the most widely practiced political theory ever existed on earth.
The Practice of Marx's doctrines, specifi開lly in countries with Communist sys-tern of government. Marxism accepts as virtually axiomatic dialectical materialism, the
The Practice of Marx's doctrines, specifi開lly in countries with Communist sys-tern of government. Marxism accepts as virtually axiomatic dialectical materialism, the