General Secretary of the Supreme Leader pointed out: "A country without developed natural sciences cannot be in the forefront of the world, nor can a country without prosperous philosophy and social sciences be in the forefront of the world." Looking into the future, interdisciplinary convergence and multi-technology cross-border integration will become the trend of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial revolution, which requires breaking the boundaries of disciplines, actively promoting the cross-integration of natural sciences and humanities and social sciences, and forming innovative potential by strengthening basic research.
There is a profound internal relationship between natural science and humanities and social sciences.
As a knowledge system for human beings to understand the development law of the objective world movement, natural science and humanities and social sciences all have the general attributes of science. Marx unified natural science and human science in historical science, pointing out that "we only know one unique science, that is, historical science. History can be viewed from two aspects, and it can be divided into natural history and human history. But these two aspects are closely related; As long as people exist, natural history and human history restrict each other. Natural history, the so-called natural science. " Natural science and humanities and social sciences are intrinsically related, mainly because everything in the world we live in is generally linked, and they are unified in the process of human understanding of the world. Man is the direct object of natural science, and nature is also the direct object of science about man. The evolution of the complex world is full of uncertainty. No matter from the perspective of natural science or humanities and social sciences, the scientific characteristics such as innovation, logic, value and verifiability displayed by human beings in responding to uncertain problems are basically the same. Of course, there are some differences between natural science and humanities and social sciences, and they all follow the research approach of "from vivid intuition to abstract thinking and from abstract thinking to practice" in essence. As early as Aristotle’s time, natural science has become the analogy object of political science research. At the end of 19th century and the beginning of 20th century, theoretical mechanics and energy mechanics provided analytical tools such as Lagrange virtual displacement and Hamiltonian function for the emerging marginal economics.The biological theory promotes the construction of social organism theory. With the deepening of human’s understanding of the law of the movement of the material world, the interoperability between natural science and humanities and social sciences has become increasingly prominent, thus extending a large number of interdisciplinary disciplines, such as complex economics. The world outlook based on quantum mechanics and Schumpeter’s theory of technological innovation have reconstructed the research paradigm of economics: increasing returns, path dependence, random events and evolution.
Problem-oriented is the starting point of the cross-integration of natural science and humanities and social sciences.
Problems are the starting point of innovation. General Secretary of the Supreme Leader pointed out at the symposium on philosophy and social science: "In a sense, the process of theoretical innovation is the process of finding problems, screening problems, studying problems and solving problems." Starting from problems and having a multidisciplinary perspective of natural science and humanities and social sciences is helpful for researchers to establish a holistic paradigm, which is the basis for comprehensively understanding the world and excavating the laws of things. If you fall into a single discipline paradigm, you can only understand and grasp the slice of the world from a certain angle, and it is easy to fall into one-sidedness; On the other hand, we can grasp the phenomenon world as a whole and solve problems systematically. For example, since 1980s, based on global warming and environmental change, natural science and humanities and social sciences have carried out active collaborative exploration. With the increasingly serious global environmental problems, climate change has changed from a simple climate problem to a comprehensive topic to explore the road of sustainable development of mankind. This topic includes the relationship between human activities and the atmosphere, terrestrial sphere, hydrosphere and biosphere, and it is necessary to study the interrelation and interaction mechanism among the major spheres through cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary means. In the process of collaborative research, natural science and humanities and social sciences focus on sustainable development, and then cut out specific environmental problems and provide theoretical support and analytical paradigm, forming new cognition and new strategies in cross-border interaction. Today’s world is open and the changes are multidimensional. Among many major research topics that are concerned about the long-term interests of mankind,Both natural scientists and humanities and social scientists need to work together to build a joint research team around the research plan, discuss and formulate research objectives and technical routes together, participate in project implementation together, and comprehensively integrate multi-scientific methods to solve theoretical and practical problems.
Abstract analogy is the basic method of cross-integration between natural science and humanities and social sciences.
The cross-integration of natural science and humanities and social sciences is mainly realized by analogy. Abstract analogy is a basic method to establish correspondence from the expression of function or nature, and its main purpose is to abstract general similarity between two disciplines. This method can prove the effectiveness and feasibility of the corresponding elements of another discipline with the analytical elements of one discipline. For example, in the field of economics, Adam Smith abstractly compared the market mechanism to Newton’s laws of nature, and he believed that there would be interaction among participants in the process of market transactions. This interaction force includes self-interest motivation and competitive pressure, and the interaction between the two forces among millions of market players will promote the market to form a dynamic and balanced order. Another example is the management science, where people compare the collective decision-making behavior to the natural bee colony thinking, which is a classic case of the cross-integration of biology and management. Biological research has found that as a "superorganism", bees often spontaneously set up a powerful interactive system in the form of division of labor and cooperation when choosing nests in spring. Generally, they will first send some reconnaissance bees to make decentralized investigations and independent decisions based on certain standards. These reconnaissance bees maintain a high degree of contact and can communicate information around the selected sites at any time. Finally, according to the recommended number of reconnaissance bees and risk trade-offs (time cost, external attacks, etc.), the new nest site is determined. There is a similar "reaction set" between human society and bee colony in the face of collective decision-making, and the thinking of bee colony has inspired scientists to have a profound insight into the theory of self-organization.In the cross-integration of natural science and humanities and social sciences, abstract analogy is extremely applicable, but the legitimacy of analogy needs to be evaluated according to the degree of correlation Once this condition is met, the results of interdisciplinary cross-integration may be breakthrough.
Natural science and humanities and social sciences achieve cross-integration through imitation grafting.
An important aspect of the interaction between natural science and humanities and social sciences is the transfer of value system, which is embodied in the process from imitation to grafting. In the cross-integration of natural science and humanities and social sciences, the first thing is to imitate concepts, theories, methods, models, standards and even values, and this link completes the "cross" task. Then, in order to achieve the deep integration of the two, what is needed is grafting skills. Grafting is one of the methods of artificial propagation of plants. Its principle is to make two connected plant parts grow into a complete plant through cell proliferation and mutual healing. The process of grafting can make the related fields of natural science and humanities and social sciences complete "fusion" and "proliferation" through close interaction on the basis of "intersection" and form a new theoretical paradigm. The most iconic example of imitating grafting is the population theory formed by Malthus, a British economist, combined with Newton style. In the field of physics, Newton showed a unique demonstration method in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. He first assumed an ideal condition (uniform linear motion or complete rest) in mathematical form, consisting of a single object and a central pointing force, and derived mathematical inference according to the law of motion. Then Newton gradually introduced objects with different shapes and compositions, analyzed the interaction between objects, and formed new mathematical inferences, so as to approach the real situation of the real world in stages. This staged recursive analysis of the counterpoint interaction between the ideal system and the actual system constitutes Newton’s style. Malthus will"Newton style" is grafted into the field of social population research, and Malthusian population theory is put forward in a breakthrough way. Malthusian population theory expresses the basic principle that "if it is not controlled, the population will increase in geometric proportion". Obviously, this law is not the result of a large number of observations, but follows the "Newton style", and "population growth in geometric proportion" is one of the ideal conditions. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy focuses on the reasons why the laws of nature are different from purely abstract laws, and Malthus explores why the actual population will not increase geometrically as imagined. Based on the imitation of the way of discussion, Malthus discussed why the population can’t grow according to the geometric level and how to restrain the population growth in Population Theory, and put forward two methods of moral suppression and active suppression, which sprouted a new viewpoint in the grafting of natural science and humanities and social sciences.
Weaving multidisciplinary network to incite the cross-integration of natural science and humanities and social sciences
With the rise of the Internet, the comprehensive promotion of literature retrieval database provides a convenient platform for the cross-integration of natural science and humanities and social sciences. Different disciplines are presented on the same network in the form of nodes, which are linked and influenced each other, and the cross-scientific knowledge association and flow are more intuitive. Network thinking takes the connection of things as the underlying logic and attaches importance to the nonlinear interaction between nodes. Building a multidisciplinary network based on network thinking is conducive to discovering the commonness of research in different disciplines and promoting the interactive inspiration between natural science and humanities and social sciences in strengthening the connection. To effectively play the related role of multidisciplinary networks, it is necessary to improve and strengthen general education, cultivate comprehensive talents who can carry out interdisciplinary research and be determined to innovate, and provide the source power for interdisciplinary integration. To effectively play the related role of multidisciplinary networks, it is necessary to base on the central node of multidisciplinary networks, activate the potential cross-integration trend, and realize the spontaneous emergence of innovative ideas. Of course, the woven multidisciplinary network cannot be distributed, but needs to form the central node of multidisciplinary aggregation, which may be a basic science or a new interdisciplinary science. For example, complex system science is the product of multidisciplinary synthesis, such as fluid, laser, chemical clock, contradiction, revolution and other issues discussed by synergetics, covering physics, chemistry, philosophy and economics.
In short, humanities and social sciences have a profound internal relationship with natural sciences. The major scientific discoveries in history and the solution of major social problems related to the national economy and people’s livelihood often involve the interweaving and integration of different disciplines. Under the historical background of the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial revolution, the cross-integration of humanities and social sciences and natural sciences conforms to the historical trend, which is the inevitable result of the comprehensive effects of the movement law of the material world, the change of social space scale and the progress of science and technology.
(Editor: Guo Lijuan)
关于作者