The New Humanism(新人文主义).docVIP

The New Humanism? George Sarton ?  Introduction by the TranslatorAutobiographical NoteSome Pertinent Excerpts ? WHEN one speaks of the history of science most people think of experimental and mathematical knowledge as we know it now, with its inexhaustible harvest of applications; they think of what we would call modern science, the development of which was hardly started before the seventeenth century. This is of course justifiable in some respects, yet he who was acquainted only with that part of the story would have a very misleading idea of the whole evolution. It is as if he knew a man only in his maturity and was not aware that such maturity was made possible only by the long years of childhood and adolescence. This recalls my comparison of mankind with a single man, and how it helped us to understand both. Let us return to it once more. What would you think of a biography which began, let us say, at a time when the hero was thirty, was married and already had children, and was well started on his work? Would not such a biography be very disappointing? For we would want to know how he got started, whom he had married, how he became interested in his chosen work and gradually devoted all of his thought and energy to it. For exactly the same reasons a history of science beginning only in the sixteenth or seventeenth century is not only incomplete but fundamentally wrong. This is even truer in the case of mankind than in that of a single man, because in the latter case we can at least imagine various possibilities. If we have read many biographies of men of science we have in our minds a sort of composite picture of their youth which may serve as a first approximation. But in the case of mankind it is simply impossible to imagine the history of the four or five millennia of recorded experience which preceded the advent of modern science. It is unfortunately true that many scientists lack a cultural background, and because of this do not like to look backw