Worldview, popularly speaking, is "viewing the world", which is people's overall view and fundamental view of the world. Methodology is the general way for people to understand and transform the world, and it is the way and method for people to observe things and deal with problems. Generally speaking, the world outlook mainly solves the problem of "what is the world" and the methodology mainly solves the problem of "how to do it".
Methodology is the sum total of categories, principles, theories, methods and means that are generally applicable to various specific social sciences and play a guiding role, usually referring to historical materialism. As a science of the general law of social development, historical materialism is not only the theoretical basis of all social sciences, but also the fundamental method to understand and transform society.
Historical materialism correctly solves the basic principle of the relationship between social existence and social consciousness (see social existence determines social consciousness), which is the fundamental starting point of various social sciences. Society is a special part of the material world. Without understanding its particularity, it is impossible to correctly apply the principle of general materialism and dialectical thought to the process of understanding social history. Historical materialism reveals the decisive role of labor in the formation and development of human society, points out the decisive role of social material relations in political relations and ideological relations, clarifies that the relationship between social existence and social consciousness is the fundamental problem of historical view, and lays the fundamental principle of materialist epistemology for various social sciences. Historical materialism explains social consciousness from social existence, production relations from productivity, superstructure from economic basis, and the law of social development from the relationship between productivity, production relations and superstructure, which has universal guiding significance for studying various fields of social life. Only by following this line of understanding can all social sciences correctly sum up empirical materials and draw scientific conclusions.
Edited this paragraph to explain in detail that discous de la méthode is a famous philosophical treatise published by Descartes in 1637, which has a great influence on the thinking mode, ideas and scientific research methods of westerners. Someone once said: Europeans are all Descartes in a sense, that is, influenced by methodology, not Descartes' dualist philosophy.
Descartes pointed out in his methodology that the method of studying problems is divided into four steps:
1. Never accept any truth I don't know, that is, I will try to avoid recklessness and prejudice. I can only be very clear and certain according to my own judgment, and there is no doubt about the truth. In other words, as long as you have no personal experience of the problem, no matter what authoritative conclusion you have, you can doubt it. This is the famous "doubt everything" theory. For example, Aristotle once concluded that women have two fewer teeth than men. But this is not the case.
2. The complex problems to be studied can be decomposed into several simple small problems as far as possible and solved separately one by one.
3. Arrange these small problems from simple to complex, and start with the problems that are easy to solve.
4. After all the problems are solved, check them together to see if they are complete and the problems are completely solved.
1960 years ago, the methods of western scientific research, from mechanics to human anatomy, were basically carried out in accordance with Descartes' methodology, which greatly promoted the rapid development of modern western science. But it also has some defects, such as the function of human body is only the synthesis of various parts of machinery, and the interaction between them is not well studied. It was not until the Apollo moon landing program appeared that scientists found that some complex problems could not be decomposed and had to be dealt with by complex methods, which led to the emergence of system engineering, and the methodological method was replaced by comprehensive method for the first time. The emergence of systems engineering has greatly promoted many large-scale western traditional sciences, such as environmental science, meteorology, biology, artificial intelligence and so on.
Descartes also put forward the famous saying "I think, therefore I am" for the first time in methodology, and introduced the Cartesian coordinate system for the first time. Newton and Leibniz invented calculus theory, which is of great significance.
The methodology of editing this paragraph and the application of some world outlook principles in the process of understanding and practice are all manifested as methods. Methodology is a theory about these methods. There is no isolated methodology that breaks away from and separates the world outlook; Without methodological significance, there is no pure world outlook. Generally speaking, what kind of world outlook has what kind of philosophical methodology. Materialist world outlook requires people to proceed from reality and seek truth from facts in understanding and practice. The idealistic world outlook begins with spiritual things. The objective idealism world outlook requires people to follow some objective spiritual principles or religious teachings, the revelation of the gods and so on in their actions. Subjective idealism holds that people can act according to their feelings, experiences, wishes and subjective will. Dialectical world outlook requires grasping things from their universal connection and eternal movement, analyzing their own contradictions and solving these contradictions. The metaphysical world outlook urges people to look at things in isolation, stillness and rigidity. Philosophical methodology is based on a certain world outlook, which obtains the value of existence with its own guiding significance of people's cognitive methods and practical methods. Philosophical methodology can not be separated from world outlook, and natural science methodology must also be based on natural view and scientific view. In the final analysis, specific scientific's research methods are also restricted by a certain world outlook. This restriction is adjusted through different levels of methods. The methods at all levels are not exactly the same, but there are some differences between them. The consistency between world outlook and methodology is not simple. Understanding world outlook does not mean mastering methodology. Methodology is a theory of applying world outlook, but applying world outlook and mastering methodology need special research.
In the history of China's philosophy, the method of seeking knowledge has been discussed many times, and different opinions on the method of understanding have been expressed from different angles, forming a theory of understanding method with China cultural tradition, which has made outstanding contributions in the history of human thought development. Confucius expounded the method of seeking knowledge. He emphasized both learning and thinking, and clearly put forward that "learning without thinking is useless, and thinking without learning is dangerous." This is the acquired source of knowledge. He advocates "erudition", "listening more" and "reading more". However, it opposes being satisfied with acquiring a lot of chaotic knowledge, and demands that all knowledge be infiltrated by the principle of "consistency". Consistency is achieved through the efforts of thinking, which is also the methodological principle of thinking. According to this principle, Confucius also put forward some methods, such as "take a corner and use three corners instead" and "knock at both ends to exhaust it" He also emphasized "meaningless, unnecessary, unrealistic and egoless", that is, opposing speculative, arbitrary, stubborn and subjective thinking methods. After Confucius, Mozi paid attention to practical verification or practical application of empirical methods. Laozi and Zhuangzi advocate intuition, ignoring experience, and require meditation to directly understand the root of the universe. Mencius stresses dedication and advocates introspection and inner pursuit, which is also an intuitive method. Xunzi combined observing things with the way of body use, demanding to know the law, that is, "Tao", in observing things, and to make analogy according to Tao, so as to gain a universal understanding of all things in the universe. Xunzi also advocated "empty silence" and "no cover", which was his way to correct his thoughts and seek true knowledge. In the ideological trend of Ming Debate in ancient China, the debates between Hui Shi and Gong Sunlong reflected the contradiction between the general and the individual, and between the relative and the absolute. They all separated the relationship between the individual and the general, and between the relative and the absolute from different aspects. In the later period, Mohism and Xunzi paid attention to combining them. This discussion is of great significance for promoting the development of China's ancient thought methodology. From the Song Dynasty to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, philosophers also paid more attention to the discussion of methodology. The Cheng-Zhu School advocates the comprehensive method of "learning from Tao" and "learning from things". It believes that knowing people is innate, but we must learn from things, that is, "things are poor." Lu Wang School advocates "respecting morality", that is, attaching importance to the heart and believing that all true knowledge comes from the heart, as long as you work hard. In Qing Dynasty, Wang Fuzhi, Yan Yuan and Dai Zhen all paid more attention to the method of cognition. Among them, Wang Fuzhi divided his understanding of things into two parts: things get truth from things and experiences, that is, induction; Knowing knowledge is a method of speculative reasoning, that is, deduction. Moreover, he believes that the two are complementary and inseparable. "I don't know, there is nothing to cut, and I am tired of playing with things; If you don't know what you don't need, you know what you don't need, and turn evil into wisdom. If the two are mutually beneficial, there is no difference. " China's philosophical tradition also pays special attention to providing people with norms and methods to correct their behavior and improve their moral level. In China's philosophy, the methodology of ethics, moral cultivation and moral practice is particularly rich, and the methodology of cognition is included in the methodology of moral practice.
In ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, Aristotle's Instrumentalism and Metaphysics are important documents about methodology. The forms and laws of logical thinking discovered by Aristotle and the logical system he founded were the norms of western thinking methods in many centuries before the Renaissance.
The modern methodology of this paragraph has not become a special and conscious branch of methodology in China's ancient philosophy and ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. The development of methodology is inseparable from the development of modern large-scale industry and natural science. The germination of capitalism and the development of industry and commerce promoted the rise and development of modern natural science, which produced an urgent need to explore the scientific methodology of correctly understanding nature. At this time, the significance of philosophy as a methodology is highlighted. The founder of modern methodology is British philosopher Bacon. He admired science and opposed religious theology and scholasticism which included science. Bacon summed up the experience of scientific experiments in The Theory of New Tools and put forward a new cognitive method, namely empirical induction. Bacon armed science with his method system and promoted its development.
The French philosopher Descartes put forward the methodology of rational deduction. Like Bacon, he opposed scholasticism and advocated the development of science. Descartes was dissatisfied with scholasticism's interpretation of biblical teachings and thought that reliable knowledge could not be obtained from it. He attached importance to rationality, and put forward four methods in his book On Methods: ① Universal doubt, excluding all suspicious knowledge, leaving behind things that cannot be doubted; (2) Simplify complex things into the simplest things, such as simplifying spiritual entities into thinking and simplifying material entities into extensiveness; (3) Get complex things from simple things by comprehensive method. He said, "Give me extension and exercise, and you can create a world"; (4) The more comprehensive the accumulation, the more thoughtful the review, the better, so as to be foolproof. He used this rational deduction method to infer the existence of God by analyzing the concept of God's completeness. He advocated clarity and called it "the light of nature", that is, reason. Descartes especially emphasized mathematics, and thought that all knowledge should be deduced from several axioms of "self-evident" and "nature" like geometry, and only this kind of knowledge is the most reliable knowledge.
J. Locke and Hume in England further developed the empirical methodology. Locke put forward the epistemology of sensory theory. Hume put forward the skepticism of criticizing rational knowledge. Spinoza and Leibniz in continental Europe further developed rationalism methodology. In particular, Spinoza established his own philosophical system by rational deduction and imitating geometry, that is, axiomatic method. At this time, methodology has been regarded as the philosophical basis of cognitive process. 19 century ago, the whole natural science was still in the stage of collecting materials, and only mathematics and mechanics were fully developed, so mechanistic and metaphysical thinking methods occupied a dominant position.
I Kant was the first person to break the gap between metaphysical thinking methods. He explained the formation and development of the solar system from the contradictory and unified movement of mutual attraction and repulsion between material particles, which promoted the bankruptcy of mechanical materialism. At the same time, he established a huge transcendental idealism system and tried to turn the whole philosophy into methodology. Kant critically investigated the method of rational thinking and the possibility of knowing the world, and formed the critical methodology of transcendental idealism. Kant criticized Leibniz's rationalism, thinking that he blindly believed in the reliability of reason and completely denied the necessity of sensory experience. He also criticized Hume's empiricism, saying that he rejected the role of reason in cognition, denied universality and inevitability, and denied scientific knowledge. Kant combined Leibniz's rationalism with Hume's empiricism, thinking that rational thinking is empty without perceptual and intuitive materials; Without logical categories and concepts, perceptual intuition is blind. But in Kant's view, the conceptual category of logic does not come from perceptual experience, but is inherent in human cognitive ability, thus actually denying the objectivity of logic.
G Hegel destroyed Kant's critical methodology. He pointed out the objectivity of logic, but regarded the historical development of the whole world as the dialectical logical development of absolute concept. In logic, Hegel emphasizes the role of dialectics of ideas as a general method of cognition and spiritual activities, so his logic is also his methodology of dialectical idealism. Hegel's dialectics of objective idealism is the highest achievement of Marx's early methodological research.
This edition of Marx's Methodology Materialist Dialectics is the only scientific methodology that Marx and Engels created by transforming Hegel's idealistic dialectics on the basis of materialism. It is a methodology with the most universal significance, which is formed on the basis of summing up various positive achievements of specific scientific and according to the most universal laws of nature, society and thinking. Materialist dialectics is the correct reflection of objective laws, which requires people to proceed from reality, seek truth from facts, consciously apply the dialectical laws of the development of the objective world, and carry out cognitive and practical activities in strict accordance with objective laws.
Materialist dialectics holds that all phenomena in the world are in universal connection and eternal movement, and the most essential form of universal connection and the deepest reason for the development of movement are the unity of contradictions and opposites. Therefore, the metaphysical thinking method of looking at problems in isolation and stillness is wrong, and contradiction analysis is the most important cognitive method. Materialist dialectics holds that practice is the basis of the unity of opposites between subjective and objective. Being divorced from practice will inevitably lead to subjective and objective deviation and subjectivism, so we must adhere to practice to maintain the consistency of subjective and objective. In the process of understanding, we should test people's understanding with practice and be good at using a variety of scientific experiments and typical experiments correctly. Materialist dialectics holds that the whole objective material world and all things and phenomena in it are the unity of diversity. Each has its own structure, including different levels and elements, forming a system; Every thing, phenomenon and system has its own personality; At the same time, there is a certain * * * between them, and * * * exists in personality. Diversity and unity, individuality and individuality are opposites and unity. As a result, there are methods of induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis in cognition, from perceptual concreteness to thinking abstraction, and from thinking abstraction to thinking concreteness. These different methods are also the unity of opposites. We should not unilaterally raise one method and belittle the other, but put them in their proper position. We should not only oppose empiricism that emphasizes induction unilaterally, but also oppose rationalism, dogmatism and dogmatism that emphasizes deduction unilaterally, and we should combine induction and deduction dialectically. All things and phenomena in the world have their historical laws of emergence, development and extinction, and the historical method and logical method must be unified in understanding. Lenin once summed up the basic logical methods of understanding things: ① To be comprehensive, we must grasp and study all aspects, relationships and intermediaries of things; ② Observing things from their development, movement and changes; ③ All human practices must be included in the complete "definition" of things; ④ Attention must be paid to the concreteness of truth. With the continuous enrichment and development of people's understanding of objective laws, Marxist methodology will also be enriched and developed.
The most important feature of Marxist philosophical methodology is that it is not only a tool for theoretical understanding, but also a tool for great revolutionary practice in the capitalist movement. It is a unified, complete and scientific methodology of theoretical understanding and revolutionary practice, and plays an increasingly important role in social practice and spiritual life. Guided by the methodology of Marxist philosophy, Mao Zedong put forward the theory of leadership methods and working methods in concrete revolutionary practice. He said: "No matter what we do in party member, we must adopt two methods, one is to combine the general with the individual, and the other is to combine the leaders with the masses." "Concentrate from the masses, persist among the masses, and form correct leadership opinions. This is the basic method of leadership. In the process of concentration and persistence, we must adopt the method of combining general call with individual guidance, which is an integral part of the former method "(Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 3, pages 852 and 855).
The modern methodology of this section has developed by leaps and bounds from the physics revolution at the end of 19 to the beginning of the 20th century. The proportion of methodology in scientific knowledge is increasing day by day, and its role in scientific development is becoming more and more obvious. This is inseparable from the characteristics of the times of scientific development. The concrete manifestations are as follows: ① The scientific research on nature and society is more and more extensive and in-depth, which reduces the intuitive degree of scientific research, improves the abstract degree, and produces the necessity of highly developed logical thinking methods. (2) The further differentiation and synthesis of science has produced some emerging disciplines and marginal disciplines, enhanced the integrity and comprehensiveness of scientific research, and produced new disciplines with methodological significance such as system theory. (3) Modern science has discovered a series of new facts that the original scientific theoretical system can't explain and explain, and some paradoxes have appeared, which have destroyed the original principles of the scientific system and the consistent logical rigor of thinking, produced many fundamental changes in the modern scientific category system, and promoted the development of logical methods. (4) The complexity and comprehensiveness of scientific research projects are increasing, followed by more and more complex and sophisticated scientific research methods, and scientific research is becoming a collective and comprehensive undertaking. Therefore, different aspects and levels of scientific research need to cooperate and coordinate with each other, so it is necessary to coordinate different aspects and levels of scientific research methodology.
The characteristics of scientific development put forward a series of problems to be solved for philosophical methodology, such as observation and experiment, scientific fact and causal explanation, induction and deduction, analogy and generalization, hypothesis and theory, certainty and uncertainty, imagination and scientific discovery, system and structure, structure and function, system and elements, control and information, law and prediction. The development of science also raised a series of questions about methodological forms, such as the analysis of scientific language and the form of scientific theory. Logical empiricism philosophy attaches great importance to the study of methodological forms and has made some useful contributions. However, logical empiricism philosophy denies the necessity and possibility of the existence of world outlook science, and dismisses all questions about philosophical world outlook as "metaphysical" illusory questions. Logical empiricists unilaterally exaggerate the formal aspects of methodology, often confined to the static logical analysis of scientific theory, ignoring and belittling the objective content of experience and obliterating the revolutionary changes in the development of scientific knowledge. Since the 1920s, most philosophers of science have built their programs on the assumption that "the knowledge content of any natural science has a definite logical structure, which can be expressed by a formal proposition system". This formal method and axiomatic method have a positive effect on the development of science, but it is wrong to ignore the objective essence and true content of related things, reduce the study of things to relations and trace back to some set axiom.
Since 1950s, there has been a new development trend in western philosophy of science, which is mainly manifested in breaking through the static logic analysis of scientific theory and linking the research of methodology with the history of scientific development. For example, K.R. Popper in Britain, T.S. Kuhn in the United States and later lakatos and P.K. Feyerabend all tried to explain the revolution and development of scientific theory from the perspective of methodology. Popper believes that the development of science is a series of falsification processes. He emphasized deduction, denied induction, praised falsification and despised confirmation. He even said, "We don't know each other, so we can only guess." Kuhn pointed out that scientific development is achieved through the alternate development of conventional science and scientific revolution. Scientific revolution is the replacement of paradigm. He believes that "if there is no destructive change in the belief in nature, it is difficult for new theories to rise." What he called "destructive change" is the product of an irrational activity. He denied the inheritance in the scientific revolution. On the basis of absorbing the advantages of Popper and Kuhn's thoughts and overcoming Popper's naive falsificationism, lakatos proposed that science can only develop on the basis of putting forward and realizing a certain order in scientific research programmes. Fejer and Abend believe that all methodologies have their own limitations. Through the analysis of historical cases of science, he tried to explain that science is stagnant under the rule of a certain theory, and put forward a method to overthrow an established theory, which is "anything will do", that is, a scientist can freely try any program he likes. They all criticized the view that logical empiricism regards scientific development as a simple process of knowledge accumulation. But their common feature is to exaggerate the relativity of knowledge and deny the absolute objective content of knowledge, thus becoming suspicious.
Philosophical methodology is a methodology with universal significance, which is applicable to all specific sciences. The development of modern natural science not only develops the special methodology of specific science, but also breeds some scientific methodologies, such as mathematical methods, which only reflect one aspect of the world, but have universal significance. Historically, mathematics is almost as old as philosophy, and mathematics has the significance of scientific methodology from the beginning. Although mathematics initially only played a methodological role in a few sciences, such as astronomical phenomena, calendars, land survey, machinery and so on. Everything in the world has two aspects: quality and quantity. Quantity specifies quality, and the mutual change of quality is a universal dialectical law. Therefore, mathematics and its methods should be universally applicable to any science. Marx believes that a science can only be truly perfect if it successfully uses mathematics. The development of modern science shows this point day by day. Mathematical methods are increasingly becoming indispensable methods in all scientific departments, including natural science, social science, thinking science and so on. However, mathematical methods only involve the quantitative aspect of things, so mathematical methods alone cannot reveal all aspects of things and achieve a comprehensive and complete understanding of things. At the same time, the correct application of mathematical methods and the healthy development of mathematical methods themselves can not be separated from the guidance of correct philosophical methodology, so mathematical methods can not replace philosophical methodology.
In the development of modern science, in addition to the extensive use of mathematical methods, there are interdisciplinary sciences such as system theory, cybernetics (see cybernetics philosophy) and information theory. They are of methodological significance to many scientific departments. Among them, the methodology of system science not only involves traditional philosophical categories such as general and individual, part and whole, simplicity and complexity, cause and effect, but also puts forward new categories with philosophical significance such as system, elements, hierarchy, structure and function. However, these methodologies only involve one aspect of the world, and they are all special scientific methodologies like mathematical methods, which cannot replace the position of materialist dialectics as the only scientific philosophy methodology. But these specialized scientific methodologies are of positive significance to the enrichment and development of materialist dialectics.
The editor of this paragraph is the theory of cognitive methodology about the method of understanding and transforming the world. Methodology can be divided into philosophical methodology, general scientific methodology and specific scientific methodology at different levels. Scientific methodology, including Bacon's experimental method and inductive logic, Descartes' mathematical method and deductive logic, Bertalanffy's general system theory method and China Ceng Bangzhe's system logic On Structure. The most common method theory about understanding the world, transforming the world and exploring the consistency between the subjective world and the objective world is philosophical methodology; It is of universal significance to study various specific disciplines, and the method theory applicable to many related fields is general scientific methodology; The methodology theory of studying a specific subject and involving a specific field is the methodology of a specific science. The three are interdependent, interactive and complementary relations of unity of opposites. Philosophical methodology plays a decisive role in a certain sense. It is the generalization and summary of various scientific methodologies and the most general methodology, which is of guiding significance to both general scientific methodology and specific scientific methodology.
Since 1950s, there has been a new development trend in western philosophy of science, which is mainly manifested in breaking through the static logic analysis of scientific theory and linking the research of methodology with the history of scientific development. For example, K.R. Popper in Britain, T.S. Kuhn in the United States and later lakatos and P.K. Feyerabend all tried to explain the revolution and development of scientific theory from the perspective of methodology. Popper believes that the development of science is a series of falsification processes. He emphasized deduction, denied induction, praised falsification and despised confirmation. He even said, "We don't know each other, so we can only guess." Kuhn pointed out that scientific development is achieved through the alternate development of conventional science and scientific revolution. Scientific revolution is the replacement of paradigm. He believes that "if there is no destructive change in the belief in nature, it is difficult for new theories to rise." What he called "destructive change" is the product of an irrational activity. He denied the inheritance in the scientific revolution. On the basis of absorbing the advantages of Popper and Kuhn's thoughts and overcoming Popper's naive falsificationism, lakatos proposed that science can only develop on the basis of putting forward and realizing a certain order in scientific research programmes. Fejer and Abend believe that all methodologies have their own limitations. Through the analysis of historical cases of science, he tried to explain that science is stagnant under the rule of a certain theory, and put forward a method to overthrow an established theory, which is "anything will do", that is, a scientist can freely try any program he likes. They all criticized the view that logical empiricism regards scientific development as a simple process of knowledge accumulation. But their common feature is to exaggerate the relativity of knowledge and deny the absolute objective content of knowledge, thus becoming suspicious.
Philosophical methodology is a methodology with universal significance, which is applicable to all specific sciences. The development of modern natural science not only develops the special methodology of specific science, but also breeds some scientific methodologies, such as mathematical methods, which only reflect one aspect of the world, but have universal significance. Historically, mathematics is almost as old as philosophy, and mathematics has the significance of scientific methodology from the beginning. Although mathematics initially only played a methodological role in a few sciences, such as astronomical phenomena, calendars, land survey, machinery and so on. Everything in the world has two aspects: quality and quantity. Quantity specifies quality, and the mutual change of quality is a universal dialectical law. Therefore, mathematics and its methods should be universally applicable to any science. Marx believes that a science can only be truly perfect if it successfully uses mathematics. The development of modern science shows this point day by day. Mathematical methods are increasingly becoming indispensable methods in all scientific departments, including natural science, social science, thinking science and so on. However, mathematical methods only involve the quantitative aspect of things, so mathematical methods alone cannot reveal all aspects of things and achieve a comprehensive and complete understanding of things. At the same time, the correct application of mathematical methods and the healthy development of mathematical methods themselves can not be separated from the guidance of correct philosophical methodology, so mathematical methods can not replace philosophical methodology.
In the development of modern science, in addition to the extensive use of mathematical methods, there are interdisciplinary sciences such as system theory, cybernetics (see cybernetics philosophy) and information theory. They are of methodological significance to many scientific departments. Among them, the methodology of system science not only involves traditional philosophical categories such as general and individual, part and whole, simplicity and complexity, cause and effect, but also puts forward new categories with philosophical significance such as system, elements, hierarchy, structure and function. However, these methodologies only involve one aspect of the world, and they are all special scientific methodologies like mathematical methods, which cannot replace the position of materialist dialectics as the only scientific philosophy methodology. But these specialized scientific methodologies are of positive significance to the enrichment and development of materialist dialectics.