梁启超早年新史学思想考源

梁启超早年新史学思想主要内容是取"家谱"说以批判"君史",倡导"民史",而"家谱"说和"君史"、"民史"概念的形成又与西方史学存在学缘关系。斯宾塞的史学理论构成梁氏早年新史学思想的核心,而他又直接受康有为思想的启示,康在梁早年新史学思想形成中具有重要地位。在康有为的教导下,万木草堂的学生或许都有与梁相似的新史学主张,只是没有像他那样见诸于文字。     

进化之调律:斯宾塞与清末的种群竞争论述

斯宾塞学说构成清末种群进化和竞争论述的主要外在资源。斯宾塞以进化的哲学思维来缀合威廉·卡彭特、查尔斯·赖尔所代表的动物生理学和生物历史知识,回应马尔萨斯的人口论。19世纪50年代以来在中国译介和流行的正是卡彭特所代表的生理学著述片段或与其相似的种群差别认知。知识界对斯宾塞的翻译,意味着中国在戊戌时期发生了类似的理论缀合过程。清末知识人以种分贵贱、黄白同为贵种调整了斯宾塞的种群进化位阶表述,抵制欧洲人歧视东亚黄种之心。同时,他们却强化了贵贱种之间的等级关系,营造"退化""灭种"的焦虑意识和压迫感,警告需积极参与生存竞争来提升种群的心智和自律性,从而为政治变革酝酿社会气氛。     

Did Herbert Spencer Have Reading Epilepsy?

Herbert Spencer, the nineteenth-century philosopher, has frequently been dismissed as a “fantastical hypochondriac” (as his most recent biographer, Mark Francis, terms him). Yet he left a record in his Autobiography of symptoms that suggest a very different diagnosis. Abruptly at age 35, he found that the activity of reading, previously indulged in without difficulty, triggered paroxysmal episodes of disturbing “head-sensations” including “giddiness” (so Spencer described them); these severely curtailed his ability to carry out his philosophical studies. Of all possible explanations for such episodes, none seems as likely as reading epilepsy. Enduring preconceptions about Spencer's presumed neurosesmay have kept modern historians from appreciating that Spencer suffered from a legitimate, if esoteric, neurological malady.     

Reading for Difference in the Archives of Tropical Geography: Imagining An(Other) Economic Geography for Beyond the Anthropocene

This paper is based on the 2016 Neil Smith Lecture presented at St Andrews University. It honours the work of a geographer whose pioneering work on uneven development and the complex relations between capitalism and nature shaped late 20^th century thinking inside and beyond the discipline of Geography. Today the collision of earth system dynamics with socio-economic dynamics is shaking apart Enlightenment knowledge systems, forcing questions of what it means to be a responsible inhabitant on planet earth and how, indeed, to go onwards “in a different mode of humanity”, to quote eco-feminist philosopher Val Plumwood (2007; Australian Humanities Review 42:1). “The Great Acceleration” since the 1950s of trends in key aspects of earth system health and socio-economic change highlights powerful dynamics that have shaped a new geological epoch, contentiously named the Anthropocene—or more perhaps to Neil’s liking, the Capitalocene. In this paper I ask how might we do geographic research in these times? I reflect on this question by drawing on the feminist anti-essentialist thinking strategy of reading for difference developed by J.K. Gibson-Graham. I attempt to open up new ways of working with uncertain possibilities. I do so with reference to field research into place-based knowledges of resilience in Monsoon Asia—a region that is experiencing increasingly uncertain and extreme “natural” events that signal Anthropogenic climate change. I return to “area studies” scholarship of Monsoon Asia conducted in the 1950s when the engines of economic change were starting to rev, fuelled by dire predictions of population explosion and the fear of communism. Like Neil, I am interested in the genealogy of geographical scholarship and the institutional contexts in which it developed and was influential. I look back to see how local knowledge was described and appreciated by two of our geographic forefathers and I consider how reading against the grain of capitalocentrism might play a role in making other worlds possible.     

天演、进化、进步的内涵及其关系研究述评

<天演论>是中国近代史上一部划时代的著作,一百多年来,人们对它的研究长盛不衰,涉及问题殊多,现就严复译述<天演论>的概念问题进行梳理,包括研究状况、不同观点以及笔者的简评.关于天演、进化、进步之间的关系存在着两种对立的观点:一是对等说,二是非对等说.文中从天演与进化、进化与进步、天演内涵、严复态度四个方面进行了梳理,认为对等说较普遍认同,而非对等说更接近真理,从科学的观点讲,应该严格加以区分,并对具体问题进行具体分析,做到实事求是.     

Minimal State Theories and Democracy in Europe: From the 1880s to Hayek

Summary

This article deals with laissez faire arguments as distinguishable in Europe between the final decades of the nineteenth century and 1914. The focus is on Herbert Spencer and the British ‘Individualists’, the Italian Vilfredo Pareto, and the Frenchman Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. Analysis concentrates on the relationship between laissez faire formulations and democracy, the latter amounting to the impact of the extension of the franchise on representative government. All the mentioned authors blamed the mechanisms of democratic government for the contemporary growth in state functions. While Spencer focused on the threat of a new class legislation after the demise of aristocratic power, Pareto and Leroy-Beaulieu viewed the pressure of lobbies and parties as the chief cause of the extension of state interventions. This article also aims to detect similarities and differences with more recent formulations. It is argued that Friedrich Hayek's achievement was to reconcile, against earlier perspectives, laissez faire with democracy. The reconciliation rested on a conceptualisation of democracy as a valuable method or procedure, onto which no values should be grafted.