From American Pragmatic Social Sciences to Social Sciences with Chinese Characteristics: An Ontological and Epistemological Reflection

本文首先讨论了实用主义社会科学在美国的兴起、发展以及这一体系的长处和弱点。在此基础上，本文指出建立新的社会科学范式的关键在于本体创新，而不仅仅在于问题意识、概念和方法的创新。本文随后提出了一个高质量的社会科学范式需要遵从的四个方法论条件：（1）该范式的本体命题能被定义为互相独立的理想形态，并且每一命题都具有很强的经验上的不证自明性；（2）任何其他相关命题都是该范式本体命题的推论或组合，即范式具有完备性；（3）其他范式很容易被吸纳为该范式的一部分，即范式具有包容性；（4）该范式中的每一本体命题都应当指向一些重要的社会机制，即与社会机制有直接的连接。本文最后讨论了道家时间观对于创建中国特色的社会科学范式体系的重要性。

This article starts with an analysis of the rise and development of pragmatic social science paradigm in the United States and the world, as well as its strengths and weaknesses. Based on the analysis, the article argues that the key to develop a new social science paradigm is to construct new ontologies, not new research questions, concepts or methods. The article then goes on to propose, with illustrated examples from my own works, four criteria of building a quality social science paradigm: (1) The paradigm’s basic ontological statements are mutually independent ideal-types of self-evident nominal social categories; (2) All other relevant ontological statements are either direct inferences or the combinations of the basic ontological statements (completeness); (3) The new social science paradigm has a high capacity to incorporate other social sciences paradigms as its sub-paradigms (inclusiveness); (4) Each of the ontological statements in the paradigm is directly linked to important social mechanisms. This article ends with a discussion of the four widely existed pitfalls in the understandings of time and temporality in Western social sciences, and how the Daoist understanding of time and temporality can help us to develop a social sciences paradigm with distinctive Chinese characteristics.

赵鼎新

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