What era was the Song Dynasty? Perhaps many people think that it was an era of poverty and weakness, but in fact it was a plateau that appeared after the Han and Tang Dynasties of Chinese civilization! On this plateau, in addition to the well-known literature of the Song Dynasty (including poems, essays, plays, etc.), there are several cultural peaks. ), there are at least four peaks.
The first peak is the peak of political thought. Politically, the Song Dynasty ushered in an era of reform. Hu Shi once called China's 1 1 century "the century of innovation". In the Northern Song Dynasty, there was Fan Zhongyan's innovation first, and then Wang Anshi's reform. Although Wang Anshi's political reform ended in failure, this innovation undoubtedly triggered thinking and brought controversy.
It was the Song Dynasty that produced the great historical work Zi Tongzhi Jian. History is different from literature. It is a reflective science with more rational thinking than literature.
It was also in the Song Dynasty that China's philosophy reached its peak, from Zhou Dunyi to Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi's "Er Cheng" and Zhang Zai's opening, to Zhu's holding high the banner, and then to Lu Xiangshan's ZTE. Neo-Confucianism in Song Dynasty was not only a master of Confucianism, but also absorbed the thoughts of Taoism and Buddhism, especially Zen, which formed a peak in the history of China's philosophy and made China culture enter an era of rational speculation.
There is a story that can illustrate the characteristics of rational speculation in Song Dynasty. In the second year of Xichun in the Southern Song Dynasty (1 175), a famous philosophical debate was held in Ehu Temple in Xinzhou. The philosophy of the Song Dynasty developed to the Southern Song Dynasty, and there were serious differences. One school is Zhu's Neo-Confucianism. This school emphasizes "learning from others", advocates exhausting things through things, advocates reading more books, observing things more, analyzing, synthesizing and summarizing according to experience, and then drawing conclusions. One school is Lu Jiuyuan's psychology. They believe that "the heart is the reason", that the object is the recognition of the original heart, and that the heart is clear and the truth of all things is naturally connected. Therefore, they advocate that there is no need to read more books and observe more, and nourishing the heart is the most important. The two factions are deadlocked. At that time, a famous scholar named, in order to reconcile the differences between Zhu's "Neo-Confucianism" and Lu Jiuyuan's "Xin Xue", invited Lu Jiuyuan's brothers to come to Ehu Temple in Xinzhou (about today's Ehu Town, Yanshan County, Shangrao City, Jiangxi Province) to meet Zhu and have a debate. At the meeting, the two sides had a heated debate on their respective philosophical views for three days. The two sides held their own opinions, refused to give in to each other, and finally broke up in discord. This is the famous philosophical debate "Goose Lake Conference" in China's ideological history. From this debate, we can see the speculative spirit of Song people.
Perhaps because of the influence of the speculative spirit of Neo-Confucianism, China's science and technology entered an unprecedented new era in the Song Dynasty, and the development of science and technology in the Song Dynasty almost reached the height of the world science center at that time. Joseph Needham, a world-famous historian of science, also demonstrated the role of Neo-Confucianism in the formation of the "golden age" of natural science at that time in his imperial masterpiece History of Science and Technology in China. He said: "The essence of Neo-Confucianism in Song Dynasty is scientific, which is accompanied by the unprecedented complexity of various activities of pure science and applied science itself. These four peaks run through a spirit, that is, rational spirit. By the Song Dynasty, the Chinese nation had a comprehensive rational consciousness. Although the scholars in Song Dynasty never lacked romantic temperament, they should also be the most rational group in the history of national development in China. Because of this, the poems used to express feelings and aspirations in the Tang Dynasty should be branded with rational speculation in the Song Dynasty.
How to speculate? With what guess? Cultural people in Song Dynasty needed a speculative tool. Mr. Hu Shi said that in the process of cultural arrangement and historical research, Song people found new methods and tools from a small Confucian book. This little book is the "university" in the Book of Rites, and the new tool they found is "learning from the scriptures"! Sima Guang, a famous historian, first discovered this point, which was carried forward by Neo-Confucianism in the Song Dynasty. This may be the historical reason why "Shi Shi" shone brilliantly in the Song Dynasty after sleeping for thousands of years.