At the National Science and Technology Conference held at the beginning of the year, General Secretary Hu Jintao clearly pointed out that the decision made by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council to build an innovative country is a major strategic decision related to the overall situation of socialist modernization. On February 9, the full text of the Outline of the National Medium-and Long-Term Science and Technology Development Plan (2006-2020) was published. Strengthening the ability of independent innovation and striving to build an innovative country have become the historic tasks of the whole party and people of all nationalities in China. The overall goal is: by 2020, China's independent innovation ability will be significantly enhanced, the ability of science and technology to promote economic and social development and safeguard national security will be significantly enhanced, the comprehensive strength of basic science and cutting-edge technology research will be significantly enhanced, and a number of scientific and technological achievements with great influence in the world will be obtained, and China will enter the ranks of innovative countries, providing strong support for building a well-off society in an all-round way.
First, what is "innovation"? What is an "innovative country"?
(1) What is "innovation"?
● One view is that the symbol of innovation is new. This statement also has some truth, but it is not comprehensive, because not all "new" is "innovation". Some fashionable things are "new" when they first appeared, but times have changed and they are soon considered different and weird.
● The general connotation of "innovation" is: creative, breakthrough and well-founded thinking activities and practical activities.
At the National Science and Technology Conference, General Secretary Hu Jintao issued a great call of "persisting in the road of independent innovation with China characteristics and striving to build an innovative country". It can be predicted that this grand goal and arduous task, once understood and put into action by the people of China, will burst into immeasurable energy!
Looking around the world today, the innovation of science and technology and other cultures is the most powerful force to promote economic and social development. The reason why the United States is called the world's first economic and military power is because it has many world-class top talents and world-class innovations in various disciplines and fields. Take the Nobel Prize for Natural Science as an example. From 194 1 to 2004, the United States was the country that won the most Nobel Prize in Natural Science, * * * won 198 times. However, since the founding of New China, China scholars have not won the Nobel Prize in Natural Science. Of course, there are many world-renowned scientists and literary masters in China, and many scientific research achievements are in the forefront of the world (as evidenced by the awards won in previous national science and technology conferences), but compared with developed countries, there are still many gaps in the overall level of scientific and technological innovation in China.
In recent years, there are countless articles about "innovation". However, there are still some major problems that seem to have not been clearly solved. What is innovation? How to innovate and so on.
There is a view that a country's innovation power should be measured from the proportion of science and technology investment in national GDP, the proportion of high-tech products in exports, the contribution rate of science and technology and the number of patents obtained. This obviously makes sense, but it doesn't reveal the connotation of the concept of "innovation". Another view is that the symbol of innovation is new. This statement also has some truth, but it is not comprehensive, because not all "new" is "innovation". Some fashionable things are "new" when they first appeared, but times have changed and they are soon considered different and weird.
What is innovation?
The meaning and standard of "innovation" are different in different disciplines and fields, and the level and level of innovation (world-class, national, local ...) are also obviously different, but there are similarities in the differences, and there are * * * innovations in the differences. When studying the connotation of "innovation", it is of great methodological significance and practical value to reveal its general essence. After research, we believe that the general connotation of "innovation" is creative, breakthrough and legitimate thinking activities and practical activities. It has the following three important characteristics:
One is creativity. "Creation is the beginning of creation" (in Yan Shigu) and "the theory of turning over the old and the new" (in Zheng Xuan). As the name implies, innovation means "initiating" and "repairing the old". From the history of ancient and modern China and foreign countries, the main feature of "innovation" is "original creation", that is, unprecedented independent creation. The three great inventions of ancient China (gunpowder, compass and printing) were the first in the world at that time; The three major energy discoveries (steam energy, electric energy and atomic energy) in western countries are also the first. The significance of the initiative lies in taking the lead in uncovering the secrets of a certain field or aspect of the world, revealing some internal laws or discovering and inventing some new theories, technologies and methods for the first time, which will cause great changes in economy and society.
The second is a breakthrough. Any innovation is bound to make a major breakthrough in the original ideas, theories, technologies and methods, and put forward new ideas, theories, technologies and methods. "The advantage of the new ideological trend is precisely that we don't want to predict the future dogmatically, but only hope to discover the new world by criticizing the old world." In Marxism, Marx and Engels broke through the limitations of Hegel's idealist dialectics, Feuerbach's metaphysical materialism, the political economy of Adam Smith and Ricardo, and the utopian socialism of Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen, and absorbed the positive and reasonable things in their theories, thus establishing Marxism. Einstein broke through Newton's absolute and mechanical concept of time and space that separated time, space and material movement, revealed the changing law of time, space and material movement under high-speed conditions, and established special relativity and general relativity, which laid a brand-new theoretical foundation for a series of major scientific and technological innovations in the world in the future.
The third is the sufficiency of reasons. Any innovation has sufficient basis and reasons, and it is by no means a fantasy, let alone a fantasy. /kloc-Morgan, an American anthropologist in the 0/9th century, after 40 years of hard and in-depth investigation and study, mastered extremely rich first-hand materials about clans, tribes, tribes, etc., and scientifically combed and excavated them, and wrote a masterpiece "Ancient Society", which revealed the law of the emergence and development of primitive society.