上海大学学报(社会科学版)

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诺贝尔自然科学奖与跨学科研究

  

  1. 复旦大学哲学学院
  • 收稿日期:2009-04-15 出版日期:2009-09-15 发布日期:2009-09-15
  • 作者简介:陈其荣(1939), 男,上海市人。复旦大学哲学学院教授,博士生导师,主要从事自然哲学与自然史、科学哲学与科学史、科学技术与社会、自然科学与人文社会科学方法论等研究。 诺贝尔自然科学奖与跨学科研究

The Nobel Prize in Natural Science and the Interdisciplinary Research

  • Received:2009-04-15 Online:2009-09-15 Published:2009-09-15

摘要:

诺贝尔自然科学奖是世界上最具权威、最负盛名的科学奖项。国内外学者对这一奖项的研究方兴未艾,从哲学、科学史、科学社会学等人文社会科学的角度对其研究,取得了一批成果。从科学哲学的视角,或者说主要从科学认识论与方法论的角度,紧密联系和结合诺贝尔自然科学奖所提供的翔实丰富的思想资料,阐释至关重要的“跨学科”概念,追溯跨学科理念确立的简要历程,指出跨学科研究本质上是突破学科之间的限制、跨越不同“范式”之间的边界或“范式”之间转换,确立跨学科的理念,打破狭隘的学科偏见是从事跨学科研究的先决前提;通过对诺贝尔自然科学奖中精彩纷呈的跨学科研究成果的统计分析,凸显了20世纪以来自然科学学科交叉的发展态势,说明现代科学技术的重大发现与发明,大多是学科交叉的成果,科学和技术上的重大突破,新的生长点和新学科的产生,往往是在不同学科彼此交叉和相互渗透的过程中形成的,从而彰显了跨学科研究的重大意义;通过对诺贝尔自然科学奖获得者的知识背景的考察,发现绝大多数获奖者拥有广泛的兴趣爱好,既专深又渊博的科学知识,论述了多学科交叉的知识背景是科学家激发丰富的想像力、打破习惯性思维定势、取得原创性成果的主要因素之一;通过对诺贝尔自然科学奖中合作奖项及其人数在不同时段所占比例的统计分析,展示了荣膺诺贝尔自然科学奖的研究工作愈来愈明显地呈现出合作的趋势,阐明了“协作产生生产力”这一著名的马克思的经济学原理同样适用于诺贝尔自然科学奖的获奖研究工作;从事跨学科研究,不仅需要研究者具备多学科汇通交叉的知识背景,而且还要依靠众多科学家在各项研究工作中的通力协作。

关键词: 关键词: 诺贝尔自然科学奖;跨学科;跨学科研究;知识背景;合作研究

Abstract:

As the most authoritative, and also the most prestigious science awards, the Nobel prizes in natural science attract more and more attentions. Scholars both at home and abroad, from different viewpoints of humanities and social sciences, such as philosophy, science history and science sociology, make a research and achieve a number of results. This essay, from the perspective of science philosophy, or, to be exact, from the perspective of the scientific knowledge and methodology, and, by a close combination of the detailed information provided by Nobel prizes in natural science, makes an interpretation of the essential concept of the "interdisciplinary". On the one hand, the author traces a brief history of the establishment of this concept, pointing out that the interdisciplinary research, in essence, can be regarded as the breakthrough of the limits between different subjects, or the crossing of the borders between different "modes", or the conversion of different "modes"; and on the other hand, by a statistical analysis of the interdisciplinary research results from the exciting Nobel prizes in natural science, he highlights the development trend of the interdisciplinary natural sciences since the beginning of the 20th century, showing that the significant discoveries and inventions in modern science and technology are mostly resulted in interdisciplinary subjects, and that both major breakthroughs in science and technology and the emergence of new growth points and new subjects are often not be separated from each other' s crossing and infiltration of different subjects, thus underlining the significance of the interdisciplinary research. At the same time, through the examination of the knowledge backgrounds of the Nobel prize winners in natural science, he finds that, since most of winners have a wide range of interests and hobbies, not only being deep but also being profound in scientific knowledge, the interdisciplinary knowledge background can be considered as one of the main factors that stimulate scientists' rich imaginations, break their habits of thinking and obtain original results. What' s more, he has a statistical analysis of the proportion of the cooperative items and winner numbers in different periods, not only displaying the increasing cooperative trend of the research for the Nobel prizes in natural science, but also showing that the wellknown principle of Marx' s economics——"productivity resulted in collaboration——can also be applied to the research for the Nobel prizes in natural science. In a word, the interdisciplinary research not only demands researchers' knowledge background of understanding multidisciplinary crossing, but also relies on scientists' collaboration in various studies.

Key words: Key words: the Nobel prizes in natural science; interdisciplinary; interdisciplinary research; knowledge background; cooperative research