On Some Basic Characteristics of Modern Society and Their Causes
The most insignificant man, if he behaves within his ability and skills, he can also achieve a perfect condition, but if short of the necessary evenness, then even some beautiful advantages will be faded, dispelled and ruined. This kind of disaster more frequently cuts a figure in modern times, because who can possibly satisfy the completely enhanced and extremely rapid-moving modern demands?[1]
-Goethe
(I)Some Basic Characteristics of Modern Society
The society we all modern men bustle in and live in is naturally modern society, and it is a social form quite different from traditional one, though compared with traditional society, modern society has some similarities, it also has many new basic features, and through the surface of complicated modern life, we can extract some central features of it, and in them, the most obvious fundamental characteristics of modern society at least include the following 5 aspects:
1 Chaos, Complexity and Rapid Progress. Understandably, every modern man deeply feels this basic fact, and many modern men feel that they need to absorb much new information every day, meanwhile, they also need to keep internally integrating their own thought system, so they need to invigorate at any time, and about this, Marx has a classical exposition: “Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.”[2] On one side, for the social macro environment we live in, we can feel that it is keeping turbulent, and this overall social environment can be divided into two aspects, software and hardware, and the hardware includes various technologies (like smart phone), while the software includes many basic overall social institutions and environment, like politics, economy, entertainment and network views. For instance, the sports events happening around us are keeping affecting our daily life, as an example, in June, 2012, when the European Cup was going on, I excitedly tracked the relevant reports of European Cup on the Internet, and this trail lasted a long time, meanwhile, I was also nervously preparing for the incoming qualifying exam, and these sports information naturally disturbed my preparing in some degree. On the other side, there exist various problems in the daily life we keep closely touch with, and they also keep disturbing our life and work, for instance, in 2011, to prepare for going abroad, I went through many processes, such as applying for a passport, getting the visa and buying tickets, and they naturally cost me much energy. In the meantime, for the basic human relationship close to ourselves (like close relations and friends), we can also feel that they are undergoing somewhat drastic changes. In summary, our living environment can be roughly classified into local surrounding environment and overall social environment, and they both constantly change in chaos.
Even in the slowly changing traditional society, most people understand the basic truth that ‘live and learn’, and the complexity of modern society far exceeds ancient society, and thus, everyone needs to absorb and integrate broad information, about it, Buffett once said: “There are two kinds of information in the world, one is information we know and the other is important information, and the information we know only makes up a very small proportion in all the important information.” This point can be constantly verified in our daily life. As we all know, in a certain degree, modern society is a information society, and we can get some critical information at any time, and they will have a direct and deep impact on our lives (we need to point out that, most mature-minded individuals know that, a valuable idea and piece of information often cannot isolatedly emerge, but needs to build on much relevant information). Take the job hunting in America as an example, when I just arrived at the United States, I was a student in math department, and at the beginning of my study, I thought graduates of my major are somewhat easy to find a job, but later, I found that the situation was not like this. Take the cellphone industry as another example, as is well known, the rapid decline of Nokia shocked the global market, and also deeply impressed every contemporary-in 2007, Nokia’s market value reached its peak 110 billion euros, but only after 4 years, in 2011, its market value dropped to 25 billion dollars, and if Nokia’s leaders could realize the development trend of smart phone in a proper time, like 2007, and took wise measures in time, today’s smart phone market perhaps will be different. Due to the high complexity of modern society, once these critical basic information is captured, they will somewhat quickly change our local or holistic judgement about life pictures. As Bill Gates said in 2007, quoting Marshall’s comment on assisting post-war Europe: “I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.” To sum up, this basic characteristic of ‘complexity’ in modern society is somewhat obvious.
Modern society not merely advances, its many fields also advance at the same time, and we can say that it is fastly changing, and the overall social face roughly undergoes a small change in three days, and a big change in five days. As to the overall social and macro aspect, for instance, in the electronic information industry, from the early shining iphone 3, to the widely popular Galaxy Note5, the various basic functions of smart phone are continually improving, and as for the processor in CPU, like i3, i5 and i7, their various central functions are also constantly promoting, and take the film industry as another example, from the classical and magnificent Titanic, to the smooth and moving BrokeBack Mountain, and to the grand and exquisite Avatar, the image quality of films also keeps advancing over the years. As to the micro and individual aspect, each of us looks powerless though, but also plays a part in the broad tide of social progress, for instance, if we publish an original mathematical paper, or apply some new patents in medicine, or get some new ideas about economic condition, all of these will be components of promoting the society. As an external manifestation of rapid progress society, many new social phenomena have arisen in contemporary China: take overseas studying as an example, in 2005, master students were very rare among China’s abroad students, while the number greatly increases nowadays, and in terms of vehicles, the number of cars in Chinese county-level cities also evidently increases, as to higher education, the faculty threshold of Chinese universities also has greatly risen, and finally, the overseas travel also has a considerable change-in 2000, Chinese tourists travelling abroad were only 10.45 million, while in 2015, the number increased to 120 million, and we can also list many other phenomena, and they are all new basic things emerging in rapid advancing Chinese society (the huge rising housing prices, the wide spread of cars, the wage increase and rise of price caused by inflation, the spread of computers in ordinary family, the wide application of smart phone, and the big rise of county-level city population and increase of buildings triggered by urbanization, these 6 changes are perhaps the most important changes of Chinese society in 2016 compared to 10 years ago). As a basic fact many people have observed-compared with 10 years ago, the life pace of modern Chinese people is somewhat faster, and the enhancement of social vigor in China perhaps took place after 2005, and people of many places in China today are often in a rush, which is naturally an obvious manifestation of the enhancement of overall social energy. The above facts all belong to changes occurring over a somewhat long time, and in the short run, we can also feel the acuteness of social progress, for instance, until recently (probably from August, 2015) do we clearly realize that Chinese market has already somewhat largely affected global market (a marked sign is, after the exchange rate of RMB greatly devaluated on Aug 11th and 12th, most stock markets worldwide also noticeably dropped), and Chinese stock market is also fluctuating and many new phenomena will emerge every day, and Chinese smart phone companies also have a certain influence in the world. To sum up, we are exposed to a lot of new information in various aspects every day, like economy, politics, science, technology, entertainment and sports, which is a somewhat basic characteristic of modern society.
2 Orderliness, Stability. Though modern society is quite disordered, this is just one side of the story, and in many situations, our lives are actually highly organized, clear and stable, and as revealed by the great economist Marshall: “The economic conditions of modern life, though more complex, are in many ways more definite than those of earlier times. Business is more clearly marked off from other concerns, the rights of individuals as against others and as against the community are more sharply defined”[3] , then Marshall further pointed out the deeper sources of this phenomenon: “above all the emancipation from custom, and the growth of free activity, of constant forethought and restless enterprise, have given a new precision and a new prominence to the causes that govern the relative values of different things and different kinds of labour.” [4]Therefore, though modern society is somewhat chaotic, we still have broad and profound mathematicians, software engineers, doctors and mechanical engineers, and thus Goethe’s description quoted at the beginning of this paper is somewhat exaggerated. After the trial-and-error in the early stage of life, namely, the struggle before 30, and to a certain stage, our basic life path will be gradually fixed, because our general positions in the overall society have already been definite. Everyone has certain professional knowledge, and also has long-term experience accumulation of their career, for instance, architecture or medicine, and therefore, our lives are in fact somewhat in order. Goethe has another sentence which can well explain this fundamental phenomenon: “Human is a simple animal. People are of all forms and diverse, but no matter how fathomless he is, he will soon run across his entire circle of life.”[5]
3 Wideness, Richness and Hardship. As our intuitive feeling, the life experience in modern society is broad, and they can be at least divided into these following sixteen fields: 1Politcs, like the relations between China and its neighboring countries, the Ukraine crisis, the Two Sessions held in every March, 2Economy, like Chinese stock market, bank, housing market, macro economy, 3Entertainment, like Spring Festival Gala (this is a hot topic during every spring festival), The Grand Mansion Gate, Starlight Avenue, 4Sports, like the World Cup in 2018, CBA’s Annual Finals, Phelps and Bolt, 5Society, like the new generation’s basic feature, the process of lawsuit and overall social atmosphere, 6Culture, like Yu Qiuyu, Yu Dan, Mo Yan, Qian Zhongshu and Lu Xun, 7Computer, like Weibo, WeChat, some operations of Excel, 8 English, like many English tutorial classes, methods for children to learn English and methods for adults to learn oral English, 9Human skills, like some aspects of our relations, including work, marriage, buying a house and children education, the way to get along with colleagues, many skills about speaking and doing things, career experience, 10Everyday experience, like peanut, yam, the way to apply a credit card, change a phone card, the prices of many food (like eggs, pork, beef, celery, cauliflower, rape and bean), the prices of many wines (like Maotai and Wuliangye), types of teas, growing flowers (jasmine, orchid) and the process of killing chickens, the price of water, electricity and gas, the location of nearby supermarkets and pharmacies, 11Health, like taking a rest after dinner, calcium supplement, and the features and causes of many cancers of those around us, 12Geography, like the districts of Qingdao, 13Education, like Chen Ning Yang, new policies in college entrance examination, 14Cooking, like how to make a pancake, process of cooking a fish 15Driving a car, like fuel consumption, the features of German cars, insurance and penalty, 16Daily amusement, like skills of playing cards, many restaurants’ specialty, travel in Beijing and Hangzhou. Usually, when we visit friends or have a dinner, if it lasts 3 or 4 hours, we can communicate hundreds of pieces of information, and they involve many aspects of the above fields, which is a good illustration of the wideness in modern life.
In many occasions, when we stroll around the streets, we will see that the stores in the two sides of the road can be roughly divided into the following types: 1 Electric apparatus (like mobile phone store and electromechanical repair shop), 2 Medical products (like many pharmacies), 3 Many supermarkets and small shops, 4 A lot of restaurants, 5 Clothing stores and barbershops. These a variety of stores are closely related with our real life, and they directly serve our living needs. Since life embraces so many different fields, and there is also very rich information in every field, thus, each of us is trying to expand the range of our life experience, and again as vividly described by Goethe: “Smart people are always the best encyclopedia.”[6]This is undoubtedly a good note about the broadness of modern society.
Because life contains such a broad range, and the high complexity of organizational structure in modern society, and knowledge in various social fields is explosively growing, thus, our daily work and life are very busy every day: we will take some time to fix broken electrical appliances, and meanwhile, also need to timely clean home, and also need to prepare food when near dinner time, and as for important work issues, they naturally take up much of the time and energy, and finally, we also need to continually reflect on human interaction experience. Broadly speaking, the daily life of ordinary Chinese mainly includes work, preparing meals, home cleaning, human skills, many ceremonies like wedding and attending parties at different restaurants, and these aspects are often interwoven and we cannot clearly separate them. Since we have so many issues to deal with, thus, we are naturally bustling about every day and busyness is one of the major features in real life, and correspondingly, energy becomes the most important work and life habit in modern society-our minds must be somewhat active and need to have many new ideas every day, and only in this way can we adapt to the high standard of modern society. One person can well handle so many aspects, which is naturally not an easy thing, thus, compared with ancient one, modern society is a bit harder. As the movie Weather Forecaster says: “But easy doesn’t enter into grown-up life.” As our life experience extends and deepens, we will have a deeper feeling about the basic life philosophy embodied in this sentence.
4 Rationalization. More than a century ago, Marx once incisively analyzed: “It (the bourgeoisie) has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties than bound man to his ‘natural superiors’, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom-Free Trade.”[7] The deep fundamental characteristic of modern society is exactly this kind of disenchantment of rationality, and a rational examination of all things in our living world. We can all feel that we once place beautiful and deep emotions on some basic things like teacher, family, friendship and marriage (meanwhile, they are also possibly emotions without rational reflection), now, our understanding of them is continually rationalizing (for instance, about marriage, young people are unlikely to have romantic and naive illusions like ‘love is doomed’, ‘love no other in my life’, but will realistically and rationally consider it from perspectives like work place and character matching). As is well known, in the widely influential classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber comprehensively and delicately surveyed the rationalization phenomenon in modern society, and he wrote: “(we have) rational economic life, rational technology, rational scientific research, rational military training, and rational legal and administrative organizations. All of these fields can be rationalized by different ultimate values and objects”[8] , in general, almost all the organizational structures in modern society have been penetrated by the fundamental rational spirit, and in the meantime, our living world contains tens of thousands of things, and they are all somewhat obviously deeply branded with rationality.[9]
5 Gradualness. The development of society is naturally bit by bit formed by the previous basis, as Marshall says: “Economic evolution is gradual. Its progress is sometimes arrested or reversed by political catastrophes: but its forward movements are never sudden; for even in the Western World and in Japan it is based on habit, partly conscious, partly unconscious. And though an inventor, or an organizer, or a financier of genius may seem to have modified the economic structure of a people almost at a stroke; yet that part of his influence, which has not been merely superficial and transitory, is found on inquiry to have done little more than bring to head a broad constructive movement which had long been in preparation.”[10] There is a famous western saying Natura non facit saltum, and it is quoted by Marshall, which can well describe this significant basic characteristic of social evolution he elaborates. Take enterprise as an example, the reason why General Electric Company has today’s top technologies is mainly because it has a continuous accumulation over 80 years, thus, though the development of high-tech enterprises has many internal rules, the most important point is undoubtedly a long-term sustained accumulation. As for individual, it is also similar, for example, in scientific fields, every brilliant scientific worker has a long-term accumulation for over 10 years. Though at some moments in our life and work, some important ideas will suddenly emerge, and will greatly change our life or work pictures, these seemingly mutations are actually all based on tens of thousands of gradual accumulations. For instance, in the investment field, Buffett says, good investment ideas are very few, and are often inspirations, but the reason why Buffett can get these good inspirations is naturally that he has a long-term thorough and careful study about relevant companies and industries, and therefore, these investment ideas seem to be the fruits of inspirations, but actually are still the products of gradual developments. In a word, life (and society) can only gradually change, not suddenly change.
In our everyday life, the above five basic characteristics of modern society are interrelated and interlaced. The wideness leads to chaos, rapid progress and complexity, while chaos, orderliness and gradual progress these three basic characteristics also restrict each other. On one hand, our lives are somewhat disordered (as every time we have dinner in a group, like with colleagues or family, we will feel a certain level of mental vibration, and will feel that our own thoughts have many-sided serious defects), on the other hand, are quite in order (after a period of thought confusion caused by dinners or dialogues, we will feel that our ideas return back to the clear path), and meanwhile, we will have sense of confusion and anxiety in chaos, and they will impel us to take new steps in our own gradual path and return to order (after many idea exchanges in a group, we sometimes will find that our future is not very certain, but after a while, when our minds restore stability and order, we will find that we are still gradually accumulating in the selected life path, and in this sense, what life most needs is a deep foundation formed by gradual accumulation.) In a word, life is often at alternative change between order and chaos these two basic conditions.[11]
In most cases, life is guided by rich ideas, and the insight of these fundamental rules in modern society is undoubtedly helpful for us to enhance the deep understandings of complex life.[12]
(II) The Central Causes of Above Characteristics
The causes of above basic characteristics in modern society is naturally complicated, firstly, the most obvious and direct causes are driving forces in science and technology fields.
1 Technology. Below we want to list some important technical inventions which have affected human life. Can opener: got patent in 1870. Sewing machine: invented by IM Singer in 1851, from 1860s, people more and more preferred to buy ready-made clothes, and machine-made underwear begins to appear in 1970s. Typewriter: invented in 1867 (Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi is the first manuscript printed by typewriter). Processed food: in 1860s, British Cross Blackwell Company could produce 27,000 gallons of tomato sauce at that time, and at the beginning of 1880s, chemist Alfred Bird invented one kind of custard without eggs, blancmange appeared in 1870s, and jelly was born in 1890s. Illumination: hard candle began to replace previous oily candle, and illumination time was greatly prolonged. Sanitary facilities: George Jennings invented sitting toilet in 1884. Dry cleaning: invented by a tailor named Bailyn in Paris in 1849.[13] Take the steam engine as another example, Watt made a series of key inventions, such as separate condenser, outside cylinder insulation layer, oiled piston, planetary gear, parallel motion linkage mechanism, centrifugal governor, damper and pressure gauge, and improved the steam engine’s efficiency to more than 3 times of Newcomen Machine, and after the invention of steam engine, steamship and train quickly appeared, which are simple facts many people know. Some groundbreaking technical advances in the 20th century are also familiar to us, meanwhile, they are somewhat closer to contemporary life: integrated circuit was invented in 1946; aqualung was created in 1942 and it realized human’s old dream of breathing in water; plaster bandage which our public are familiar with today was invented in 1938, and before it, if people break a bone may result in death; in 1930s, American Carothers invented Nylon, and greatly improved people’s dress condition; in 1926, Swede Platen invented the first fridge; television was born in 1930, which also quickly affected almost all families. Briefly speaking, the daily life we are accustomed to today is the result of hundreds of years’ technical innovations, and it contains a large number of necessaries and conveniences, and they are all new things brought by modern technology wave, and so technical innovations have opened a vast world for the progress of human society and the overall improvement of human’s quality of life.
2 Science. Take the mathematical field I am most familiar with as an example, numerical PDE (finite element method and finite difference method are its main body) has penetrated into many fields like aerospace engineering and petroleum engineering, and wavelet analysis and Fourier analysis are foundational mathematical tools people well know and have permeated into fields like information engineering, and higher algebra also has broadly permeated into many engineering areas, and as for calculus, a great discovery in mathematics, its grand influence is more widely known. In physics, in the 19th century, the development of electromagnetics paved the way for the Second Industrial Revolution and many brilliant inventions like light, television and telephone are all based on electromagnetics, and among the twentieth-century achievements of physics, quantum mechanics provides the theoretical cornerstone for areas like electronic engineering, nuclear energy and medical engineering (like nuclear magnetic resonance). Chemistry also establishes a solid basis for the birth and development of many new materials (like nanomaterial, intelligent material, energy material, etc). Below, we want to detailedly list some key breakthroughs in biology in the first half of the 20th century: in 1901, Austrian pathologist Landsteiner discovered ABO blood group system, and this discovery has become the basis of transfusion operations nowadays; in 1912, British biochemist Hopkins propounded vitamin theory, which is now a household theory; in 1917, French Dreier found viruses who infect bacteria and modern virology started out; in 1920, French bacteriologist Calmette and Guerin developed BCG vaccine; in 1921, Canadian Banting, Best and British Macleod found and developed insulin which is now widely used in the treatment of diabetes; in 1924, Dutch Einthoven discovered ECG mechanism, and it is extensively applied in today’s hospitals; in 1929, Lohmann and others discovered ATP, which is the basic substance for human energy supply; in 1932, American cardiologist Hyman developed the first clinically effective pacemaker; in 1948, American Calvin found the Calvin Cycle in photosynthesis. The above listed facts are all new important breakthroughs in biology, and they are all closely related with our life and have been naturally integrated into our living world, and become its organic parts, and these basic facts fully prove that biology also has made fundamental contributions to the continuous expansion of civilisation.[14]
The underlying reason why science becomes the central driving factor of social progress is the basic change of overall social background, namely, due to the increasing complexity of technology development, since the second Industrial Revolution, technical inventions more and more rely on scientists’ advanced theoretical research, and in the first Industrial Revolution, since inventions then were somewhat simple, many inventions in some degree still benefited from inventors’ workshops, while in the second Industrial Revolution, many new inventions were mainly from scientists’ laboratories, and this profound change makes the fundamental importance of science to human society’s progress growingly prominent. It should be noted that it needs some middle links for scientific knowledge to go from scholars’ laboratories to the market, and about it, Lewis makes a brilliant summary: “Another impact of science to the increase of technical knowledge, is to divide this process into three independent stages, namely: the formative stage of scientific principles, stage of applying these principles to certain technical problems, and stage of the development of technical inventions can be applied commercially anytime.”[15] Through observing these three stages, we can easily find that, science provides the underlying knowledge foundation for the development of modern society, and thus also provides stable impetus to human society’s continuous evolution.
3 Computer. As a newly born significant invention, computer has changed the basic face of many human fields. The far-reaching influence of computer can be at least summarized into five aspects: firstly, partly change human’s way of entertainment, and many basic daily activities like enjoying movies, watching TV series, appreciating music and playing new games can be done online; secondly, in some degree change the way of human communication, and we can either text chat or video chat through some tools like Skype, which has shortened the physical distance between people; thirdly, partly change people’s consumption pattern, and E-business has a somewhat large impact[16]; fourthly, in some degree change people’s way of learning, and we can conveniently do many basic academic activities online, like searching frontier papers and reading classical literature; fifthly, partly change people’s work method, and electronic work is common for most modern people, and colorful electronic screens are everywhere, such as the e-ticketing system in railway and the e-service system in hospital. In a word, computer has unconsciously changed the basic face of modern people’s learning, work and life in many ways.
Here, to better understand some features of the development of computer, we list some important figures renovating Java programming language: James Gosling: well-known father of Java; Bill Joy: co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and is also the writer of vi, csh and early Pascal complier, and also adds TCP/IP protocol and virtual memory system based on paging to Berkeley Unix kernel, and also takes part in the design of SPARC microprocessor as the main designer, and is praised as “Edison of the Internet Age” due to his brilliant contributions in many aspects; Joshua Bloch: makes important contributions to develop from JDK 1.1 to J2SE 5.0, and also writes classicEffective Java; Bruce Eckel: writes popular textbooks likeThinking in Java; Richard Oberg: designs popular code generation tool XDoclet，MVC Framework WebWork and JBoss application server; Doug Lea: promotes two transformations in the history of Java-upgrade JDK1.1 to JDK1.2, and launched Tiger in 2004; Scott Mcnealy: CEO of SUN; Rod Johnson: creates lightweight vessel Spring; Alan Kay: designs the second object-oriented language-Smalltalk in the world, and thus is a pioneer of Java; Kent Beck: initiates the methodology of XP (extreme programming), and also co-designs JUnit. Through these brilliant contributions of the above 10 important figures, we can feel the richness and variety of Java language, and also the vastness of the whole computer field.
The birth of computer stimulates the wide spread of new knowledge and new information, and enables the emergence and permeation of new ideas to reach a new depth and breadth, and also largely improves human society’s creativity and advance speed. Computer has changed some deeply ingrained living habits for one century or even several centuries, and shapes new way of life, for instance, people can only watch the weather forecast and instant news on TV in the past, now the situation has greatly changed, and similarly, Google map also has locally changed people’s living condition.[17]In many cases, if people meet not mastered various knowledge, they will eagerly search for relevant information by searching Google, which is naturally a new work and life style. The basic reason why Internet is so enjoyable and makes people linger on is somewhat simple, because Internet almost covers all the fascinating elements in real life: entertainment shows, sports, music and movies, social communication, knowledge and experience, economic information, etc, and is more extensive and convenient, more flexible and autonomous, and thus, Internet gets a somewhat enduring attraction for many people.
We need to point out that computer indeed brings many positive impacts, but also generates some somewhat serious basic negative impacts, such as partly lacking extensive hands-on practice, overly young tendency and superficiality of online contents, and these negative impacts also need our high attention.[18]A somewhat obvious basic fact is that computer and Internet are just part of life, and is a tool for the service of the whole life, and it should not and also can not replace life itself.
The broad value of science and technology to promote social progress is obvious, and is also easy to understand by people, but meanwhile, western philosopher Whitehead also points out: “Institution plays a fundamental role in the rise of civilisation. It enables a social system to gradually develop.”[19]This reminds us that we should not overly simplify human society’s progress mechanism, and should not overlook the deep basic function of institutional ingredients in human society.
4 Market Economy. The most far-reaching institution in modern society is undoubtedly the birth of market economy, and in the masterpieceThe Theory of Economic Development, Schumpeter puts forward the well-known ‘creative destruction’ theory, and he elaborates the huge value of market mechanism’s innovation to promote social progress, according to Schumpeter, innovations in the market can be divided into five categories: “(1) Adopt a new product-product which consumers are not familiar with-or a new feature of a product. (2) Adopt a new production method, and this method does not need to build on new discoveries in science, and moreover, also can be a new way to deal with a product in business. (3) Create a new market, namely, one market which relevant country’s certain manufacturing sector has not entered, in despite of whether this market exists before. (4) Plunder or control a new source of supply of raw materials or semi-manufactured products, in despite of whether this source has existed, or is firstly created. (5) Achieve any new industrial organization, for instance, get a monopoly (like by trust) or break a monopoly.”[20]Though the above five forms of innovations are different, they are all not dependent on science, but rely on the upgrading of market mechanism, which fully proves that market economy is indeed one basic driving mechanism for social evolution.
It should be noted that, in the past several centuries market economy system has been gradually developed and improved, and as Lewis’ exposition: “There are man-made trade barriers-taxes, tarrifs, quota, bans and etc. Reducing these barriers is one of the greatest achievements for human from 16thcentury to 19thcentury.”[21]While this process of improvement of market economy is also a process of increase of social productivity, about it, Lewis explains: “The number and variety of market is a symbol of social wealth. Sometimes, merely opening a market to benefit trade can increase wealth, but before the society opens enough trade to prove the need of market, it is also likely to open the market-like in some poor countries, people there are talking about opening the stock exchange.”[22]Amartya Sen also points out: “Many empirical facts reveal that market system can be the engine for fast economic growth and improvement of living standard.”[23]Because the market has many-sided fundamental characteristics, like free movement of factors, full competition and trade openness, and thus has released incredible energy in the past several hundred years, and from this we can easily understand that market economy as a fundamental institution has a basic impact to promote civilization’s evolution.
5 Freedom. In the tradition of western intelligentsia, the analysis about how freedom can promote social progress is an important theme, and there are already a huge amount of diverse arguments; in them, the utilitarian arguments for freedom of Mill and Hayek are most classical. In the classicOn Liberty,Mill'scomplex discussions can be summarized into two points: 1 The richness and variety of life is based upon freedom, about it, Mill writes: “There should be different experiments of living, that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others, and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them.”[24] 2 The genius and originality in human society needs to be based on eccentricity, and about this, Mill argues: “Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded, and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage it contained.”[25] About this basic argument, we can list some famous illustrations: for example, Nobel was a billionaire, but was never married, and indulged in the research of nitroglycerin, though injuries all over the body, still strongly interested and lost himself in research, which is indeed quite eccentric to ordinary people, and some important figures like Einstein and Dirac also look strange in personality to those close to them.[26]
These eloquent arguments of Mill still have an extensive and important impact to this day. 100 years later, Hayek proposes new arguments about the role of freedom to promote social progress, and compared with Mill’s superficial level of empirical observations, Hayek’s arguments are more abstract and deeper, “The Creative Powers of a Free Civilisation” is an important and original paper of Hayek, and in this basic paper, his arguments can be summarized into the below three aspects: firstly, about social life, we are in ignorance, namely, “man’s unavoidable ignorance of much on which the working of civilisation rests”[27], and meanwhile, “all institutions of freedom are adaptations to this fundamental fact of ignorance”[28], furthermore, “most of the advantages of social life, rest on the fact that the individual benefits from more knowledge than he is aware of”[29], and therefore, freedom has a huge value for ignorance and then for promoting social advance. Secondly, unpredictable developments are based on freedom, about it, Hayek deeply points out: “The undesigned novelties constantly emerge in the process of adaptation”[30], and “liberty of the individual, would, of course, make complete foresight impossible. Liberty is essential in order to leave room for the unforeseeable and unpredictable”[31], namely, in Hayek’s view, only liberty can provide broad development space for unpredictable new things and new ideas. Here, as support for Hayek’s view, we can list two appropriate examples: in the process of finding a suitable spouse, we will get much accidental information, and some key people will often unpredictably show up, while these unpredictable people might have a decisive impact, and in the history of science development, the situation is also similar, for instance, the emergence of well-known Index Theorem was quite accidental, when Atiyah and Singer conceived this significant conclusion, they were enlightened by Smale.[32]Generally speaking, in all fields of human activity, unpredictable things often have a deep and beneficial impact, and they are all based on the institutional factor of freedom, and also based on the free social atmosphere derived from it, and therefore, we need to provide wide space for freedom in the overall social scope. Finally, the competition between organizations in human society also needs to be based on freedom, and about it, Hayek writes: “Organization is therefore likely to be beneficial and effective so long as it is voluntary and is imbedded in a free sphere”[33], namely, the evolution of organization also cannot lack freedom as the organizational and cultural premise; for instance, the competition between Google and Bing is in the fully free market environment, and if we provide privilege for any part, both these two search engines will not have today’s evolution speed. Therefore, if we just have freedom at individual level, but compulsory at institutional level, human society is also hard to develop widely, healthily and vigorously. Through the multiple arguments of Mill and Hayek, we can clearly realize that freedom is an essential basic institutional and cultural foundation to promote social progress.
6 The Division of Labor. People with certain economic common sense all know that the division of labor has rich values in improving social productivity, as Mises says: “Under the same conditions, the production activities with division of labor not only can produce the same wealth as an equal number of individuals’ isolated production activities, but are much more.”[34]Mises is a twentieth-century scholar, in fact, as we know, as early as the remote 18thcentury, scholars then had already realized the huge power brought by social division, and as Adam Smith’s summation: “The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labor, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.”[35]As a good illustration, Smith describes an interesting fact: pin-making industry then could break up into 18 simple and fine processes, and thus greatly improved production efficiency. Meanwhile, Smith also fully summarizes three basic functions of the division of labor: “first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a greater number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.”[36]Obviously, after two hundred years, Smith’s classical exposition of division of labor is still somewhat applicable to this day.
In modern society, though each person can only do one job, all people actually use information from various industries in society, and moreover, we also need to keep step with the front edge of many industries, for instance, all people (workers in mathematics, physics, mechanical engineering, medicine, finance, etc) are enjoying some latest advances in computer field (like iwatch and Windows 10). Therefore, as Yang Xiaokai says: “The function of market system is not to share all the information with all people, but conversely, the market system will stimulate information asymmetry caused by specialization, and thus, people do not need to know knowledge of other industries, but can enjoy all professional sectors’ products.”[37]About the important theme that division can promote the society to get more information, Yang Xiaokai and Huang Youguang give a simple mathematical proof.[38]
Finally, to better elaborate the modern importance of division of labor, we give a specific illustration of division of labor in contemporary society, and considering that computer industry is an industry we are all familiar with, therefore, we present an example of this industry here: to sum up, a laptop is divided into many parts to process, dispose and manufacture, and thus improving the productivity. Combining the above multi-angle analysis, we can know that precise social division is also a fundamental institutional factor to promote the progress of modern society.[39]
In a word, the basic impetus of modern society is mainly provided by scientific and technological factors and institutional factors, and they together hold up the magnificent building of civilized society.
[1]Selection of Goethe’s Prose, p.312, Baihua Literature & Art Press, 2005.
[3]Principles of Economics, Book I, Chapter I, Section 3, p. 8, Macmillan and Co. , 8thed., 1920.
[4] See the above book, p. 8.
[5]SeeConversations with Goethe, May 1, 1825, p. 116, The Translation Press, 2000.
[6]Selection of Goethe’s Prose, p. 307.
[8] The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Introduction, p.15, Joint Publishing.
[9]InPrinciples of Economics,Marshall writes: “But these tendencies towards collective ownership and collective action are quite different from those of earlier times, because they are the result not of custom, not of any passive drifting into association with one’s neighbours, but of free choice by each individual of that line of conduct which after careful deliberation seems to him the best suited for attaining his ends, whether they are selfish or unselfish.” “Now it is true that there is less deliberate selfishness in early than in modern forms of industry; but there is also less deliberate unselfishness. It is deliberateness, and not selfishness, that is the characteristic of the modern age.” (Book I, Chapter I, Section 4) The facts described in this passage are some concrete representations of rational spirit in the economic sphere.
[10]Principles of Economics, Preface to the 8thedition.
[11] We can refer to Whitehead’s wise saying: “The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order”. Corresponding to the alternative change between order and chaos in external living environment, individuals should also keep a proper balance between passion and peace in internal intellectual condition, and in the passionate stage, our judgement about difficulty of knowledge and life goals will be somewhat chaotic, while in the peaceful stage, our understandings of life and work will become stable, and obviously, these two basic conditions are both what we need, if just in passion, we will lose the overall understanding of work and life, while if just in peace, our creative vigor will to some degree be inhibited.
[12]For instance, about the value of chaos to human progress, Whitehead writes: “It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.” “It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilisation. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.” SeeScience and the Modern World, Chapter XIII, p.208, Macmillan Company, 1948.
[13]Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, Part 1, Chapter III, Section 3, Penguin Books, 2005.
[14]An interesting dialogue is recorded inWhitehead’s Anthology,which can well demonstrate the extensive values of medicine: “’If without the progress in medicine, 20 years ago, I would die from appendicitis.’ I said, ‘in 1892, patients were bound to die if ill with this disease. But now, it is already regarded as a ‘small’ surgery.” Whitehead continues, ‘if without a medical discovery only in 3 years ago, I would die 6 weeks ago.’ He got pneumonia, and was cured by a new medicine.” See the essay ‘Civilisation and Progress’ in this book, p.312, Zhejiang Art & Literature Press, 1999.
[15]The Theory of Economic Growth, Chapter IV, Section I, p.205, Commercial Press, 2005. For the concrete discussions of these three stages, we can refer to pp.205-206, for example, about the third stage, Lewis writes: “For instance, it requires many years from the idea of making a jet plane to the first flight of this airplane, and issues like choice of high temperature resistant metal, design of fuselage adapted to flying speed need to invest a lot of time and money.”
[16] In Chinese society, the E-commerce companies people widely discuss include Alibaba, Jingdong, etc, and some network things like online shopping and WeChat are also familiar to us.
[17]About the use of computer to play bridge and organize skier club we can refer to Bill Gates’ The Road Ahead, Chapter X, pp.255-279, Peking University Press, 1996.
[18] See my paper “On Some Negative Impacts of Internet and Entertainment”.
[19]See the essay ‘Autobiography’ inWhitehead’s Anthology,p.10.
[20] The Theory of Economic Development, Chapter II, Section II, Routledge Press, 1980.
[21] The Theory of Economic Growth, Chapter III, Section II, p.84.
[22] See the above book, p.87.
[23]Development as Freedom, Chapter I, Section 8, Oxford University Press, 1999.
[24] On Liberty, Chapter III, p.53, Batoche Books Limited, 2001.
[25] See the above book, p.63.
[26] As a sub-domain of human society, in economic affairs, new ideas are usually viewed as unorthodox, and thus, strongly distrusted and resisted by people, as Schumpeter says: “This resistence firstly embodies in some groups threatened by the innovations, secondly embodies in difficulty in finding necessary cooperation, and finally embodies in difficulty in attracting consumers.” See the previously quoted book The Theory of Economic Development, p.97.
[27]The Constitution of Liberty, Chapter II, p.73, The University of Chicago Press, 2011.
[28]See the above book, p.82. Human’s ignorance is a very complex issue, and we do not want to elaborate it here, and for the specific analysis please see this content-rich and farsighted paper of Hayek, and his more famous economics paper “The Use of Knowledge in Society”,American Economic Review, September, 1945, 35(4), 519-530
[29] See the above book, p.73.
[30] See the above book, p.84.
[31] See the above book, p.81.
[32]For more details of this example see "An Interview with Michael Atiyah", The Mathematical Intelligencer 6 (1984), 17-18.
[33] The Constitution of Liberty, p.89.
[34]The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth,Chapter I, Section 1, p.60, China Social Sciences Press, 1995.
[35]The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter I, Penguin Books Ltd, 1982.
[36] For more detailed explanations, please see the above book, Book I, Chapter I.
[37]See the essay “Hayek’s ideas Which I know” inYang Xiaokai’s Discussions on Economy,p.101, China Social Sciences Press, 2004.
[38]Specialization and Economic Organization,Chapter 2, Section 1, pp.32-33, Economic Science Press, 2000.
[39]About the deep analysis of this broad and interesting theme of division of labor, we can refer to Durkheim’s classicThe Division of Labor in Society. But it is worth noting that social division not only brings positive impacts, its negative effects also have aroused reflections of many sensible people, as Whitehead reveals: “(due to the division of knowledge), the modern chemist is likely to be weak in zoology, weaker still in his general knowledge of the Elizabethan drama, and completely ignorant of the principles of rhythm in English versification. It is probably safe to ignore his knowledge of ancient history.” “The point is the restraint of serious thought within a groove. The remainder of life is treated superficially, with the imperfect categories of thought derived from one profession.” Whitehead’s criticism of celibacy of knowledge deserves our attention, and about his systematic reflections on social division see his workScience and the Modern World,Chapter XIII.
