The author of Doubt and Knowledge: "Doubt and Knowledge" is an article written by Gu Jiegang. It is a text for the first volume of the ninth grade Chinese language compiled by the Ministry of Human Education. It has clear and profound views, sufficient and thorough reasoning, and discusses the issues It is highly targeted, universal and has far-reaching practical significance.
“Scholars must first doubt.” ——Cheng Yi. "Those who do not doubt when there is doubt have never learned; learning requires doubt." - Zhang Zai The basis of knowledge is facts and evidence. There are two sources of facts and evidence: one is what you see with your own eyes, and the other is what you hear from others. For example, during a time of national crisis, there must be a lot of oral news from various places. No matter how dangerous it is, it is other people's legends and may not be reliable. To know the actual situation, you can only observe it yourself.
The same is true in learning. The most important and reliable material is the factual evidence that you have seen with your own eyes; but sometimes this kind of evidence cannot be seen in person, so you can only rely on other people's legends.
Whether we believe the legend or not, we should think about it carefully and should not just believe it casually. We believe it because it is "yes"; we do not believe it because it is "not".
This kind of thinking in advance and not being willing to believe easily is the spirit of doubt, which is the basic condition for all knowledge. When we hear that there were three emperors and five emperors in ancient times, we have to ask: Who said this? In which book was it first seen? When was the book written? How does the author know? We also heard that "rotten plants turn into fireflies", so we have to ask: How can dead plants turn into flying beetles? What's the scientific basis for this? If we can ask this question, all false theories will be self-defeating.
No matter which book or knowledge we have, we must first go through doubts, think because of doubts, and distinguish right from wrong because of thinking. After going through the three steps of doubting, thinking, and discerning, that book is my book, and that knowledge is my knowledge. Otherwise it is blind obedience and superstition. Mencius said, "It is better to have all faith in books than to have no books at all." This means that we should have a little bit of doubt and not blindly follow or be superstitious.
Doubt is not only a necessary step in identifying falsehoods and eliminating falsehoods on the negative side, but also a basic condition for building new doctrines and inspiring new inventions on the positive side. It is ideological laziness to admit without discounting what others say. Such a mind will always be passive and will never be able to learn. Only a mind that is always doubting and asking questions has problems, and only those who have questions want to seek answers. Only through constant questioning and solving can all knowledge be developed. Many great intellectuals and great philosophers were trained through doubt. Dai Zhenyi, a great scholar in the Qing Dynasty, read Zhu Xi's "The Great Learning" when he was a child, and asked when "The Great Learning" was written and when Zhu Zi was born.
The private school teacher told him that "The Great Learning" was written in the Zhou Dynasty, and that Zhu Xi was a great Confucian in the Song Dynasty. He then asked how people in the Song Dynasty could know the meaning of the author who wrote it more than a thousand years ago. The great French philosopher Descartes also said: "I doubt, therefore I exist." His philosophy is based on doubt and discernment about everything.
All scholars are often skeptical not only of popular legends, but also of the doctrines of past scholars. They often debate with the doctrines in books, often judge the doctrines in books, and often revise the doctrines in books. theory.
Only in this way can newer and better doctrines be produced. Throughout the ages, new inventions in science, new theories in philosophy, and new styles in art have come about in this way. If later scholars stick to the old theories of their predecessors, there will be no new problems and no new inventions, all scholarship will stagnate, and human culture will not progress.