I still don’t understand what the term “khoa học” means to Vietnamese scholars. It is how the term “science” was originally translated into Vietnamese, but today I don’t know anyone who would consider history to be a “science” anymore.
However, Vietnamese historians do use the term “khoa học” to talk about research, conferences, etc. So do they think of history as a “science” or is the term used to simply refer to something as “academic”?
Whatever the case may be, I think things that are “scientific” or “academic” have at least one point in common, and that is that they are supposed to attempt to avoid being biased and strive to be as neutral as possible in the presentation of information.
With this in mind, it always confuses me when I hear Vietnamese scholars talk or write about “lịch sử nước ta” (our country’s history) or “người Việt ta” (we Viet[namese]), because once you start talking about something as “ours” then it can no longer be neutral. “Ta” immediately adds a bias to the information that is being presented, and that is not “khoa học,” however one wants to understand that term.
The concept of “we” is also very problematic. The world today is divided into nations and every nation marginalizes and silences some of its population. So in such a situation, the use of terms like “we” or “our” is always problematic.
Think, for example, about the US conquest and colonization of the Philippines. Let’s imagine that an author writes a history about that topic and judiciously covers both what we could call the good things that happened (the establishment of a “modern” school system, the promotion of a common language across the islands, etc.) and the bad things that happened (crushing an independence movement, torturing people, etc.).
Let’s also imagine that this author refers to the Americans in the book as “we Americans.”
Now, to take this exercise in imagination further, imagine an African-American reads this book, and that that person’s ancestors were brought to North America 200 years ago as slaves from Africa, that they were sold to a white plantation owner, that their descendants were eventually freed after the Civil War, but that they were still very much discriminated against at the time that the US conquered and colonized the Philippines at the turn of the twentieth century.
Would that person associate herself/himself with the “we” in this author’s book? Maybe, or maybe not. Instead, s/he might associate herself/himself more with people like the African-American intellectual, W. E. B. Du Bois, who criticized the US government for its conquest of the Philippines, and who did not see himself as part of the dominant “we” in the US at that time, just as this person might know that her/his ancestors were not part of the dominant “we” at that time either.
However, as a living person today, that reader is part of a society, and s/he has responsibilities toward that society. So it is important that s/he have a sense of being part of a “we” today.
This then is where it gets tricky.
Every society has to find a way to create bonds among its people for the society to function effectively (and this is a very important contribution of elementary and high schools in many countries around the globe). At the same time, the ultimate purpose of “khoa học” is supposed to be to increase human knowledge in general, and to do so in a neutral manner, free of overt biases.
Of course it’s never that simple, but people who engage in “khoa học” can at least try to do that. But is that even possible when scholars refer to history as “ours”?
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When one sees a word like khoa học in Vietnam it’s difficult to view it in complete isolation from scientific socialism as passed down from Marx, through Lenin, Mao to Trường Chinh and his acolytes.
At its worst this becomes what Robert Jay Lifton referred to as “sacred science.” Quoting the summary of Lifton’s viewpoint from the wikipedia “sacred science” means that “The group’s doctrine or ideology is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or dispute.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jay_Lifton
“Ta” is, of course, the group in possession of the truth. It may or may not reflect the beliefs of the society at large, but it usually reflects the state’s viewpoint.
Eloquent and insightful as always. Thanks for the response.
I believe “khoa học” is often used in Vietnam to mean “academic” and not “scientific”. Also, “scientific” is often understood as referring to natural sciences and not humnanities or social sciences.
Thanks for the comment. So in English people would talk about an “academic” conference about history and “scientific” research in biology, but in Vietnamese “khoa học” would be used in both of those instances, but in people’s minds there would be a difference of what “khoa học” means in those two cases. Is that correct?
I have to disagree with this distinction of science/academic. History can be a science, too, just as politics, social study and so on. Science doesn’t simply mean “research” or technology-related – science encapsulates not simply only the body of knowledge (such as history, biology and so on), but also more importantly, the methodology to both defend and dispute such knowledge. A scientific claim, be it historical, biological, mathematical, must come with the tools to disprove it should strong evidence be discovered/learned. When talking about academic, the treatment of knowledge is more concerned with delivery to/reception by an audience (scholars, students etc). It doesn’t come with the rigid requirements as in scientific study, though the two oftentimes overlap.
Back to the use of “khoa học”, my view is that Vietnamese tend to treat the body of knowledge as absolute – which is very dangerous since it contradicts to the definition of “science” I discussed above. In a way, scientific knowledge is viewed as holy text, indisputable, in the mind of even scientific workers. In fact, this misconception is popular among native speakers of the English-speaking world, too. However, their scientists are equipped with a better understanding of scientific methods and therefore do not walk into the same pitfall.
Thanks for your comments!!
I agree with what you say here. The only thing I would add is that just as you say that (in the English-speaking world) “scientists are equipped with a better understanding of scientific methods and therefore do not walk into the same pitfall,” I think that since the “linguistic turn” many historians have acquired a heightened sense of the degree to which the knowledge in their field is constructed, and because of that, they avoid referring to their discipline as a “science,” given the “misconception [that is] popular among native speakers of the English-speaking world.
I also think it is interesting that when you explain what “khoa hoc” is, you use terms like “absolute” and “holy.” That word “holy” or “sacred” often comes up when people try to explain what “khoa hoc” is. (see the comment by dustofthewest above). I find that interesting.
Thanks again for the comments.
Now that you mention that “many historians have acquired a heightened sense of the degree to which the knowledge in their field is constructed”, it reminds me of a joke that people in my field (computer science) often tell. We say that computer science isn’t that far off from political sciences, in the sense that many claims we make are relative and do not go through the same check as you have with hard-core sciences such as maths or physics.
In this sense, it is important for a scientific worker to realize when their claim lay in that grey area of being scientific or just a claim or not. I think people in other fields also have the same concepts of some indisputable facts (such as in the case of historians, nobody can deny that world war 2 happened due to the overwhelm amount of evidence and account), or just a speculation with insufficient evidence (such as the exact date of birth of Jesus). As somebody who study computer science, which is a technology-oriented field and often treated as “fancy” or “science”, I find it unfair for other fields to be treated as “non-science” whereas the gap isn’t that far-off.
Yea, I agree. Scientists are not entirely “scientific” and historians are not entirely “constructive/interpretive.” That’s part of what makes it all fun!! 🙂
There is something to what anhvu73f writes. Look at this:
http://www.cand.com.vn/vi-VN/vanhoa/2012/11/184692.cand
I think the word “hàn lâm” would be clearer and more precise. And in the “academic” usage I still think that khoa học does not escape from having a sense of the sacral.
Did someone leave a comment on that page? If so, I don’t see it now.
Yea, in the field of history, history in the North was definitely said to be “science” in the 1950s. If it is now “academic” but the same word is used to talk about it, then that begs the question – to what degree has the sense of history as a science left people’s minds?