Civilization History Introduction

Author: Zhou Chunsheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: This book provides an overview of Marxist historiography and the civilizational history perspectives of various Western historical schools, while also presenting the author's own views on issues such as civilization, civilizational characteristics, and civilizational evolution. These views include: civilization as creative activities and achievements of human beings seeking survival and development with a progressive value orientation; the overall evolutionary process of human beings—productivity—society and culture in civilizational history; the idea that the development of civilization is always a "unity of trend and contingent facts," and so on. The book also utilizes the latest research findings in historical philosophy to address issues related to the intellectual realm, knowledge level, and cognitive methods involved in the compilation and reading of civilizational history. Based on the author's extensive experience in reading and teaching, the book offers a general explanation of various phenomena in civilizational history, particularly through comparisons and analyses of different civilizational characteristics and their connotations. It conducts a comprehensive examination of the processes of agricultural civilization, industrial civilization, and the information age civilization. The author believes that the future of civilization will be a holistic progress centered on human beings. In today's increasingly globalized world, various civilizations should engage in civilizational dialogue under the lowest common standards and premises they can accept to foster mutual understanding between them. Additionally, the author addresses questions raised by teachers and students based on the current use of civilizational history textbooks in schools and provides a list of numerous relevant teaching reference materials. Therefore, this book can also serve as a reference for history teachers when teaching civilizational history.