新旧“大历史”：前提假设、范围与可能性

近年来，大卫·克里斯蒂安等人已经将“大历史”提升为一种研究过去的新方法。本文将大历史与旧大历史、也就是“普遍史”传统并列。“新”大历史或者以一种连续的神学为基础，或者建立在一种唯物主义形式之上，这种唯物主义被看作人类历史决定因素，或者起源于两者多少有些矛盾的混合。新旧大历史例示的“大跨度历史”与其说是对历史知识的贡献，不如说是这种或那种世界观的叙述化过程。在区分最大跨度历史与“仅仅是”大跨度历史过程中，在历史书写过程中满足大跨度历史要求的更好方法是更适度的尝试，例如，大跨度比较史、网络与交流史、专题史和现代化史。

“Big History” Old and New：Presuppositions,Limits, Alternatives

In recent years David Christian and others have promoted“Big History” as an innovative approach to the study of the past. The present paper juxtaposes to Big History an old Big History. The“new” Big History is rooted either in a continuing theology, or in a form of materialism that is assumed to be determined of human history, or in a somewhat contradictory amalgam of the two. The present paper suggests that“largest-scale history” as exemplified in the old and new Big Histories is less a contribution to historical knowledge than it is a narrativization of one or another worldview. Distinguishing between largest-scale history and history that is“merely” large-scale, the paper also suggests that a better approach to meeting the desire for large scale in historical writing is through more modest endeavors, such as large-scale comparative history, network and exchange history, thematic history, and histo-ry of modernization.