歷史書寫：一個二階觀察

Historical Writing: A Second-Order Observation

本文嘗試由魯曼社會系統理論的角度，對歷史書寫做二階觀察。歷史是「歷史／過去」這組區分的統一。史學家藉由「史料」對過去進行區分，因此史料扮演著媒介的角色，激發歷史溝通。史學家對史料進行溝通，因此產生了歷史著作。而因為現代時間意識的關係，歷史著作藉著時間的再進入而成為新的史料，引發社會對過去不間斷的觀察。而進行歷史書寫時，出現了一個歷史溝通的系統，它以史學方法為結構，進行書寫的各步驟，並從這個溝通系統出現了歷史文本。歷史文本的同一性由事件之間的相關性所保證。如此，歷史敘事可以一方面由結構展現連續性，一方面由事件展現變化、不連續，並由作者自行決定，一段歷史由何處開始，在何處結束。

This article uses the social systems theory by Niklas Luhmann to investigate the forms of historical writing.“History”is the unification of the distinction of“history and past”. With the help of historical data, historians can divide the past into two parts: recorded and unrecorded. Historical data also plays the role of the medium to activate historical communications. Through historical communication with historical data, historians create work. Moreover, because of the modern consciousness of time, historical works transform themselves into historical data via the re-entry of time. As a result, society can observe its past constantly. The conduct of historical writing generates a system of historical communication. The structures of this system are the so-called historical methods, which guide the procedure to write a history as text. The correlation of the historical events guarantees the identity of the text; thus, a historical narrative can keep its continuity with the structures on the one hand and show the changes and discontinuity with events on the other hand. Eventually, the historian can decide the chronological period when a historical narrative starts and stops.