Abstract
The 1923 ""War of Science and Metaphysics"", also known as the ""Debate about Science and Life Philosophies"", has often been seen as a victory of progressive, albeit naively scientistic cultural radicals of the May Fourth Movement against conservative obscurantists mobilizing European idealist philosophy. Yet a closer reading of the debate shows that the opponents of scientism did not protest against science as such, but rather against its one-sided, simplistic understanding.
They construed science as correct but necessarily limited knowledge, which can neither be reduced to a vacuous rational method applicable to any object whatsoever, nor identified with ""common sense"" or ""true knowledge"". The objections of Zhang Junmai, Liang Qichao, Lin Zaiping and Zhang Dongsun against scientism were refined and entirely modern, and the scientists never managed to successfully deal with them.
The declared victory of the science party was thus primarily a measure of the ability of its proponents to temporarily dominate the public discourse; the opponents of scientism nevertheless established a powerful voice of the newly formed humanities, and made themselves heard repeatedly in the coming years, building on the prominent arguments in this debate.