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When in 1931 the late Arthur W. Hummel published his annotated translation of Gu Jiegang's Preface to the Gushi-bian, only the first two volumes of this opus magnum in modern Chinese historiography had appeared. Yet, Hummel recognized the nascent work as "an admirable introduction to the technique and temper of Chinese scholarship" of the post-May-Fourth "Chinese Renaissance" era, and its then youthful editor as an historian who, although he had never studied abroad or with a western teacher, was able to conduct such a large-scale disputation on ancient Chinese history "in the most rigorous scientific manner" owing to his "firm grasp of the best traditions of native scholarship, together with what he had learned of western methods." Most of the leaders of the "New Culture Movement" (yet another name for the intellectual tide around May Fourth) subsequently contributed to the Gushi-bian, the spiritus rector of which Gu remained, although he had to ask colleagues for help with the editing.

This article is devoted to the views on the goals and objectives of cognition of Gu Yanwu (1613–1682), the founder of the critical philosophy in China. These views, originally associated with the military-political projects of the Chi­nese elite of the Ming era and reflecting the strategy of the struggle for national sovereignty during the Manchu conquest of China, had a serious impact not only on the Confucian tradition of the following centuries, but also on modern Chi­nese studies. The concepts by Gu Yanwu were formed in the conditions of the emergence of new ideas about the world associated with the penetration of European knowledge and inventions into China. Because of his research con­cerning cognitive processes in the era of the collapse of the former Chinese and the emergence of the new Manchu official ideology, Gu Yanwu was able to ra­tionally explain the evolution of the Confucian tradition. His rejection of neo-Confucianism and the search for other orientations of intellectual activity were derived from the desire to preserve the Confucian heritage after the death of the Ming Dynasty. The former neo-Confucian attitude to the synthesis and con­sistency of knowledge, which has a practical application in eliminating differ­ences in descriptions of phenomena and events, has been replaced by an attitude to the analysis of knowledge and verification of the reliability of its source, also implying the verification of knowledge by practice. Gu Yanwu was the first to include field studies of geographical objects in essays on the standard Confucian issues of political culture and public administration. The idea of Yijing studies as the frameworks of Confucian tradition is fundamental to Gu Yanwu's critical theory of cognition.