汉语古文字的起源是中外学界密切关注的课题,也是业师高明先生倾注较多心力的研究领域。这个课题的研究现在似乎到了一个瓶颈阶段。虽然近年来不断有报刊文章把汉字发明的年代往前推,可是在论证上存在较大的分歧。诸家学说见仁见智,各执一端。造成这种局面的原因,主要有两方面:一是我们现在掌握的早期材料还不够,而且对已有材料的理解还不够深入,相关的考古工作也还不够细致。无论是零星的新石器时代陶器或龟甲刻符,或是年代序列不甚清楚的“族徽”以及其他刻划、书写符号,都还不足以使汉字起源研究有突破性的进展。另一方面,汉字起源研究方法论存在严重的缺陷。方法论的问题不但涉及对旧有材料的理解,也关系到如何发掘新材料,开拓新思路。因此,要进一步深入研究汉字起源,有必要先讨论一下汉字起源研究的方法论。 The origin of Chinese ancient writing is a subject that Chinese and foreign scholars pay close attention to, and it is also a research field where Mr. Gao Ming devotes more effort. The research on this topic now seems to be at a bottleneck stage. Although in recent years there have been newspaper articles pushing forward the invention of Chinese characters, there is a big divergence in the argument. Various schools of thought differ from each other, each end of one. There are two main reasons for this situation: First, the early materials we now have are not enough, and the understanding of the existing materials is not deep enough and the relevant archeology work is still not detailed enough. Neither sporadic Neolithic pottery or tortoiseshell carvings, or the “emblem” with unclear chronologies, nor any other sculptures or writing symbols are enough to make breakthrough research on the origin of Chinese characters. On the other hand, there is a serious flaw in the methodology of Chinese origin research. Methodological issues not only involve the understanding of old materials, but also how to discover new materials and explore new ideas. Therefore, to further study the origin of Chinese characters, it is necessary to discuss the methodology of the origin of Chinese characters.