历史研究以社会为对象,不是指单纯的生产力或物质生产中的物,而是要研究人们在生产与生活中的社会关系,不仅研究经济政治领域的社会关系,也需要研究影响这种关系的各种思想。把历史简单地看作文化史或思想的历史固然未必妥当,而若忽视思想文化在历史进程中的地位和作用,恐也难以反映历史的全貌。对阿诺德·汤因比的文化史观及他的著作,学术界有不同的意见是很自然的事,但汤因比又确实提出了一些值得思考的问题,例如:如何确定历史研究的单位。若以国家作为研究的单位,即便像不列颠在地理上与欧洲大陆隔开,其历史也是不可分割的;而若以世界作为一个单位进行研究,又不免过于宽泛。他根据这种主张,把当代世界划分为五个不同类型的社会:西方社会、东方正教社会,伊斯兰社 The study of history takes social as its object and does not refer to mere productivity or material production. Rather, it studies the social relations between people in production and life. It not only studies the social relations in the economic and political fields, but also studies the influences that influence the relations Various ideas. While it is not necessarily proper to regard history simply as the history of cultural history or thought, it is hard to reflect the full picture of history if we ignore the position and role of the ideology and culture in the historical process. It is only natural that Arnold Toynbee’s viewpoints of cultural history and his writings and academic circles have different opinions. However, Toynbee did raise some questions worth considering, such as how to determine the unit of historical research. If the state is taken as a unit of study, even if Britain is geographically separated from the European continent, its history is indivisible. If the world is studied as a unit, it can not be too broad. According to this proposition, he divided the contemporary world into five different types of society: Western society, Eastern Orthodox Society, Islamic Society