To try to expound the problems contemporary philosophy of nature faces and the directions in which it might develop — the essay question on the final exam in philosophy of nature. I’ll write a bit more about it when I have time in a few days.
Sigh, this exam was really hard: ten term-definition questions:
1. In modern Chinese and Western languages, the word “nature” has two usages; what are they respectively?
2. Why did Plato think it was a misuse of terms to call the “sensible world” “nature”?
3. What is Aristotle’s topos?
4. What are Aristotle’s doctrine of the four causes and doctrine of the five elements?
5. What influences did Christianity have on the formation of the modern view of nature?
6. Did Newton think that mechanical mechanics was sufficient to provide a complete account of the world? Why?
7. What characteristics of life did Mayer think could not be explained by physics and chemistry?
8. Give two disciplines that do not include a time arrow and two that do include a time arrow.
9. Quantum theory has provided powerful support for the wholeness of the world; give two examples.
10. What is deep ecology?
Although it was an open-book exam, it was already a struggle just to write that much within two hours, and then I also had to look up all these answers — really terrifying… Fortunately, I managed to borrow a photocopy of someone else’s notes after asking around, which made looking things up a lot easier. I had originally thought that even without the notes, the pile of “bricks” I brought would already be plenty, but I didn’t expect it still wouldn’t be enough. Of course, if I had gone all out and brought an entire shelf of books, it would probably still have been enough, because for books I had read through thoroughly I still had some idea of where things were. Still, this time I was fortunate enough to have that set of notes, and I finally got the term definitions done in just under an hour. The later essay question also took exactly an hour, and I put down my pen when the bell rang. All in all, my luck was pretty good; now it just depends on whether Teacher Wu will be ruthless or not…
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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