2006 Winter Vacation Reading Notes: Preface/Conclusion/Contents
Last year, in order to write a paper on ecological philosophy, I “finished” 117 books within two months. It looked “fierce,” but in fact, aside from a little over a dozen books I read closely, the rest were mostly skimmed by reading the beginning, the end, and selected relevant passages, and that was that; it was not solid work, and the books I read then will need to be read again in the future. This winter vacation, however, I made a major change in style: for the vast majority of books I adopted a “read through” method, meaning that I made sure my eyes passed over every paragraph. The only difference was that some were read faster and some more slowly. I no longer kept the mentality that “in any case I’ll have to read them again later,” but instead tried to make it so that after finishing them, aside from searching and checking, I would not need to read them through again.
Stimulated by a certain set of factors, I suddenly decided to chew through one book a day on average, and to write reading notes on my blog. In fact, reading one book a day is not hard at all—I was not reading very obscure specialized books after all; it was winter vacation, so reading was also a form of recreation, and there was no need to make it too painful. Besides, I also used several lightweight books to make up the numbers. But keeping up the reading notes was indeed rather tiring; in the last few days the notes became lazier and lazier. Still, I have already written quite a lot of reading impressions and marginal comments, and it is much better to refine and deepen one’s own thoughts in this way than to write separate essays.
After the semester begins, I probably won’t have so much time, and even if I do read, I may not write reading notes so diligently anymore (it is still easier to mark passages in the books with a highlighter). These are the reading notes from winter vacation, just over 150,000 characters in total. Among them, items 2, 6, 7, 8, 12, 15, 17, 18, 23, 25, 27, and 29 probably took more time to read. My reading impressions and marginal notes are all marked in italics; as for some of the views contained in them, if I have time, I may write two more essays or short papers to sort them out.
February 19, 2006
Contents
1. Cao Tianyuan (Capo): Does God Play Dice? — A History of Quantum Physics… 2
2. Zhao Tingyang: On Possible Life — A Theory of Happiness and Justice… 3
3. [Denmark] Søren Kierkegaard: Selected Diary Entries of Kierkegaard… 6
4. Deng Xiaomang: Lecture Notes on Hegel’s Dialectics… 7
5. [U.S.] Tom Rockmore: Hegel: Before and After — An Introduction to the Historical Thought of Hegel… 12
6. Edited by Sun Xiaoli: Philosophical Debates on Modern Science… 15
7. Zhao Lin: Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion… 20
8. [Germany] Luckmann: Invisible Religion — The Question of Religion in Modern Society… 24
9. [Germany] Ernst Cassirer: An Essay on Man… 29
10. [U.K.] Martin Oliver: The History of Philosophy… 35
11. Fang Zhouzi: Ulcer — Confronting Academic Corruption in China… 36
12. Roger G. Newton: What Is Scientific Truth? — Is the Moon There When No One Looks?… 41
13. [Germany] Edited by U. Böhm: A Feast of Thought — Conversations with Famous Western Thinkers, Including Gadamer… 49
14. Edited by Zhang Runlun: The Philosophical History of Poetry — An Annotated Account of Zhang Dongsun’s Poems on Western Philosophy… 50
15. [Germany] Feuerbach: The Essence of Religion… 54
16. Jin Kemu: Wind-Devoured Ashes — The Melodies of Thought… 58
17. Tian Song: Don Quixote’s Lance — Through the Mist of Scientific Discourse… 58
18. [France] Poincaré: The Last Thoughts… 64
19. [U.S.] Scott Adams: The Residue of God — Alternative Reflections on a Complex World… 69
20. [U.S.] Fred Alan Wolf: The Spiritual Universe… 70
21. [Japan] Kyoichi Yano: Kuhn — Paradigm… 70
22. [U.K.] Raymond Firth: Human Types… 71
23. [Germany] Rickert: Culture Science and Natural Science… 72
24. [U.K.] F. Bacon: Essays… 77
25. [U.S.] Edwin Arthur Burtt: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science… 80
26. [U.S.] Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan: Slanted Truth… 83
27. Edited by Wang Hongbo and Ma Jianbo: Crossing the Chasm — Science in Cultural Perspective… 87
28. [U.S.] Thomas Nagel: Your First Book of Philosophy… 92
29. [France] Jean Ladrière: Science and Technology as a Challenge to Culture… 95
30. [Austria] Erwin Schrödinger: Nature and the Ancient Greeks… 99
31. [U.S.] Gerald Holton: Science and Anti-Science… 101
32. Huang Aihe (interview): Drift — The Story of Peking University Scholar Liu Huajie… 103
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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