Suixuan

Year: 2006

  • A Complete Guide to Buying Books in Shanghai, Beijing, and Online

    Life & Notes

    A Complete Guide to Buying Books in Shanghai, Beijing, and Online

    Shanghai: Having grown used to living at Peking University, when I came back to Shanghai I felt that finding books was really not very convenient. Still, Shanghai is after all a big city, so there are quite a few bookstores. From my home it’s a very short walk to First Yaohan, and in the basement of First Yaohan there is the so-called “Oriental Book City,” advertised as the largest in Pudong. There are quite a lot of books, but the layout is too chaotic; as a general bookstore, it doesn’t have many academic books. On Fuzhou Road: Shanghai Book City is the most famous, but it is also a general…

    everyday lifeChinabook reviewscript
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  • Draft Text for a Philosophy Popularization Display Board

    Philosophy & Thought

    Draft Text for a Philosophy Popularization Display Board

    The images were too hard to match! I first rushed out a text draft: ten panels in all, each centered on a single “question.” Nearly five hundred Chinese characters, including three excerpts of philosophers’ own words. Doing academic work in Shanghai is really inconvenient. All my books are at school, and after several days of buying and borrowing books I didn’t gain much. With resources this scarce, this is about as far as I can get. Draft Text for Philosophy Popularization Display Panels Xingding published on 2006-08-29 03:52:57 1. What is philosophy? “What is philosophy?” This is precisely the most fascinating, and most bewildering, question in philosophy. Like philosophy’s many…

    philosophyAristotleMarxPlato
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  • Wristwatch

    Life & Notes

    Wristwatch

    The original watch was running slow, so this time when I went home I needed to get a new one. I left the matter of buying a watch to my parents; after all, I don’t care much about style or anything like that, only that it would be better if it were more water-resistant—the previous watch had been tormented by me to the point that rust spots covered both the outside and the inside of it. Nowadays people like to check the time on their mobile phones. After all, almost everyone has one, and using it as a watch along the way is indeed convenient; watches, on the other hand,…

    everyday liferitualrelationismmemory
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  • Constellations and Self-Confidence

    Life & Notes

    Constellations and Self-Confidence

    Pluto has been demoted; now the solar system has become the eight major planets. This news counts as one of the most eye-catching science and technology news items of the past few days, but today I saw a rather interesting report: it said that Pluto’s demotion caused only limited shock in astronomy, yet stirred up quite a commotion in “astrology.” The ones most affected are probably us Scorpio folks, because it is said that Pluto is Scorpio’s “ruling planet.” I don’t know what exactly this ruling planet is supposed to do, but it does sound like the problem is indeed quite serious… Pluto being included among the major planets was…

    everyday lifetraditionintellectualsfree will
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  • The Mathematical Roots of Postmodern Thought

    History of Science & Scholarship

    The Mathematical Roots of Postmodern Thought

    [Addendum] Vladimir Tasic: _The Mathematical Roots of Postmodern Thought_, translated by Cai Zhong and Dai Jianping, Fudan University Press, October 2005 Page 5: I think we can subdivide the theoretical edifice of postmodernism. First, one may regard postmodernism as influenced by Romanticism, as a revival—or, to use slightly different terminology, a reinvention—of the ideas of those mathematicians who once challenged logical inductivism; second, one may regard postmodernism as an extreme departure from Romantic humanism, a departure whose roots can in part be traced back to mathematics, and whose postmodern version has become a rather extreme form of formalism. ////——Tasic’s perspective is highly distinctive. Indeed, whenever philosophy discovers that something has…

    philosophybook readingnotesmathematics
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  • Do Not Forget Popularization

    Life & Notes

    Do Not Forget Popularization

    Whether in philosophy or in science, “popularization” is needed—that is to say, the public outside the field needs to be brought to some degree of understanding in some way. Most people would agree with this; the question is only—who should popularize, to whom should it be popularized, in what way, how should the effects of popularization be defined, and so on. In modern times, learning has become increasingly specialized, increasingly profound, and thus increasingly distant from the grasp of ordinary people. In such circumstances, “popularization” instead appears ever more important. But the current state of popularization is worrying. Looking at science popularization: in fact, modern times can be said to…

    philosophyeveryday lifescholarshipscience communication
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  • Spoofs, Media, and Random Reflections

    Culture & Public Commentary

    Spoofs, Media, and Random Reflections

    The biggest advantage of being in Shanghai is being able to enjoy air conditioning; the second is being able, now and then, to watch the TV news. I just saw two news items that were rather interesting. One was the “first blog lawsuit in China,” saying that an associate professor at some university had sued Blogcn because, in a certain blog post, someone had insulted him and attacked him personally by name…… In fact it was just a little log entry of three to five hundred characters, with a title like “Rubbish Book, Rubbish Person” or something of the sort. It said: today there’s an exam, so hurry up and…

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  • Better to Be a Hypocrite Than a Real Villain

    Culture & Public Commentary

    Better to Be a Hypocrite Than a Real Villain

    The title is certainly not inverted. Those familiar with my consistent position, or those who have heard Yangzi’s history of Chinese philosophy, will not find this surprising. The phrase “Rather be a true villain than a hypocritical gentleman” is quite fashionable now; many people even quote it with the formulas “as the saying goes” and “there is a common saying.” What does it mean? The fact that this phrase has been enshrined as “common sense” reveals certain features of current fashion. “Hypocritical gentleman” is of course a pejorative term. If by hypocritical gentleman one means someone whose lips are honeyed but whose heart is a dagger, who acts one way…

    culturehuman natureConfucianismvirtue
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  • A Sand County Almanac

    History of Science & Scholarship

    A Sand County Almanac

    [U.S.] Aldo Leopold: Sand County Almanac — Leopold’s Meditations on Nature, translated by Wu Meizhen, revised by Wang Ruixiang, China Social Sciences Publishing House, March 2004 This is the Taiwanese edition of Sand County Almanac (Leopold); it seems to include the most complete set of essays, and should be the best version. From whatever angle you look at it, this book is essential reading. It is praised, together with Walden, as a model of nature-and-humanity writing; it was selected by the New York Public Library as one of the ten must-read books in the humanities in its “Books of the Century” list; it has been called the Bible of ecologism;…

    book readingnoteshumanitiesnatural history
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  • Brave New World

    Culture & Public Commentary

    Brave New World

    [English] Aldous Huxley: *Brave New World*, translated by Wang Bo, Chongqing Publishing House, June 2005 I’d long heard of it, and Teacher Liu had recommended it too, but I still hadn’t read it. Probably just laziness. I really ought to read some literary works too. I’ve always admired and emphasized literature, but that can’t just remain lip service forever, can it? After being reminded once again, I decided to show some decisiveness in my reading—if I think of reading it, I buy it; if I buy it, I read it. The book was just delivered this afternoon, and I finished it in one sitting. It really is excellent—very excellent! Well…

    philosophybook readingnotesfaith
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