Year: 2007

Brief Notes on a Trip to Shanxi

Life & Notes2007.07.09
Brief Notes on a Trip to Shanxi
After coming back from Shanxi, I rested for a day (mainly catching up on a week’s worth of cartoons…), then spent a day and a half busily occupied, and only now have I begun to jot down a few things. But once I picked up the pen, I still didn’t know where to begin. After all, I’m not good at writing travel notes, and this trip to Shanxi didn’t bring me much in the way of harvest either, so I can only give a chronological account in the form of a流水账. June 30, departure: Because I had exams on the 27th and 28th, and was rushing to finish a paper…
everyday life China blog tradition
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2007年7月9日
[American] Dan Brown: Angels & Demons

Culture & Public Commentary2007.07.08
[American] Dan Brown: Angels & Demons
[U.S.]Dan Brown: Angels and Demons, translated by Zhu Zhenwu, Wang Qiaoli, and Xin Yan, People's Literature Publishing House, February 2005, 29.8 yuan—☆ The second book I read during my Shanxi period. Since I have never been very enthusiastic about bestsellers, I nearly missed The Da Vinci Code; later the movie came out, and I heard it had something to do with science and religion, so I downloaded it and watched it. It really was quite remarkable—after all, there are many good books even among bestsellers~ Although I still haven’t read the original The Da Vinci Code, after reading this Angels and Demons, I am certain that this book is even…
book reading science notes religion
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2007年7月8日
[American] Dan Brown: Angels & Demons

Culture & Public Commentary2007.07.08
[American] Dan Brown: Angels & Demons
[U.S.]Dan Brown: Angels and Demons, translated by Zhu Zhenwu, Wang Qiaoli, and Xin Yan, People's Literature Publishing House, February 2005, 29.8 yuan—☆ The second book I read during my Shanxi period. Since I have never been very enthusiastic about bestsellers, I nearly missed The Da Vinci Code; later the movie came out, and I heard it had something to do with science and religion, so I downloaded it and watched it. It really was quite remarkable—after all, there are many good books even among bestsellers~ Although I still haven’t read the original The Da Vinci Code, after reading this Angels and Demons, I am certain that this book is even…
book reading science notes religion
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2007年7月8日
Paul Hoffman: The Man Who Loved Only Numbers—A Biography of Erdős

History of Science & Scholarship2007.07.08
Paul Hoffman: The Man Who Loved Only Numbers—A Biography of Erdős
Paul Hoffman: Digital Abiding Passion: The Life of Erdős, translated by Mi Xiujun, Zhang Xiaoyan, and Miu Weidong, Shanghai Science and Technology Education Press, August 2000, 21 yuan This was the first book I read during my trip to Shanxi. It was something Senior Brother Botian had mentioned before, and it really is very good. It had been a long time since I last read a scientist’s biography. In fact, biographies of scientists are a superb form of popular science: through literary means, they can interestingly combine first-order popularization with second-order popularization. That is to say, in a scientist’s biography, one can not only occasionally insert explanations of scientific knowledge,…
philosophy book reading notes history of science
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2007年7月8日
Music for This Issue: Kreisler: Prelude and Allegro in the Style of Pugnani

Life & Notes2007.07.07
Music for This Issue: Kreisler: Prelude and Allegro in the Style of Pugnani
http://www.birdofparadise.info/mistic/zigeunerweisen/Track04.mp3 The previous piece was Heifetz and Kreisler on the violin—very good! Kreisler is hailed as the king of the violin, and he truly deserves the name. I looked around for a long time, but the quality of the Kreisler music linked online isn’t very good. The sound on this piece is much worse than what I heard, especially the piano accompaniment, which feels rather uncoordinated. Still, I’ll make do and post it here; choosing music—finding music—really is exhausting. In a few days, once I’ve bought some new CDs, I’ll say more~ Below I’ll also post two other pieces. Also, when I searched “Kreisler” on Baidu MP3, the main results…
everyday life music
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2007年7月7日
Religious Language and Its Relation to Reality and Truth

Philosophy & Thought2007.07.07
Religious Language and Its Relation to Reality and Truth
Abstract: This article discusses the sources and significance of religious language and religious knowledge. The author first compares religion with questions of scientific cognition and experience, pointing out that the ability to grasp and use concepts in thought is the precondition for cognition, and that analogy and metaphor are crucial to any system of knowledge. Simply put, these preconditions of knowledge are “language,” and language is grounded in a form of life, so it is necessarily finite. Language cannot possess truth; even the language of science or religion is no exception. However, the significance of language lies in facilitating communication rather than flaunting truth, and the purpose of communication is…
philosophy religion Kant truth
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2007年7月7日
On a Discussion on Teachers’ Blogs: the Criterion of Truth, Pluralism, and Other Matters

Philosophy & Thought2007.07.07
On a Discussion on Teachers’ Blogs: the Criterion of Truth, Pluralism, and Other Matters
On the Discussion on the Teachers’ Blogs: Truth Standards, Pluralism, and Others Gu Ya 发表于 2007-07-07 14:02:46 Preface 2007-06-08 16:59:55 Since I ultimately stopped responding, let me add this here: pluralism is related to the metaphor of dumplings and noodles. When I say that anti-scientism is not anti-science, I do not merely mean that I support some other kind of science; rather, I mean that even with the science that exists now, I do not oppose it. On the contrary, mathematization is not something loathsome: mathematics is very beautiful, marvelous, and a mathematical world is awe-inspiring as well. What we oppose is only the elevation of one particular worldview—no matter…
philosophy philosophy of science pluralism truth
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2007年7月7日
Suixuan Has Been Put in Place

Life & Notes2007.06.25
Suixuan Has Been Put in Place
Hmm. One should keep a low profile… The disclosure is limited to blog readers only; please do not make a fuss about it. Read 223 times, 8 comments, personal homepage, toss a note, folder: Suixuan——Gu Chu Room 802, Building B, Zhichun Building, 118 Zhichun Road. Latest Comments mist 2007-06-25 23:59:58 Anonymous 124.17.16.80 [Reply] Still no idea where it is… It reminds me of a point in philosophy research: merely telling the other person that this is a chess piece, called the king, does not give him any more information; unless he already understands the rules of chess and so on 古雴 2007-06-26 07:02:19 http://epr.ycool.com/ [Reply] Heh,…
everyday life blog
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2007年6月25日
What Is So Good About a Philosophy Department? — Written for Parents

Philosophy & Thought2007.06.22
What Is So Good About a Philosophy Department? — Written for Parents
Poor parents across the world all feel this way: if their children actually choose to study philosophy, it is rather like their children saying they want to join the underworld, or saying they want to marry an eighty-two-year-old man. How many parents would not be deeply worried by that? Such anxiety is only natural. A single casual choice can alter the whole second half of one’s life; how much more so matters as major as the college entrance examination and choosing a major? The child has not yet seen the world, so how could parents not keep a close eye on things? Indeed, many people are simply not suited to…
philosophy scholarship education self
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2007年6月22日
Zhu Haijun: Force Does Not Need Acquired Inheritance

History of Science & Scholarship2007.06.18
Zhu Haijun: Force Does Not Need Acquired Inheritance
Zhu Hairun’s Force Taken from KeyinWiki Definition An evolutionary driving force proposed by the amateur scientist Zhu Hairun, used to explain why human beings walk upright. Zhu Hairun believed that among animals, only human beings engage in face-to-face sex, and only human beings walk upright; therefore, face-to-face intercourse must be the main reason human beings walk upright. He explained that when our remote ancestors engaged in face-to-face sex, the female pelvis was subjected to downward pressure from the male, thereby gradually changing its structure, so that women could gradually begin to walk upright. And since all men are born of women, the mother’s upright manner of walking, through reproduction…
science evolution folk science
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2007年6月18日