Year: 2020

An Interview with China Discipline Inspection and Supervision News on Questions of Science and Technology

Culture & Public Commentary2020.09.24
An Interview with China Discipline Inspection and Supervision News on Questions of Science and Technology
The published version can be found here: http://www.jjjcb.cn/content/2020-09/24/content_95300.htm There are quite a lot of changes in the published version of my wording, but these changes were also reviewed and approved by me, so I suppose this counts as a necessary compromise. Of course I have my own more independent thoughts, but when dealing with official media, I am also willing to seek common ground while reserving differences, and take the opportunity to pass along a couple of things I want to say. It is quite obvious that the interviewer wanted to locate the cause of the “chokepoint” problem in the weakness of “basic science.” I agree with this point, but…
China technology commentary Scientific Revolution
阅读全文

2020年9月24日
Course Outline: Philosophy of Science and Reading the Original Texts

Teaching & Courses2020.08.25
Course Outline: Philosophy of Science and Reading the Original Texts
“Selected Readings in Classics of the Philosophy of Science” was the first course I was in charge of after coming to Tsinghua, aimed at incoming graduate students in the Department of History of Science. At the time, the Department of History of Science still had only a few teachers, and someone had to teach philosophy of science, so naturally I was assigned to this course. My own research leans toward the history of technology and the philosophy of technology. I am broadly familiar with orthodox philosophy of science, but it is not my specialty. But in my view, orthodox philosophy of science is definitely something one has to study; there…
philosophy of science course Aristotle Kant
阅读全文

2020年8月25日
Rules for Authorship on Coauthored Papers

History of Science & Scholarship2020.08.11
Rules for Authorship on Coauthored Papers
Professor Wu’s published papers and books are almost always single-authored; he has never coauthored papers with students. Naturally, I followed suit, and under normal circumstances I also tend toward working independently, while encouraging students to pursue research on their own and not giving much thought to questions of joint authorship. Still, of course, I am not rigid to the point of stubbornness. For various reasons, I have recently begun trying to coauthor papers with students. But this is not something to be done casually or blindly: why coauthor at all, under what circumstances one may be listed as an author, who should be first author and who second author—these questions…
scholarship paper
阅读全文

2020年8月11日
Course Summary for General History of Technology (Spring 2020)

Teaching & Courses2020.08.06
Course Summary for General History of Technology (Spring 2020)
The History of Technology survey course has now run through its third round. The course summaries for the first year and second year were both quite detailed, so students who want an overview of the course can refer to those earlier installments. This year’s summary will be written a bit more briefly. This year, because of the pandemic, the spring semester was taught entirely online. Since it was my first time doing an online format, I didn’t add any new material; instead I just reheated yesterday’s leftovers, selecting relatively mature parts from the previous two years and teaching them again. With the teaching plan adjusted for next semester, I will…
history of science course Scientific Revolution Introduction to Philosophy of Technology
阅读全文

2020年8月6日
Why Must Philosophy Be Obscure? — Reflections on a Perfect-Score Zhejiang Essay

Culture & Public Commentary2020.08.04
Why Must Philosophy Be Obscure? — Reflections on a Perfect-Score Zhejiang Essay
A recent Zhejiang Gaokao essay that scored full marks has sparked heated discussion, but the target of the criticism is often “obscurity.” The author opened by quoting Heidegger, famous for being obscure, and thereby deepened the stereotype of philosophy = obscurity. In my view, the key to that full-mark essay is not “obscurity,” but “posing,” that is, feigning obscurity. Some philosophers are obscure because they often construct a grand edifice of thought, weaving together a self-consistent conceptual system; if an outsider is not familiar with the basic patterns, then even a few scattered phrases are hard to understand. It is like a mathematical formula: if you are not familiar with…
philosophy scholarship commentary Aristotle
阅读全文

2020年8月4日
Driverless Driving: Transforming the World Like Automobiles Did? — A Review of “The Age of Automation”

AI & Scholarship2020.07.23
Driverless Driving: Transforming the World Like Automobiles Did? — A Review of “The Age of Automation”
This article was published in Sai Xiansheng. The title was “Can driverless cars change the world, just as automobiles once did?” In fact, I did not read this book very closely; the article was mainly written on the basis of inspirations from a cursory reading, and around my own thoughts on the relevant issues. The automobile, invented and popularized from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth, can be said to be one of the most important, or most emblematic, inventions of modern industrial society. The automobile industry brought together a series of the most cutting-edge industrial technologies of the time—steel, materials, petroleum, chemicals, and so on—thus driving the…
book reading technology book review Introduction to Philosophy of Technology
阅读全文

2020年7月23日
Hindsight in the Face of Technology—A Review of The Dark Side of Technology

AI & the Future of Technology2020.07.09
Hindsight in the Face of Technology—A Review of The Dark Side of Technology
I owe quite a few book reviews; the books are all rather good, and I’ll be writing them out in succession in the near future. Of course, as long as a book is good overall, my reviews will still tend to praise it, while using the review as an occasion to talk about my own thoughts; in fact, that does not amount to a particularly strong recommendation of the book itself. This article was published in China Science Daily (July 9, 2020, page 7, Book Review) Everything has two sides, and even the best technology is a “double-edged sword”: it can strike down the enemy, but it can also wound…
book reading technology history book review
阅读全文

2020年7月9日
Can This Really Count as a General History? — The Publication of Extension of Man: A General History of Technology

Life & Notes2020.06.09
Can This Really Count as a General History? — The Publication of Extension of Man: A General History of Technology
This year I have at least two new books coming out, and the first to appear is Shanghai Education Press’s 人的延伸——技术通史, or The Extension of Man: A General History of Technology. This book was part of a writing plan I signed at the same time back when Outdated Wisdom was published, but I dragged my feet for three years before it finally saw the light of day this year. This book is still transitional in nature. I am writing a more substantial monograph on the history of technology, and if all goes well I should finish it early next year. The reason I brought out this miniature version of the…
history of technology Introduction to Philosophy of Technology Liu Huajie General History of Technology
阅读全文

2020年6月9日
A Brief Q&A on Bitcoin Halving

Web3 & Cypherpunks2020.05.11
A Brief Q&A on Bitcoin Halving
Bitcoin is about to undergo its third “halving.” There has already been far too much discussion about Bitcoin halving for me to say anything terribly new, but precisely because there has been so much discussion, it may all seem dizzying to outsiders. So here I’ll try to answer, in a concise way, a few basic questions about Bitcoin halving. If you know nothing at all about Bitcoin, you might start by reading my “Bitcoin: A Popular Introduction.” 1.What——What is halving? “Halving” is a basic part of Bitcoin’s issuance mechanism. Every time Bitcoin produces 210,000 blocks, or roughly every four years, the block reward is “halved” once. Since going online in…
Web3 Bitcoin blockchain money
阅读全文

2020年5月11日
How to Write Good Reading Notes Assignments

History of Science & Scholarship2020.05.03
How to Write Good Reading Notes Assignments
My undergraduate general-education courses (History of Technology, Introduction to Philosophy of Technology, and so on) all like to assign “reading notes” as homework, which can substitute for a term paper (many undergraduates simply do not know how to write papers at all; if you force them to do so, plagiarism becomes all too likely, so it is better to be a bit more open-ended). But if reading notes are assigned as the major project, students should of course take them seriously; a slapdash job will naturally not earn a high grade. If you send me your reading notes in advance, you can get some feedback. But I have found that,…
philosophy book reading notes scholarship
阅读全文

2020年5月3日