Year: 2020

The “Atmosphere” of Online Teaching, or a New Paradigm

Culture & Public Commentary2020.04.18
The “Atmosphere” of Online Teaching, or a New Paradigm
Stage-by-Stage Reflections on Online Teaching The most unusual semester in years has already passed its halfway point in the blink of an eye. I have finished eight lectures of my course on the history of technology, and of course it has always been online. The reading group I host has naturally also shifted to an online mode; during winter break we had already launched a “cloud reading group,” meeting once before the semester began and then resuming once a week after classes started. The reading group is held through Zoom cloud video conferencing, while Tsinghua’s large lecture course (history of technology) is livestreamed simultaneously via Rain Classroom and Zoom cloud…
culture technology scholarship media
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2020年4月18日
Should We Defy Gaia? — A Review of The Medea Hypothesis

History of Science & Scholarship2020.04.16
Should We Defy Gaia? — A Review of The Medea Hypothesis
Published in Chinese Science Bulletin (2020-04-16, Book Review, p. 7). The title was mine, but now I’m tempted to change it again and call it: “Will Gaia Die?” The “Gaia hypothesis” was proposed by the British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock in the 1970s, and, together with the biologist Lynn Margulis, it exerted a huge influence both in science and in the environmental movement; it has remained a matter of controversy to this day. The inspiration for the Gaia hypothesis came from Lovelock’s participation in the 1965 Mars life-detection project. Lovelock held that the existence of life would be a planetary phenomenon: life would transform an entire planet’s environment, especially its…
book reading science history of science book review
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2020年4月16日
Rethinking Human Nature in the Age of Technology — A Review of Technics and Time 1

Phenomenology & Heidegger2020.04.03
Rethinking Human Nature in the Age of Technology — A Review of Technics and Time 1
This article was published in the April 2020 issue of Book City Bernard Stiegler is one of the most influential living philosophers in the field of philosophy of technology, and in recent years he has also had a considerable impact in China. He himself often comes to China to give lectures and teach courses. The lecture notes from a course he taught in the Department of Philosophy at Nanjing University in 2016 have recently been published in collected form (Nanjing Lectures: Reading Marx and Engels in the Anthropocene—From The German Ideology to Dialectics of Nature). And the Chinese translation of the work that made his name in his early years,…
book reading technology Heidegger book review
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2020年4月3日
Using Unequal Technology to Promote Equality

AI & the Future of Technology2020.03.03
Using Unequal Technology to Promote Equality
Under the shadow of the pandemic, online education has made a great leap forward, and overnight primary, secondary, and higher schools across the country all switched on cloud-based classes. In the Internet age, online education may well be the inevitable trend, but a sudden leap made in haste will naturally bring many problems with it, especially since the ability to adapt to online education varies greatly from one region and one family to another. For example, on February 29, a ninth-grade girl in Henan, because her family was impoverished and she had to fight with her siblings for the family’s phone in order to listen to online classes, may have…
philosophy technology history of technology sociology
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2020年3月3日
Rumor: Seeking Rationality in an Absurd World

Culture & Public Commentary2020.02.18
Rumor: Seeking Rationality in an Absurd World
Here is another essay on the epidemic; if the previous one also counts as related, then this is the fifth. I still ask friends to circulate it cautiously. The rumors about the Wuhan Virus Institute are still continuing: some claim to be real-name whistleblowers accusing the director of secretly selling animals; others solemnly identify a certain graduate student as “Patient Zero.” These conspiracy theories are, of course, all rather crude and not worth refuting. But the significance of rumors does not lie in their own professionalism or accuracy, but in the public sentiment and popular will they reflect. The cruder a rumor is, the fact that it can still spread…
science commentary public sphere reason
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2020年2月18日
Elevating the Enemy, or a Narrative Bigger Than the Grand

Culture & Public Commentary2020.02.17
Elevating the Enemy, or a Narrative Bigger Than the Grand
Forcibly rushing to exonerate Nurse Liu Fan has stirred anger. The so-called rumor enraged some people; they furiously denounced how terrifying rumors can be, and then produced the so-called refutation. Yet this “forceful, well-grounded” refutation seemed instead to confirm that she was indeed a nurse, that she was indeed fighting the epidemic, that she indeed died of the disease, and that her whole family indeed fell ill as well… So what exactly was wrong? The rumor-refuters emphasized that protective suits were not in short supply. The implication was that she had ample protective conditions, and was not infected because resources were tight; she could only have been infected because she…
philosophy history of science history Aristotle
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2020年2月17日
The Meaning of “Conflation”: How the Public Can Participate in Scientific Communication

Culture & Public Commentary2020.02.06
The Meaning of “Conflation”: How the Public Can Participate in Scientific Communication
The third essay written amid the epidemic. I’ll say it again: things are tense, so please be cautious about sharing this among friends. From science popularization to public understanding of science to science communication, people in philosophy of science and technology have been talking about this for at least twenty years. The most traditional “deficit model” has long been widely questioned, but to this day, science communication and its significance still have by no means truly taken root in people’s minds. Simply put, the “deficit model” says that scientists possess scientific knowledge while the public lacks scientific knowledge, so science popularization is nothing more than scientists, from a position of…
science philosophy of science commentary politics
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2020年2月6日
Viruses: Nature’s Temper?

Culture & Public Commentary2020.02.04
Viruses: Nature’s Temper?
This is the second essay in my epidemic reflections; with tensions high these days, please be cautious in sharing it with friends. During the epidemic, every day I have seen many things that make one feel awful. What grieved me most, in fact, was the study on Shuanghuanglian released by the Shanghai branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Of course, as Teacher Tiansong says, one must “beware of scientists,” because scientists, like people in any trade, can be just as good or just as bad; but they wield powers greater than those of many other trades, while people in other trades are less…
culture technology science commentary
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2020年2月4日
“Preventable and Controllable” — the “Flag” of the Technological Age

Culture & Public Commentary2020.01.26
“Preventable and Controllable” — the “Flag” of the Technological Age
The pneumonia epidemic is raging, and I didn’t go home for the New Year this year either. I’m just staying at home in a daze, which is a good excuse to write something. But I’m feeling restless, so before writing on other topics, I might as well first say a few things about this epidemic. Still, I should make it clear from the outset that anything I write here is utterly useless for the practical work on the front lines of epidemic prevention and control. I have neither the standing nor the ability to “offer advice and propose measures” for anyone. Of course, simply shouting a couple of slogans like…
China technology commentary Heidegger
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2020年1月26日
Why Has “From One to Infinity” Remained Popular for 70 Years?

History of Science & Scholarship2020.01.18
Why Has “From One to Infinity” Remained Popular for 70 Years?
Published in China Science Daily (2020-01-02, Section 7, Book Review) Its Decades-Long Bestseller Status Was No Accident From One to Infinity is the famous popular-science classic by the renowned physicist Gamow. Published in 1947 and revised and republished in 1961, it was translated into Chinese in 1978 by Mr. Bao Yongning, and has already been wildly popular at home and abroad for decades. Gamow died in 1968, more than 50 years ago now, so this classic work has become a “public-domain book.” As a result, many new translations suddenly appeared on the market. In addition to the repeatedly reprinted Bao Yongning translation from Science Press, I have already found at…
book reading science history of science mathematics
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2020年1月18日