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Category: History of Science & Scholarship

Universities that prohibit students from using AI to write papers should be dissolved immediately

AI & Scholarship2026.05.27
Universities that prohibit students from using AI to write papers should be dissolved immediately
It’s graduation season again, and recently many universities in China have acquired a new task: checking AI-generation rates. Rules like “if AI-generated content (AIGC rate) exceeds 40%, you cannot graduate” are simply hilarious; they show how helpless some universities are in the age of AI. I believe that any university that stipulates that using AI means you cannot graduate can be dissolved on the spot; that is the best thing it can do for this era. Stop misleading the young. Checking the AIGC rate is a joke Checking the AIGC rate is in the same vein as the earlier thesis plagiarism check. I criticized the absurdity of plagiarism checks in…
China scholarship freedom education
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May 27, 2026
If Scholars Don’t Use AI, That Counts as Academic Corruption

AI & Scholarship2026.05.09
If Scholars Don’t Use AI, That Counts as Academic Corruption
AI’s New Advances At the end of last year, at someone’s request, I wrote a piece, Will AI Restructure the History of Science?. That happened to coincide with the release of gemini 3.0, and I thought it marked a watershed, the point at which AI moved from the level of a student to the level of a professional researcher. Less than half a year later, the AI tool landscape has once again shifted dramatically; gemini long ago ceased to be leading, and claude and chatgpt have reclaimed the lead in capability. More importantly, claude’s cowork and chatgpt’s codex have both undergone qualitative leaps forward too (perhaps spurred on by openclaw),…
technology history of science scholarship freedom
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May 9, 2026
Will AI Restructure the History of Science?

AI & Scholarship2026.03.24
Will AI Restructure the History of Science?
Published in Xinrui Weekly, issue 162; the original draft is posted here. 1 AI accelerates iteration: from assistant to master I received this commissioned piece in September, but I procrastinated until December to write it. Yet that delay also meant I waited for the November 18 release of Gemini 3.0, a milestone that marks the restructuring of academic research by AI as having entered the present continuous tense. It is not that Gemini 3.0 overturned my previous views; rather, many of the “AI will…” statements I had discussed before now have to be rewritten as “AI can already…”. The previous major milestone was probably at the beginning of 2025, when…
philosophy history of science scholarship history
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Mar 24, 2026
How to Be a Punk Philosopher

History of Science & Scholarship2026.02.04
How to Be a Punk Philosopher
On January 30, 2026, I came to Chiang Mai to attend GCC’s first Chinese-language “Cypherpunk x Thinker Gathering,” where I gave a 20-minute talk, “How to Be a Punk Philosopher.” I had actively asked to join this event after seeing the announcement, because I was very fond of this theme. On the one hand, “cypherpunk” is a current of thought I very much hope to spread in the Chinese-speaking world; on the other hand, “cypherpunk thinker” is also how I position myself, and it is much cooler than “independent scholar.” My talk introduced what “punk” is and elaborated the claim that philosophers ought to be punk. But the time on…
philosophy scholarship freedom Aristotle
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Feb 4, 2026
How Science Museums in China Can Innovate by Bringing Forth the New

Culture & Public Commentary2025.09.12
How Science Museums in China Can Innovate by Bringing Forth the New
Published in Science Times (2025-08-28, p. 3, general), with the title changed to “The first users of science museums should not be teenagers, but scholars” In this summer vacation, which is about to end, science museums have joined the ranks of the many must-check-in tourist destinations. For parents, if they want their children to take part in some edutainment-oriented activities, science museums are obviously one of the best choices. In recent years, our country has continuously increased investment in science museum construction. According to Xinhua News Agency, the number of science museums open free of charge in China increased from 92 in 2015 to 409 in 2024, with an average…
China science history of science scholarship
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Sep 12, 2025
The Linguistics of the Life Sciences: From Mechanical Analogies to Teleological Analogies—Preface to the Recommended Chinese Translation of The Book of Life

History of Science & Scholarship2025.08.03
The Linguistics of the Life Sciences: From Mechanical Analogies to Teleological Analogies—Preface to the Recommended Chinese Translation of The Book of Life
Philip Ball: *The Book of Life*, translated by Wang Qiaoqi, CITIC Publishing Group, 2025 I was honored to write the recommendation preface for this book. I actually did not read the main text very closely; I mainly wrote from the general perspective of philosophy of science. What I’m posting here is my original draft; the published version may have been revised to some extent. Science and Analogy The genome is the “blueprint” of life, the “instruction manual” of life, and life science deciphers the “code” of life through genetic technology… These are all familiar formulas to us. But Philip Ball’s *The Book of Life* is precisely a critique of these…
philosophy book reading science philosophy of science
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Aug 3, 2025
“Metaverse” from the Perspective of the History of Technology — The New Environment of the Information Revolution

History of Science & Scholarship2023.08.15
“Metaverse” from the Perspective of the History of Technology — The New Environment of the Information Revolution
This article was published in Dialectics of Nature Studies, 2023, No. 7, Vol. 39; it was written last April and has only just appeared in print. Abstract: The concept of the “metaverse” contains two layers of meaning, “meta” and “verse.” The former is immersion, or rather transcendence; the latter is openness or connectivity. The metaverse has the characteristic of surpassing itself and referring back to itself, and this characteristic is embedded within the trend of the history of technology from cave paintings onward. The metaverse is not virtual reality, and one cannot confuse immersion with realism. The metaverse does not seek to approximate reality, but to transcend it. The reason…
media history of technology Introduction to Philosophy of Technology knowledge
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Aug 15, 2023
How Is a History of Technological Thought Possible? — Mumford’s Historiographical Method as Seen in Technics and Civilization

History of Science & Scholarship2023.06.06
How Is a History of Technological Thought Possible? — Mumford’s Historiographical Method as Seen in Technics and Civilization
Published in Journal of Guangxi Minzu University, 2023, v.29;No.107(01) 46-52 Abstract: Mumford was a pioneer in the discipline of history of technology, and his representative work Technics and Civilization has profound significance as an inspiration for historiographical method. His historiographical method can be developed as a “history of technical thought,” which, like the “history of scientific thought,” aims to sort out the “inner logic” of technological development, that is, a certain thread at the level of thought or spirit. A history of technical thought requires the introduction of the following four features: first, spirituality (no longer regarding technology merely as neutral material artifacts, but revealing the spiritual connotations of technology);…
book reading book review history of technology paper
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Jun 6, 2023
Can General Education Outmaneuver the Majors? — A Loose Talk from Course Assessment Methods to ChatGPT

AI & Scholarship2023.03.19
Can General Education Outmaneuver the Majors? — A Loose Talk from Course Assessment Methods to ChatGPT
Note: I originally just wanted to vent a bit about the feelings stirred up by a wave of severely plagiarized assignments, but as it turned out the discussion naturally drifted into AI, and things got a bit loose. Let’s leave it at that for now. The two courses I taught last semester—A General History of Technology and Introduction to Philosophy of Technology—have only just now finally been brought to a close. Normally, my courses use in-class exams during the last week of the term, but because of the outbreak of the pandemic at the end of last semester, the university suggested changing the final-exam process and arranging two exam sessions,…
technology scholarship freedom education
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Mar 19, 2023
The Structure of the Historiographical Revolution — An Introduction to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

History of Science & Scholarship2023.03.01
The Structure of the Historiographical Revolution — An Introduction to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
I’ve recorded another introductory lecture for Chaoxing. The video course should already have been published on Chaoxing, and here I am posting the verbatim script I prepared when recording the program. I Hello everyone, I’m Hu Yilin, a teacher in the Department of History of Science at Tsinghua University. Today I’m giving you an introductory guide to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. II This book’s influence is enormous. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it this way: “Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996) was one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century (perhaps the most influential). His 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of…
book reading science history of science philosophy of science
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Mar 1, 2023

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