分类：History of Science & Scholarship

“The Soul of Science,” “The Dragon-Slaying Saber of Calculus,” “The Stolen Harvest”

History of Science & Scholarship2007.01.20
“The Soul of Science,” “The Dragon-Slaying Saber of Calculus,” “The Stolen Harvest”
[U.S.] Lancy Peirce Charles Thurston: The Soul of Science—A 500-Year History of the Interaction between Science, Faith, and Philosophy, translated by Pan Bitao, Jiangxi People’s Publishing House, December 2006 The very first book in my reading plan was already disappointing—the theme of this book is undoubtedly one I care about deeply, yet the book itself is not outstanding at all (perhaps because I had expected too much). In terms of content, its account of Christianity’s role in promoting science may seem strange to the general public, but to me there was not much that was new. For the history of the interaction between science and religion, books such as Brooke’s…
book reading notes history of science women
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2007年1月20日
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science

History of Science & Scholarship2007.01.16
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science
I’ve long wanted to write an essay introducing philosophy of science to the younger students, but each time I started it I gave up halfway through. I hope today I can stick with it and finish. I no longer expect to find fellow travelers in philosophy of science at the undergraduate level, but even for those classmates who do not choose philosophy of science as their direction, I still hope to reduce a few of the many misunderstandings that philosophy of science has suffered from a little bit (for the moment, let me take my own understanding as the correct one; of course, my understanding may also be a misunderstanding—make…
philosophy science history of science philosophy of science
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2007年1月16日
Kuhn’s Historicism as a Rebuttal to Popper’s Philosophy of History

History of Science & Scholarship2007.01.14
Kuhn’s Historicism as a Rebuttal to Popper’s Philosophy of History
Abstract: Based on the philosophy of science of “historicism,” represented by Kuhn, this article offers a critique of the scientific-philosophical foundations of Popper’s philosophy of history, and thereby of his anti-historicist philosophy of history. The author points out the close connection between Popper’s view of history and his view of science, and then, around the keywords “falsification,” “science,” “technology,” “wholeness,” “revolution,” and “history,” analyzes in turn the limitations and one-sidedness of Popper’s understanding of these concepts. Keywords: Popper historicism falsificationism Kuhn holism revolution Contents Introduction… 1 Falsification… 2 Science… 5 Technology… 7 Wholeness… 9 Revolution… 10 History… 13 Bibliography… 14 January 14, 2007, 2:30 a.m., at Yangroupaoju Introduction The title…
science paper Kuhn revolution
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2007年1月14日
On the Discussion on the Teachers’ Blogs: Can All Problems Brought by Science Be Solved by Science?

History of Science & Scholarship2007.01.03
On the Discussion on the Teachers’ Blogs: Can All Problems Brought by Science Be Solved by Science?
Reposting one article by Teacher Jiang Xiaoyuan: Can all the problems brought by science be solved by science? 2007-03-30 21:16:43 Can all the problems brought by science be solved by science? ——A discussion with Professor Wei Menghua Jiang Xiaoyuan http://www.sciencenet.cn/sbhtmlnews/200733001117574176097.html Science Times 2007-03-30, A4 Having read with respect Professor Wei Menghua’s article, “Science Has No Third Pole—A Discussion with Professor Liu Huajie,” published in the March 23 issue of Science Times · Weekend Review, as well as Professor Liu Huajie’s article, which was the object of discussion and had appeared earlier in Science Times, I have been deeply moved, and cannot resist offering a few modest views of my own….
science discussion truth Liu Huajie
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2007年1月3日
The Reformation and the Scientific Revolution

History of Science & Scholarship2007.01.01
The Reformation and the Scientific Revolution
The Protestant Reformation and the Scientific Revolution occurred and unfolded almost simultaneously—people discovered this obvious fact long ago and tried to guess at the inner connection between the two. Beginning with Francis Bacon, many tended to treat praise of science as part of an argument for the superiority of Protestantism. This raises a question: although there is clearly some connection between the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution, how exactly did that connection arise? And to what extent was it related to the differences between Protestantism and Catholicism? This essay will make some very preliminary inquiries into this question. The most conservative conclusion is this: Protestantism was more conducive to scientific…
science Scientific Revolution Christianity Copernicus
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2007年1月1日
Similarities and Differences Between Modern Science and Classical Greek Science

History of Science & Scholarship2006.11.30
Similarities and Differences Between Modern Science and Classical Greek Science
First of all, it is obvious that modern science and Greek classical science are both explorations and studies of “nature,” that is, natural philosophy or natural science. But this is also where the most fundamental difference between them lies—modernity and ancient Greece understood the concept of “nature” in very different ways. In ancient Greece, the word nature did not mean something like the modern “the totality of natural things”; rather, it meant “nature” in the sense of “essence,” which, according to Aristotle, is “the essence of a thing that has the source of its own motion within itself.” Yet “the discovery of nature” implies believing in an objectifiable world that…
philosophy science philosophy of science Aristotle
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2006年11月30日
Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth (2006) / A Truth Hard to Ignore

History of Science & Scholarship2006.11.21
Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth (2006) / A Truth Hard to Ignore
Al Gore An Inconvenient Truth Highly recommend this film. A documentary about global warming. Starring former U.S. Vice President Al Gore (the same one who ran against George W. Bush back then). It’s deeply shocking. Even though I already had some awareness of the environmental crisis, I was still very shaken. For some people who remain unmoved by the environmental crisis, or who keep speaking in vague and equivocal terms, it is truly “their duty” to watch this film. Screenshot: the upper line shows changes in the level of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 650,000 years, as examined through Antarctic permafrost ice cores, while the lower…
book reading notes environment responsibility
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2006年11月21日
A Discussion of the Question of Abolishing Traditional Chinese Medicine

History of Science & Scholarship2006.11.08
A Discussion of the Question of Abolishing Traditional Chinese Medicine
Again, this is a comment posted on Professor Liu’s blog: http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/485ea879010005nw Whether Chinese medicine is science, and what kind of science it is, is a major issue in the philosophy of technology, and it always deserves serious thought. Let me now post some preliminary discussion (there was already some discussion in last semester’s Introduction to Philosophy of Science course assignment), Neither Chinese medicine nor Western medicine is “science”; they are “technology,” after all. The technology of medicine is very special indeed, and in the West it too has sources and traditions different from those of science. Medicine exists to cure illness; it is not human biology, not a science pursued…
science philosophy of science pluralism Galileo
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2006年11月8日
A Frog Metaphor for Ancient Chinese Science

History of Science & Scholarship2006.11.02
A Frog Metaphor for Ancient Chinese Science
On whether ancient China had science, what kind of science it had, and how it relates to Western science. Viewpoint one: little frog and big frog — ancient China had the same science as the West, but it was simply undernourished and underdeveloped, not as sturdy and robust as Western science. That is all. Viewpoint two: tadpole and frog — this admits that ancient China did not form a mature science, but it did have the “sprouting” of science; even without outside intervention, it would sooner or later grow into a frog. Although a tadpole and a frog look extremely different, in essence they are the same. Viewpoint three: frog…
philosophy China science history of science
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2006年11月2日
Draft of the First Three Parts of Popper’s Essay on the Philosophy of History

History of Science & Scholarship2006.10.26
Draft of the First Three Parts of Popper’s Essay on the Philosophy of History
Popper Popper… 0 Introduction… 0 What Is Falsification?… 2 What Is Science?… 4 What Is Technology?… 7 What Is Totality?… 8 What Is Revolution?… 9 What Is History?… 12 Other… 13 Bibliography… 16 Introduction Popper’s most influential, and at the same time most controversial, philosophical claims are, first, the doctrine of “falsificationism” in the philosophy of science, and second, the critique of “historicism” in the philosophy of history—or, rather, political philosophy. For Popper, the move from the philosophy of science to political philosophy is “internally consistent”: the philosophy of science is the starting point and foothold of Popper’s thought, and his views on the philosophy of history are in fact…
science philosophy of science Popper
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2006年10月26日