分类：History of Science & Scholarship

Natural History or Natural Records?

History of Science & Scholarship2015.09.23
Natural History or Natural Records?
Last Friday, Professor Wu gave a lecture titled “What Is Natural History?” As for the Chinese translation of natural history, Professor Wu and I had been debating it long ago. I argued that it should be translated as “ziran shi” (“natural history”). This dispute over terminology later opened out into more layers of meaning, especially our understanding of the origins of modern science. In this lecture, Professor Wu formally expressed a willingness to yield: he no longer insisted that “bowuxue” was the only correct translation, acknowledged that my view had merit, and ultimately supported using “ziran zhi” in academic contexts, while continuing to use “bowuxue” in popular contexts. Of course,…
China science history of science nature
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2015年9月23日
On Writing Papers — Summary of the “Introduction to Academic Research” Course

History of Science & Scholarship2015.07.11
On Writing Papers — Summary of the “Introduction to Academic Research” Course
This semester I offered two courses at BNU, one a university-wide elective, “A General History of Science,” and the other a 1-credit specialized course in the Department of Philosophy, “Introduction to Academic Research.” Both courses ended up with exactly 15 students enrolled. Why I offered the courses The reason I decided to offer these two courses was, first, on Professor Tian’s suggestion; in a sense, it was also to accumulate a bit of output for the future, whether for staying on at the university or finding a teaching position elsewhere, and in a sense it was also a kind of internship experience. In any case, I myself feel that these…
philosophy scholarship course Peking University
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2015年7月11日
On Genetically Modified Organisms

History of Science & Scholarship2015.02.08
On Genetically Modified Organisms
Thanks to Xiao Cui’s efforts, the issue of genetically modified organisms has increasingly become a public topic, and the related controversies have increasingly been brought into the open—for example, the recent discussion forum held by Phoenix University Questions, which looked pretty good. Genetically modified organisms and traditional Chinese medicine have basically become a kind of litmus test for aligning with one camp or another; it seems that those strongly in favor of GMOs and against traditional Chinese medicine are the “scientific camp,” while those against GMOs or in favor of traditional Chinese medicine are the “mystical camp.” I have also been asked similar questions to “state my position,” but my…
technology science philosophy of science environment
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2015年2月8日
Supervisors as the Dissertation’s Imagined Adversary—Odds and Ends on Academic Papers

History of Science & Scholarship2015.01.19
Supervisors as the Dissertation’s Imagined Adversary—Odds and Ends on Academic Papers
I spent the first semester of my postdoctoral stay at BNU without really taking part in much beyond Teacher Tian’s weekly writing class. My sense of presence was zero. Thinking about it, that really wasn’t very becoming, so at Teacher Tian’s suggestion, over the past two weeks I took part in various activities such as the master’s thesis proposal defenses and doctoral pre-defenses in the department’s research office, just to show my face a bit and, at the same time, to get a feel for the style and method of the philosophy of science and technology program at BNU. Listening to all kinds of defense presentations, I have increasingly felt…
philosophy science scholarship Aristotle
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2015年1月19日
A Summary of the Reading Group on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

History of Science & Scholarship2014.12.10
A Summary of the Reading Group on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
This semester, at the initiative of a few undergraduate students, with me leading the reading, we organized a reading group on Kuhn’s *Structure*. By last week, we finally finished *Structure* (skipping the postscript), and starting this week the reading group has begun *Being and Time*. This time around, leading *Structure* was quite a coincidence: just when Professor Wu went abroad, the undergraduate students in our department’s history and philosophy of science project were left without anyone to supervise them. These two students were especially eager to learn and spontaneously wanted to start a reading group, asking Professor Wu to find a teaching assistant to lead it. Professor Wu knew that…
philosophy book reading notes history of science
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2014年12月10日
An Outline of the General History of Technology

History of Science & Scholarship2014.11.21
An Outline of the General History of Technology
Outline of a General History of Technology Hu Yilin I. A Survey of Western Studies in the History of Technology In the English-speaking world, the history of technology as an established academic discipline roughly began in the 1950s. Its landmark was the publication of the monumental Oxford History of Technology (volumes 1 through 5 were published from 1954 to 1958, the final two volumes in 1978, and the general index for volume 8 was completed in 1984). Another milestone was the founding of the American Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) in 1958 and the launch of its journal Technology and Culture in 1959. From roughly the late 1950s…
culture technology media phenomenology
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2014年11月21日
Media as Environment — A Rough Philosophical Reading of Media Ecology

History of Science & Scholarship2014.09.25
Media as Environment — A Rough Philosophical Reading of Media Ecology
This is the draft of the talk I’m preparing to give tomorrow at Tsinghua; by then I’ll basically plan to read straight from the script, of course after finishing I’ll probably also expand on certain parts extemporaneously depending on how things go… This talk aims to offer a brief and accessible overview of the basic claims of my dissertation. My dissertation involves many problems, and the relationships among its chapters are originally rather loose, so it is not very easy to distill. Here I can only focus on a few core concepts. Since I have avoided the most abstruse parts (ontology and transcendental philosophy) and the most concrete parts…
philosophy technology history of science media
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2014年9月25日
On the Historiographical Program for a General History of Science

History of Science & Scholarship2014.07.10
On the Historiographical Program for a General History of Science
According to Professor Wu, the historiographical program for a general history of science should primarily address the problem of how to make things “comprehensive.” In addition to the continuity of historical development across periods, we also hope to connect science and technology, Western science and Chinese science, and tell their story within a larger whole. I discussed this with Senior Brother Shengli, Jin Shixiang, and others, and we reached some basic common ground. First, we can still hold high the banner of “intentional history” as a basic defensive strategy. Of course, when explaining the outline of the historiographical program, there is no need to get too deeply into its philosophical…
China science history of science media
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2014年7月10日
An Initial Exploration of Simmel’s Philosophy of Money

History of Science & Scholarship2014.07.01
An Initial Exploration of Simmel’s Philosophy of Money
From ancient times on, philosophy has always concerned itself only with the pure world of ideas and grand ultimate questions, and has prized “useless learning.” Money, by contrast, plainly sat ill with the interests of mainstream philosophers. Even after contemporary philosophers began to turn their gaze toward technology, money as this distinctive artifact still rarely became a topic of central concern. Georg Simmel (1858–1918) was an exception. From *The Psychology of Money* to *The Philosophy of Money*, money was one of the focal points and pivots of his philosophical system. In particular, the massive *The Philosophy of Money* has had a far-reaching influence; even today, whenever one speaks of “philosophy…
philosophy freedom media Kant
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2014年7月1日
Postscript to the Doctoral Dissertation

History of Science & Scholarship2014.06.04
Postscript to the Doctoral Dissertation
On June 1 I finally completed my doctoral dissertation defense. At last I’ve set down one major burden, and can gradually begin rebuilding this blog, which has long lain barren. Let me start with a couple of post-defense reflections. My dissertation did not include a “postscript” or “acknowledgments”; instead, in the final paragraph of the conclusion, I embedded a note of gratitude to my teachers and friends in the Wu circle in the form of a reflexive examination. On the one hand, this was part of my dissertation’s design of “self-entanglement”; on the other hand, I also did not really want to stage a deliberately sentimental expression of feeling at…
philosophy scholarship discussion paper
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2014年6月4日