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Category: History of Science & Technology

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
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
From the Altar to the Forum: The Practical Significance of the History of Science (A Review of Modern History of Science)

Culture & Public Commentary2022.01.27
From the Altar to the Forum: The Practical Significance of the History of Science (A Review of Modern History of Science)
This article was published in the April 2021 issue of Book City Magazine. It was a review from last year, but I forgot to repost it then. Since the magazine allows me to republish my own articles on my blog, I might as well put it here too. Making Science—An Over-the-Syllabus Title When Chinese publishers introduce foreign academic works, they often have the habit of changing the title. For example, A Short History of Modern Science: From the Steam Engine to Grebe Courtship, published by the Electronics Industry Press in 2018, had the original title “The Making of Modern Science: The Making of Modern Science: Science, Technology, Medicine and Modernity:…
book reading science history of science philosophy of science
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Jan 27, 2022
The Cost of Innovation: Another Kind of Lesson from the History of Technology — A Review of The Technology Trap

AI & the Future of Technology2022.01.21
The Cost of Innovation: Another Kind of Lesson from the History of Technology — A Review of The Technology Trap
This article was published in China Science Daily (2022-01-21, page 3, Reading); the title was changed to “A Different Kind of Inspiration: Seeing the Suffering of Ordinary People in the History of Technology.” It was also posted on their WeChat public account, under the title “Let’s Talk This Time About the Suffering Brought to Humanity by Technological Progress!” I’m reposting it here. I teach a general history of technology course at Tsinghua, and over the past few years I have also given quite a few public lectures on special topics in the history of technology. One question such courses or lectures often face is this: what guiding significance does the…
book reading technology book review history of technology
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Jan 21, 2022
Biography of Things (Continued) — Educational Significance, Secondary-School Science and Technology Innovation, and the Bottleneck Problem

AI & the Future of Technology2021.11.04
Biography of Things (Continued) — Educational Significance, Secondary-School Science and Technology Innovation, and the Bottleneck Problem
Yesterday’s comments still weren’t finished. What I wrote yesterday was that research in the history of scientific instruments can be positioned as “artifact biographies,” in which meaning is formed around the artifact itself. But that does not mean that, beyond this intrinsic meaning, research in the history of instruments has no other benefits. We can also make an analogy with biographical research. Unlike general academic research, biographical works as the outcome of research on individuals often lie somewhere between scholarship and popularization. Apart from non-academic biographical literature, research-based biographies also tend to have a popularizing dimension, making them easier for general readers to read. Between intervening in academic issues and…
technology history of science history education
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Nov 4, 2021
The Biography of Objects: Methods and Significance in the History of Scientific Instruments

AI & the Future of Technology2021.11.03
The Biography of Objects: Methods and Significance in the History of Scientific Instruments
At today’s regular meeting we discussed the question of paradigms in the history of scientific instruments, and I offered some views. Here I’ll spell them out a bit more fully. At present, the history of scientific instruments does not seem to have formed a relatively unified and distinctive research paradigm. On this point, Teacher Wu seems inclined to think that studies of individual instruments belong to the “initial stage” of scholarship in the history of science and technology: instruments, like manuscripts, artifacts, and other primary historical sources, are the foundation of historical research. But through further study, the results we obtain from these basic materials still ultimately have to crystallize…
technology history of science scholarship history
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Nov 3, 2021
The Growth History of the Scientific Spirit and the Unity of Personality

History of Science & Scholarship2020.12.19
The Growth History of the Scientific Spirit and the Unity of Personality
Today I was invited to take part in a forum on the spirit of science. Although my theme talk was only five minutes long, I had also prepared some new formulations, which I will lay out here in a fuller way. “The spirit of science” seems to include many dimensions: seeking truth from facts, pursuing truth, solidarity and cooperation, and so on. How should we understand this multiplicity of what is called the “spirit of science”? There are two reasons for this multiplicity. On the one hand, many people are too casual, stuffing every “good” quality into the spirit of science; but on the other hand, this multiplicity does have…
science history of science freedom Scientific Revolution
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Dec 19, 2020
Was There Confucianism in the Ancient West?

Culture & Public Commentary2019.08.25
Was There Confucianism in the Ancient West?
The recent atmosphere has me a little like a startled bird, so I’m continuing to use encrypted mode. This article really isn’t worth encrypting; in a couple of days I may quietly decrypt it. A teacher has recently been disciplined over remarks about the Four Great Inventions, and that is truly shocking. I don’t want to reopen here the warning against a culture of informing on others; I only want to talk about the academic question. What makes this incident even more frightening than before is that the remarks that led to the punishment were not a political issue, but an academic one. Even the official media could not stomach…
culture China technology science
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Aug 25, 2019
Upgrading One’s Worldview Is Not So Easy—A Review of Worldview

History of Science & Scholarship2019.03.05
Upgrading One’s Worldview Is Not So Easy—A Review of Worldview
This is a commissioned book review, published in China Science Daily (2019-03-01, Section 7, Book Review) The original title was: Before “Cognitive Upgrading,” It Is Even More Important to Understand the Foundations of Cognition When it was published, the title was changed (for the better), section headings were added, and some omissions were made. For example, the rather severe criticism I originally made of the translation was toned down quite a bit; I was informed in advance by the editor that I agreed to that. In addition, the embedded “advertisement” (for the Department of History of Science at Tsinghua) was removed, and the short final passage on Greek pseudo-history was…
book reading history of science philosophy of science Aristotle
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Mar 5, 2019
Viète and the Transformation of Mathematics from Antiquity to Modernity

History of Science & Scholarship2018.11.09
Viète and the Transformation of Mathematics from Antiquity to Modernity
Published in the Chang’e supplement of Science and Technology Daily on November 9; I cobbled this piece together from a general invitation for submissions. Science and Technology Daily has launched a new column, “Stories from the History of Science,” which is rather good. If any students want to submit something, I can make the connection. Of course, the mentality of the traditional media is still rather old-fashioned—for example, they always hope to draw out some kind of scientific spirit… Viète (François Viète, 1540–1603) was a famous mathematician of the Renaissance. Contemporary middle school students are probably not unfamiliar with his name, because the “formula for finding the roots” of the…
science history of science history mathematics
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Nov 9, 2018

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