标签：Aristotle

Second Commentary on the Science and Technology Assignment (On the Revolutionary and Conservative Aspects of the Copernican System)

Teaching & Courses2011.11.30
Second Commentary on the Science and Technology Assignment (On the Revolutionary and Conservative Aspects of the Copernican System)
I’d been busy with meetings for a while; organizing these meetings takes so much mental energy that I still haven’t really recovered… But the long-overdue second assignment for Keton had to be graded. I’ve already gone through the assignments once and added comments one by one. Some assignments got very few comments, so I’ll use this space to talk about the more general issues. First, I have to stress once again the issue of annotation conventions. Last time I only directly pointed out the problem of annotation conventions in my replies to some students; for other students whose annotations were also nonstandard, I didn’t criticize them directly. Instead, I wrote…
history of science scholarship history course
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2011年11月30日
Some Replies on the General History of Science BBS in the First Half of the Semester

Teaching & Courses2011.10.28
Some Replies on the General History of Science BBS in the First Half of the Semester
Before, I was busy cranking out papers and went several weeks without recording the students’ discussions. Today I’ve caught everything up in one go, and along the way I also pulled out some of my own replies; some of them may still be a bit interesting, though most of the views I’ve written about before too.. On Philolaus’s “Counter-Earth” People at the time believed that “ten” was the most perfect number, but with the Sun, Moon, gold, wood, water, fire, earth, and the Earth, that still only makes nine, so people guessed there must be another planet on the opposite side of the Earth, called the “counter-earth,” but has…
philosophy China history of science education
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2011年10月28日
Arendt Reading Notes

Culture & Public Commentary2011.09.28
Arendt Reading Notes
Finally finished reading Arendt’s The Human Condition, and feel immensely relieved… Let me make some notes.. Wang Yinli’s Chinese translation of The Human Condition is basically pretty good. Though I didn’t compare it line by line with the English original, on the whole I could make sense of it, and there probably won’t be any major misunderstandings. The problem, however, is that her translation is still rather awkward. In the translator’s afterword, she also writes that she follows the principle of “literal translation,” saying that “literal translation has already become a consensus in the translation of academic works,” and so she tries not to change the original word order. I…
book reading notes freedom Aristotle
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2011年9月28日
Heidegger’s Thought on Technology

AI & the Future of Technology2011.06.27
Heidegger’s Thought on Technology
As everyone knows, “technology” is a core concept in Heidegger’s later thought. Heidegger’s meditation on technology exerted a major influence on both the critique of modernity and the unfolding of postmodern currents, and it pointed the way for the “philosophy of technology” that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century; Heidegger has even been retrospectively canonized as a model “philosopher of technology.” Yet this emblematic image of Heidegger is often painted as that of a reactionary resister, pessimistic or romantic: it is said that he denied “the exaltation of human subjectivity”[1], ignored the “promoting role”[2] of modern technology, and was a “romantic” afflicted with “nostalgia”[3]. These judgments are…
philosophy technology media Aristotle
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2011年6月27日
Utensils and Ritual Vessels

AI & the Future of Technology2011.05.25
Utensils and Ritual Vessels
A few days ago I attended a lecture by Li Meng. To be honest, the lecture was rather like scratching an itch through one’s boot, or rather, he merely pointed out where the itch was, and then it was entirely up to us to do the scratching ourselves. The lecture’s inspiration is wholly concentrated in its title; for those of us doing phenomenology of technology, there’s no need to attend the lecture at all—just recite this title a few times over. “Utensils and Ritual Vessels—A Chinese Appraisal of Metaphysics” First of all, we know that Western philosophers of technology, with Heidegger as their leader, carried out a kind of “appraisal”…
China technology media Aristotle
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2011年5月25日
The Distinctiveness of China’s Written Culture and Print Culture

AI & the Future of Technology2011.05.14
The Distinctiveness of China’s Written Culture and Print Culture
I often cite McLuhan, Walter Ong, and others on the progression from oral culture to written culture to print culture (see Media, Senses, Space-Time — A Preliminary Exploration of McLuhan’s Media Ontology), but they are basically talking within the context of Western languages. The development of writing there is basically a process of “pure oral speech — ideographic writing — consonantal alphabetic writing — vocalized alphabetic writing (from Greek onward) — alphabetic writing printed with movable type.” Certain Eastern scripts can also be fitted into this genealogy and understood in that way: for example, Arabic and Sanskrit are consonantal alphabetic scripts, and thus preserve context more strongly. However, Chinese writing…
culture China technology media
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2011年5月14日
Some Thoughts on the Elements of History of Science in the Primary School “Science” Curriculum

History of Science & Scholarship2011.01.23
Some Thoughts on the Elements of History of Science in the Primary School “Science” Curriculum
It is a great honor to have the opportunity to offer suggestions for the writing of primary school science textbooks. However, because my own level is limited and I have a habitual tendency to drag my feet, I may not be able to offer many constructive opinions; I can only jot down some very scattered thoughts. I will divide them into two parts: first, the overall significance of elements from the history of science; second, following the framework of the textbook, some ideas about how to interweave historical material into each grade. The original plan also had a third part, which would have selected some usable cases along the thread…
science history of science history education
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2011年1月23日
Categories in the Internet Age and Hypertext Scholarship

AI & the Future of Technology2010.12.14
Categories in the Internet Age and Hypertext Scholarship
WordPress-based blogs have countless advantages: backup functionality, easy maintenance, a wide range of mode choices, and abundant room for expansion. Apart from the legendary drawback that they seem to consume comparatively more server resources, they are really beyond criticism. For me, apart from the crucial ability to be backed up, WordPress also offers another crucial revolution compared with the Yaiku blog: namely, a revolution in the way categories are arranged. This revolution looks trivial at first glance: it is simply a shift from the original linear, segmented model to a many-to-many correspondence. In other words, on Yaiku, each post belongs to, and belongs only to, one folder, whereas under the…
technology scholarship Aristotle internet
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2010年12月14日
Civilization History as History of Science—A Review of Sarton’s Ancient Science in the Golden Age of Greece

History of Science & Scholarship2010.10.24
Civilization History as History of Science—A Review of Sarton’s Ancient Science in the Golden Age of Greece
As the founder of the discipline of the history of science, George Sarton was the first generation of professional historians of science, and he is by no means unfamiliar to scholars in China. In 2007, Jiang Xiaoyuan and Liu Bing edited Sarton’s History of Science Series, bringing Sarton’s ideas on historiography into the Chinese context in a comprehensive way. One of the monumental representative works that reflects Sarton’s achievements in the history of science, Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece, has also recently been introduced by Xiangxiang Press. Regarding Sarton’s value, the translator Lu Xudong says in the preface: “Anyone reading the history of science cannot but read…
book reading history of science Aristotle book review
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2010年10月24日
The Naturalization of Mathematics — A Wordplay on the Mechanization of the World Picture

History of Science & Scholarship2010.01.15
The Naturalization of Mathematics — A Wordplay on the Mechanization of the World Picture
What is meant by “a mechanistic world-picture”? Dijksterhuis’s *The Mechanization of the World Picture* revolves around this question. He asks: “When we say this, are we thinking of the meaning of ‘tool’ or ‘machine’ implied by the Greek word μηχανή (that is, of viewing the world [whether or not it includes the human spirit] as a machine)? Or does it mean that natural events can be described by means of concepts and handled through the methods of mechanics, this branch of science (in which case the word is used in a very different sense from its original one, signifying the science of motion)?”[1] In the end, Dijksterhuis gives his answer:…
philosophy science Aristotle mathematics
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2010年1月15日