标签：book reading

Is Digital Currency Beautiful? — A Review of *The New Currency War*

Web3 & Bitcoin2020.09.25
Is Digital Currency Beautiful? — A Review of *The New Currency War*
Published in China Science Daily (2020-09-24, page 7, book review). This book is actually not all that great; at first glance I thought it would be about Bitcoin, but it turns out the real topic is digital payments. Bitcoin is only mentioned in passing, and even then in a conspiratorial way. To be frank, if you can talk conspiracy theories about such a completely transparent open-source project, that only shows there is definitely something off with your intelligence. I would still write the review, on the one hand because it was commissioned, and on the other because, even with conspiracy theories mixed in, the problems this book wants to address…
technology book reading Bitcoin book review
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2020年9月25日
Driverless Driving: Transforming the World Like Automobiles Did? — A Review of “The Age of Automation”

AI & Scholarship2020.07.23
Driverless Driving: Transforming the World Like Automobiles Did? — A Review of “The Age of Automation”
This article was published in Sai Xiansheng. The title was “Can driverless cars change the world, just as automobiles once did?” In fact, I did not read this book very closely; the article was mainly written on the basis of inspirations from a cursory reading, and around my own thoughts on the relevant issues. The automobile, invented and popularized from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth, can be said to be one of the most important, or most emblematic, inventions of modern industrial society. The automobile industry brought together a series of the most cutting-edge industrial technologies of the time—steel, materials, petroleum, chemicals, and so on—thus driving the…
technology book reading Introduction to Philosophy of Technology book review
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2020年7月23日
Hindsight in the Face of Technology—A Review of The Dark Side of Technology

AI & the Future of Technology2020.07.09
Hindsight in the Face of Technology—A Review of The Dark Side of Technology
I owe quite a few book reviews; the books are all rather good, and I’ll be writing them out in succession in the near future. Of course, as long as a book is good overall, my reviews will still tend to praise it, while using the review as an occasion to talk about my own thoughts; in fact, that does not amount to a particularly strong recommendation of the book itself. This article was published in China Science Daily (July 9, 2020, page 7, Book Review) Everything has two sides, and even the best technology is a “double-edged sword”: it can strike down the enemy, but it can also wound…
technology book reading history book review
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2020年7月9日
How to Write Good Reading Notes Assignments

History of Science & Scholarship2020.05.03
How to Write Good Reading Notes Assignments
My undergraduate general-education courses (History of Technology, Introduction to Philosophy of Technology, and so on) all like to assign “reading notes” as homework, which can substitute for a term paper (many undergraduates simply do not know how to write papers at all; if you force them to do so, plagiarism becomes all too likely, so it is better to be a bit more open-ended). But if reading notes are assigned as the major project, students should of course take them seriously; a slapdash job will naturally not earn a high grade. If you send me your reading notes in advance, you can get some feedback. But I have found that,…
philosophy book reading scholarship notes
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2020年5月3日
Should We Defy Gaia? — A Review of The Medea Hypothesis

History of Science & Scholarship2020.04.16
Should We Defy Gaia? — A Review of The Medea Hypothesis
Published in Chinese Science Bulletin (2020-04-16, Book Review, p. 7). The title was mine, but now I’m tempted to change it again and call it: “Will Gaia Die?” The “Gaia hypothesis” was proposed by the British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock in the 1970s, and, together with the biologist Lynn Margulis, it exerted a huge influence both in science and in the environmental movement; it has remained a matter of controversy to this day. The inspiration for the Gaia hypothesis came from Lovelock’s participation in the 1965 Mars life-detection project. Lovelock held that the existence of life would be a planetary phenomenon: life would transform an entire planet’s environment, especially its…
book reading science history of science book review
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2020年4月16日
Rethinking Human Nature in the Age of Technology — A Review of Technics and Time 1

Phenomenology & Heidegger2020.04.03
Rethinking Human Nature in the Age of Technology — A Review of Technics and Time 1
This article was published in the April 2020 issue of Book City Bernard Stiegler is one of the most influential living philosophers in the field of philosophy of technology, and in recent years he has also had a considerable impact in China. He himself often comes to China to give lectures and teach courses. The lecture notes from a course he taught in the Department of Philosophy at Nanjing University in 2016 have recently been published in collected form (Nanjing Lectures: Reading Marx and Engels in the Anthropocene—From The German Ideology to Dialectics of Nature). And the Chinese translation of the work that made his name in his early years,…
technology book reading Heidegger history of technology
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2020年4月3日
Why Has “From One to Infinity” Remained Popular for 70 Years?

History of Science & Scholarship2020.01.18
Why Has “From One to Infinity” Remained Popular for 70 Years?
Published in China Science Daily (2020-01-02, Section 7, Book Review) Its Decades-Long Bestseller Status Was No Accident From One to Infinity is the famous popular-science classic by the renowned physicist Gamow. Published in 1947 and revised and republished in 1961, it was translated into Chinese in 1978 by Mr. Bao Yongning, and has already been wildly popular at home and abroad for decades. Gamow died in 1968, more than 50 years ago now, so this classic work has become a “public-domain book.” As a result, many new translations suddenly appeared on the market. In addition to the repeatedly reprinted Bao Yongning translation from Science Press, I have already found at…
book reading science history of science book review
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2020年1月18日
Am I “One” or “Many”? — A Review of I Encompass All Things

AI & the Future of Technology2019.08.16
Am I “One” or “Many”? — A Review of I Encompass All Things
Published in *China Science Daily* (2019-08-16, Section 7, Book Review) “Who am I?” — this may be the oldest and most enduring great question in the history of human thought. Philosophers have poured their energies into it, and modern science has also advanced human self-understanding from different angles. Some say human beings are rational animals; some say they are political animals; some say they are tool-making animals… But in any case, few people would doubt this point: “I am one person.” The question “Who am I?” is immediately transformed into “What is a human being?”, thereby bypassing any inquiry into the “one.” No matter what I am, I am first…
philosophy technology book reading Introduction to Philosophy of Technology
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2019年8月16日
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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2019年3月5日
Review of The Meaning of Science

History of Science & Scholarship2018.10.19
Review of The Meaning of Science
This is a commissioned review. My original title was “The Meaning of Philosophy of Science”; when it was published in the China Science Daily, it was changed to “Thinking at the Edge of Science.” I actually didn’t like either title all that much, so I won’t put a title here. In any case, this is just a review of the book. Commissioned reviews always tend to lean a little toward saying nice things; in fact, this book is just so-so, and I’m not particularly recommending it. Still, what I say in the text below about an introduction to philosophy of science positioned as “non-academic” is worth writing about. Shanghai…
book reading philosophy of science Scientific Revolution book review
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2018年10月19日