标签：book review

Less Habit, More Tracing Back to the Source — A Review of The Origin of Everything

History of Science & Scholarship2017.09.11
Less Habit, More Tracing Back to the Source — A Review of The Origin of Everything
This book review was a commissioned piece I wrote in the first half of this year, but after I handed it in, it seems it was never published? (No feedback.) I suppose they thought I had written it badly. In fact, although this book really is quite good, it is not all that stunning, and there is no especially strong central idea to comment on, so I did not go all out in singing its praises either. But since I wrote it, I might as well post it here. The popular science book Origins of Everything, compiled by the British magazine *New Scientist*, has recently been introduced and published…
book reading science history of science book review
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2017年9月11日
When Reading Joseph Needham, Do Not “Buy the Casket and Return the Pearl” — A Review of *The Titration of Civilization*

History of Science & Scholarship2017.03.26
When Reading Joseph Needham, Do Not “Buy the Casket and Return the Pearl” — A Review of *The Titration of Civilization*
Titrating Civilization: Science and Society in East and West This book review was written last November. It was commissioned, but after I submitted it there was no response. I only asked about it recently and learned that it had not been used, so I’m posting it here first and then I’ll look for somewhere else to submit it~ Before Brother Bo Tianshi translated The Grand Titration, I had long heard of this book and read some introductions to it, but I never quite understood what the titration business was all about. Only after reading it myself did I begin to make some sense of it, and I feel it…
book reading China science history of science
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2017年3月26日
Exploring the Dark Interstices — A Review of Speculation and Media

AI & the Future of Technology2014.07.25
Exploring the Dark Interstices — A Review of Speculation and Media
(This book review was written as an invited assignment; in fact, I did not manage to read this book through, and I basically never got through the second half, “Speculative Economics.” That may have something to do with its postmodern writing style and with the Chinese translation, of course I also never found my footing, so the review below is actually not quite to the point; if I tricked you into reading it, don’t blame me for leading you astray… Of course, if you do manage to read it with a feel for it, you’re welcome to enlighten me~) Speculation and Media Amazon price: ￥20.10 http://news.sciencenet.cn/sbhtmlnews/2014/7/289950.shtm Born in…
philosophy book reading culture media
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2014年7月25日
The Dark Forest and the Law of Evolution, Thought and Expression — Some Complaints about The Three-Body Problem

History of Science & Scholarship2014.01.30
The Dark Forest and the Law of Evolution, Thought and Expression — Some Complaints about The Three-Body Problem
《The Three-Body Problem》is indeed a pretty good science-fiction novel: the conception is very ingenious, and it also contains many elements that invite deep reflection. But given Teacher Jiang Xiaoyuan’s excessive elevation of it, I actually found myself becoming rather resistant. As an ordinary fantasy novel, whether it is Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics or Liu Cixin’s cosmic sociology, these are all clever designs; but if one wants to elevate them to the level of genuine social science or philosophy and discuss their profound significance, that is going too far. I had already made sarcastic remarks about cosmic sociology back then. Of course, at that time I had not yet read…
book reading book review civilization evolution
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2014年1月30日
Why Should Young People Publish Books?—Starting from Sounding the West, Striking the East

History of Science & Scholarship2013.11.25
Why Should Young People Publish Books?—Starting from Sounding the West, Striking the East
Recently, Teacher He Huaihong wrote a book review of a work by a sophomore student, which sparked a lively discussion. Teacher He affirmed the philosophical vision and concern for reality displayed in *Sounding West, Striking East*, but he was by no means uncritically flattering; rather, he offered some well-founded criticism. He pointed out some problems in Han Qian’s use of academic concepts, and also offered his views on the book’s style: “As an academic paper, it could still have contained more detailed analytic argumentation and stricter formal requirements than the existing articles; and if it is a commentary, then it could be sharper and more vivid and forceful. If the…
book reading scholarship blog book review
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2013年11月25日
What Is Wrong with “Eugenics” — A Review of Against Perfection

AI & the Future of Technology2013.08.23
What Is Wrong with “Eugenics” — A Review of Against Perfection
The China Science Daily (2013-08-23, p. 14, Books) Eugenics, which once enjoyed a brief and sweeping vogue in the first half of the twentieth century, was even implemented in many places in the form of law, only to be discredited in the end by the atrocities of the Nazis. The Nazis’ wrongdoing is obvious: they tried to improve the human race through violent means such as forced sterilization and even genocide. But what, exactly, was mistaken? Was it only the violent means, or was there something wrong with eugenics itself? This question seems never to have been adequately reflected upon. Half a century later, with the development of life sciences…
book reading technology book review human nature
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2013年8月23日
A Philosophy of Cinema, Not a Philosophy About Cinema—Reading Technics and Time 3: The Problem of Cinema’s Time and the Pain of Existence

Phenomenology & Heidegger2012.09.17
A Philosophy of Cinema, Not a Philosophy About Cinema—Reading Technics and Time 3: The Problem of Cinema’s Time and the Pain of Existence
From robber to Pompidou director, the legendary Bernard Stiegler is also the hottest figure in French philosophy today after Derrida. All three volumes of his magnum opus Technics and Time have already been introduced into China by Yilin Press. Although this third volume was written after the first two, it can also be read independently; the author himself notes that, in a certain sense, this volume can serve as the “best introduction” to the first two. Compared with the subtitles of the first two volumes — The Fault of Epimetheus and Disorientation — the subtitle of the newly published third volume, The Time of Cinema and the Problem of the…
book reading technology media Heidegger
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2012年9月17日
Recommended Chinese-Language Bibliography on Environmental Philosophy

History of Science & Scholarship2012.04.20
Recommended Chinese-Language Bibliography on Environmental Philosophy
In discussion class, Liu Ping asked me to recommend books related to environmental ethics or eco-socialist thought, so I整理了一下 and am posting it here. In 2005, when I was a freshman, a number of courses in environmental ethics and environmental philosophy happened to be offered at the same time. I took three or five of them in one go, and then put effort into the papers as a whole too (when I submitted them I explained the situation of “multiple submissions”). The end result was that I skimmed through dozens of books on environmental philosophy then available on the market, and along with other reference works, more than a hundred…
book reading China book review environment
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2012年4月20日
In Praise of “Rumors”

Culture & Public Commentary2012.04.15
In Praise of “Rumors”
Recently the word “rumor” has once again become a hot topic, and a full-scale “war” against “rumors” is plainly about to break out. At a time like this, it is all the more necessary to reflect on what “rumor” really means. On Weibo, I saw Sun Haifeng repost Deng Wenchu’s “Nine Theses on Rumor,” written several years ago, and applauded it enthusiastically (you can find it among some of the earliest posts on his blog, though it seems a few of the theses have been harmonized?). Later I read Kapferer’s Rumor: The World’s Oldest Media, and found it quite rewarding as well. So let me offer a few casual remarks…
book reading China tradition politics
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2012年4月15日
A Paragon of the History of Scientific Thought — Dijksterhuis’s The Mechanization of the World Picture

History of Science & Scholarship2010.12.20
A Paragon of the History of Scientific Thought — Dijksterhuis’s The Mechanization of the World Picture
Textbook-style history of science takes the achievements of modern science as its standard, and describes the course of science as a great chronology in which people one by one attained those achievements. But history of science in this sense is in a certain way not history at all; what it confronts is not the process by which science succeeded one another, but is always simply the task of praising modern science. Such history of science assigns to each component of modern science a discoverer and a date of discovery, and thus introduces modern science according to the order of discovery rather than the logical order. Yet this kind of narrative…
book reading history of science history book review
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2010年12月20日