标签：historiography

Travel Notes from the Shenyang–Benxi Conference (Shenyang Section)

History of Science & Scholarship2015.10.08
Travel Notes from the Shenyang–Benxi Conference (Shenyang Section)
The annual conference on phenomenology and philosophy of technology has once again come to a successful close. This year it was hosted by Northeastern University and held in Shenyang and Benxi from September 24 to 28. In my travel notes from the Lushan conference in 2013, I wrote: Since going to Nanning in 2009 to attend the Third Conference on Phenomenology and Philosophy of Technology, I have now participated in five consecutive conferences. Apart from Nanning, where I only wrote a little “miscellaneous notes,” I wrote full-on conference takedowns for Hailar, Yangma Island, and Guangzhou. It has already become a case of riding a tiger and finding it hard to…
technology media phenomenology Scientific Revolution
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2015年10月8日
Lecture Notes on the General History of Science (Introduction)

History of Science & Technology2015.03.04
Lecture Notes on the General History of Science (Introduction)
Course Arrangement Spring 2015 semester, Wednesday evening18:00-19:40, room Shengsiclass now moved to Jiaoba 306. Course requirements: no memorization, no calculations, and no particular background knowledge is required of students; only free reading and independent thinking are expected. Assessment requirements: Class attendance and discussion performance: 20%; (basically free points; active questioning and participation in discussion earn bonus points) Reading report: 30%; (choose from the recommended reading list, or choose other related books you personally like; choosing a good book earns bonus points, choosing a bad book loses points.) Final short paper: 50% (the topic is of your own choosing; it can also be completed on the basis of the…
history of science freedom course Aristotle
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2015年3月4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…
technology culture media phenomenology
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2014年11月21日
An Introduction to the Historiography of the General History of Technology

AI & the Future of Technology2014.08.01
An Introduction to the Historiography of the General History of Technology
Introduction to the Historiography of the General History of Technology //Note: this article has not yet been completed. I am only giving Wu laoshi an account in advance during the discussion… Next I will flesh out the concept of “the history of technological thought” a bit more. 1. A Survey of Western Research on the History of Technology In the English-speaking world, the history of technology as an academically institutionalized discipline roughly began in the 1950s. Its markers were the publication of the monumental Oxford edition of A History of Technology (Volumes 1 through 5 were published in 1954–1958, the last two volumes in 1978, and the general index of…
technology culture media history
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2014年8月1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
The Rationality of Whig History and the Possibility of an Anti-Whig Approach

Culture & Public Commentary2013.09.18
The Rationality of Whig History and the Possibility of an Anti-Whig Approach
In the first week of the Wendao seminar at Wu, junior brother Liu Renxiang, a promising new talent, took the initiative to give a talk on “The Poverty of Anti-Whiggish Historiography.” There were many discussions in class at the time, and I even went up to the podium to draw a diagram, but afterward I kept busy writing my travel notes on Mount Lu and preparing my own seminar report, so I never got around to writing anything down. Still, this topic is quite important, so I’m taking a little time now to add some thoughts. Just from the title of Liu Renxiang’s article, you can tell that the junior…
science history of science philosophy of science history
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2013年9月18日
The Revolutionary History of Media

AI & the Future of Technology2013.09.16
The Revolutionary History of Media
Pre-seminar note: The paper isn’t finished yet, but I’ll say a few things first anyway. I’ve run into some difficulties with this paper, which have stalled its progress. In fact, this section is quite an important part of my doctoral dissertation plan. Here I am trying to establish a connection between the history of technology and the history of science, linking philosophy of technology → history of technology → history of science → philosophy of science into a single chain. But the ambition of the framework is rather large, and so I ended up letting the conclusion come first, while the material has not kept up. Relying mainly on Walter…
technology history of science media phenomenology
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2013年9月16日
A Natural History of Media—McLuhan’s Method

History of Science & Scholarship2013.08.10
A Natural History of Media—McLuhan’s Method
1. Introduction: Literary Style or Research Method? Marshall McLuhan (1911–1982) was the most influential and at the same time the most controversial media thinker of the twentieth century. As a pioneer or founding figure of the media ecology school, his reputation rose and fell dramatically: he was once elevated to the altar, and then quickly neglected and forgotten. With the dawn of the network age, he came once again to be widely known in academic circles and indeed throughout the cultural world as a “prophet-sage,” yet some still regard him as a mountebank who merely uses gibberish to hoodwink the public. These two images are not really contradictory. So-called prophets…
media Heidegger paper McLuhan
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2013年8月10日
A Civilizational History of Technology—Using Mumford as an Example

History of Science & Scholarship2013.03.10
A Civilizational History of Technology—Using Mumford as an Example
Discussion section note: Good spring to Professor Wu and to all the students: I’m terribly sorry to have fallen back into my habitual procrastination again…… Mumford is the first figure I plan to deal with in the body of my doctoral dissertation, after the introduction. Because there is an overall writing plan in the background, some basic introduction to media ecology should already have been laid out in the introduction, while other parts will have to wait until later, when I discuss McLuhan and others in more detail. As a result, this section ended up being quite short after I trimmed away the beginning and the ending; of course, that…
technology media history of technology environment
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2013年3月10日
On the Discussion of Intentional History and Actual History

Culture & Public Commentary2012.11.10
On the Discussion of Intentional History and Actual History
Recently the blog update has come almost to a standstill, mainly because three mountains are weighing on me: first, the discussion-group paper (which also doubles as a submission for the phenomenology and philosophy of technology conference, as well as part of the introduction to the doctoral dissertation); second, the plan to turn the blog posts into a book (*A History of Science and Culture*); and third, using WordPress to build the soon-to-be-relaunched website of the Center for History and Philosophy of Science. These things will probably all be finished within a week. Years of not updating have already caused my blog’s PR rating to drop…… Today, to celebrate my birthday,…
technology history of science media history
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2012年11月10日