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标签：history of science

The Science Museum in the Metaverse: Looking Ahead to the Future of Digital Collectibles

Web3 & Cypherpunks2022.03.31
The Science Museum in the Metaverse: Looking Ahead to the Future of Digital Collectibles
Recently I’ve had a few conversations about the possibility of combining NFTs with science museums, including people in blockchain circles and in the VR industry. I’m recording my thoughts here: The digitization of museums is nothing new; it’s been underway for many years, especially in many overseas museums, which long ago digitized most of their collections and made them public on the internet. Of course, digital exhibition halls and the like have also already been built in great numbers. Our own Tsinghua Science Museum is not behind the times either: every exhibition is turned into a “3D Digital Exhibition Hall”. But the current kind of digitization is basically still rather…
history of science education Web3 blockchain
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2022年3月31日
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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2022年1月27日
Course Summary for A General History of Technology, Fall 2021 (Questionnaire Summary)

Teaching & Courses2022.01.22
Course Summary for A General History of Technology, Fall 2021 (Questionnaire Summary)
Last time I already wrote the final-exam commentary and presentation of excellent papers. In fact, there was another component: the reading notes. This time the reading notes were reduced from more than 6,000 characters in previous years to around 3,000 characters, but there was nothing particularly new in the basic requirements or in my grading impressions, so I won’t say much more about that. The rough grading standards were: 1. plagiarism, 0 points; 2. anything clearly not meeting the course requirements is a fail (for example, not a reading note at all, too few characters, obviously borrowed from an assignment for another course, and so on); 3. anything very perfunctory,…
history of science course General History of Technology
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2022年1月22日
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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2021年11月4日
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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2021年11月3日
An Interview Transcript about Zhang Xiaoyu’s Technics and Civilization

Culture & Public Commentary2021.08.09
An Interview Transcript about Zhang Xiaoyu’s Technics and Civilization
Earlier, China Science Daily recommended Zhang Xiaoyu’s book Technology and Civilization, and interviewed me for a few comments. Today I suddenly remembered this, looked it up, and found that the interview had already been used. See China Science Daily (2021-06-17, Section 5, Culture Weekly). The published piece was assembled from excerpts of my written interview responses, integrated with the introduction to Zhang Xiaoyu’s book. Overall it was organized fairly well, but from the standpoint of my own expression, it was chopped up too much. Below I am posting my original answers, which are much richer in content and also more complete. Zhang Xiaoyu’s book is of course a good one,…
philosophy book reading China technology
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2021年8月9日
In the Age of Technology, What Use Is Philosophy? — On “An Introduction to Philosophy of Technology”

AI & the Future of Technology2021.06.07
In the Age of Technology, What Use Is Philosophy? — On “An Introduction to Philosophy of Technology”
My new book, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Technology (Tsinghua Series in the History and Philosophy of Science), was published by the Commercial Press in May 2021. Come to think of it, this seems to be the first original book in the Tsinghua Series in the History and Philosophy of Science over its two phases; the others are either revised reprints of books long since published, or works based on a doctoral dissertation or an English-language monograph. This Introduction to the Philosophy of Technology was written entirely during my time in the Department of the History of Science at Tsinghua. This is my sixth book, and one of the…
philosophy technology history of science history of technology
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2021年6月7日
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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2020年12月19日
Getting It Done in Advance — The Common Logic of Napier’s Bones and Logarithms

AI & the Future of Technology2020.11.05
Getting It Done in Advance — The Common Logic of Napier’s Bones and Logarithms
This is still written for the Science and Technology Museum, and the piece “Xiang: Made in Advance — Napier’s Rods and the Common Logic of Logarithms.” John Napier (1550–1617) was born into a prominent Scottish noble family. He inherited the family fortune and managed his own castle and estate. He ran his lands with a researcher’s attitude, conducting experiments and analyses on matters such as fertilizer. He was also a devout Protestant, and in order to push back against Catholicism he took an active part in the religious controversies of the time and wrote influential theological works. He was also a wizard: he carefully fed a magical black rooster, and…
technology history of science history mathematics
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2020年11月5日
A Conversation with Teacher Wu at the Yejiaxuan Reading Salon

AI & the Future of Technology2020.10.11
A Conversation with Teacher Wu at the Yejiaxuan Reading Salon
Thanks to Teacher Wang Wei and Teacher Wu, I put together this conversation with Teacher Wu, and it felt a bit like Teacher Wu was checking my homework. I thought the conversation went rather well. Some of the issues it touched on, especially concerning historiographical concepts, I may have a chance to write about in more detail later. The following is the transcript, compiled by the salon’s official staff 整理的文字稿, and I made some revisions to it, though I cannot guarantee its accuracy. If you would like to reprint it, please contact 文素THU. Host Wang Wei: Good evening, distinguished guests, teachers, and students! I am Wang Wei, Executive Deputy Director…
philosophy technology history of science philosophy of science
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2020年10月11日