标签：history of science

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
Solving Problems and Institutional Reform

Culture & Public Commentary2012.07.28
Solving Problems and Institutional Reform
The previous article mentioned that a despotic system constantly needs imminent crises to overcome, with hatred and struggle as its basic posture. Of course, a democratic system too must keep solving immediate problems; “solving problems” is the normal state of governance. However, the basic paradigms for solving problems differ under different systems. This is not merely a matter of keeping pace with the times or adapting measures to local conditions—for example, Chinese people solving China’s special problems, Americans solving America’s problems, and so on. The difference in paradigms is not limited to that kind of distinction; it also includes differences in standards of judgment, such as what counts as a…
philosophy culture China history of science
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2012年7月28日
The Re-Creation of the World: How Modern Science Came Into Being

History of Science & Scholarship2012.04.08
The Re-Creation of the World: How Modern Science Came Into Being
[荷]H·弗洛里斯·科恩：《The Re-Creation of the World: How Modern Science Came into Being》，translated by Zhang Butian, Hunan Science and Technology Press, 2012 This is a slim booklet written for ordinary readers, and may be regarded as a popularized version of the author’s other weighty scholarly work, *How Modern Science Was Born: Four Civilizations, One Breakthrough in the Seventeenth Century*. The Needham Question has long been a topic of particular concern to Chinese historians of science and even to the general public. The Hong Kong scholar Chen Fangzheng recently published *Inheritance and Rebellion: Why Did Modern Science Appear in the West?* Teacher Zhou Cheng translated a book also called *Why Did Modern…
book reading China notes history of science
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2012年4月8日
“Intentional History” and the Aim of Historiography

Culture & Public Commentary2011.12.28
“Intentional History” and the Aim of Historiography
After returning from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, where I attended the “Winter Solstice Conference,” I had the chance to meet teachers and students from Shanghai’s history-of-science circle, and I also took my senior and junior brothers around Shanghai for a bit. Although it took up a whole weekend that included the founding day of the PRC, it was still worthwhile. After I came back, Teacher Wu asked us to talk about our impressions. I said that, in my view, the biggest problem with the history of science in Shanghai is that it lacks philosophy. Of course, from a good perspective, this means that such history of science is relatively “pure”:…
philosophy history of science philosophy of science history
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2011年12月28日
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
Introduction to the History, Philosophy, and Science Conference Handbook

Life & Notes2011.11.16
Introduction to the History, Philosophy, and Science Conference Handbook
This forum received strong support from students and teachers at various colleges and universities in the Beijing area, and the students took part with great enthusiasm. On behalf of the organizing committee, I would like to express our gratitude to all the students and teachers who participated in our forum in one way or another! Because of everyone’s enthusiastic support, we ultimately received as many as 80 submissions. But in the end only a little over twenty could be presented at the conference, and the remaining articles could not be printed in full either (only abstracts would be included). If we have disappointed the enthusiasm of the students who submitted…
philosophy everyday life science history of science
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2011年11月16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
Printing, Natural History, and the Birth of Modern Science

History of Science & Scholarship2011.10.24
Printing, Natural History, and the Birth of Modern Science
Introduction This article attempts to point out a certain connection among the three things named in the title—what is the relation between the invention of printing, the revival of natural history, and the birth of modern science? Is there perhaps some profound link among them, such that if we want to understand the essence of modern science and even “modernity,” we must begin by examining the influence of printing? Among these three matters, the date of printing’s appearance in Europe is the clearest: in the 1440s, Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany, invented movable-type printing. Whether or not Chinese printing indirectly influenced Gutenberg’s invention, the fact that the era of print in…
history of science scholarship media knowledge
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2011年10月24日
Revisiting “Natural History” (Natural Science) as a Historiographical Program

Culture & Public Commentary2011.08.26
Revisiting “Natural History” (Natural Science) as a Historiographical Program
I previously wrote “Natural History as a Historiographical Program—Thoughts on Liu Huajie’s Lecture,” where I briefly raised this idea. I noted that although what I call natural history as a historiographical program differs from Liu Huajie’s “historiographical program of natural history” only in translation (I argue that Natural History should be translated as “自然史” rather than the more usual “博物学”), my conception of this way of writing history is quite different from Liu’s. Recently I chatted again with my student Wang Liang about related topics, and then I saw a conversation record between Liu and Jiang Xiaoyuan, Liu Bing, and the others about “the good should be attributed to natural…
philosophy history of science history knowledge
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2011年8月26日
Recommended Introductory Readings in Philosophy of Technology

History of Science & Scholarship2011.07.26
Recommended Introductory Readings in Philosophy of Technology
The department’s magazine, *Qingqiu Yuan*, invited me to write a few recommendations of good books in philosophy of science and technology, mainly to provide some guidance for students who have not yet settled on a direction. I am very honored. In addition, I hope that all students interested in philosophy of science and technology will get in touch with me. On my blog (yilinhut.com) you can find my various contact details. Undergraduate philosophy majors are required to choose a supervisor and a direction in their freshman or sophomore year. At this stage, apart from introductory courses in Chinese philosophy, Western philosophy, and Marxist philosophy, students have relatively little knowledge of…
book reading science notes history of science
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2011年7月26日