标签：mathematics

A Collection of Questions on the Mung Bean Distribution Problem and a Summary

History of Science & Scholarship2008.11.26
A Collection of Questions on the Mung Bean Distribution Problem and a Summary
After the previous “summary collection” was posted, the argument still continued, but now I’ve made up my mind to cut off the discussion! Professor Wu’s assignment has already been handed out, and other assignments may be close at hand as well, so let me focus on my current affairs for the time being~ This discussion began with a problem provided by the user igeli in https://yilinhut.net/2006/08/05/498.html. Later, because I forcibly closed the comments on that article, the discussion was moved under another unrelated article. I’ve now deleted those comments, but the full content is preserved in this collection. I’ve said before that my interest in philosophy really stems from mathematics,…
science mathematics logic paradox
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2008年11月26日
How I Came to Approach Philosophy of Science (A Whig History)

Life & Notes2008.09.27
How I Came to Approach Philosophy of Science (A Whig History)
I didn’t write it well… not recommended reading.. Life is full of possibilities. In the course of my growing up, had it not been for those chance encounters and coincidences, I’m afraid I would not have set out on the road I’m on now—perhaps I would have gone into economics, or become a scientist; most likely, perhaps, I would have become some kind of amateur science nerd or armchair philosopher. But in the end I still ended up here: the philosophy of technology at Peking University. It was accidental, and yet somehow it also feels as though it came naturally, the most natural outcome of all. Looking back over my…
autobiography Peking University mathematics modernity
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2008年9月27日
A Tour Guide to the Mathematical World — “Two-Dimensional at Home and Abroad”

History of Science & Scholarship2008.06.26
A Tour Guide to the Mathematical World — “Two-Dimensional at Home and Abroad”
This is the first time I’ve been invited to write and submit a book review, and in the spirit of this year’s Guangdong College Entrance Examination essay topic, I took on the task~ Writing an article for submission is painful. That piece “A Brief Talk on the Popularization of Philosophy,” though it was published too, had been written rather casually at the time; writing specifically for submission really was a first for me, and it seems I’m still not quite suited to it. Ideally I could have written it better, but on the one hand I was rushing to finish it before my graduation trip, and on the other hand…
book reading mathematics book review
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2008年6月26日
Things This Semester

Life & Notes2008.02.21
Things This Semester
The graduating thesis is really a minor matter; after all, writing papers has already merged into daily life. The key point is that, for various reasons, this semester I must take 10 credits of natural science courses, and I must also launch a decisive campaign against English. This means that my way of life this semester will definitely no longer be “ordinary”; I’ll have to live in a way I never have before. At first I wanted to take biology as my science course. On the one hand, it might be of some use for my future specialization; on the other hand, it might be a bit easier to get…
everyday life education mathematics university
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2008年2月21日
What Logic Do We Use in Everyday Discussion?

Philosophy & Thought2008.02.18
What Logic Do We Use in Everyday Discussion?
Today I listened to Hu Ge’s “intuitionistic logic.” The first class naturally began with a bit of introduction and overview before moving on to the logical system itself. What I was interested in was the introductory part. Hu Ge works in mathematics, so the philosophical disputes were brushed past in a sentence and did not take up much time. Hu Ge’s sketch of intuitionistic logic was still quite concise and on point: intuitionism is aimed at mathematics, not at everyday communication; in everyday communication, the law of excluded middle remains reliable, because the world with which daily life comes into contact is finite. And intuitionistic logic is not some paranoid…
philosophy mathematics discussion logic
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2008年2月18日
The Benefits of Mathematical and Logical Training for Studying Philosophy

Philosophy & Thought2008.02.15
The Benefits of Mathematical and Logical Training for Studying Philosophy
Although I entered the philosophy department as an undergraduate, I still unabashedly identify myself as “from a science background.” Of course, the current Chinese practice of splitting high school students into arts and sciences is very bad; the so-called “science students” in high school are not necessarily all that “scientific” in any meaningful sense—after all, most of them choose physics. And it is even harder to say how much “literature” arts students have actually come into contact with—how can middle-school history, politics, and the like be called “literature”? But when I say I am “from a science background,” I do not mean that I was a high school science student;…
philosophy scholarship mathematics analytic philosophy
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2008年2月15日
[Repost] What Is Whig History? (“Whig History” and “Contemporary History,” Whig History of Mathematics and Whig History of Philosophy, and So On)

Culture & Public Commentary2008.01.20
[Repost] What Is Whig History? (“Whig History” and “Contemporary History,” Whig History of Mathematics and Whig History of Philosophy, and So On)
http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=297 Gu Che What Is “Whig History”? This forum is updated the slowest of all, so let me ask a “layman’s question”~ In a previous post (see: http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=284), Brother Yuzhile said that the discussion had “changed in nature,” shifting from professional questions to layman’s questions. Since he put it that way, I was no longer comfortable pursuing the matter in that post. But the very basic layman’s question involved there struck me as something really worth pressing further! Brother Yu said: “History is necessarily Whig history. Don’t say that you know the original history, or a philosopher’s original thought, unless you are God.” Good heavens! What does that mean? I’ve…
philosophy history mathematics Whig history
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2008年1月20日
On “Quantification”

History of Science & Scholarship2007.12.11
On “Quantification”
What is “quantification”? This word is easy to understand, but it is not at all easy to explain just how the modern worldview has been “quantified.” “Quantification” was certainly not invented by modern science; “quality” and “quantity” are indispensable when human beings observe things, or one could say they are a priori—if we do not regard things in terms of qualitative or quantitative relations, then the world can only be a mass of chaos. Human beings always “partition” this world through quality and quantity, so that the world can be understood and described. Natural history, one might say, takes an approach that emphasizes partitioning by “quality.” At first, people may…
philosophy science history of science mathematics
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2007年12月11日
Mathematics Is a Technical Craft… Some Additional Notes on Learning High School Mathematics

History of Science & Scholarship2007.10.28
Mathematics Is a Technical Craft… Some Additional Notes on Learning High School Mathematics
Last year I wrote a piece, “On Learning Middle School Mathematics”; the discussion below can be taken as a supplement to it. In the ending of that piece, I gave the so-called very “origin” kind of math problem, and this discussion picks up right from there. What follows is an excerpt from my chat log with UNIC. I’m too lazy to rewrite it all over again, so I’ll just file it away here as a record. The only help I can offer you is this sort of empty talk, because since mathematics is a kind of technical art, the mathematics “coach” really has to teach hands-on, step by step; teaching…
technology science mathematics Wittgenstein
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2007年10月28日
The Question of Choosing a Secretary

Life & Notes2007.09.27
The Question of Choosing a Secretary
[Eng.]John Haigh: “The Mathematics of Chance,” translated by Li Daqiang, Jilin People’s Publishing House, August 2001, 26 yuan Pages191~192 The Secretary Selection Problem Suppose you want to hire a secretary. A group of applicants is waiting in line outside your office for interviews. You interview them one by one. At the end of each interview, you have two choices:1.reject this applicant and interview the next person;2.decide to hire the current applicant and end the recruitment process. You must make your decision on the spot. Once you have rejected someone, you cannot hire that person. How can you maximize the probability of hiring the best applicant? In fact,…
everyday life mathematics
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2007年9月27日