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标签：museum

The whole world has erupted into a shouting match—what right does a museum have to step in and play peacemaker?

Culture & Public Commentary2026.05.17
The whole world has erupted into a shouting match—what right does a museum have to step in and play peacemaker?
Published in Science Times (2026-05-15, p. 4, Culture); here is the original draft. You may be scrolling on your phone at this very moment, have seen this astonishing title, and clicked in to have a look. If you saw this article in the printed newspaper, that is quite rare, but even then you must have first noticed these eye-catching headlines. In this age of mass media, this age of information explosion, this age of the attention economy, the foremost question for information providers is not whether the content can withstand scrutiny from every angle, or whether it can withstand the test of time, or whether the author has deep accumulations,…
culture commentary history tradition
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2026年5月17日
How Science Museums in China Can Innovate by Bringing Forth the New

Culture & Public Commentary2025.09.12
How Science Museums in China Can Innovate by Bringing Forth the New
Published in Science Times (2025-08-28, p. 3, general), with the title changed to “The first users of science museums should not be teenagers, but scholars” In this summer vacation, which is about to end, science museums have joined the ranks of the many must-check-in tourist destinations. For parents, if they want their children to take part in some edutainment-oriented activities, science museums are obviously one of the best choices. In recent years, our country has continuously increased investment in science museum construction. According to Xinhua News Agency, the number of science museums open free of charge in China increased from 92 in 2015 to 409 in 2024, with an average…
China science history of science scholarship
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2025年9月12日
Museums in a Changing Society

Culture & Public Commentary2025.05.19
Museums in a Changing Society
An assignment from 中国科学报; the WeChat article was retitled “Where Are Museums, Born Out of the ‘Temple of the Muses’ and the ‘Cabinet of Curiosities,’ Heading in the Digital Age?” It should have been polished, so I am posting the original draft here. What is a “museum”? If we trace the history back, the concept of the museum and the social role it plays have never been fixed; they have continuously changed along with society. This was true in the past, and it is even more true in the future: in this rapidly changing society, museums are giving rise to new meanings. The word museum comes from Alexandria in the…
culture history of science history Aristotle
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2025年5月19日
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 Web3 education blockchain
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2022年3月31日
What Is the Difference Between Philosophy and Natural History?

Philosophy & Thought2008.08.03
What Is the Difference Between Philosophy and Natural History?
Today I was asked a question that, at first hearing, seemed baffling: “What is the difference between philosophy and natural history?” The questioner felt that philosophy deals with everything, and natural history also touches on everything, so the two seemed more or less the same… My answer was: philosophy is directed toward problems, whereas natural history faces things. Or, to put it another way, philosophy asks after the ultimate meaning of concepts—such as “What, ultimately, is science?” “What, ultimately, is essence?”—these are the ways philosophy poses its questions. A typical way natural history poses a question is: point at a tree and ask, “What is this?”—“A poplar.” That sort of…
philosophy scholarship knowledge natural history
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2008年8月3日
Reflections on the Social Practice Project “The Preservation of Traditional Culture and Its Relationship with Tourism”

Life & Notes2007.08.30
Reflections on the Social Practice Project “The Preservation of Traditional Culture and Its Relationship with Tourism”
Our social practice project was themed “The Protection of Traditional Culture and Its Relationship with Tourism.” With this question in mind, we examined places such as the ancient city of Pingyao and Mount Wutai in Shanxi. Below, I will mainly connect my impressions from the visit and investigation of the ancient city of Pingyao to offer my views on this topic. First, if we look at this theme more concretely, it gives rise to three main questions: first, what is tradition? Second, how should it be protected? Third, what is the significance of tourism—after all, is tourism to be developed in order to protect tradition, or is tradition to be…
everyday life culture history tradition
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2007年8月30日