标签：philosophy

Philosophical Commentary and Quips [Column Introduction] Philosophy and Life

Philosophy & Thought2015.07.28
Philosophical Commentary and Quips [Column Introduction] Philosophy and Life
I have always used the “history-thought-poetry” classification system, corresponding to three kinds of textual form: reflection, record, and lyricism. This classification system is logically sound, but for me personally it is not very practical: some categories have especially many articles, while others remain in a state of abandonment year after year. Recently I have been thinking about building a classification system centered on “columns,” no longer subdividing things into specific directories. If you need to search, just use keywords. But we can also establish some “columns”; not every article has to belong to one. The articles under a column would be selected pieces or serialized pieces with a specific theme….
philosophy everyday life game philosophy talk
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2015年7月28日
How Should the General History of Science Be Told? — Course Summary for “General History of Science”

Teaching & Courses2015.07.16
How Should the General History of Science Be Told? — Course Summary for “General History of Science”
In addition to the philosophy department’s required course “Guide to Academic Research,” the main thing I had to deal with this semester was this university-wide elective, “General History of Science.” Grading It must be said that Beishida’s elective-course system is not all that great either. Although course offerings are very free, the credit requirement for electives seems to be extremely low, so many classmates take a take-it-or-leave-it attitude toward them. Not only did several classmates never come to class at all, but in the end they simply did not submit the final paper either, adopting the attitude that if they fail, they fail. As a result, out of the 15…
philosophy China history of science history
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2015年7月16日
On Writing Papers — Summary of the “Introduction to Academic Research” Course

History of Science & Scholarship2015.07.11
On Writing Papers — Summary of the “Introduction to Academic Research” Course
This semester I offered two courses at BNU, one a university-wide elective, “A General History of Science,” and the other a 1-credit specialized course in the Department of Philosophy, “Introduction to Academic Research.” Both courses ended up with exactly 15 students enrolled. Why I offered the courses The reason I decided to offer these two courses was, first, on Professor Tian’s suggestion; in a sense, it was also to accumulate a bit of output for the future, whether for staying on at the university or finding a teaching position elsewhere, and in a sense it was also a kind of internship experience. In any case, I myself feel that these…
philosophy scholarship course Peking University
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2015年7月11日
Lectures on the General History of Science 4: Hellenistic Science

History of Science & Technology2015.03.27
Lectures on the General History of Science 4: Hellenistic Science
Last class we talked about ancient Greece as the birthplace of science. The key word of Greek learning is “freedom,” and this freedom has several layers of meaning. As for things, free things are natural things, as distinct from artificial things; natural things provide their own causes, so the discipline that seeks causes within things themselves is natural philosophy. As for human beings, freedom stands opposed to utility, and free persons stand opposed to slaves; one should pursue excellence rather than chase immediate material gain. As for learning, free learning stands opposed to imitation and authority; mathematics is the paradigm of free learning, because knowledge displays itself, without relying on…
philosophy science course Aristotle
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2015年3月27日
Inner Bodily Consciousness

AI & the Future of Technology2015.01.22
Inner Bodily Consciousness
Embodiment is an important concept brought to us by phenomenology, but in the hands of analytic philosophers or cognitive scientists it often becomes reified. The reason for this is, on the one hand, that the very terminology of “embodiment” has already turned the concept into a fixed term (I don’t like this term, especially its Chinese translation); on the other hand, some scholars have given “body” a reified understanding, focusing their attention on the slab of flesh there before them in reality, and thereby turning the problem of embodiment into a problem “about the body.” Thinking of the analyses of time by phenomenologists such as Husserl and Heidegger, we must…
philosophy technology phenomenology Introduction to Philosophy of Technology
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2015年1月22日
Supervisors as the Dissertation’s Imagined Adversary—Odds and Ends on Academic Papers

History of Science & Scholarship2015.01.19
Supervisors as the Dissertation’s Imagined Adversary—Odds and Ends on Academic Papers
I spent the first semester of my postdoctoral stay at BNU without really taking part in much beyond Teacher Tian’s weekly writing class. My sense of presence was zero. Thinking about it, that really wasn’t very becoming, so at Teacher Tian’s suggestion, over the past two weeks I took part in various activities such as the master’s thesis proposal defenses and doctoral pre-defenses in the department’s research office, just to show my face a bit and, at the same time, to get a feel for the style and method of the philosophy of science and technology program at BNU. Listening to all kinds of defense presentations, I have increasingly felt…
philosophy science scholarship Aristotle
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2015年1月19日
A Summary of the Reading Group on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

History of Science & Scholarship2014.12.10
A Summary of the Reading Group on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
This semester, at the initiative of a few undergraduate students, with me leading the reading, we organized a reading group on Kuhn’s *Structure*. By last week, we finally finished *Structure* (skipping the postscript), and starting this week the reading group has begun *Being and Time*. This time around, leading *Structure* was quite a coincidence: just when Professor Wu went abroad, the undergraduate students in our department’s history and philosophy of science project were left without anyone to supervise them. These two students were especially eager to learn and spontaneously wanted to start a reading group, asking Professor Wu to find a teaching assistant to lead it. Professor Wu knew that…
philosophy book reading notes history of science
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2014年12月10日
Giving a Talk on the History of Science at Central China Normal University

Life & Notes2014.11.05
Giving a Talk on the History of Science at Central China Normal University
Last weekend I went to Wuhan to give a lecture on behalf of Teacher Wu. My audience was two dozen or so graduate students, who are being trained as reserve talent for the Hubei Science and Technology Museum. The required course I was to teach consists of three parts: the history of Chinese science and technology, the history of world science and technology, and the philosophy of technology. The part on the history of world science and technology had originally been assigned to Teacher Wu, but since he was abroad, I was sent to teach it. I lectured for a day and a half straight on Saturday and Sunday, twelve…
philosophy everyday life science history of science
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2014年11月5日
Course Outline: A Guide to Academic Research

Teaching & Courses2014.11.05
Course Outline: A Guide to Academic Research
As I mentioned earlier, next semester I’m planning to teach two courses at BNU. One is the general elective A General History of Science; the second is going to be a specialized course. However, at the Philosophy Department of BNU, one cannot just open a new specialized course at will; one must claim a course that already exists in the pre-established teaching plan. And most of the courses, of course, have already been claimed by one teacher or another, leaving only two and a half uncclaimed. So I chose this one, “Introduction of Academic Research.” Though this course may seem rather expendable, I feel it is still quite meaningful. In…
philosophy scholarship course Peking University
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2014年11月5日
Media as Environment — A Rough Philosophical Reading of Media Ecology

History of Science & Scholarship2014.09.25
Media as Environment — A Rough Philosophical Reading of Media Ecology
This is the draft of the talk I’m preparing to give tomorrow at Tsinghua; by then I’ll basically plan to read straight from the script, of course after finishing I’ll probably also expand on certain parts extemporaneously depending on how things go… This talk aims to offer a brief and accessible overview of the basic claims of my dissertation. My dissertation involves many problems, and the relationships among its chapters are originally rather loose, so it is not very easy to distill. Here I can only focus on a few core concepts. Since I have avoided the most abstruse parts (ontology and transcendental philosophy) and the most concrete parts…
philosophy technology history of science media
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2014年9月25日