标签：physics

Why Has “From One to Infinity” Remained Popular for 70 Years?

History of Science & Scholarship2020.01.18
Why Has “From One to Infinity” Remained Popular for 70 Years?
Published in China Science Daily (2020-01-02, Section 7, Book Review) Its Decades-Long Bestseller Status Was No Accident From One to Infinity is the famous popular-science classic by the renowned physicist Gamow. Published in 1947 and revised and republished in 1961, it was translated into Chinese in 1978 by Mr. Bao Yongning, and has already been wildly popular at home and abroad for decades. Gamow died in 1968, more than 50 years ago now, so this classic work has become a “public-domain book.” As a result, many new translations suddenly appeared on the market. In addition to the repeatedly reprinted Bao Yongning translation from Science Press, I have already found at…
book reading science history of science book review
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2020年1月18日
Is It Worth Building a Super-Large Particle Collider?

Culture & Public Commentary2016.09.07
Is It Worth Building a Super-Large Particle Collider?
Recently, Mr. Yang Zhenning published an article opposing China’s construction of a super-large collider, turning the matter into a hot topic. The director of the Institute of High Energy Physics, Wang Yifang, has already rebutted Mr. Yang’s arguments point by point, so I’ll just make a few offhand comments on what the two of them have said. Mr. Yang Zhenning is a clear-headed man, and has always tended to think from the standpoint of ordinary people at the bottom. I remember that when he gave a lecture at Peking University and spoke about the comparison between Chinese education and American education, he thought that the usual saying that American education…
China science commentary value
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2016年9月7日
Is It Worth Building a Super-Large Collider?

Culture & Public Commentary2016.09.07
Is It Worth Building a Super-Large Collider?
Recently, Mr. Yang Zhenning published an article opposing China’s construction of an ultra-large collider, turning the matter into a hot topic. The director of the High Energy Physics Institute, Wang Yifang, has already refuted Mr. Yang’s arguments point by point, so I’ll just offer a few casual comments on what the two of them have said. Mr. Yang Zhenning is a clear-headed man, and he has always tended to think about problems from the standpoint of ordinary people at the bottom. I remember that when he gave a lecture at Peking University and spoke about the comparison between Chinese education and American education, he said that what people commonly call…
China science commentary value
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2016年9月7日
A Paragon of the History of Scientific Thought — Dijksterhuis’s The Mechanization of the World Picture

History of Science & Scholarship2010.12.20
A Paragon of the History of Scientific Thought — Dijksterhuis’s The Mechanization of the World Picture
Textbook-style history of science takes the achievements of modern science as its standard, and describes the course of science as a great chronology in which people one by one attained those achievements. But history of science in this sense is in a certain way not history at all; what it confronts is not the process by which science succeeded one another, but is always simply the task of praising modern science. Such history of science assigns to each component of modern science a discoverer and a date of discovery, and thus introduces modern science according to the order of discovery rather than the logical order. Yet this kind of narrative…
book reading history of science history book review
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2010年12月20日
The Tower of Babel and the Accelerator — Reflections on Ma Boqiang’s Lecture

History of Science & Scholarship2010.12.17
The Tower of Babel and the Accelerator — Reflections on Ma Boqiang’s Lecture
Today Professor Ma brought us a lecture in popular frontier science, mainly introducing the scientific achievements and latest developments in particle physics and cosmology. People build ever more precise astronomical instruments and vast particle accelerators in order to probe the mysteries of the universe. The still unobserved particle left over in gauge theory—the Higgs particle—has also been called the God particle. Why go looking for such particles? In a certain sense, physicists really are searching for “God.” The Higgs particle is used to patch up the defects of the current theory, playing a role similar to that of God: “The Higgs field once represented all the energy that created…
science pursuit religion God
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2010年12月17日
Has Chaos Theory Overturned the Determinism of Classical Physics? (Philosophy of Physics Assignment)

History of Science & Scholarship2010.06.27
Has Chaos Theory Overturned the Determinism of Classical Physics? (Philosophy of Physics Assignment)
Physics Philosophy Assignment • 1. Does chaos theory overturn the determinism of classical physics? I do not think chaos theory overturns the determinism of classical physics. Perhaps chaos theory forces the worldview of classical physics to be redrawn, and determinism will also have to be rearticulated, but I am afraid “overturn” is too strong a word. What is called determinism involves, at the very least, two levels of question. One is ontological, the other operational. Determinism in classical physics first means this: the entire world is determined by strict causal relations; present events are caused by prior ones, and a determinate cause will necessarily lead to a determinate result. Therefore,…
science mathematics physics determinism
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2010年6月27日
Quantum Mechanics: Did It Introduce the Observer, or Send God Away?

History of Science & Scholarship2010.03.26
Quantum Mechanics: Did It Introduce the Observer, or Send God Away?
Back when I was in high school, I became interested in philosophy, and to tell the truth it was also by starting with some popular books on quantum mechanics, just as Feynman said: if you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don’t understand it. The astonishment that quantum mechanics brought me has stayed with me ever since. But then again, though I may be overstepping or even being presumptuous, I still feel that I have some understanding of quantum phenomena; especially after several years of studying philosophy, I have gained quite a few insights. From the standpoint of some of the philosophical ideas I have accepted, quantum phenomena are…
philosophy science God physics
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2010年3月26日
Aristotle’s Tactile World

History of Science & Scholarship2009.06.17
Aristotle’s Tactile World
Before discussing propositions such as modern science’s “mechanization of the world picture”[1], one should note that the concept of the “world picture” is quite extraordinary. Before the world can possibly be mechanized as a picture, there is a prior step: the picturing of the world. The world does not become a picture for human beings from the very beginning; in fact, once the world has come, as a matter of course, to be a picture, whether that picture is mechanized or not, some vitally important change in human knowledge has already quietly taken place. As Heidegger put it: “The world picture does not change from a medieval world picture into…
philosophy of science Heidegger Aristotle paper
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2009年6月17日
Reading an Einstein Biography

History of Science & Scholarship2009.05.09
Reading an Einstein Biography
[U.S.] Walter Isaacson: Einstein: Life and the Universe, translated by Zhang Butian I had originally promised to write a review for Senior Brother Butian, but I have kept putting it off again and again. It seems I really just cannot squeeze one out; at least, not before the end of this term. So let me just write a few random lines here as an explanation… There are several reasons for this procrastination: First, this spring I unfortunately developed allergic rhinitis. Since I had never had allergies before, I never got the right treatment at the beginning, and it took me more than half a month of fussing around before I…
book reading history of science notes historiography
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2009年5月9日
Speaking of Childhood’s First Dream

Life & Notes2009.03.31
Speaking of Childhood’s First Dream
Recollecting something that came to mind in passing when thinking back on childhood, it is worth adding as a postscript. This thing does not count as a deeply memorable “scene,” because my recollection of it now is actually indirect; it is only because I later remembered and spoke of it many times that I am certain it really happened. From primary school all the way to senior year of high school, if you asked me what I wanted to do in the future, my answer would probably have been: “scientist.” More specifically, in primary school and junior high I was mainly influenced by Olympiad mathematics, so I leaned toward being…
philosophy science autobiography mathematics
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2009年3月31日