标签：Plato

How to Be a Punk Philosopher

History of Science & Scholarship2026.02.04
How to Be a Punk Philosopher
On January 30, 2026, I came to Chiang Mai to attend GCC’s first Chinese-language “Cypherpunk x Thinker Gathering,” where I gave a 20-minute talk, “How to Be a Punk Philosopher.” I had actively asked to join this event after seeing the announcement, because I was very fond of this theme. On the one hand, “cypherpunk” is a current of thought I very much hope to spread in the Chinese-speaking world; on the other hand, “cypherpunk thinker” is also how I position myself, and it is much cooler than “independent scholar.” My talk introduced what “punk” is and elaborated the claim that philosophers ought to be punk. But the time on…
philosophy scholarship freedom Aristotle
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2026年2月4日
Reading: A Bridge to the Future

Culture & Public Commentary2025.04.23
Reading: A Bridge to the Future
Commissioned piece for China Science Daily China Science Daily (2025-03-23, p. 4, General) — I am posting the original draft here The theme of World Book Day 2025 is “Reading: A Bridge to the Future” (Reading: A Bridge to the Future). Come to think of it, this formulation seems a bit strange, because the future will always arrive; no matter what we do, time will always pass, and we will always move toward the future. Reading, by contrast, is always touching “the past,” and what becomes a book always originates in the past and settles there. Perhaps the point of the metaphor is the “bridge” — we will always enter…
culture AI Plato future
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2025年4月23日
In the Age of AI, What Is Philosophy For?

AI & Scholarship2025.02.21
In the Age of AI, What Is Philosophy For?
Published in Science Daily of China (2025-02-21, p. 4, Culture). This should be the longest article I have ever published in a newspaper; they gave me a full page. My original text was basically not changed much, except that the section headings were altered a bit and the prose was lightly polished. What I am posting here is my original draft; anyone who wants to reprint it can go find the version posted by Science Net. Welcoming the AI Era In the courses on history of science and philosophy of technology that I had been teaching at Tsinghua, I had already run into the shock of AI. Back then I…
philosophy technology freedom education
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2025年2月21日
“The World of Ideas,” “Lyceum”: An NFT Project I Imagined, 2 and 3

Web3 & Cypherpunks2022.01.14
“The World of Ideas,” “Lyceum”: An NFT Project I Imagined, 2 and 3
What did I say? Why have I “not kept up closely with the new things in the crypto world in recent years”? Because it takes too much mental energy: there are too many opportunities, and before you know it you’re getting fomo. I played with NFT for a few days recently, and I felt that familiar sensation again. You really can’t linger in this circle for long; I’d better pull out early and get back to writing papers…… But I’ll still write down the second idea I came up with that night when I couldn’t sleep. At the time I actually mainly thought of three projects: one was 《Pantheon》, the…
scholarship Web3 blockchain Plato
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2022年1月14日
Course Outline: Philosophy of Science and Reading the Original Texts

Teaching & Courses2020.08.25
Course Outline: Philosophy of Science and Reading the Original Texts
“Selected Readings in Classics of the Philosophy of Science” was the first course I was in charge of after coming to Tsinghua, aimed at incoming graduate students in the Department of History of Science. At the time, the Department of History of Science still had only a few teachers, and someone had to teach philosophy of science, so naturally I was assigned to this course. My own research leans toward the history of technology and the philosophy of technology. I am broadly familiar with orthodox philosophy of science, but it is not my specialty. But in my view, orthodox philosophy of science is definitely something one has to study; there…
philosophy of science course Aristotle Kant
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2020年8月25日
Personality Philosophy vs. Propositional Philosophy: On the Inevitability of the Decline of Continental Philosophy and the Immortality of Its Significance

History of Science & Scholarship2019.04.20
Personality Philosophy vs. Propositional Philosophy: On the Inevitability of the Decline of Continental Philosophy and the Immortality of Its Significance
I had mentioned this in passing on Weibo before, and because it was rather short, I didn’t plan to put it on the blog. Yesterday, at the small reading group, this question came up again, and after thinking it over I decided to post it after all, since it is ultimately a question about the basic orientation of philosophy. Byzantines Should Regard Themselves as Romans As a student of Wu, my philosophical position is of course inclined toward continental phenomenology, but in fact I am not very willing to call myself a phenomenologist or a continental philosopher. It is much like how, after the division of the Eastern and Western…
philosophy scholarship media philosophy of science
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2019年4月20日
Writing Robot: The Conflict Between Education and Technology

AI & the Future of Technology2019.02.19
Writing Robot: The Conflict Between Education and Technology
Still a submission for Jiemian, with the published title changed to “The Writing Robot Has Arrived: Smash It to Pieces, or Throw Up Your Hands and Surrender?” Recently, the “writing robot” has burst onto the scene and sparked heated debate. Because it can imitate a child’s handwriting to finish copying textbook passages, copying new characters, and even hand-copying a class newspaper, some parents angrily smashed the machine to bits, while others welcomed it with open arms and wanted to buy one to help their children cope with “boring homework.” The “writing robot” is a new thing, but the conflict it reflects is not new. In essence, it is the distance…
philosophy technology commentary education
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2019年2月19日
Lectures on the General History of Science 5: Roman and Arabic Science

History of Science & Technology2015.04.03
Lectures on the General History of Science 5: Roman and Arabic Science
Last class we talked about Hellenistic science, represented by Ptolemaic astronomy; Western classical science reached its peak in the Hellenistic period. The next peak would have to wait until the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, from Copernicus to Newton. The period in between is relatively less exciting, but our general history course cannot very well skip over it, and this period is also one we are comparatively unfamiliar with. Before the Scientific Revolution, we must at least discuss three strands: first, the Arabs; second, China; third, Christian Europe. The Arabs took up the torch of Greek science and also made distinctive contributions, laying the groundwork for Europe’s…
science history of science course Aristotle
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2015年4月3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
Lectures on the General History of Science 3: The Classical Greek Period [Classroom Changed Starting Next Week]

History of Science & Technology2015.03.18
Lectures on the General History of Science 3: The Classical Greek Period [Classroom Changed Starting Next Week]
下 week starting next week, the “History of Science” class will move to Jiao Ba 306 In the last class, we went from primitive humans to the four great ancient civilizations. We mentioned that human history is, in a sense, the history of technology; no human culture is cut off from technology. Where there is technology, there is also “knowledge,” and every culture passes on its own knowledge. By the time we get to the ancient civilizations of Babylonia and Egypt, people’s knowledge and skills had already reached a very high level. But I still regard ancient Greece as the origin of “science.” That is to say, the “science”…
culture scholarship freedom history
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2015年3月18日