标签：Plato

Lecture Notes on the General History of Science (Introduction)

History of Science & Technology2015.03.04
Lecture Notes on the General History of Science (Introduction)
Course Arrangement Spring 2015 semester, Wednesday evening18:00-19:40, room Shengsiclass now moved to Jiaoba 306. Course requirements: no memorization, no calculations, and no particular background knowledge is required of students; only free reading and independent thinking are expected. Assessment requirements: Class attendance and discussion performance: 20%; (basically free points; active questioning and participation in discussion earn bonus points) Reading report: 30%; (choose from the recommended reading list, or choose other related books you personally like; choosing a good book earns bonus points, choosing a bad book loses points.) Final short paper: 50% (the topic is of your own choosing; it can also be completed on the basis of the…
history of science freedom course Aristotle
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2015年3月4日
Notes and Illustration Sources for “A Brief History of Scientific Culture”

Life & Notes2014.07.11
Notes and Illustration Sources for “A Brief History of Scientific Culture”
My first “monograph” has finally been published. This book is mainly a compilation of some articles already on the blog, with a bit of revision and stitching-together added to make a small book. Preparation for it began in September 2012, and by the end of that year the manuscript was basically finished. With Wu Laoshi’s help, it was published by Peking University Press as a public-literacy reader. Originally, I had hoped it would give me one more line on my record when I graduated and went job hunting for my doctorate, but after the slow publishing process, it finally came off the press at such an awkward time. By then…
science history of science Aristotle Bitcoin
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2014年7月11日
The Shameful Greek Spirit

Culture & Public Commentary2012.08.14
The Shameful Greek Spirit
The London Olympics are over, and I should also turn my jet lag back to the timezone of my graduation thesis. This essay can count as a bridge between what came before and what comes after~ Let me give a heads-up first: this should be a fairly loose, freewheeling conversation, not entirely centered on the title. During the Olympics there were obviously two kinds of people on Weibo: those watching the Olympics, and those not watching the Olympics. Among the latter were a considerable number of people who were either cursing the Olympics or using the Olympics as a pretext to curse the system. Basically speaking, the left in China…
China freedom autobiography pursuit
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2012年8月14日
Knowledge Is Connection

AI & the Future of Technology2012.05.28
Knowledge Is Connection
Earlier I spoke of “phenomenological education,” which also made me recall the as-yet-unwritten essay I mentioned last year, “Knowledge Is Linkage.” Why is it that I, someone just about to begin a PhD dissertation on “media ontology,” “ have suddenly, and quite off the beaten track, decided to take up “education”? Have I changed direction? Of course not. My turn toward educational questions is on the one hand driven by my interest in Neil Postman (who is in essence an educational theorist), and on the other hand it is also a question I have long cared about. In fact, the question of education involves the whole range of philosophy, from…
technology media education internet
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2012年5月28日
“The Kingly Way” — The Road to the Supreme Good

Chinese Civilization & the Way of Chinese2012.01.26
“The Kingly Way” — The Road to the Supreme Good
You can read this article as a continuation of this earlier one: Freedom vs. Equality—I Am a Right-Wing Socialist In that essay I expressed a certain resistance to “equality”: equality in the sense of a condition for freedom, or equality as the rules that must be observed for the game of competition to unfold—those senses of equality I certainly support. But equality for equality’s sake, taking equality as a principle, is not something I agree with. So if one does not champion equality, must one necessarily tolerate “inequality”? Not necessarily. One reason for opposing “equality” is that it is an overly abstract concept; in fact, equality always requires a standard…
philosophy China freedom autobiography
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2012年1月26日
Utensils and Ritual Vessels

AI & the Future of Technology2011.05.25
Utensils and Ritual Vessels
A few days ago I attended a lecture by Li Meng. To be honest, the lecture was rather like scratching an itch through one’s boot, or rather, he merely pointed out where the itch was, and then it was entirely up to us to do the scratching ourselves. The lecture’s inspiration is wholly concentrated in its title; for those of us doing phenomenology of technology, there’s no need to attend the lecture at all—just recite this title a few times over. “Utensils and Ritual Vessels—A Chinese Appraisal of Metaphysics” First of all, we know that Western philosophers of technology, with Heidegger as their leader, carried out a kind of “appraisal”…
China technology media Aristotle
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2011年5月25日
Civilization History as History of Science—A Review of Sarton’s Ancient Science in the Golden Age of Greece

History of Science & Scholarship2010.10.24
Civilization History as History of Science—A Review of Sarton’s Ancient Science in the Golden Age of Greece
As the founder of the discipline of the history of science, George Sarton was the first generation of professional historians of science, and he is by no means unfamiliar to scholars in China. In 2007, Jiang Xiaoyuan and Liu Bing edited Sarton’s History of Science Series, bringing Sarton’s ideas on historiography into the Chinese context in a comprehensive way. One of the monumental representative works that reflects Sarton’s achievements in the history of science, Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece, has also recently been introduced by Xiangxiang Press. Regarding Sarton’s value, the translator Lu Xudong says in the preface: “Anyone reading the history of science cannot but read…
book reading history of science Aristotle book review
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2010年10月24日
“Proof” and the Mathematical Spirit

History of Science & Scholarship2010.07.18
“Proof” and the Mathematical Spirit
In last week’s assignment I wrote about “proof” and “the foundations of mathematics.” Since it was a response to a set prompt, I wasn’t very satisfied with how it turned out, and now I want to add a few more remarks. For a long time I have admired the concept of “proof” as the fundamental spirit of mathematics, or rather, “proof” is the core of the “mathematical spirit.” The demand for “proof” is what distinguishes mathematics from the technologies of calculation and geodesy, which solve practical problems; it represents an attitude of freedom, reason, and disinterestedness, and one cannot overstate the significance of “proof.” But this emphasis does not mean…
philosophy science mathematics Plato
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2010年7月18日
Winter Break Essay V: Love, or the Search for Certainty

Philosophy & Thought2010.02.12
Winter Break Essay V: Love, or the Search for Certainty
Philosophy, or “love of wisdom,” is fundamentally an activity of love. I have always said that love is like philosophy, and philosophy is like love; related remarks can be found in the blog folder “谈情——说爱.” I also once wrote “Philosophical Style and Attitudes Toward Love,” in which I crudely mapped various philosophical styles across ancient and modern times onto various attitudes toward love. This was not some offhand joke of mine, The resemblance between philosophy and love is by no means merely a literary analogy; rather, it means that these two activities share something in certain fundamental senses. A culture, or a thinker, who has a certain philosophy will also…
philosophy pursuit Plato love
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2010年2月12日
(For the first assignment in the General History of Science—“Briefly describe the basic features of Greek cosmology and astronomy”) A few words before I’ve even graded the assignment~

Teaching & Courses2009.10.27
(For the first assignment in the General History of Science—“Briefly describe the basic features of Greek cosmology and astronomy”) A few words before I’ve even graded the assignment~
Before the homework is graded, let me say a few words~ The third question on this assignment, namely “briefly describe the basic features of Greek cosmology and astronomy,” was set by me and will also be graded by me. Perhaps because the topic seemed difficult, or because it was listed last, in any case comparatively the fewest students chose my topic. I only received 36 submissions, which just so happens to make it possible for me to offer a bit of special kill-you-while-serving-you (service)~ That is to say, in addition to learning their scores, everyone will also know exactly why they were inevitably killed by the TA~~ I will explain…
philosophy history of science course Aristotle
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2009年10月27日