标签：printing

In the Digital Age, How Do We Win the “Battle to Defend Childhood”

AI & Scholarship2025.06.01
In the Digital Age, How Do We Win the “Battle to Defend Childhood”
Published in China Science Daily (2025-05-30, p. 4, Culture). The original draft title was “How to Protect Childhood in the Digital Age”; this is a reprint of the published version. International Children’s Day on June 1 is approaching. The holiday was initiated by the Soviet Union, originally to commemorate the children persecuted in the Lidice massacre of June 1942; later it became “International Day for the Protection of Children,” aimed at protecting children’s rights to survival, health care, and education, and at opposing the hiring of child labor. As for the right to survival and the right to health care, adults ought to have those too. What is truly special…
culture book reading media education
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2025年6月1日
Lectures on the General History of Science 12: Discussion Session

Teaching & Courses2015.05.22
Lectures on the General History of Science 12: Discussion Session
This week was the long-anticipated discussion class, so there was no lecture script~ There are 15 students enrolled in this course, but in practice only about half can usually make it. This time was the same: a total of 7 students came, and only 6 actually took part in the discussion. Even so, the discussion turned out pretty well. At least everyone had something to say, and we used up the whole class period. What is somewhat regrettable is that I feel my course has had very little impact on the students. For example, one student asked why ancient Greek science, which also originated in a tendency toward theory, eventually…
history of science history course Christianity
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2015年5月22日
Course Outline: A General History of Science

Teaching & Courses2014.11.05
Course Outline: A General History of Science
Next semester I’m preparing to teach two courses at Beijing Normal University. No one is actually making me do this; I went to Beijing Normal University in the first place because I wanted to teach. Whether I end up staying at Beijing Normal University as a lecturer or not, I might as well first build up some experience—at least then my postdoc won’t have been for nothing. I’m planning to offer one general-education elective and one major course; the general-education elective will be a General History of Science. I listened to Teacher Wu’s lectures on the general history of science in several rounds at Peking University, and I’ve already served…
history of science course Scientific Revolution Wu Guosheng
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2014年11月5日
On the Question of the Scientificity of Traditional Chinese Medicine

History of Science & Scholarship2013.12.11
On the Question of the Scientificity of Traditional Chinese Medicine
Yesterday, Senior Brother Shengli came back to the discussion group to take our brickbats, and the result turned into Senior Brother Shengli holding the floor against the assembled scholars, arguing from class all the way through dinner in unflagging high spirits. After graduating, Senior Brother Shengli’s research focus shifted entirely to the question of Chinese medicine, and he tried to vindicate the “scientificity” of Chinese medicine on the basis of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Senior Brother Shengli extended Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between the “phenomenal body” and the “objective body” into a distinction between “phenomenal science” and “objective science,” and argued that the scientificity of Chinese medicine could be supported under the category of…
science media phenomenology tradition
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2013年12月11日
My Book-Writing Plan

Life & Notes2012.07.10
My Book-Writing Plan
Yesterday, at a dinner gathering, we happened to mention publishing books. I heard that in some places one book counts for the equivalent of three papers; in others it counts for nothing at all. But in any case, it can at least be regarded as one kind of achievement. For me, perhaps writing three books would be easier than publishing ten papers, so if writing books could also earn me some credit, that would be a good thing. Of course, I am indeed willing to write books, and not only for the sake of credit. Although, in my view, philosophical texts in the pre-network era may have been mainly in…
everyday life scholarship media blog
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2012年7月10日
Reading Foster: “The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Natural Science”

History of Science & Scholarship2012.06.14
Reading Foster: “The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Natural Science”
On the relationship between science and religion, if one were to say that the two are irreconcilable, then the focal point of the conflict often lies in Christianity’s doctrine of creation, where Christian teachings about the universe or nature come into direct collision with natural science. Conversely, if one were to say that science and religion complement and support one another, one would still have to begin from creation theory. In 1934 Michael Foster wrote the article “The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Natural Science,” attempting to reduce Christianity’s doctrine of creation to a necessary condition for the rise of modern natural science, and offering a…
science Aristotle modernity religion
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2012年6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
On the Final Essay Question in the General History of Science Course: “The Key Machine of the Industrial Age Was Not the Steam Engine but the Clock”

AI & the Future of Technology2011.12.23
On the Final Essay Question in the General History of Science Course: “The Key Machine of the Industrial Age Was Not the Steam Engine but the Clock”
This time, since the usual workload was increased substantially, the final exam was relatively easier. Apart from the traditional term-definition questions—which have been raised to 14—there was only one essay question. Counted toward the total score, the essay question was worth the equivalent of 12 points, so one might roughly say it was the fourth short paper. 2. Essay question (30 points): citations must be proper (if you cite at all); plagiarism is forbidden. Why is it said that “the key machine of the industrial age was not the steam engine but the clock” (Mumford)? This final short paper also required proper citation, but after all, since this was an…
technology Introduction to Philosophy of Technology McLuhan Wu Guosheng
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2011年12月23日
Cookbooks and the History of Science and Technology

Culture & Public Commentary2011.12.12
Cookbooks and the History of Science and Technology
Last week in Brother Bu Tianshi’s class, he mentioned how a certain quantitative tendency entered the general consciousness of modern people. Brother Bu Tianshi said that in history, some things simply “happened”; the spirit of the age shifted, and sometimes there was not much in the way of a reason. Indeed, one cannot find a strict causal-law explanation in history, but one can still find many “explanations.” For example, I tend to explain the quantitative tendency of public thinking by the rise of print media. This is because printing brought with it an unprecedented demand for repeatability and operability, and this repeatability was realized through text rather than oral…
technology culture history printing
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2011年12月12日
Printing, Natural History, and the Birth of Modern Science

History of Science & Scholarship2011.10.24
Printing, Natural History, and the Birth of Modern Science
Introduction This article attempts to point out a certain connection among the three things named in the title—what is the relation between the invention of printing, the revival of natural history, and the birth of modern science? Is there perhaps some profound link among them, such that if we want to understand the essence of modern science and even “modernity,” we must begin by examining the influence of printing? Among these three matters, the date of printing’s appearance in Europe is the clearest: in the 1440s, Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany, invented movable-type printing. Whether or not Chinese printing indirectly influenced Gutenberg’s invention, the fact that the era of print in…
history of science scholarship media knowledge
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2011年10月24日