标签：pursuit

The Whole-Nation System and the Pursuit of Excellence

Culture & Public Commentary2012.08.03
The Whole-Nation System and the Pursuit of Excellence
At Olympic season, it feels awkward not to talk about the Olympics; but four years ago, in “Four Takes on the Olympics”, I already said more than enough, and for the moment I don’t particularly feel like rewriting anything. As for the recent badminton match-fixing-through-passivity incident, I’ve said quite a lot about it on Weibo. First of all, this match was of course disgraceful; the question is whose disgrace it was. Obviously not the athletes’—the athletes were simply trying to adopt the best possible strategy for eventual victory, which is perfectly understandable. The first to be embarrassed is the International Badminton Federation’s bullshit rule: setting up such a weird rule…
culture commentary education pursuit
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2012年8月3日
Chopsticks and Internet Addiction

AI & the Future of Technology2012.07.23
Chopsticks and Internet Addiction
A few days ago I ate two Western meals, using knife and fork, and thinking of chopsticks; I always felt that something was missing, and I was also very unaccustomed to it. So, am I addicted to chopsticks? Is a life in which one depends on chopsticks every day a kind of obsession? This way of putting it seems a bit absurd; I’m afraid no one would seriously reflect on a symptom like “chopstick addiction.” Besides chopsticks, there are things like showers, flush toilets, and so on: many things in our lives on which we depend even more, and without which we feel uncomfortable all over. They are fully embedded…
technology media internet pursuit
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2012年7月23日
Maid Cafés and “Professional Ethics”

Philosophy & Thought2012.02.03
Maid Cafés and “Professional Ethics”
Stirred by the Fang Yaohan incident, I wrote three articles in a row, which is already quite enough to have gotten my money’s worth. Since Han Han has also announced that he is stopping writing and not talking about it anymore, I may as well stop here too. So this article continues from the earlier piece “The Kingly Way”; everyone can skip the previous three articles, and we can continue talking about “morality.” We say that the kingly way is the path to supreme goodness, and supreme goodness is nothing other than “the best life.” But in the traditional sense, for a ruler, the kingly way merely provides one of…
philosophy freedom pursuit Marx
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2012年2月3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 politics
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2012年1月26日
Freedom vs. Equality — I Am a Right-Wing Socialist

Enlightenment & the Spirit of Freedom2012.01.17
Freedom vs. Equality — I Am a Right-Wing Socialist
Last month I posted an article talking about my impressions of the two Wu teachers’ gathering, and as a result a commenter who was criticizing Professor Wu Tong showed up and we exchanged several rounds in the thread below. It’s not that I absolutely had to defend Professor Wu Tong; after all, my dealings with him have mostly been public and not much private, and I wouldn’t dare pound my chest and guarantee that he himself is beyond reproach. But taking the matter strictly on its merits, and judging only from the circumstances presented by the accuser, I still couldn’t help wanting to defend him: not only Professor Wu Tong,…
freedom politics autobiography value
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2012年1月17日
Love of Wisdom and Patriotism

Life & Notes2011.12.17
Love of Wisdom and Patriotism
Yesterday the two Wu teachers had a gathering, and Old Wu [Bei Wu laoshi] got quite drunk and launched into a grand speech. Unlike when he is drunk in other settings, he said many things that he would only say in front of his disciples. Teacher Wu mentioned that, during his lifetime, he would certainly PUSH us; gold always shines in the end, but don’t count on Teacher Wu living too long—we have to make a name for ourselves within fifteen years… (Although Teacher Wu said drunkenness means speaking logically, in fact there were still some problems at the level of logic.) In the end, Teacher Wu came to the…
philosophy China scholarship freedom
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2011年12月17日
The Internet Needs Scholarship; Scholarship Needs the Internet

Site Matters2011.07.22
The Internet Needs Scholarship; Scholarship Needs the Internet
The previous article mentioned that scholarship should actively confront the web; on the other hand, the web also needs scholarship. Through scholars’ active intervention in network media, on the one hand the possibilities for the development of scholarship will be expanded; on the other hand, distinctive elements will also be brought into the development of network technology. In an even earlier essay on the web, I cited Newell Castells’s historical review—“Internet culture” contains four layers: a technical elite culture that pursues knowledge and esteems excellence; a hacker culture that yearns for “freedom” and play; “virtual communists” who advocate sharing and practicality; and entrepreneurs in search of business opportunities. Of course,…
technology China scholarship internet
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2011年7月22日
Why Do We Need Protein? — The Pursuit of Relative Truth

Philosophy & Thought2011.03.14
Why Do We Need Protein? — The Pursuit of Relative Truth
A few days ago, when I was presenting the article “Media Realism—Looking at Scientific Realism from the Perspective of Media Ontology,” Senior Brother Botian mentioned that, in the final analysis, my position is still one of compromise: according to my line of thought, those contemporary scientific theories that have already succeeded are indeed “real,” and I can only compromise with them, unable to put forward a forceful claim like Teacher Tiansong’s “We Simply Do Not Need Protein.” Indeed, my position has always been “weak” from beginning to end, and I fully agree. Ever since my undergraduate days I have tried to reflect on science, but I have never thought of…
philosophy science tradition discussion
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2011年3月14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
Know Yourself, and Do Nothing in Excess—Reflections on Wang Yifang’s Lecture

Culture & Public Commentary2010.10.15
Know Yourself, and Do Nothing in Excess—Reflections on Wang Yifang’s Lecture
Scientific development is proceeding at high speed, and humanity is forging ahead rapidly on the road to knowledge—but does such development need a braking mechanism? Does science need to be “negatively thought”? This is the question Teacher Wang raised. Does science need ethical constraints? Beyond what is “correct,” is there also a standard of “justice”? When people discuss the ethical constraints or social responsibility of science, they are often referring to the personal conduct of scientists. Of course, scientists, as citizens and as members of society, are subject, like people in any other profession, to corresponding social and ethical constraints in their work and lives. Scientific ethics in this sense…
culture science knowledge pursuit
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2010年10月15日