标签：scholarship

Do We Still Need to “Read” in the Age of “Swiping”?

AI & Scholarship2023.04.21
Do We Still Need to “Read” in the Age of “Swiping”?
The original title of this article was “Does the Age of Artificial Intelligence Still Need Reading?”, published in China Science Daily (2023-04-21, p. 1, News, the title was changed to “Do We Still Need to ‘Read’ in the Age of ‘Scrolling’?”》, and on the WeChat public account the title was changed again to Just for This Reason, in the Age of “Scrolling” We Still Need to “Read”. I myself think the newspaper title is better, so I use it here. What follows is the original draft; it was lightly polished for publication, and when citing it, please use the newspaper version. World Book Day is coming again soon. Books are…
culture scholarship freedom AI
阅读全文

2023年4月21日
Can General Education Outmaneuver the Majors? — A Loose Talk from Course Assessment Methods to ChatGPT

AI & Scholarship2023.03.19
Can General Education Outmaneuver the Majors? — A Loose Talk from Course Assessment Methods to ChatGPT
Note: I originally just wanted to vent a bit about the feelings stirred up by a wave of severely plagiarized assignments, but as it turned out the discussion naturally drifted into AI, and things got a bit loose. Let’s leave it at that for now. The two courses I taught last semester—A General History of Technology and Introduction to Philosophy of Technology—have only just now finally been brought to a close. Normally, my courses use in-class exams during the last week of the term, but because of the outbreak of the pandemic at the end of last semester, the university suggested changing the final-exam process and arranging two exam sessions,…
technology scholarship freedom education
阅读全文

2023年3月19日
Becoming Citizens Capable of Debate—Commencement Address for the 2022 Department of History of Science Graduation Ceremony

History of Science & Scholarship2022.06.27
Becoming Citizens Capable of Debate—Commencement Address for the 2022 Department of History of Science Graduation Ceremony
I am very honored to speak today on behalf of the teachers of the undergraduate minor in history of science. Building the undergraduate major has always been a priority for us in the Department of History of Science at Tsinghua University. In China as a whole, we were also the first department of history of science to enroll undergraduates. At present we are training a minor; in the future we will also train a major. So, why should undergraduates study history of science? Of course, one purpose is to train future scholars of history of science and strengthen the pool of applicants for our graduate program. But many undergraduate students…
history of science scholarship philosophy of science knowledge
阅读全文

2022年6月27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
阅读全文

2022年1月14日
The Biography of Objects: Methods and Significance in the History of Scientific Instruments

AI & the Future of Technology2021.11.03
The Biography of Objects: Methods and Significance in the History of Scientific Instruments
At today’s regular meeting we discussed the question of paradigms in the history of scientific instruments, and I offered some views. Here I’ll spell them out a bit more fully. At present, the history of scientific instruments does not seem to have formed a relatively unified and distinctive research paradigm. On this point, Teacher Wu seems inclined to think that studies of individual instruments belong to the “initial stage” of scholarship in the history of science and technology: instruments, like manuscripts, artifacts, and other primary historical sources, are the foundation of historical research. But through further study, the results we obtain from these basic materials still ultimately have to crystallize…
technology history of science scholarship history
阅读全文

2021年11月3日
Basic Skills in Studying Philosophy: Avoid Reifying Abstract Entities, Resist the Universalization of Holism

History of Science & Scholarship2021.10.30
Basic Skills in Studying Philosophy: Avoid Reifying Abstract Entities, Resist the Universalization of Holism
Recently I have been supervising students’ thesis proposals, and I have had a lot of thoughts. In fact, I have always hoped that students would do history rather than philosophy, because then my supervision would be a bit easier. Doing history requires inspiration and thought, but more important is steady, painstaking labor: I give some broad conceptual inspiration and advice, and then the student just buries their head in the books. But if students want to do philosophy, then I get a headache, because philosophy is the easiest thing to fake and the hardest thing to fool. If you run into a teacher who is happy to look the other…
philosophy scholarship Marx God's-eye view
阅读全文

2021年10月30日
Rules for Authorship on Coauthored Papers

History of Science & Scholarship2020.08.11
Rules for Authorship on Coauthored Papers
Professor Wu’s published papers and books are almost always single-authored; he has never coauthored papers with students. Naturally, I followed suit, and under normal circumstances I also tend toward working independently, while encouraging students to pursue research on their own and not giving much thought to questions of joint authorship. Still, of course, I am not rigid to the point of stubbornness. For various reasons, I have recently begun trying to coauthor papers with students. But this is not something to be done casually or blindly: why coauthor at all, under what circumstances one may be listed as an author, who should be first author and who second author—these questions…
scholarship paper
阅读全文

2020年8月11日
Why Must Philosophy Be Obscure? — Reflections on a Perfect-Score Zhejiang Essay

Culture & Public Commentary2020.08.04
Why Must Philosophy Be Obscure? — Reflections on a Perfect-Score Zhejiang Essay
A recent Zhejiang Gaokao essay that scored full marks has sparked heated discussion, but the target of the criticism is often “obscurity.” The author opened by quoting Heidegger, famous for being obscure, and thereby deepened the stereotype of philosophy = obscurity. In my view, the key to that full-mark essay is not “obscurity,” but “posing,” that is, feigning obscurity. Some philosophers are obscure because they often construct a grand edifice of thought, weaving together a self-consistent conceptual system; if an outsider is not familiar with the basic patterns, then even a few scattered phrases are hard to understand. It is like a mathematical formula: if you are not familiar with…
philosophy scholarship commentary Heidegger
阅读全文

2020年8月4日
How to Write Good Reading Notes Assignments

History of Science & Scholarship2020.05.03
How to Write Good Reading Notes Assignments
My undergraduate general-education courses (History of Technology, Introduction to Philosophy of Technology, and so on) all like to assign “reading notes” as homework, which can substitute for a term paper (many undergraduates simply do not know how to write papers at all; if you force them to do so, plagiarism becomes all too likely, so it is better to be a bit more open-ended). But if reading notes are assigned as the major project, students should of course take them seriously; a slapdash job will naturally not earn a high grade. If you send me your reading notes in advance, you can get some feedback. But I have found that,…
philosophy book reading scholarship notes
阅读全文

2020年5月3日
The “Atmosphere” of Online Teaching, or a New Paradigm

Culture & Public Commentary2020.04.18
The “Atmosphere” of Online Teaching, or a New Paradigm
Stage-by-Stage Reflections on Online Teaching The most unusual semester in years has already passed its halfway point in the blink of an eye. I have finished eight lectures of my course on the history of technology, and of course it has always been online. The reading group I host has naturally also shifted to an online mode; during winter break we had already launched a “cloud reading group,” meeting once before the semester began and then resuming once a week after classes started. The reading group is held through Zoom cloud video conferencing, while Tsinghua’s large lecture course (history of technology) is livestreamed simultaneously via Rain Classroom and Zoom cloud…
technology culture scholarship media
阅读全文

2020年4月18日