标签：science

The Growth History of the Scientific Spirit and the Unity of Personality

History of Science & Scholarship2020.12.19
The Growth History of the Scientific Spirit and the Unity of Personality
Today I was invited to take part in a forum on the spirit of science. Although my theme talk was only five minutes long, I had also prepared some new formulations, which I will lay out here in a fuller way. “The spirit of science” seems to include many dimensions: seeking truth from facts, pursuing truth, solidarity and cooperation, and so on. How should we understand this multiplicity of what is called the “spirit of science”? There are two reasons for this multiplicity. On the one hand, many people are too casual, stuffing every “good” quality into the spirit of science; but on the other hand, this multiplicity does have…
science history of science freedom Scientific Revolution
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2020年12月19日
Should We Defy Gaia? — A Review of The Medea Hypothesis

History of Science & Scholarship2020.04.16
Should We Defy Gaia? — A Review of The Medea Hypothesis
Published in Chinese Science Bulletin (2020-04-16, Book Review, p. 7). The title was mine, but now I’m tempted to change it again and call it: “Will Gaia Die?” The “Gaia hypothesis” was proposed by the British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock in the 1970s, and, together with the biologist Lynn Margulis, it exerted a huge influence both in science and in the environmental movement; it has remained a matter of controversy to this day. The inspiration for the Gaia hypothesis came from Lovelock’s participation in the 1965 Mars life-detection project. Lovelock held that the existence of life would be a planetary phenomenon: life would transform an entire planet’s environment, especially its…
book reading science history of science book review
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2020年4月16日
Rumor: Seeking Rationality in an Absurd World

Culture & Public Commentary2020.02.18
Rumor: Seeking Rationality in an Absurd World
Here is another essay on the epidemic; if the previous one also counts as related, then this is the fifth. I still ask friends to circulate it cautiously. The rumors about the Wuhan Virus Institute are still continuing: some claim to be real-name whistleblowers accusing the director of secretly selling animals; others solemnly identify a certain graduate student as “Patient Zero.” These conspiracy theories are, of course, all rather crude and not worth refuting. But the significance of rumors does not lie in their own professionalism or accuracy, but in the public sentiment and popular will they reflect. The cruder a rumor is, the fact that it can still spread…
science commentary public sphere reason
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2020年2月18日
The Meaning of “Conflation”: How the Public Can Participate in Scientific Communication

Culture & Public Commentary2020.02.06
The Meaning of “Conflation”: How the Public Can Participate in Scientific Communication
The third essay written amid the epidemic. I’ll say it again: things are tense, so please be cautious about sharing this among friends. From science popularization to public understanding of science to science communication, people in philosophy of science and technology have been talking about this for at least twenty years. The most traditional “deficit model” has long been widely questioned, but to this day, science communication and its significance still have by no means truly taken root in people’s minds. Simply put, the “deficit model” says that scientists possess scientific knowledge while the public lacks scientific knowledge, so science popularization is nothing more than scientists, from a position of…
science philosophy of science commentary politics
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2020年2月6日
Viruses: Nature’s Temper?

Culture & Public Commentary2020.02.04
Viruses: Nature’s Temper?
This is the second essay in my epidemic reflections; with tensions high these days, please be cautious in sharing it with friends. During the epidemic, every day I have seen many things that make one feel awful. What grieved me most, in fact, was the study on Shuanghuanglian released by the Shanghai branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Of course, as Teacher Tiansong says, one must “beware of scientists,” because scientists, like people in any trade, can be just as good or just as bad; but they wield powers greater than those of many other trades, while people in other trades are less…
culture technology science commentary
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2020年2月4日
Why Has “From One to Infinity” Remained Popular for 70 Years?

History of Science & Scholarship2020.01.18
Why Has “From One to Infinity” Remained Popular for 70 Years?
Published in China Science Daily (2020-01-02, Section 7, Book Review) Its Decades-Long Bestseller Status Was No Accident From One to Infinity is the famous popular-science classic by the renowned physicist Gamow. Published in 1947 and revised and republished in 1961, it was translated into Chinese in 1978 by Mr. Bao Yongning, and has already been wildly popular at home and abroad for decades. Gamow died in 1968, more than 50 years ago now, so this classic work has become a “public-domain book.” As a result, many new translations suddenly appeared on the market. In addition to the repeatedly reprinted Bao Yongning translation from Science Press, I have already found at…
book reading science history of science mathematics
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2020年1月18日
Was There Confucianism in the Ancient West?

Culture & Public Commentary2019.08.25
Was There Confucianism in the Ancient West?
The recent atmosphere has me a little like a startled bird, so I’m continuing to use encrypted mode. This article really isn’t worth encrypting; in a couple of days I may quietly decrypt it. A teacher has recently been disciplined over remarks about the Four Great Inventions, and that is truly shocking. I don’t want to reopen here the warning against a culture of informing on others; I only want to talk about the academic question. What makes this incident even more frightening than before is that the remarks that led to the punishment were not a political issue, but an academic one. Even the official media could not stomach…
culture China technology science
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2019年8月25日
The “Two Cultures” Debate Is Long Outdated

Culture & Public Commentary2019.07.02
The “Two Cultures” Debate Is Long Outdated
Published in China Science Daily (2019-06-28, p. 5, Culture) In 1959, the British writer C. P. Snow proposed the thesis of the “two cultures” in a lecture, sparking intense debate. Even sixty years later, the topic is still with us, and seems not to have gone out of date. But I want to put forward a seemingly out-of-place claim: the two-cultures debate is already passé, and there is not much point in still fretting over the issue Snow raised. First, let us return to the context of the time and see just what split between what two cultures Snow was actually talking about. Nowadays, when many people talk about…
culture science sociology intellectuals
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2019年7月2日
Who Can Sell Black Hole Photos? Visual China Can, but So Can You

Culture & Public Commentary2019.04.12
Who Can Sell Black Hole Photos? Visual China Can, but So Can You
This piece was also commissioned by Jiemian, but fittingly it was released under CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License) permission: as long as the author information (Hu Yilin / Jiemian Commentary) is clearly credited, it may be used free of charge. [caption id="attachment_7573" align="alignnone" width="900"] Credit:ESO/C. Malin[/caption] On April 10, 2019, the first “black hole” photograph ever taken by humankind was released in a high-profile manner, attracting the world’s attention. However, in China, beyond sparking people’s interest in black holes, this photo also detonated another topic. People noticed that the image had been included on a website called “Visual China,” and a copyright notice had been attached to…
science freedom commentary internet
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2019年4月12日
The Abdication of Royal Power and the Reform of the International System of Units

History of Science & Scholarship2018.12.07
The Abdication of Royal Power and the Reform of the International System of Units
Published in the *Chang’e* supplement of *Science and Technology Daily*; it has now also been turned into a WeChat public account article, with only minor changes made at publication. In fact, the piece had been commissioned back then, but I caught a cold and it was delayed for a while; only now have I remembered to make it up. On November 13, the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures, held in Versailles, France, passed a resolution revising the International System of Units and redefined four units, including the kilogram, in terms of physical constants. With that, all seven base units of the International System of Units will have been…
science history of science history decentralization
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2018年12月7日