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Kant’s Space-Time and Hawking’s Universe — Kant’s View of Science and Modern Physics

History of Science & Scholarship2005.12.07
Kant’s Space-Time and Hawking’s Universe — Kant’s View of Science and Modern Physics
Abstract Kant is one of the greatest philosophers of all ages. Some have said, “Kant is like a reservoir: all the philosophy of the past flows into him, and all the philosophy that comes afterward flows out from him.”[①] Kant’s philosophy has an influence so far-reaching that it is beyond dispute. However, the significance of his doctrine of space and time and his understanding of the natural sciences has been widely underestimated. What I want to show is this: although science appears to have undergone earth-shaking changes, from Newton’s classical system to modern physics represented by relativity and quantum theory, scientific method has not changed qualitatively, and modern people’s understanding…
philosophy science history of science Kant
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2005年12月7日
Science Has No Absolute Truth… But Is There Absolute Error? (And a Supplement)

History of Science & Scholarship2005.12.03
Science Has No Absolute Truth… But Is There Absolute Error? (And a Supplement)
Feynman points out: “Any scientific concept lies on some point along the scale between absolute error and absolute truth, and will not be at either end.”[①] It is easier for us to understand this: there is no absolutely correct scientific theory; but is there such a thing as absolute error? Should those scientific theories that have been “falsified” count as absolute errors? Why does Feynman say there are no absolute errors? Let us take an example of a scientific theory—“the geocentric theory.” Obviously, today the geocentric theory is widely recognized as an “incorrect” theory; but is this “incorrectness” absolute? In fact, before Copernicus, the geocentric theory had never had any…
science philosophy of science faith truth
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2005年12月3日
Feynman: Poets Always Say That Scientists Cannot See the Beauty of the Planets—

History of Science & Scholarship2005.08.11
Feynman: Poets Always Say That Scientists Cannot See the Beauty of the Planets—
Poets always say that scientists cannot see the beauty of the stars—stars are, in the eyes of scientists, merely a mass of gathered gaseous atoms. Nothing is “merely” anything. I can see the stars in the desert night sky, and I can feel them too. But do I see them less than others, or more? The vast sky stirs my imagination—gazing up at this turning dome of heaven, with my small eyes I can catch the light that was emitted a million years ago…… or I can observe these stars through the big eye on Mount Palomar (the telescope), which can gather together the light emitted from the same source…
book reading science notes physics
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2005年8月11日
A Short History of Nearly Everything [U.S.] Bill Bryson / by

History of Science & Scholarship2005.07.31
A Short History of Nearly Everything [U.S.] Bill Bryson / by
[American] Bill Bryson, author; translated by Yan Weiming and Chen Yong; Jieli Publishing House, 2005.2 I’ve just finished reading A Short History of Nearly Everything. As a popular science book that is both lively and entertaining, it is certainly well worth recommending. The Chinese translation has an impressive lineup of consultants: Xu Zhihong, Gan Zizhao, and He Zuoxiu; and of reviewers: Wu Guosheng, Liu Huajie, and Zhang Butian. Just seeing these familiar names is reason enough to buy a copy. However, both translators are literature scholars and translators from foreign-language institutes, rather than, like many of the translators in the First Push series, people with a scientific background. In the…
book reading science notes Wu Guosheng
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2005年7月31日