标签：Scientific Revolution

History of Science as a Nature Reserve—A Darwinian View of Science

History of Science & Scholarship2018.04.05
History of Science as a Nature Reserve—A Darwinian View of Science
Last Friday (March 30), I was invited to Shanghai Natural History Museum to take part in a “reading session,” where I introduced my own Outdated Wisdom. Although it was an internal event, there were quite a few listeners—more than 50 friends from museums and publishing houses took part. The title I set for my talk was “Outdated Wisdom and Its Contemporary Significance.” I heard that Liu Su was going as well, so I especially strengthened the Darwinian evolutionary logic in it, and won myself a remark: “Thought-provoking; I hadn’t expected it could be used that way.” I was pretty satisfied with that~ This talk was rather unusual for me, because…
science history of science philosophy of science Scientific Revolution
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2018年4月5日
Selected Readings in Original Works of Philosophy of Science: “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (Post-class Notes by the Lecturer, by Yiduo Xiong)

Teaching & Courses2017.11.03
Selected Readings in Original Works of Philosophy of Science: “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (Post-class Notes by the Lecturer, by Yiduo Xiong)
Note: See the explanation in the previous post; this was handed to me almost at the same time. This one feels stylistically completely different, and in fact a bit too scattered. It might be better to sketch, a little, the particularly interesting or controversial issues that came up in the actual classroom discussion, especially where the discussion was most concentrated. Although I said that all that was needed was to do a light editing of the lecture notes, they still do need some editing after all; it should nevertheless reflect a bit of the fruits of the classroom discussion. Of course, the speaker may also annotate and supplement it here…
history of science course Scientific Revolution discussion
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2017年11月3日
Selected Readings in Classics of Philosophy of Science: Sample In-Class Questions

Teaching & Courses2017.11.01
Selected Readings in Classics of Philosophy of Science: Sample In-Class Questions
We’ve now finished reading two books in the course. Overall, the students have all done fairly well: basically everyone was able to complete the reading and actively participate in discussion. Of course, compared with the format of Mr. Wu’s class, my course still has far too little of a sense of pressure overall. Mr. Wu’s reading class is entirely led by him: he sprays questions at random, asking all kinds of incisive questions. His questions are all tightly keyed to the text, yet none of them can be answered by just skimming it casually. Every class has to be approached with trepidation; after class, you dare not fail to read…
philosophy of science course Scientific Revolution Kuhn
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2017年11月1日
Course Syllabus: Selected Readings from Classic Works in Philosophy of Science

Teaching & Courses2017.09.19
Course Syllabus: Selected Readings from Classic Works in Philosophy of Science
This week the new semester has officially begun, and today the course I am responsible for has also opened for business: “Selected Readings in Classic Works of Philosophy of Science.” This is one of the foundational professional courses offered to first-year master’s students and first-year doctoral students not trained in our department. This year there are altogether just 5 new students enrolled, with no students from other departments, and two auditors. Class time is every Tuesday afternoon starting at 1:30, and the class usually ends a little after 4 o’clock. The location is Room 204, Building 1 at Tsinghua University. Auditors are welcome. But because of the nature of this…
scholarship philosophy of science course Scientific Revolution
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2017年9月19日
Course Syllabus: Selected Readings from Classic Works in Philosophy of Science

Teaching & Courses2017.09.19
Course Syllabus: Selected Readings from Classic Works in Philosophy of Science
This week the new semester has officially begun, and today the course I am responsible for has also opened for business: “Selected Readings in Classic Works of Philosophy of Science.” This is one of the foundational professional courses offered to first-year master’s students and first-year doctoral students not trained in our department. This year there are altogether just 5 new students enrolled, with no students from other departments, and two auditors. Class time is every Tuesday afternoon starting at 1:30, and the class usually ends a little after 4 o’clock. The location is Room 204, Building 1 at Tsinghua University. Auditors are welcome. But because of the nature of this…
scholarship philosophy of science course Scientific Revolution
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2017年9月19日
Science Popularization Should Stand on the Opposite Side of “Innovation”

History of Science & Scholarship2017.05.22
Science Popularization Should Stand on the Opposite Side of “Innovation”
This piece appeared today in the *China Science Daily*; it is an impromptu essay I dashed off in half a day after being commissioned to write it. The original title was “How to Understand the Relationship Between Science Popularization and Technological Innovation”; when it was published, the title was changed and two paragraphs were cut. The cuts were actually pretty good, so I’ll just post the reprint here directly: http://news.sciencenet.cn/sbhtmlnews/2017/5/323655.shtm Since 2001, the third week of May every year has been designated the National Science and Technology Activity Week; this year is already the 17th edition. Science and Technology Week is positioned as a “mass science and technology activity,” aimed…
science history of science history tradition
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2017年5月22日
A “Transitional” Work — _Outmoded Wisdom_ (Afterword, Table of Contents, and Selected Images)

Life & Notes2016.07.24
A “Transitional” Work — _Outmoded Wisdom_ (Afterword, Table of Contents, and Selected Images)
Outdated Wisdom Postscript My second book is about to be published, Outdated Wisdom—Fifteen Lectures on the General History of Science. This book was written by revising the lecture notes from the “General History of Science” course I taught at BNU. The publication of this book had a certain amount of contingency. What was originally being prepared for Shanghai Education Press were actually two other books, The Extension of Man—An Introduction to the General History of Technology and Can Science Be Learned?—A History of Education in Science. At the time, the editor said it would be better to make a series, and hoped to add one more book. I happened to…
history of science Scientific Revolution Stiegler Mumford
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2016年7月24日
On Garbage (1): From Discarded Things to Useless Things

AI & the Future of Technology2016.01.02
On Garbage (1): From Discarded Things to Useless Things
My postdoctoral research project at the time was to work on a history of garbage. I am ashamed to say that, although I have been collaborating with Professor Tian for more than a year, there has been little real progress under this topic, and whether I will ultimately be able to turn it into my exit report is somewhat worrying. One compromise would be to write the exit report on the history of technology or the philosophy of technology, while inserting discussions of garbage at appropriate points. My intention to study garbage was not a whim, nor did I think of this topic merely because I happened to collaborate with…
technology Heidegger Scientific Revolution value
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2016年1月2日
What Does the Mobile Phone Have to Do with Cooking? — The One and the Many of Technology

AI & the Future of Technology2015.11.12
What Does the Mobile Phone Have to Do with Cooking? — The One and the Many of Technology
The previous post mentioned one of Wu’s core objections, namely, his view that science is singular, whereas technology is plural. At the time he gave an example: branches of science such as physics, chemistry, and biology ultimately promise that they can be reduced to a unified foundation, and therefore their historical development is also interconnected. But what about the relations among various technologies, such as between mobile phones and cooking technology? If various concrete technologies are mutually independent, then where does their unity in history come from? My brief reply at the time was this: the reason various technologies can be “unified” is that “life” is unified. And I also…
everyday life technology history of science media
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2015年11月12日
The Structure of the Technological Revolution (Draft)

AI & the Future of Technology2015.11.10
The Structure of the Technological Revolution (Draft)
This is the article I presented at last week’s Wumen seminar. The article itself is very incomplete—not only has it not been finished in form, but the key problem is the lack of basic literature: in academia, the issues related to “technological revolution” seem to lack discussions worth citing. Of course, this gives reason to suspect that there may be problems with the very legitimacy of my topic; Teacher Wu also questioned it quite strongly. But I myself still think this question is legitimate, and that the concept of “technological revolution” is indeed worth probing in depth. My article itself merely makes a superficial correspondence with Kuhn; this correspondence is…
technology history of science philosophy of science history of technology
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2015年11月10日