标签：Scientific Revolution

Course Outline: A General History of Science

Teaching & Courses2014.11.05
Course Outline: A General History of Science
Next semester I’m preparing to teach two courses at Beijing Normal University. No one is actually making me do this; I went to Beijing Normal University in the first place because I wanted to teach. Whether I end up staying at Beijing Normal University as a lecturer or not, I might as well first build up some experience—at least then my postdoc won’t have been for nothing. I’m planning to offer one general-education elective and one major course; the general-education elective will be a General History of Science. I listened to Teacher Wu’s lectures on the general history of science in several rounds at Peking University, and I’ve already served…
history of science course Scientific Revolution Wu Guosheng
阅读全文

2014年11月5日
On the Question of the Scientificity of Traditional Chinese Medicine

History of Science & Scholarship2013.12.11
On the Question of the Scientificity of Traditional Chinese Medicine
Yesterday, Senior Brother Shengli came back to the discussion group to take our brickbats, and the result turned into Senior Brother Shengli holding the floor against the assembled scholars, arguing from class all the way through dinner in unflagging high spirits. After graduating, Senior Brother Shengli’s research focus shifted entirely to the question of Chinese medicine, and he tried to vindicate the “scientificity” of Chinese medicine on the basis of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Senior Brother Shengli extended Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between the “phenomenal body” and the “objective body” into a distinction between “phenomenal science” and “objective science,” and argued that the scientificity of Chinese medicine could be supported under the category of…
science media phenomenology tradition
阅读全文

2013年12月11日
The Revolutionary History of Media

AI & the Future of Technology2013.09.16
The Revolutionary History of Media
Pre-seminar note: The paper isn’t finished yet, but I’ll say a few things first anyway. I’ve run into some difficulties with this paper, which have stalled its progress. In fact, this section is quite an important part of my doctoral dissertation plan. Here I am trying to establish a connection between the history of technology and the history of science, linking philosophy of technology → history of technology → history of science → philosophy of science into a single chain. But the ambition of the framework is rather large, and so I ended up letting the conclusion come first, while the material has not kept up. Relying mainly on Walter…
technology history of science media phenomenology
阅读全文

2013年9月16日
Photography and Science

History of Science & Scholarship2013.03.23
Photography and Science
This is a simple metaphor that I have used before, though I never wrote it up as a special topic. Today, when I was eating with Teacher Zhang and the others, I brought it up again, and I think this metaphor is still fairly illuminating, so I’ll talk about it here in some detail. The metaphor is mainly meant to express our attitude toward science and how to understand the relation between science and the “world”: science is like photography, offering an image of the world. We point at a photograph and identify it, saying, “This is Zhang San.” Is this Zhang San? Yes, this is indeed Zhang San, not…
technology science media phenomenology
阅读全文

2013年3月23日
Solving Problems and Institutional Reform

Culture & Public Commentary2012.07.28
Solving Problems and Institutional Reform
The previous article mentioned that a despotic system constantly needs imminent crises to overcome, with hatred and struggle as its basic posture. Of course, a democratic system too must keep solving immediate problems; “solving problems” is the normal state of governance. However, the basic paradigms for solving problems differ under different systems. This is not merely a matter of keeping pace with the times or adapting measures to local conditions—for example, Chinese people solving China’s special problems, Americans solving America’s problems, and so on. The difference in paradigms is not limited to that kind of distinction; it also includes differences in standards of judgment, such as what counts as a…
philosophy culture China history of science
阅读全文

2012年7月28日
Christian Creationism and the Rise of Modern Science

History of Science & Scholarship2012.06.14
Christian Creationism and the Rise of Modern Science
Abstract: The Christian doctrine of creation is the metaphysical foundation of modern science, and an important thread for sorting out the historical relationship between science and religion. Foster’s essay “The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Natural Science” represents a typical line of thought: it emphasizes the connection between God’s free will and the empirical tendency of modern science, though its argumentative details are open to question. The key is to clarify the general points of the Christian doctrine of creation and the ways these points correspond to the characteristic features of modern science. The doctrine of creation, at the very least, includes four aspects: 1. There…
science philosophy of science history religion
阅读全文

2012年6月14日
The Re-Creation of the World: How Modern Science Came Into Being

History of Science & Scholarship2012.04.08
The Re-Creation of the World: How Modern Science Came Into Being
[荷]H·弗洛里斯·科恩：《The Re-Creation of the World: How Modern Science Came into Being》，translated by Zhang Butian, Hunan Science and Technology Press, 2012 This is a slim booklet written for ordinary readers, and may be regarded as a popularized version of the author’s other weighty scholarly work, *How Modern Science Was Born: Four Civilizations, One Breakthrough in the Seventeenth Century*. The Needham Question has long been a topic of particular concern to Chinese historians of science and even to the general public. The Hong Kong scholar Chen Fangzheng recently published *Inheritance and Rebellion: Why Did Modern Science Appear in the West?* Teacher Zhou Cheng translated a book also called *Why Did Modern…
book reading China notes history of science
阅读全文

2012年4月8日
Regarding the Third Assignment for Ke Tong: “On Bacon’s Science”

History of Science & Scholarship2011.12.19
Regarding the Third Assignment for Ke Tong: “On Bacon’s Science”
As final exams approach, the teaching assistants are all busy too… This time I was a bit lazy with the assignment and didn’t annotate and reply to each student one by one. In fact, last time I did annotate and reply individually, many people simply didn’t even look at my comments, and the citations were still nonstandard. That really disappointed me… Of course, if you would like to communicate with me, you can take the initiative to contact me. Given that this assignment was relatively open, the standards were also hard to set, and it was the final assignment, I suggest grading somewhat leniently, with 8 points as the basic…
philosophy science philosophy of science Scientific Revolution
阅读全文

2011年12月19日
Second Commentary on the Science and Technology Assignment (On the Revolutionary and Conservative Aspects of the Copernican System)

Teaching & Courses2011.11.30
Second Commentary on the Science and Technology Assignment (On the Revolutionary and Conservative Aspects of the Copernican System)
I’d been busy with meetings for a while; organizing these meetings takes so much mental energy that I still haven’t really recovered… But the long-overdue second assignment for Keton had to be graded. I’ve already gone through the assignments once and added comments one by one. Some assignments got very few comments, so I’ll use this space to talk about the more general issues. First, I have to stress once again the issue of annotation conventions. Last time I only directly pointed out the problem of annotation conventions in my replies to some students; for other students whose annotations were also nonstandard, I didn’t criticize them directly. Instead, I wrote…
history of science scholarship history course
阅读全文

2011年11月30日
Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry in Biology—Thoughts on Chang Zengyi’s Lecture

History of Science & Scholarship2010.11.25
Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry in Biology—Thoughts on Chang Zengyi’s Lecture
Today, Teacher Chang Zengyi lectured on “biology driven by physics and chemistry,” discussing the concepts and techniques that physics and chemistry have brought to the life sciences, and introducing the contributions to the life sciences made throughout history by many scientists with backgrounds in physics and chemistry. What Teacher Chang said was relatively superficial; it did not bring out the deeper connections between mathematics, physics, chemistry, and the development of the life sciences as a discipline. In fact, the reason the life sciences were able to develop so extensively under the push of physics and chemistry was not that, by historical accident, there happened to be some interdisciplinary scientists who…
science mathematics Scientific Revolution determinism
阅读全文

2010年11月25日