标签：scientific spirit

Confronting “Complexity” — A Review of Big Science

History of Science & Scholarship2022.09.16
Confronting “Complexity” — A Review of Big Science
This article was published in China Science Daily (2022-09-16, Section 3, Books), with the title changed to “Confronting the ‘Complex’ Head-On — A Compound of Science, Capital, and Politics in the Age of Big Science, Scientists Can No Longer ‘Cultivate Themselves Alone’” When we speak of America’s research environment or science policy, the first thing that usually comes to mind is Vannevar Bush’s Science: The Endless Frontier, a report Bush submitted to then-President Roosevelt in 1945. The report emphasized the importance of basic research, arguing that the government should provide funding support for basic scientific research, but must also respect scientists’ independence and autonomy. Bush’s report was indeed far-reaching in…
book reading science freedom Scientific Revolution
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2022年9月16日
The “Nonsense” that Scientifically Combats Scientific Nonsense — Preface to Recommending Exposing Data Nonsense

History of Science & Scholarship2022.04.07
The “Nonsense” that Scientifically Combats Scientific Nonsense — Preface to Recommending Exposing Data Nonsense
In the past I always wrote book reviews for newspapers; this time, for the first time, I was invited to write a recommendation foreword, which can be found in CITIC Publishing Group’s newly released Debunking Data Bullshit. Since it’s a recommendation and a bit of promotion, I suppose it can also be reposted here. One thing needs to be explained: when I received the advance copy, the tentative Chinese title was The Signal and the Noise of Science; by the time it was officially published, it had been changed to the current Debunking Data Bullshit. So when I wrote the recommendation, I started from the translated title, and the part…
book reading science philosophy of science book review
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2022年4月7日
An Interview Transcript on Research Failure

History of Science & Scholarship2022.03.04
An Interview Transcript on Research Failure
In an earlier interview with China Science Daily, I answered quite a lot of questions, but when they compiled it into an article, they actually only quoted two of my sentences. Here I’m posting my original answers. 1. Someone once proposed that “failure refers to an action’s result deviating from the expected goal, or to the termination (interruption) of an action that has not achieved its intended value.” How do you understand “research failure”? The relationship between failure and success is dialectical. In your view, what kind of research counts as ‘failure’? Can “research failure” be divided into several types? How we define failure of course depends on how we…
science paper innovation scientific spirit
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2022年3月4日
Biography of Things (Continued) — Educational Significance, Secondary-School Science and Technology Innovation, and the Bottleneck Problem

AI & the Future of Technology2021.11.04
Biography of Things (Continued) — Educational Significance, Secondary-School Science and Technology Innovation, and the Bottleneck Problem
Yesterday’s comments still weren’t finished. What I wrote yesterday was that research in the history of scientific instruments can be positioned as “artifact biographies,” in which meaning is formed around the artifact itself. But that does not mean that, beyond this intrinsic meaning, research in the history of instruments has no other benefits. We can also make an analogy with biographical research. Unlike general academic research, biographical works as the outcome of research on individuals often lie somewhere between scholarship and popularization. Apart from non-academic biographical literature, research-based biographies also tend to have a popularizing dimension, making them easier for general readers to read. Between intervening in academic issues and…
technology history of science history education
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2021年11月4日
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
In what sense is “basic science” the cause of “bottlenecking”?

AI & the Future of Technology2020.10.03
In what sense is “basic science” the cause of “bottlenecking”?
In that earlier interview transcript, what I posted as the “original draft” was in fact not the original draft either; the part about “basic theoretical research” was added only at the reporter’s prompting. As for the proposition that “the reason for the bottleneck is weak basic research,” I myself actually have reservations about it. Of course, I am willing to partly support this view, first because the official wording that “encourages free exploration and full exchange and debate” is indeed rare and valuable. Second, in a certain sense, this formulation is correct. But we have seen many completely wrong tendencies. For example, some people think that in order to break…
China technology history of science commentary
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2020年10月3日
An Interview with China Discipline Inspection and Supervision News on Questions of Science and Technology

Culture & Public Commentary2020.09.24
An Interview with China Discipline Inspection and Supervision News on Questions of Science and Technology
The published version can be found here: http://www.jjjcb.cn/content/2020-09/24/content_95300.htm There are quite a lot of changes in the published version of my wording, but these changes were also reviewed and approved by me, so I suppose this counts as a necessary compromise. Of course I have my own more independent thoughts, but when dealing with official media, I am also willing to seek common ground while reserving differences, and take the opportunity to pass along a couple of things I want to say. It is quite obvious that the interviewer wanted to locate the cause of the “chokepoint” problem in the weakness of “basic science.” I agree with this point, but…
China technology commentary Scientific Revolution
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2020年9月24日
The Spirit of Science: Struggle or Harmony?

History of Science & Scholarship2018.06.20
The Spirit of Science: Struggle or Harmony?
This one was also commissioned, but it seems it was never published. It began because an editor at a newspaper or magazine wanted to put together a special issue on the scientific spirit and hoped to commission some related articles. The various keywords she gave included: tireless effort, fearless before power, daring to question, breaking through old prejudices, indifferent to fame and fortune, content with loneliness, even sacrifice of one’s life…… I disliked every single one of those words, so I proposed that these ideas were too cliché and too naïve. If we were going to talk about “the scientific spirit,” why not turn things around and talk about chasing…
science history of science scholarship scientific spirit
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2018年6月20日
Less Habit, More Tracing Back to the Source — A Review of The Origin of Everything

History of Science & Scholarship2017.09.11
Less Habit, More Tracing Back to the Source — A Review of The Origin of Everything
This book review was a commissioned piece I wrote in the first half of this year, but after I handed it in, it seems it was never published? (No feedback.) I suppose they thought I had written it badly. In fact, although this book really is quite good, it is not all that stunning, and there is no especially strong central idea to comment on, so I did not go all out in singing its praises either. But since I wrote it, I might as well post it here. The popular science book Origins of Everything, compiled by the British magazine *New Scientist*, has recently been introduced and published…
book reading science history of science book review
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2017年9月11日
Results Obscure Process—”Science Literacy Benchmarks” and Melamine

Culture & Public Commentary2016.04.29
Results Obscure Process—”Science Literacy Benchmarks” and Melamine
Recently I took part in the commentary on the “Basic Standards for the Scientific Literacy of Chinese Citizens.” I was invited to write a piece for China Science Daily, and it was published together with interviews of many teachers; see here. Because of the word limit, I accidentally wrote too much, and when the article was published it was edited and cut. In fact, the cuts were quite well done: the key points were all retained, and the tone was made less aggressive. Still, I’ll post the unedited original here for reference~ The newly released “Basic Standards for the Scientific Literacy of Chinese Citizens” has stirred up a great…
China science history of science philosophy of science
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2016年4月29日