课程: 科学史视角与争论

学分：3 学时：48

考核方式：课程论文 教学方式：讲授＋讨论

主讲教师：雷震John Alekna 课程类型：基础理论课

授课对象：硕博研究生、在海外研究、发布英文文献有兴趣的研究生

开设目的：To offer training for relevant graduate students in English language literature and debates regarding the history of science, technology, and medicine in East Asia with a special focus on China in order to prepare them to influence the global academic conversation.

教学要求：class participation (30%); reading responses (35%); a final research paper of approximately 4,000 words (35%)

预修知识要求：无

主要内容

1. The Global Early Modern & the History of Science

2. Jesuits at the Ming and Qing Courts

3. Li Shizhen and Perspectives on Natural History

4. Problems of Translation

5. Warfare and the Advance of Science in the 19^th Century

6. The Circulation of Knowledge in China and Japan

7. The First World War: Crisis and Opportunity

8. What is Scientific Culture?

9. Sanitation, Medicine, and of Hygienic Modernity

10. Science in the Countryside? City versus Village Before 1949

11. Bones & Bodies: Science in the Republic

12. Agriculture’s “Green Revolution”

13. Industrialization and Science

14. The Development of Chinese Medicine

15. Did Reform Change Science, or Did Science Change Reform?

16. The Present Scientific Revolution

英文简介

Perspectives and Debates in the History of Science

The history of science, technology, and medicine in East Asia has become the subject of a rich English-language literature over the last several decades. As societies like China have developed unprecedented technological and scientific prowess, the field of history of science in the region has become central to any understanding of the modern world. It is therefore critical that Chinese scholars understand and engage with these debates in order to offer their own thoughtful critiques and analyses. Thus, the goal of this class is to enable future scholars to respond extant academic dialogues and topics in the international arena, enabling them to develop their own perspectives, and over time building toward something we might one day call the “Beida School” of thought in the history of science.

Working toward this goal, this seminar is designed to introduce students to critical debates in the history of science and technology from the Qing dynasty to present. The course aims to enable students to historicize terms like ‘science’, ‘technology’, ‘backwardness’ and ‘development’ in the context of a non-Western society. The major themes include: cultural and technological exchange, the political mobilization of ideas of ‘progress’ and ‘science’, and the putative scientific divergence between East and West. Students will learn to assess the influence of scientific thought on the culture of China, and to contextualize China’s current technological environment. The course concludes with a brief look towards the future.