Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang
Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences
Bridging Traditions, 2015
Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang* e foundation of modern chemistry has traditionally been viewed as arising ... more Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang* e foundation of modern chemistry has traditionally been viewed as arising t of the debunking, first, of alchemy and, then, of the phlogistic chemistry of Georg Ernst Stahl (1659-1734). That historical narrative considers alchem-Regional Contexts and Communities of Texts
Science History Publications eBooks, 2007
Impagination – Layout and Materiality of Writing and Publication, 2021
History of Universities, 2004
What we identify today as the dissertation is a text written by a degree candidate and viva voce ... more What we identify today as the dissertation is a text written by a degree candidate and viva voce defended before a group of people (the candidate's examination committee or the community of his university). Its form is straightforward: a text, and its authorship certain: a degree candidate. Likewise, its use is clear: the acquirement of a degree, in most cases a Ph.D. While the length and quality of the dissertation may vary, the doctoral dissertation is supposed to make an original contribution to human knowledge. Such is the format of the dissertation that seems to be taken for granted today. But this was not the case for the early-modern dissertation. Ever since the Middle Ages, ars disserendi and ars disputandi were used interchangeably to refer to the art of performing on an occasion when ideas were discussed orally, and disputation and dissertation were considered synonymous. When later in the early-modern period a text was printed for that occasion, it was called a dissertation or a disputation, again interchangeably, and most commonly the text was penned by the chair, or praeses, of the oral disputation. That text was not necessarily produced for the acquisition of a degree, nor did the oral disputation necessarily serve that purpose. The form, authorship, medium, and purpose of the early-modern dissertation differed remarkably from those of its modern counterpart. Today's dissertation is a product of a medieval institution irrevocably changed by the new intellectual, social, and cultural changes of early-modern Europe. This paper endeavors to elucidate the transformation of the dissertation in the early-modern period. An exhaustive study of the history of the dissertation in different European countries is beyond the scope of this paper, which seeks, instead, to sketch in broad strokes the I. Disputation at the Theology auditorium at Altdorf, early eighteenth century. From Johann G.
Asia Major, 2017
After the arrival of the vitalist philosophy of Henri Bergson and Hans Driesch in the 1910s, Chin... more After the arrival of the vitalist philosophy of Henri Bergson and Hans Driesch in the 1910s, Chinese intellectuals formulated and expanded a domestic version of vital-ism that located its origin in such classical passages as "repeated generation of life constitutes change 生生之謂易" from the Book of Changes. Liang Shuming 梁漱溟 first formulated this domestic vitalism, which mirrored Bergson's philosophy of change, flow, and life. Zhu Qianzhi 朱謙之, Li Shicen 李石岑, Xiong Shili 熊十力, and Fang Dongmei 方東美 expanded the idea in the context of their responses to new cultural, intellectual and geopolitical realities. This article surveys the trajectory of this domestic Chinese vitalism in the first half of the twentieth century and elucidates its importance as a curious combination of conservative and liberal, Eastern and Western, traditional and modern thinking.
History of Science Society Meeting (Cambridge, Massachusetts : History of Science Society), Nov 22, 2003
Ambix, 2021
Georg Ernst Stahl, an influential chymical-medical author of the late seventeenth and early eight... more Georg Ernst Stahl, an influential chymical-medical author of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, first believed in alchemical transmutation and reversed his position over the course of his career. This essay begins by placing Stahl’s early teaching in alchemy in a larger background in which German princes and academics shared intense interest in gold-making. Then, tracing Stahl’s intellectual development, it shows that he developed an increasing reservation about alchemy, though he remained open to the possibility of transmutation during his tenure at Halle. Finally, this essay shows that Stahl’s service to King Friedrich Wilhelm I was an important context for his later public denunciation of alchemy. An analysis of Stahl’s career shift from a university professor to a royal physician at court thus sheds light on the reversal of his positions.
has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or c... more has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographicaliy in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order.
Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, 2019
Bridging Traditions, 2015
KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge, 2021
History of Universities: Volume XXXIV/1, 2021
This chapter continues the time frame of Chapter 8 through the first half of the twentieth centur... more This chapter continues the time frame of Chapter 8 through the first half of the twentieth century, an important period in which linguistics and phonetics gained their own identities. The editors and contributors of this volume have chosen to examine an area of study over two successive periods: the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. This aims to show that a discipline may go through transformations, sometimes branching into new disciplines, and that methods and instruments of training contribute to the formation or consolidation of new disciplines. The first half of the twentieth century saw the breakaway of language sciences (linguistics and phonetics) from philology. Although language scholars usually received substantial training in philology, especially comparative philology (known as comparative grammar in France), they took up new methods in training the next generation. In the United States, the new instrument of training was fieldwork, adop...
History of Humanities, 2019
he importance of phonetics as the indispensable foundation of all study of language—whether that ... more he importance of phonetics as the indispensable foundation of all study of language—whether that study be purely theoretical, or practical as well—is now generally admitted.” Henry Sweet opened hisHandbook of Phonetics with this declaration. Judged by his younger contemporary and the leading phonetician of the time, Daniel Jones (1881–1967), half a century later, this declaration was in fact premature. Though the community of language scholars was becoming aware of the importance of the studies of sounds, in particular speech sounds, there was not yet a well-defined discipline of phonetics. Although there had been rudimentary works on phonetics before, “it is no exaggeration to say that Sweet did in this work more for phonetics than all his predecessors put together,” a language scholar once judged. Sweet’s Handbook of Phonetics is significant in the history of the humanities in two major perspectives. First, it placed phonetics in the development of language studies in the nineteenth century up to Sweet’s time by connecting phonetics to philology and several fields. Second, as just discussed, the Handbook laid the foundation for modern phonetics. Indeed it was one of the founding documents for the discipline of phonetics. Sweet was arguably the best-known British philologist in the second half of the nineteenth century, other than his mentor at Oxford Max Müller (1823–1900), who was in fact born and educated a German. Sweet was not a typical student, not finishing his degree until near age thirty. Before his entrance to Oxford he had studied Germanic philology and comparative Indo-European philology (predecessor to today’s linguistics, often known as comparative philology) at Heidelberg. He began to publish on English philology while at Oxford, editing medieval texts and compiling Old English readers and dictionaries. He was an able philologist in the first place and had updated
Early Science and Medicine, 2014
World Philology, 2015
T THE TURN of the twentieth century, philology was already a mature, prominent discipline well es... more T THE TURN of the twentieth century, philology was already a mature, prominent discipline well established in the faculty of philosophy (or the arts) in European academia. Starting in Germany, chairs in classical philology, philology of modern European languages, and comparative (or "Indo-Germanic") philology were established in universities across Europe in the nineteenth century. 1 At what was perhaps its peak, philology was undergoing at least two important developments. First, it continued to be widely disseminated, now outside Europe. In East Asia its formal arrival was marked by the appointment of Ueda Kazutoshi (or Mannen) (1867-1937) to the chair of philology at the University of Tokyo in 1894. Ueda had studied philology in Berlin, Leipzig, and Paris from 1890 to 1894. Once back home, he repeated in Japan what his European predecessors had done in the nineteenth century, launching a movement to study Japanese as a national language and compiling a critical and comprehensive Japanese dictionary. 2 The arrival of European philology in China, though later than in Japan, is no less significant. The first institutionalization of philology brought with it the other development that was just taking place in Europe and the United States: the emergence of linguistics as a science independent of philology. Philology and linguistics were welcomed by Chinese intellectuals with relatively little resistance, as both of them were integrated into a renewal of
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2010
This article examines two early modern models of dissertation authorship that both relied on exte... more This article examines two early modern models of dissertation authorship that both relied on extensive collaboration between the degree candidate and his supervisor. The dissertation conducted on the traditional model, practiced until the eighteenth century at German universities, was a joint product of the supervisor, who prepared the thesis in writing, and the degree candidate, who defended it in the oral disputation. The two collaborators shared the credit for a successfully defended thesis in different forms: right for public recognition and rights to use and reproduce the thesis. Instead of sharing the credit as two equal partners, each of them took advantage of his credit in ways that benefited his status. In the model that Albrecht von Haller introduced at Göttingen, the supervisor provided the student with a laboratory and experimental training, while the degree candidate wrote a thesis by himself based on the experiments he carried out, and defended the thesis without the supervisor chairing the disputation. The Haller model reveals two new elements that heralded the development of modern scientific education: divisibility of laboratory labor between the student's experimentation and the research program to which it belongs; and feasibility of the requirement of experimental work in return for the exclusive authorship of the doctoral thesis.
Early Science and Medicine, 2002
This paper examines Georg Ernst Stahl's first book, the Zymotechnia Fundamentalis, in the con... more This paper examines Georg Ernst Stahl's first book, the Zymotechnia Fundamentalis, in the context of contemporary natural philosophy and the author's career. I argue that the Zymotechnia was a mechanical theory of fermentation written consciously against the influential "fermentational program" of Joan Baptista van Helmont and especially Thomas Willis. Stahl's theory of fermentation introduced his first conception of phlogiston, which was in part a corpuscular transformation of the Paracelsian sulphur principle. Meanwhile some assumptions underlying this theory, such as the composition of matter, the absolute passivity of matter and the "passions" of sulphur, reveal the combined scholastic and mechanistic character of Stahl's natural philosophy. In the conclusion I show that Stahl's theory of fermentation undermined the old fermentational program and paved the way for his dualist vitalism.
Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences
Bridging Traditions, 2015
Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang* e foundation of modern chemistry has traditionally been viewed as arising ... more Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang* e foundation of modern chemistry has traditionally been viewed as arising t of the debunking, first, of alchemy and, then, of the phlogistic chemistry of Georg Ernst Stahl (1659-1734). That historical narrative considers alchem-Regional Contexts and Communities of Texts
Science History Publications eBooks, 2007
Impagination – Layout and Materiality of Writing and Publication, 2021
History of Universities, 2004
What we identify today as the dissertation is a text written by a degree candidate and viva voce ... more What we identify today as the dissertation is a text written by a degree candidate and viva voce defended before a group of people (the candidate's examination committee or the community of his university). Its form is straightforward: a text, and its authorship certain: a degree candidate. Likewise, its use is clear: the acquirement of a degree, in most cases a Ph.D. While the length and quality of the dissertation may vary, the doctoral dissertation is supposed to make an original contribution to human knowledge. Such is the format of the dissertation that seems to be taken for granted today. But this was not the case for the early-modern dissertation. Ever since the Middle Ages, ars disserendi and ars disputandi were used interchangeably to refer to the art of performing on an occasion when ideas were discussed orally, and disputation and dissertation were considered synonymous. When later in the early-modern period a text was printed for that occasion, it was called a dissertation or a disputation, again interchangeably, and most commonly the text was penned by the chair, or praeses, of the oral disputation. That text was not necessarily produced for the acquisition of a degree, nor did the oral disputation necessarily serve that purpose. The form, authorship, medium, and purpose of the early-modern dissertation differed remarkably from those of its modern counterpart. Today's dissertation is a product of a medieval institution irrevocably changed by the new intellectual, social, and cultural changes of early-modern Europe. This paper endeavors to elucidate the transformation of the dissertation in the early-modern period. An exhaustive study of the history of the dissertation in different European countries is beyond the scope of this paper, which seeks, instead, to sketch in broad strokes the I. Disputation at the Theology auditorium at Altdorf, early eighteenth century. From Johann G.
Asia Major, 2017
After the arrival of the vitalist philosophy of Henri Bergson and Hans Driesch in the 1910s, Chin... more After the arrival of the vitalist philosophy of Henri Bergson and Hans Driesch in the 1910s, Chinese intellectuals formulated and expanded a domestic version of vital-ism that located its origin in such classical passages as "repeated generation of life constitutes change 生生之謂易" from the Book of Changes. Liang Shuming 梁漱溟 first formulated this domestic vitalism, which mirrored Bergson's philosophy of change, flow, and life. Zhu Qianzhi 朱謙之, Li Shicen 李石岑, Xiong Shili 熊十力, and Fang Dongmei 方東美 expanded the idea in the context of their responses to new cultural, intellectual and geopolitical realities. This article surveys the trajectory of this domestic Chinese vitalism in the first half of the twentieth century and elucidates its importance as a curious combination of conservative and liberal, Eastern and Western, traditional and modern thinking.
History of Science Society Meeting (Cambridge, Massachusetts : History of Science Society), Nov 22, 2003
Ambix, 2021
Georg Ernst Stahl, an influential chymical-medical author of the late seventeenth and early eight... more Georg Ernst Stahl, an influential chymical-medical author of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, first believed in alchemical transmutation and reversed his position over the course of his career. This essay begins by placing Stahl’s early teaching in alchemy in a larger background in which German princes and academics shared intense interest in gold-making. Then, tracing Stahl’s intellectual development, it shows that he developed an increasing reservation about alchemy, though he remained open to the possibility of transmutation during his tenure at Halle. Finally, this essay shows that Stahl’s service to King Friedrich Wilhelm I was an important context for his later public denunciation of alchemy. An analysis of Stahl’s career shift from a university professor to a royal physician at court thus sheds light on the reversal of his positions.
has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or c... more has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographicaliy in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order.
Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, 2019
Bridging Traditions, 2015
KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge, 2021
History of Universities: Volume XXXIV/1, 2021
This chapter continues the time frame of Chapter 8 through the first half of the twentieth centur... more This chapter continues the time frame of Chapter 8 through the first half of the twentieth century, an important period in which linguistics and phonetics gained their own identities. The editors and contributors of this volume have chosen to examine an area of study over two successive periods: the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. This aims to show that a discipline may go through transformations, sometimes branching into new disciplines, and that methods and instruments of training contribute to the formation or consolidation of new disciplines. The first half of the twentieth century saw the breakaway of language sciences (linguistics and phonetics) from philology. Although language scholars usually received substantial training in philology, especially comparative philology (known as comparative grammar in France), they took up new methods in training the next generation. In the United States, the new instrument of training was fieldwork, adop...
History of Humanities, 2019
he importance of phonetics as the indispensable foundation of all study of language—whether that ... more he importance of phonetics as the indispensable foundation of all study of language—whether that study be purely theoretical, or practical as well—is now generally admitted.” Henry Sweet opened hisHandbook of Phonetics with this declaration. Judged by his younger contemporary and the leading phonetician of the time, Daniel Jones (1881–1967), half a century later, this declaration was in fact premature. Though the community of language scholars was becoming aware of the importance of the studies of sounds, in particular speech sounds, there was not yet a well-defined discipline of phonetics. Although there had been rudimentary works on phonetics before, “it is no exaggeration to say that Sweet did in this work more for phonetics than all his predecessors put together,” a language scholar once judged. Sweet’s Handbook of Phonetics is significant in the history of the humanities in two major perspectives. First, it placed phonetics in the development of language studies in the nineteenth century up to Sweet’s time by connecting phonetics to philology and several fields. Second, as just discussed, the Handbook laid the foundation for modern phonetics. Indeed it was one of the founding documents for the discipline of phonetics. Sweet was arguably the best-known British philologist in the second half of the nineteenth century, other than his mentor at Oxford Max Müller (1823–1900), who was in fact born and educated a German. Sweet was not a typical student, not finishing his degree until near age thirty. Before his entrance to Oxford he had studied Germanic philology and comparative Indo-European philology (predecessor to today’s linguistics, often known as comparative philology) at Heidelberg. He began to publish on English philology while at Oxford, editing medieval texts and compiling Old English readers and dictionaries. He was an able philologist in the first place and had updated
Early Science and Medicine, 2014
World Philology, 2015
T THE TURN of the twentieth century, philology was already a mature, prominent discipline well es... more T THE TURN of the twentieth century, philology was already a mature, prominent discipline well established in the faculty of philosophy (or the arts) in European academia. Starting in Germany, chairs in classical philology, philology of modern European languages, and comparative (or "Indo-Germanic") philology were established in universities across Europe in the nineteenth century. 1 At what was perhaps its peak, philology was undergoing at least two important developments. First, it continued to be widely disseminated, now outside Europe. In East Asia its formal arrival was marked by the appointment of Ueda Kazutoshi (or Mannen) (1867-1937) to the chair of philology at the University of Tokyo in 1894. Ueda had studied philology in Berlin, Leipzig, and Paris from 1890 to 1894. Once back home, he repeated in Japan what his European predecessors had done in the nineteenth century, launching a movement to study Japanese as a national language and compiling a critical and comprehensive Japanese dictionary. 2 The arrival of European philology in China, though later than in Japan, is no less significant. The first institutionalization of philology brought with it the other development that was just taking place in Europe and the United States: the emergence of linguistics as a science independent of philology. Philology and linguistics were welcomed by Chinese intellectuals with relatively little resistance, as both of them were integrated into a renewal of
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2010
This article examines two early modern models of dissertation authorship that both relied on exte... more This article examines two early modern models of dissertation authorship that both relied on extensive collaboration between the degree candidate and his supervisor. The dissertation conducted on the traditional model, practiced until the eighteenth century at German universities, was a joint product of the supervisor, who prepared the thesis in writing, and the degree candidate, who defended it in the oral disputation. The two collaborators shared the credit for a successfully defended thesis in different forms: right for public recognition and rights to use and reproduce the thesis. Instead of sharing the credit as two equal partners, each of them took advantage of his credit in ways that benefited his status. In the model that Albrecht von Haller introduced at Göttingen, the supervisor provided the student with a laboratory and experimental training, while the degree candidate wrote a thesis by himself based on the experiments he carried out, and defended the thesis without the supervisor chairing the disputation. The Haller model reveals two new elements that heralded the development of modern scientific education: divisibility of laboratory labor between the student's experimentation and the research program to which it belongs; and feasibility of the requirement of experimental work in return for the exclusive authorship of the doctoral thesis.
Early Science and Medicine, 2002
This paper examines Georg Ernst Stahl's first book, the Zymotechnia Fundamentalis, in the con... more This paper examines Georg Ernst Stahl's first book, the Zymotechnia Fundamentalis, in the context of contemporary natural philosophy and the author's career. I argue that the Zymotechnia was a mechanical theory of fermentation written consciously against the influential "fermentational program" of Joan Baptista van Helmont and especially Thomas Willis. Stahl's theory of fermentation introduced his first conception of phlogiston, which was in part a corpuscular transformation of the Paracelsian sulphur principle. Meanwhile some assumptions underlying this theory, such as the composition of matter, the absolute passivity of matter and the "passions" of sulphur, reveal the combined scholastic and mechanistic character of Stahl's natural philosophy. In the conclusion I show that Stahl's theory of fermentation undermined the old fermentational program and paved the way for his dualist vitalism.