Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Puccini, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Satie and Chopin. So many masters listed here with so many masterworks. What’s the meaning of life? Some say: the meaning of life is to express so that the next generation will take in your thoughts and live on and on. Live long and prosper, isn’t it? In this point of view, composers do are the luckiest man. For they work for themselves. Writers and directors express thoughts by stories. And in stories, there are so many other factors: social background, name of characters and so on. But in music, the only distraction is the instruments. Thoughts and spirits live there alone and undisturbed.

I took a course named The Enjoyment of Music this term. And the final exam is to analysis La Valse by Ravel. I have to say that impressionism is really hard to follow. Boléro played at Summer Night Concert Schönbrunn 2016 is well known as a giant raise up. But in La Valse, there is just simply nothing to capture. The lecturer of The Enjoyment of Music, Prof. Bi Minghui once said “La Valse is the best dance music ever. It concentrates all the essence of three-beat music.” But I can really not appreciate La Valse for now. And maybe I never will. 

Brahms once embedded “AGADHE”, the name of one of his girlfriends, into his String Sextet No. 2. How lucky he is to master the ability to express. How lucky is Tian Yimiao to actually feel the most of great passion passed by those masterpieces.

I major in Computer Science, so reading this book, reading about stories between Turing and Neumann is like peeping life of God.

I have no right to comment on Turing’s life. Just wish this world to be nicer to ones like him. And just like Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

The lecture Origin of Greek Science Spirit is a lecture given by Professor Wu Guosheng on Nov. 7, 2019, at Peking University. And the book What’s Science is also Prof. Wu.

To begin our discussion, let’s define science first. The science we discuss in this note is a system styled with two features: deductive and falsifiable. In addition, science is different from technology: technology is not deductive but more productive.

Some say science is one kind of faith. Yes. Modern science is a replacement of Christian. As for China, from the 1800s to 1920s, the traditional value system went corrupted, people need something to believe in. That’s why the Chinese are so fascinating about modern science.

There are two phases of Science: Greek Science and Modern Science. Greek Science is the base of modern science. Modern Science introduced the spirit of will to power, thus modern science has greatly improved productivity.

Greek Science: do science deductively for science

There are two bases of Greek Science: free and independent. Free means people do science for no certain practice purpose. People do science for science. Independent means science relay on the deduction to develop itself.

Why “free” is important? The progress from static electricity to electric cars is not and can not be powered by practical demand. Free represents unlimited potential.

Why “independency” is important? Independence ensured that no is no. Let’s take Chinese astronomy as an example: when the astronomical phenomenon is highly related to politics, misprediction lead to fables instead of correction of theories.

And Greek philosophy contribute a lot to Greek science. They invented nature. This world can not be described in math, but concepts can be. Thus, we work on nature instead of this world. This is one of the bases of Greek Science.

Modern Science: the will to power

Christian accepted the nature science proposed by Aristotle. They understand the Bible is not about science. Moreover, the proposal of Nominalism in scholasticism replace God with the human. Nominalism proposes that God is unpredictable so pray will not save you. The only way to save yourself is positively manipulating nature. They released the will to power.

Greek science did not interact with nature, the representative is Stoicheia. For modern science nature is neither holy nor cheap, science began to interfere with nature. The representative is Almagest, which is the bridge between Greek science and modern science.

And I’ve got a new understanding of how philosophy leads to the development of science. Science is very much the same as agriculture. You can not make plans for science, all you can do is to provide the right environment, which is what philosophy does. Here’s a specific example: philosopher Henry More proposed that space might be infinite, which is the direct base of Newton’s first law of motion.

Eastern Science?

The highest pursuit of Chinese philosophy is benevolence which Greek philosophy peruse free science. And Chinese philosophers believed that people are part of the world, nature worked not in its own way but a complicated way which encountered human wishes and gods’ wishes. What’s why there’s no eastern science.

From a religious point of view, our culture did not stand for one’s own will. Buddhism proposed that publicity is the source of suffering. Therefore, there’s no place for nominalism.

However, eastern technology was greatly advanced. Why advanced technology didn’t lead to science? Let’s take Chinese astronomy as an example: Chinese astronomy served Li instead of discovering nature rules. Secondly, misprediction didn’t falsify the theory: we made stories to explain misprediction.

Worth mention that science is just one kind of ideology, not the best one. Confucianism kept China prosper for thousands of years while European suffered from Dark Ages. The competition between Chinese philosophy and Greek philosophy is very much the same as the competition between Magic and Mechanism.

In a word, Renaissance is a burst of desires. People started to wonder. They gradually had the wish to see, to know, to understand things. The outcome is tons of fascinating works distributed in various fields of humanity.

Why there’s a burst? There are three reasons: 1. Christian suppresses people’s desire to stay in power. But Christian started to become inclusive started from Francis of Assisi. 2. The development of printing greatly reduced the cost to obtain knowledge, Christianity can no longer hold the knowledge to themselves. 3. European economy went prosper, people were no longer satisfied with sufficient food.

There were crises. Idealism once prevailed. Salvation in Christianity went all the way up when the plague swept Europe. History finally chose the current direction.

As a biography written by an American writer, there are reasons to believe that this version is rather objective. And it’s so interesting, for example, guess who is Choo Choo Train. And after reading this book, you will realize that Trump’s government is not the most stupid one in history.

This book is based on this thought: Religions without the supernatural and religions without gods, but none which does not subdivide the world into things and times and persons that are sacred and others that as a consequence are profane. Therefore, we have no right to decide what kind of knowledge is useful nor who have the right to educate nor who have the right to be educated.

The defects of modern schools

School constantly indoctrinate groups of beliefs to us: There are secrets everywhere; If we live a happy life depend on if we understand those secretes; If you want to understand those secrets you have to follow one pre-designed long-lasting procedure; Only teachers can reveal secrets properly. Try another one: Children belong to schools; Children learn in schools; Schools are the only place for children to learn.

There’s one thing that the modern school system is extremely good at: keep this society stable. So the poor are robbed of their self-respect by subscribing to a creed that grants salvation only through school. At least the Church gave them a chance to repent at the hour of death. The school leaves them with the expectation (a counterfeit hope) that their grandchildren will make it.

Latent functions performed by modern school systems are complicated: custodial care, selection, indoctrination and learning. Schools try to perform all those functions but result in failures in most of those aspects. (We did a really good job on indoctrination)

We are not saying that all those aspects can’t be accomplished by one agency but the design of the existing agency is not proper anymore.

1. Custodial Care

Let’s put it in an easy way: Children are not happy at school. Parents spend tons of money on schooling while getting a little outcome. The very only reason they choose a school is that there are no other options.

2. Selection

In modern school systems, the selection is based on diplomas instead of ability. The outcome of this mismatch is schools become a tool of Social Reproduction.

3. Learning

There are three kinds of learning: skill-learning, education for inventive and creative behaviour and purpose-learning. All of them can be aided by institutional arrangement but they are of a different, frequently opposed nature.

Without skill-learning, we have no tool to conduct any plans. Poor education for inventive and creative behaviour stops us from moving forward. The lack of purpose-learning makes us cunning egoists.

Unfortunately, in modern China, we do a fairly good job in skill-learning while the latter two are extremely poorly done.

Renaissance

The field of education needs a Renaissance.

School is not a cure for poverty. Learning is. We believe that attending schools makes us successful. Wrong. Master the ability to learn makes us successful. Schooling is very much like dieting:

Alice: “I’m dieting.”

Bob: “Are you losing any weight?”

Alice: “No.”

We have to realize that the key is not about teaching but learning. It’s a positive action.

What we can do is to provide a proper environment for anyone who wants to learn.

China

School in China tend to serve just one purpose: to promise Social Mobility, a special kind of selection, to the public. It keeps society stable, which is good. As China growing we need more creative talents to push science forward. We need more leaders with a purpose to solve social problems. While our educating system is doing such a terrible job in helping those two kinds of man.

On the other hand, China has so many people but so few educating resources. Raising funds helps. But the very only fundamental solution is to take away the privilege of teaching from schools. This is the only way to bring equal right to learn to everyone.

This is such a useful book which solves tons of my question on the relationship. Why we love each other? Why we need love? What’s the perfect love? I’ve been wondering answers to those questions for long. Though I’ve found some practical answers on the internet, I can’t set up a system to unify my answers. Luckily, this book did this for me.

What is love?

Let’s talk about what is NOT love. Marriage is not based on love. Actually, it has no necessary relationship with love. Marriage is one kind of financial insurance, a practice of symbiotic bond. Secondly, love is not a relationship with a certain object but an attitude, an intention which decides how a person interact with the world. You can only begin to feel real love in relationships without a certain purpose.

Love is a constant intention of actions, not a depressed feeling. It’s constant instead of falling in love. Using a general expression, loving is more about giving away instead of just accepting. It’s a two-way interaction.

How about one-way loving? Unconditional one-way love brings you fear. If the very only reason you are loved is your some kind of advantage or you deserve to be loved, questions come to you: What if I failed to make others happy, will they still love me? That’s why in modern relationships one tends to feel a lack of security. In fact, if you were loved because you make others happy, you are not loved but used.

There’s another interesting fact: when you are fared of losing love actually you fare of loving. Loving means give away without insurance. This is some sort of circle, just like confidence and courage.

Meanwhile selfish is definitely not love but controversial. The tendency of selfish is caused by the lack of power of loving. One can not love anything so that he tries to seek satisfaction in other aspects of life. For example, mothers who care for their children too much, because they can achieve their dream, they push their children so hard without caring if what children want. What children get is hate of living from their mothers protected by moral. In addition, both too much caring and too much selfless are both caused by the lack of love. And usually, too much selflessness is much more harmful because morally they can’t be criticized.

Why we need love?

We all have a tendency to get away with loneliness.

Let’s take a look at alcohol. Why we are so eager to get drunk when we get sad? In this kind of madness, a colourful outer side world disappeared. You are disengaged with the world together with this damn loneliness. We love drugs and religion for the same reason.

This is why we feel even more lonely after sexual relationships without love. This kind of relationship is a desperate temptation to get away from loneliness. But without love, this relationship leads to nothing but high in a flash. In addition, we are not saying that sexual relationship is the same as other kinds of love. The love between couples is exclusive and requires commitment while other kinds of love tend to be extensive. There’s a unique element in this kind of love: the fundamental difference between boys and girls.

There is another very different kind of love: love from mothers. Other kinds of love share an intention to get together. But love from mothers requires a mother to let go when the time comes. It’s about separation. That’s why love from mothers are considered the noblest. Meanwhile, it’s the same reason why men are so eager for accomplishment: they gain no satisfaction of succuss from raising children.

How to love

As we talk about earlier, loving is more about giving away, which mean loving is a kind of skill which needs to be practised. So there’s a common thought which is way more wrong: the reason no one loves me is that I haven’t met the right person. If we apply this thought to painting: the reason I haven’t complete any good work is I haven’t seen the right sight. Apparently, if you want to become a good artist you should practice instead of waiting for the right sight.

Modern society is kind of disturb us from loving. When self conciseness grows, society gets unstable. That’s why we are usually required to hold our feelings. We are asked to understand each other which is good. But avoiding conflicts means you have no chance to get to know each other. Two individuals living together without any conflicts is not we called couples but strangers. This kind of relationship is about finding a shelter to pretend to get away from loneliness. Conflicts sometimes are good and necessary, they lead to true understanding.

There are two kinds of character: maternal character and fatherly character. They are separated because love from mothers is unconditional and love from father is conditional. The principle of love from father is that you have to take responsibility for your actions: I love you because you act like me, you accomplished my wishes. So maternal character is that no matter what had happened, I love you and wish you can be happy while fatherly character stands for: you can not run away from consequence of your actions. If you want my love, you have to correct your mistake.

A mutual person internalizes both maternal character and fatherly character. If he failed to internalize fatherly character, he is very likely to have the wrong judgement and become a goody-goody. If he failed to internalize maternal character, he is very likely to be a mean guy. After internalized those two kinds of character, he then has the ability to properly show the energetic side of his inner world. He cares, respects and understands others. That’s love.

Meeting another Phaedrus

It doesn’t take long to read this book. I guess it follows the ice burg theory from Hemingway. So there’s a lot you can wander around.

I read this book with James Bay, James Blunt, Labrinth, and Passenger. It seems that Siri does read my mind and this book.

To keep the ice burg theory, I would like to quote one sentence as the note: There isn’t time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.