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Are We Living in a Computable World? Answers and Controversies from Chinese Scholars

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Berechenbarkeit der Welt?

Zusammenfassung

The ongoing controversies in China whether “society can or cannot be computed” are both in and about science and they are far from closure. It is found that this problem originates in China’s historical division between the natural and the social sciences, as well as in its long established culture regarding a “differential mode of association”, which is present even in academia. Scientific proposals in this context, such as that “the natural sciences and the social sciences must closely work together”, are politically improper and somehow incompatible with the overall ideology. A consensus on the computability of society problem is not to be expected under this fragmentation.

Dr. Chadwick (Chengwei) WANG is an assistant professor at Tsinghua University, Institute of Science, Technology and Society and a visiting scholar at Harvard University, Department of the History of Science. His principal research interests include discursive history of science, technology and innovation, as well as non-human actors in the institutional entrepreneurship. This research is funded by the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tsinghua University Beijing, Beijing, China

    Chadwick Wang

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Correspondence to Chadwick Wang .

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  1. TU München, München, Germany

    Wolfgang Pietsch

  2. TU München, München, Germany

    Jörg Wernecke

  3. Anstalt für Kommunale Datenverarbeitung, München, Bayern, Germany

    Maximilian Ott

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Wang, C. (2017). Are We Living in a Computable World? Answers and Controversies from Chinese Scholars. In: Pietsch, W., Wernecke, J., Ott, M. (eds) Berechenbarkeit der Welt?. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-12153-2_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-12153-2_13

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