Department of Physics and Astronomy, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192-0106, USA

报告人简介：
Lui LAM (林磊), humanist and physicist, is professor at San Jose State University, California, and guest professor at IoP, CAS. He got his MS from University of British Columbia; PhD, Columbia University. He did his PhD thesis at Bell Labs with Philip Platzman, student of Nobelist Richard Feynman. In 1978-1983, he worked at IoP, Beijing where he published the first PRL paper ever from mainland China (1979); invented Bowlics (1982), one of three existing types of liquid crystals in the world; and pioneered the study of propagating solitons in liquid crystals (PRL, 1982). He further invented Active Walks (1992), a new paradigm in complex systems; and two new disciplines: Histophysics (2002) and Scimat (Science Matters, 2007/2008). He has published 15 books and over 180 scientific papers. He is the founder of the International Liquid Crystal Society (1990). His current research is in scimat, complex systems, and philosophy. Website: www.sjsu.edu/people/lui.lam/scimat. Email: lui2002lam@yahoo.com.

报告摘要:
There is a lot of confusion and misconception concerning Science. The nature and contents of science is an unsettled problem. For example, Thales of 2,600 years ago is recognized as the “Father of Science” but the word science was introduced only in the 14th century, and so it is obvious wrong if science is understood as modern science only, which started with Galileo about 400 years ago. If science is mainly about nonliving systems, then social science cannot be part of science. And if social science is part of science, then why the humanities, which are also about humans, are not part of science? All these confusions and dilemmas concerning science could be traced to the historical evolution of the word and concept of Science and the many misconceptions perpetuated by various philosophers and historians of science, due to the lack of an agreed-upon definition of science. This talk aims to clear up all these confusions by retracing the historical development of science—the word, concept and practice. A simple definition of science according to Scimat, the new discipline that treats all human-dependent matters as part of science, is provided. The definition’s important implications concerning the two-culture problem, science and religion, antiscience and pseudoscience as well as the philosophy, history, sociology and communication of science are presented.

联 系 人：谷林（82649550）