Mr. HU Haiyan, a professor from the Beijing Institute of Technology and Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, as well as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the World Academy of Scientists for the Advancement of Science in a Developing Country (TWAS), was invited to give his brilliant lecture of “Aesthetics in Technological Science” at Tongji University on the morning of November 25th. President CHEN Jie of Tongji University attended the lecture hosted by Vice President GU Xianglin. Young teachers, postgraduates and senior undergraduates of Tongji University attended the lecture in a packed hall on the first floor of the Yifu Building.
Mr. HU elaborated the connotations of science, technology, and art, the relationship between science and art, ways to appreciate technological science and its meaning, as well as the cultivation of aesthetic ability. Science and art share similarities and unities, HU pointed out, and that aesthetics is the science of studying people's aesthetic standards while technological science studies the scientific issues involved in technical innovation and development. Through several cases in the fields of mechanics, machinery, control, and information, HU presented that technological science has the typical characteristics of scientific aesthetics such as unity, conciseness, regularity, symmetry, and singularity. The introduction of aesthetics to technological science will help researchers understand the theoretical system of specific disciplines in this field with a unified and concise approach to improve their sense of innovation and the quality of academic research. Combined withhis experience as an educator for many years,HU pointed out the cultivation of aesthetic ability must have a heuristic way and practical phases, which can give students a sense of pleasure. As for the future of technological science, HU said the understanding of its beauty is a process of continuous improvementwhile the rigidity would constrain people’s innovative thinking and only scholars with excellent technological science and humanistic qualities can savor the intrinsic beauty of technological science from the intricate data, images and phenomena, thus making groundbreaking achievements. Finally, HU also looked into the future of breakthroughs in and outside the technological science field.
In the heated interactive session, President CHEN Jie along with young scholars and postgraduates from schools of life sciences and medicine, of humanities and of physics asked lots of questions from the relationships among science, technology, philosophy and art, ways to improve the academic atmosphere to innovation in scientific research. HU demonstrated his profound knowledge and abundant experience in scientific research and his insight in education in his responses. His wisdom and humor, scientific spirit and humanistic aspirations impressed the audience. In the end, HU encouraged the students of Tongji to do scientific research towards exploring the mysteries of nature and life.
