The Taiwan Academia Sinica (Academia Sinica) announced the list of new academicians on the 4th, and Tsinghua University Professor Yang Rubing is one of them. He is an important scholar of Neo-Confucianism. When it comes to the rise of AI, Yang Rubing revealed that he does not use a computer or a cellphone, believing that thinking with the human brain is more profound.
Yang Rubing, who is a new academician of the Academia Sinica this year, is a joint-appointed professor of the Philosophy Institute and General Education Center at Tsinghua University. He specializes in Song and Ming Confucianism, Daoist philosophy, body theory, and mythological thinking. He has repeatedly broken through old paradigms in the field of Chinese philosophy, opened up new issues, led new trends of thought, and is also an important collector of cultural relics.
Yang Rubing disclosed that he is one of the very few scholars in Taiwan who does not use a computer and does not have a cellphone. While it may be true that his speed in gathering information is slower than others, he believes that using the human brain for memory and thinking results in a deeper understanding. He thinks that tools that are too convenient lack a certain “style”.
“In the age of information explosion, the key is not how much you absorb, but how much you reject. Although this means spending more time understanding or memorizing each article or issue, he believes that this way is better,” said Yang Rubing.
Yang Rubing stated that creation is a very mysterious process. For a humanities scholar, the creations will have a significant connection to the individual’s personality, life, and style. “Humanistic values are higher,” and these are not something AI can replace. There is no “spiritual content or style.”
Yang Rubing is not only a scholar but also an important collector of cultural relics. He has collected a considerable number of cultural relics through his own efforts, all of which are closely related to Taiwan’s development. The vast majority of them have also been donated to the Tsinghua University Museum. Just in terms of calligraphy and paintings collected from 1949, there are over 2,000 pieces, and there are about five to six hundred cultural relics related to the Governor-General of Taiwan and celebrities from the Japanese colonial period. Additionally, there are over 1,000 cultural relics from the Edo period in Japan.
He mentioned that collecting cultural relics is not just out of interest but also because he believes that observing cultural relics from different perspectives can reveal close internal connections among East Asian countries.
(From the Central News Agency)