The new third edition of the course book
In Dialogue with Nature: Textbook for General Education Foundation Programme is an anthology compiled for students of the course “In Dialogue with Nature (UGFN 1000)”, which, together with the course “In Dialogue with Humanity”, form the General Education (GE) Foundation Programme at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). The GE Foundation Programme was introduced to the undergraduate education of CUHK in 2012 when all universities in Hong Kong transited to a 4-year undergraduate curriculum. For more than a decade, the two seminar-based courses, which emphasise intensive reading, have exposed CUHK students to a world of classics and served as a platform for fostering intellectual exchanges and personal reflections that culminate in academic writings.
Since the inception of “In Dialogue with Nature”, its skeleton has been formed by a set of selected texts, which are excerpts from a collection of classics. From 2012 to 2023, the texts were extracted from the following titles, which were organised into three parts in the course:
Part I: Human Exploration of the Physical Universe
1. Plato. Republic.
2. Lindberg, David C. The Beginnings of Western Science.
3. Cohen, I. Bernard. The Birth of a New Physics.
4. Newton, Isaac. The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.
Part II: Human Exploration of the World of Life
5. Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species.
6. Watson, James D. with Andrew Berry. DNA: The Secret of Life.
7. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring.
Part III: Our Understanding of Human Understanding
8. Poincaré, Henri. Science and Method.
9. Kandel, Eric R. In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind.
10. Ronan, Colin A. The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: An Abridgement of Joseph Needham’s Original Text. Vol. 1.
11. Sivin, Nathan. “Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not Take Place in China – or Didn’t it?”
12. 沈括：《夢溪筆談》
13. Dunham, William. The Mathematical Universe: An Alphabetical Journey through the Great Proofs, Problems, and Personalities.
14. Euclid. Elements.
The GE Foundation Programme teachers conducted a comprehensive review of the syllabi of the two courses in 2022. After several rounds of deliberations, they agreed, for “In Dialogue with Nature”, (1) to reduce the number of texts to eight so that more time could be allocated to some texts for deeper reading and discussion, and (2) to a text related to sustainability education to the syllabus. Starting from 2023, the revised syllabus would include the following classics from which the texts in the present anthology are extracted., In response to the second point above, the text by Leopold is included.
Part I: Human Exploration of the Physical Universe
1. Plato. Republic.
2. Newton, Isaac. The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.
Part II: Human Exploration of the World of Life
3. Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species.
4. Watson, James D. with Andrew Berry. DNA: The Secret of Life.
Part III: Our Understanding of Human Understanding
5. Poincaré, Henri. Science and Method.
6. Kandel, Eric R. In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind.
7. Ronan, Colin A. The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: An Abridgement of Joseph Needham’s Original Text. Vol. 1.
8. Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There.
It is our wish that the revised reading list will provide new exposure to the world of classics for both teachers and students. We sincerely hope that our students will gain a fulfilling and rewarding learning experience through taking “In Dialogue with Nature”.
General Education Foundation Programme
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
July 2023