Introduction to the Fangtang-Qingquan Dialogue

China has become a major scientific and technological power, yet it still faces the deeper challenge of insufficient breakthrough innovation. The Needham Question and Qian Xuesen’s Question have continued to engage scientists, educators, philosophers, and historians of science with a sense of mission. Scholars and practitioners, including Academicians Shing-Tung Yau and Zheng Quan Shui, have undertaken a range of innovative experiments in education and accumulated valuable experience. At the same time, the question of how Chinese intellectual traditions might accommodate science continues to draw inquiry from philosophers and historians of science with historical and civilisational awareness.

We believe that this is the moment to take stock of the practical and theoretical responses that have emerged around these two questions, and to ask deeper questions in light of new experience and new circumstances. Philosophical reflection on scientific spirit and scientific method has continued throughout modern Chinese intellectual history since the New Culture Movement. Yet one striking gap remains: there has been little systematic, meta-level inquiry into how scientific thinking and scientific spirit are formed, grounded in China’s own scientific and science-education practice.

For this reason, we seek to draw philosophically consequential questions from the rich contemporary practice of science and education in China, and to develop interdisciplinary reflection and theory on the formation of scientific thinking and scientific spirit itself. To that end, we established the Fangtang-Qingquan Dialogue Series, a platform for sustained dialogue and shared practice among practitioners and theorists, scientists, science educators, and philosophers. Its first gathering was held with Shenzhen Zero One Academy in October 2025.

More than twenty leading participants from philosophy, science, education, and industry took part in the first closed dialogue. Their discussion ranged across conceptual logic, the beauty of logic, non-consensus choices, and generative education. Three shared concerns emerged: the capacity for conceptual thought, including conceptual analysis and sustained chains of reasoning; the capacity to pose and pursue questions; and the resolve to imagine boldly and act. Fangtang Institute plans to bring resources and sustained attention to research on these questions.