A Public Lecture jointly presented by the Office of the Deputy President (Research and Technology), the Department of Chinese Studies & the Department of Philosophy

AS7 Seminar Room B, 25 Nov 2011, 5-6:30pm

About the talk: The richness of the Chinese heritage of proverbial wisdom has struck many observers. Bertrand Russell has gone so far as to say that there is nothing more civilised than a civlised Chinese. In this lecture Christoph Harbsmeier will show in some detail how a subtle knowledge of classical Chinese is essential for any understanding not only of the subtleties of that proverbial wisdom that so many Chinese people continue to live by, but also of the intricate internal structure of modern Chinese words which are in fact mostly construed by the principles of classical Chinese syntax.

About the speaker: Christoph Harbsmeier is Professor of Chinese in the University of Oslo. He is also holds honorary professorships at Peking University, Fudan University (Shanghai), Wuhan University, Zhejiang University, Shanghai Normal University, and East China Normal University. His main work is in the history of science (logic), conceptual history, historical linguistics, and modern Chinese cartoons. He is the editor of the international project Thesaurus Linguae Sericae.