Previous
The Princeps of Trisolaris
Once a respected physics professor at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, by the dawn of the Cultural Revolution, Ye Zhetai has become a pariah for his supposedly anti-communist beliefs. Though his wife, Shao Lin, and younger daughter Ye Wenxue turn against him, his elder daughter Ye Wenjie remains loyal. Ye Zhetai is particularly notable for his conviction that “truth emerges from experiences.” He therefore embodies the novel’s thematic suggestion that theory is meaningless unless it is informed by life.
Ye Zhetai Quotes in The Three-Body Problem
The The Three-Body Problem quotes below are all either spoken by Ye Zhetai or refer to Ye Zhetai . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1 Quotes
Should philosophy guide experiments or should experiments guide philosophy? […] Truth emerges from experience.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Three-Body Problem LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
Ye Zhetai Character Timeline in The Three-Body Problem
The timeline below shows where the character Ye Zhetai appears in The Three-Body Problem. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1. The Madness Years
...killed themselves or abandoned their beliefs when faced with this mass humiliation and torture. But Ye Zhetai , a brilliant physics professor, refuses to bend to the demands of the Cultural Revolution....
(full context)
A group of two college-aged men and four high school girls accosts Ye Zhetai with accusations. When he remains silent, the girls bring Ye Zhetai’s wife, Shao Lin, onstage....
(full context)
The students at Tsinghua begin to beat Ye Zhetai with a copper belt. As they do so, Shao and her husband debate whether philosophy...
(full context)
The girls double down on their interrogation of Ye Zhetai . As they fight over the Big Bang Theory, Ye Zhetai admits that he believes...
(full context)
Chapter 2. Silent Spring
The document is all about Ye’s father, Ye Zhetai —and worse still, the source for the report is Ye Wenxue, Ye’s younger sister. Wenxue...
(full context)
Chapter 3. Red Coast I
...there. Ye is shocked to see Yang—he was one of her father’s students. However, while Ye Zhetai was always eager to focus on theory, Yang preferred to focus on the real world...
(full context)
Chapter 9. The Universe Flickers
...drink. While they talk, Sha summarizes Ye Wenjie’s life—he recaps the loss of her father Ye Zhetai , her stint in the Greater Khingan Mountains, and then a strange time of her...
(full context)
