I'm sure that, throughout the 100,000-odd years of our species' existence and even before, our ancestors looked up at the night sky and wondered what stars are -- wondering, therefore, how to explain what they saw in terms of things unseen.
我十分确信在人类诞生以来 的大概10万多年 甚至比这更长的时间里- 我们的祖先仰望夜空 想知道那些星星究竟是什么 其实也就是想要 把他们看见的东西 用不可见的东西来解释
OK, so, most people only wondered that occasionally, like today, in breaks from whatever normally preoccupied them. But what normally preoccupied them also involved yearning to know. They wished they knew how to prevent their food supply from sometimes failing, and how they could rest when they were tired without risking starvation, be warmer, cooler, safer, in less pain. I bet those prehistoric cave artists would have loved to know how to draw better.
这样的话,大多数人看似 只是偶尔如此想想,比如说像在今天 从日常活动中 抽空解脱出来的时候才行 但实际上人们的日常活动 同样富含着对知识的渴望 人们希望知道 如何避免食物来源 不时的中断 如何在疲惫时得以充分休整 又不会因为停止劳作而断粮 如何创造更温暖,或更凉爽;更安全的环境 如何减轻痛苦 我敢打赌远古时代的岩洞画家们 都想知道 怎样画得更漂亮些
(Laughter)
我们的祖先在生活的方方面面
In every aspect of their lives, they wished for progress, just as we do. But they failed, almost completely, to make any. They didn't know how to. Discoveries like fire happened so rarely that, from an individual's point of view, the world never improved. Nothing new was learned.
都像我们一样地期望进步 但是他们得到的发展微乎其微 他们还不懂其中的秘诀 像人工生火这样的重大发明 凤毛麟角,于是乎从一个个人的角度看来 世界几乎毫无改善 知识停滞不前
The first clue to the origin of starlight happened as recently as 1899: radioactivity. And within 40 years, physicists discovered the whole explanation, expressed, as usual, in elegant symbols. But never mind the symbols. Think how many discoveries they represent. Nuclei and nuclear reactions, of course. But isotopes, particles of electricity, antimatter, neutrinos, the conversion of mass to energy -- that's E=mc2 -- gamma rays, transmutation. That ancient dream that had always eluded the alchemists was achieved through these same theories that explained starlight and other ancient mysteries and new, unexpected phenomena.
星星闪光的奥秘初步被揭开 是在不久前的1899年- 放射现象 而这之后的仅仅40年间 物理学家们发现了一个完整的解释 然后像往常一样用简明优雅的数学符号把它表示了出来 可别把这些符号不当回事 想想它们表达了 多少人类的发现 这些么就是原子核 核反应 再看看这些:同位素 带电粒子 反物质 中微子 物质到能量的转化 E=mc^2 伽马射线 嬗变(一种元素通过核反应转化为另一种元素) 那个古代炼金术师们为之枉费心机的梦想 现在由这些 解释了星光的实质 以及其他古代的谜团 和意料之外新现象的理论变为现实
That all that, discovered in 40 years, had not been in the previous hundred thousand was not for lack of thinking about stars and all those other urgent problems they had. They even arrived at answers, such as myths, that dominated their lives, yet bore almost no resemblance to the truth. The tragedy of that protracted stagnation isn't sufficiently recognized, I think. These were people with brains of essentially the same design that eventually did discover all those things. But that ability to make progress remained almost unused, until the event that revolutionized the human condition and changed the universe.
这40年中的所有发现 是数千年来所未有的 而这可不能归结为古人思维懒惰 对星星啊,还有那些迫切的问题不闻不问 他们不光思考了,还给出了答案 比如说神话 可虽说神话统治了古人的生活,包罗万象 却与真正的现实 几乎搭不上边 这种长期认知停滞所造成的悲哀 我觉得,并没有被古人足够重视 古人们的大脑 和我们的这些发现了种种新知识的大脑 实质上没有分别 但是其中那个用来产生进步的潜力 始终几乎没有被利用 直到有一件事 彻底更新了人们的生活状态 改天换地
Or so we should hope, because that event was the scientific revolution, ever since which our knowledge of the physical world and of how to adapt it to our wishes has been growing relentlessly. Now, what had changed? What were people now doing for the first time that made that difference between stagnation and rapid, open-ended discovery? How to make that difference is surely the most important universal truth that it's possible to know. And worryingly, there's no consensus about what it is. So, I'll tell you.
至少我们希望情况是这样的 这个大事件就是 科学革命 从那以后我们对于 物质世界的认知 和对如何根据我们的意愿改造它的了解 就一个劲地增长着 现在想想,到底是发生了什么变化呢? 当时人们 究竟初次尝试了什么 就打破了僵局 开始了快速而无休无止的发现之旅? 这一僵局的打破 肯定是一个极为重要的广泛真理 而我们是可以了解它的 让人担忧的是,对它究竟是怎么做到的人们众说纷纭 我这就来说说我的解释
(Laughter)
但先得稍稍回顾一下
But I'll have to backtrack a little first.
Before the scientific revolution, they believed that everything important, knowable, was already known, enshrined in ancient writings, institutions and in some genuinely useful rules of thumb -- which were, however, entrenched as dogmas, along with many falsehoods. So, they believed that knowledge came from authorities that actually knew very little. And therefore, progress depended on learning how to reject the authority of learned men, the priests, traditions and rulers, which is why the scientific revolution had to have a wider context: the Enlightenment, a revolution in how people sought knowledge,
在科学革命发生之前 古人相信一切重要而可知的事物 都已经被了解了 这些知识被高高供起在古籍里,经院中 还在日常生活的惯用窍门中被深信不疑 而这些窍门,和许多谬论一同 都成了根深蒂固的教条 那时人们相信知识来自权威 这些权威其实知道的不多 所以知识的进步 取决于学会如何摈弃 学究 教士,传统习惯和统治者们的权威 这就是为什么科学革命 必须有一个大背景
trying not to rely on authority. "Take no one's word for it." But that can't be what made the difference. Authorities had been rejected before, many times. And that rarely, if ever, caused anything like the scientific revolution. At the time, what they thought distinguished science was a radical idea about things unseen, known as empiricism -- all knowledge derives from the senses. Well, we've seen that that can't be true. It did help by promoting observation and experiment. But, from the outset, it was obvious that there was something horribly wrong with it.
那就是启蒙运动 对于求知方法的一场革命 试着摆脱对权威的依赖 “切勿轻信人言” 可这还不够 历史上摈弃权威的例子比比皆是 而这些事件的结果却很难,或根本不能 与科学革命同日而语 在那个时候,启蒙学者们认为 科学的独特标志 是一个关于不可见事物的激进看法 叫做经验主义 认为所有的知识来自我们的感官 呵呵,我们知道这样说有些偏颇 但经验主义成就了 科学观察与实验 然而乍一看之下,似乎很明显地 经验主义存在着可怕的漏洞
Knowledge comes from the senses? In what language? Certainly not the language of mathematics, in which, Galileo rightly said, the book of nature is written. Look at the world. You don't see equations carved on the mountainsides. If you did, it would be because people had carved them. By the way, why don't we do that?
“知识源自感官” 那么感官得来的知识由什么语言承载呢?肯定不会是数学语言吧 可伽利略却有此精辟一语 “自然之书乃数学著成” 看看这世界,你看不到山崖上刻着方程式 刻着方程式 就算碰巧看到了,那也是因为人们 刻上去的
(Laughter)
顺便问一句,我们干嘛不这样做呢?
What's wrong with us?
这不是有毛病嘛?
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Empiricism is inadequate because, well, scientific theories explain the seen in terms of the unseen. And the unseen, you have to admit, doesn't come to us through the senses. We don't see those nuclear reactions in stars. We don't see the origin of species. We don't see the curvature of space-time, and other universes. But we know about those things. How?
经验主义本身是不足的 这大概是因为 科学理论用不可见的来解释可见的 而那些不可见的--你得承认-- 可不是从感官得来的 我们可看不见恒星中的核反应 看不见物种起源 还有时空弯曲 其他的平行宇宙 但我们知道这些 我们是怎么做到的呢?
Well, the classic empiricist answer is induction -- the unseen resembles the seen. But it doesn't. You know what the clinching evidence was that space-time is curved? It was a photograph -- not of space-time, but of an eclipse, with a dot there rather than there. And the evidence for evolution? Some rocks and some finches. And parallel universes? Again: dots there rather than there, on a screen. What we see in all these cases bears no resemblance to the reality that we conclude is responsible -- only a long chain of theoretical reasoning and interpretation connects them.
经验主义的经典的答案是“归纳法” 认为不可见的与可见的相似 其实不然 你能找到一个决定性的反例 比如:时空是弯曲的这一事实 我们知道它的证据是一张照片,不是关于时空本身 而是拍摄的一次日食,上面有个小点在这儿而不在那儿 至于物种起源的证据呢? 一些岩石和雀类化石 平行宇宙的证据何在啊?又是屏幕上这儿有些点 而不是那儿 这些事例中我们眼睛观察到的 和事实没有什么相似之处 --所以前面的“相似说”不成立-- 只有一条长长的理论推导与解读的链条 把它们(观察现象与真理)连在一起
"Ah!" say creationists. "So you admit it's all interpretation. No one's ever seen evolution. We see rocks. You have your interpretation. We have ours. Yours comes from guesswork; ours, from the Bible." But what creationist and empiricists both ignore is that, in that sense, no one's ever seen a Bible either, that the eye only detects light, which we don't perceive. Brains only detect nerve impulses. And they don't perceive even those as what they really are, namely electrical crackles. So we perceive nothing as what it really is.
于是那些神创论者就说:“啊哈!” “所以你承认这些科学理论都只是某种解读 没人知道答案是什么 我们都看得见石头 你有你的理解,我们有我们的 你的理解来自理论猜测 我们的来自圣经。” 可是有一点神创论者和经验主义者同时忽略了 那就是,从先前的那种意义上看 没有人真正切实“观察”到一本圣经 眼睛只是探测到阳光,而我们无法有意识地感知它 大脑只侦测神经脉冲 但却无法感知它们究竟本身是什么 而它们其实是带电粒子“小爆破” 如此说来我们无法感知任何事物的现实究竟是什么
Our connection to reality is never just perception. It's always, as Karl Popper put it, theory-laden. Scientific knowledge isn't derived from anything. Like all knowledge, it's conjectural, guesswork, tested by observation, not derived from it. So, were testable conjectures the great innovation that opened the intellectual prison gates? No, contrary to what's usually said, testability is common in myths and all sorts of other irrational modes of thinking. Any crank claiming the sun will go out next Tuesday has got a testable prediction.
而我们与现实的联系 从不会只是感知 而是如卡尔·波普尔所说 充满着理论假设 科学知识不是从什么直接推导而来 而是像所有其他知识一样,是假设性的,一种推测 由观察来检验 却不从观察直接推导而来 这么说来,是不是可以检验的假设 就是把人类放出认知牢笼的伟大发明呢? 不是。和人们常常所说的不同 可检验性其实不稀奇,就是 在神话和其他非理性的思维方式中都广泛存在 随便哪个家伙想说下周二太阳将要熄灭 他的假设都是可检验的
Consider the ancient Greek myth explaining seasons. Hades, god of the underworld, kidnaps Persephone, the goddess of spring, and negotiates a forced marriage contract, requiring her to return regularly, and lets her go. And each year, she is magically compelled to return. And her mother, Demeter, goddess of the earth, is sad, and makes it cold and barren. That myth is testable. If winter is caused by Demeter's sadness, then it must happen everywhere on earth simultaneously. So if the ancient Greeks had only known that Australia is at its warmest when Demeter is at her saddest ...
让我们想想一个古希腊的神话 是用来解释季节更替的 哈德斯,冥界之神 绑架了春之神普西芬妮 又强迫她签下一纸婚书 只允许她每年定时回到地面,然后就放她走了 于是每一年 她都被某种魔力带回冥界 她的妈妈迪米特 大地女神 十分伤心,土地于是冻结荒芜 这则神话是可以检验的 如果迪米特的哀伤导致了冬天 那么它必须在地球上的所有地方同时发生 所以其实只要古希腊人知道澳大利亚 在迪米特最伤心时正经历着最热的天气
(Laughter)
它们肯定知道自己的理论错了
they'd have known that their theory is false.
(Laughter)
那么这则神话究竟错在哪儿呢?
So, what was wrong with that myth and with all prescientific thinking? And what, then, made that momentous difference? I think there's one thing you have to care about and that implies testability, the scientific method, the Enlightenment and everything. And here's the crucial thing: there is such a thing as a defect in a story. I don't just mean a logical defect. I mean a bad explanation. What does that mean?
科学到来前人们的思维有什么问题呢? 又是什么改变了这一切呢? 我觉得有一样东西我们得关注 它同时意味着 可验证性,科学方法 启蒙运动,还有前面说的一切 我现在要说的就是那个万分重要的东西: 一个故事里可能出现缺陷 我不是指逻辑缺陷,我是说坏解释的存在的 什么意思呢?所谓解释
Well, an explanation is an assertion about what's there, unseen, that accounts for what's seen; because the explanatory role of Persephone's marriage contract could be played equally well by infinitely many other ad hoc entities. Why a marriage contract and not any other reason for regular annual action? Here's one: Persephone wasn't released. She escaped, and returns every spring to take revenge on Hades, with her spring powers. She cools his domain with spring air, venting heat up to the surface, creating summer. That accounts for the same phenomena as the original myth. It's equally testable. Yet what it asserts about reality is, in many ways, the opposite. And that's possible because the details of the original myth are unrelated to seasons, except via the myth itself.
是一个关于不可见物 如何描述可见物的断言 因为普西芬妮婚书 对季节的解释作用 可以完好无损地 由无限多个其他 临时想出的事物来完成 为什么是一纸婚书而不是其他什么原因 使普西芬妮定期往返呢? 我且来举个例子:普西芬妮并没有被放走 她逃走了,每年春天又回冥府 找哈德斯报仇 用她春天的神力 她让春风给冥界降温 热气排到地上,成了夏天 这个说法和先前的神话能解释同样的现象 而且同样可以检验 可是它对现实的描述,断言 却和刚才的在许多方面正好相反 这看似矛盾的情况之所以存在 是因为原先那个神话的诸多细节™ 除了在这则神话的背景中外
This easy variability is the sign of a bad explanation, because, without a functional reason to prefer one of countless variants, advocating one of them in preference to the others is irrational. So, for the essence of what makes the difference to enable progress, seek good explanations, the ones that can't be easily varied, while still explaining the phenomena.
与季节都没有什么联系 这种很随意的可变性 正是坏解释的标志 因为当没有什么关于细节的解释作用的理由能使我们选择 千万种可能解释中的一个 唯独支持这一个而抛弃其他 便是不理性的 所以,产生变革 推进发展的本质原因 就是追求好解释 那些为了保证解释现象的能力 而不能被轻易改变的解释
Now our current explanation of seasons is that the Earth's axis is tilted like that, so each hemisphere tilts towards the sun for half the year, and away for the other half.
我们现在对季节的解释 是说地球的转轴像这样倾斜着 所以每个半球在半年中倾向太阳 另外半年远离阳光
[Not to scale!]
最好放出来看看
Better put that up.
(笑声)
(Laughter)
这就是个好解释:很难改动
That's a good explanation: hard to vary, because every detail plays a functional role. For instance, we know, independently of seasons, that surfaces tilted away from radiant heat are heated less, and that a spinning sphere, in space, points in a constant direction. And the tilt also explains the sun's angle of elevation at different times of year, and predicts that the seasons will be out of phase in the two hemispheres. If they'd been observed in phase, the theory would have been refuted. But now, the fact that it's also a good explanation, hard to vary, makes the crucial difference.
因为每一个细节都对有至关重要的解释作用 比如说,我们不用明白季节就知道 背向发光物体的表面 受热的程度较小 空间中自转的这个球体 指向同一个方向 地轴的倾斜也解释了 太阳在一年中不同的仰角 并预测两半球的季节情况 正好相反 如果观察显示它们相同 理论就被驳倒了 可是它作为一个好解释 一个难以更改的解释,这一点才是最重要的区别
If the ancient Greeks had found out about seasons in Australia, they could have easily varied their myth to predict that. For instance, when Demeter's upset, she banishes heat from her vicinity into the other hemisphere, where it makes summer. So, being proved wrong by observation and changing their theory accordingly still wouldn't have got the ancient Greeks one jot closer to understanding seasons, because their explanation was bad -- easy to vary. And it's only when an explanation is good that it even matters whether it's testable. If the axis-tilt theory had been refuted, its defenders would have had nowhere to go. No easily implemented change could make that tilt cause the same seasons in both hemispheres.
如果古希腊人得知了 澳洲季节的更替 他们很容易就能修改这个神话 然后预测说, 比如,当迪米特为女儿忧愁时 她把热气从四周驱赶出去 赶到另一个半球,形成夏天 这样看来,尽管被观察所否决 并被迫据此修改他们的理论 古希腊人并没有 离对季节的理解进了那怕一步 因为改过的解释仍旧是坏解释:它太易变了 而只有当好解释存在 它是否可以验证才值得考虑 倘若“地轴倾斜”理论被观察否定了 它的支持者们就无路可退了 没有什么信手拈来的变动 能让地轴的倾斜
The search for hard-to-vary explanations is the origin of all progress.
在两个半球产生相同的季节
It's the basic regulating principle of the Enlightenment. So, in science, two false approaches blight progress. One's well-known: untestable theories. But the more important one is explanationless theories. Whenever you're told that some existing statistical trend will continue but you aren't given a hard-to-vary account of what causes that trend, you're being told a wizard did it.
对难以修改的解释的探寻 是所有进步之源 这是启蒙运动的 基本纲领 在科学领域,有两种错误阻碍进步 第一种众所周知:无法验证的空头理论 但更重要的却是不带解释的理论 每当别人告诉你某个统计数据趋势将会延续下去 而又不给你一个难以改动的好解释 告诉你这趋势为什么存在
When you are told that carrots have human rights because they share half our genes, but not how gene percentages confer rights -- wizard. When someone announces that the nature-nurture debate has been settled because there's evidence that a given percentage of our political opinions are genetically inherited, but they don't explain how genes cause opinions, they've settled nothing. They're saying that our opinions are caused by wizards, and presumably, so are their own.
他几乎就是在说某个大仙做了个法就成这样了 当别人说胡萝卜也是有人权的 因为我们有一半基因胡萝卜也有 却不说明相同基因的比重怎么引出人权--大仙又来了 当有人宣布认知论中经久不息的“先天-后天”大辩论 已经解决了,因为有证据说明 某个百分比的 政治主张是先天遗传的 但他们却不解释基因怎么导致某些意见 它们就什么也没解决。他们只是说 我们的主张是变来的 估计他们自己的也是变来的
(Laughter)
真理体现在
That the truth consists of hard-to-vary assertions about reality is the most important fact about the physical world. It's a fact that is itself unseen, yet impossible to vary.
对现实提出的无法轻易改动的论断 这是物质世界中 最重要的一个事实 这一事实本身其实也是看不见的 但却不可能被东改西改。谢谢大家。
Thank you.
(掌声)
(Applause)