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.
我很確定,在人類這種物種存活的 數十萬年間, 甚至在更早以前, 我們的祖先仰望夜空, 想知道星星到底是什麼。 因此,也很想知道 如何以那些看不到的東西 解釋他們所看到的一切
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.
好吧,當時的大多數的人 就像現在一樣,只是偶而會想知道 在閒暇時,那些 使他們著迷的東西 不過那些他們專注的東西 也跟求知的慾望有關。 他們盼望知道 如何讓食物供給 不致偶有匱乏, 還有他們疲累時該如何歇息 且不會挨餓, 住得更加溫暖,更加涼爽,更加安全 以及讓生活少點的痛苦。 我敢說那些史前洞穴的畫家 一定很想知道 怎麼樣畫得更好。
(Laughter)
在生活上的各個方面,
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.
他們渴望進步,就跟我們一樣。 不過,他們幾乎是一敗塗地,沒有獲得任何進展。 他們不知道如何進步。 像火這類的發現 極少發生,所以從人的觀點而言, 整個世界沒有進步過。 也沒有學過什麼新事物。
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.
最早研究星光的起源 發生在約1899年:放射性。 在四十年之內, 物理學家發現了全部的解釋, 如同往常,這些解釋以優雅的符號表現出來。 不過別管這些符號。 想想看這些符號 代表多少發現。 當然,有原子核反應。 同位素、正負電粒子 反物質 微中子, 質能變換,就是E=mc平方 伽馬射線 核嬗變 (一種元素通過核反應轉化成另外一種元素) 這些連古代鍊金術士也無能為力的夢想 被以上這些理論實現了 這些方程式解釋了星光 和其他的古代神話 和那些新的,預料不到的現象
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.
所有的這些都在這40年中發現 但卻都沒有在過去的千百年中發現 這不是因為他們缺乏思考 關於星星,或者那些很緊迫的問題 他們其實是有一套答案的 例如說用神話來解釋現象 這些主宰了他們的生活 雖然這些對於事實 幾乎沒任何關聯性 這種知識停滯所帶來的悲劇 我認為並沒有被充分的意識到 人類的大腦 本質上都是一樣的構造 這樣的構造發現了這些現象 但是那種進步的能力 並沒有充分地被發揮 直到有些事件 徹底地改變了人類的現況 和改變了整個宇宙
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.
或者我們希望透過它大幅改變人類的生活 因為這個事件是 科學革命 從我們有了 對現實世界的知識以來 怎麼樣利用科學技術來實現我們的願望 這樣的發展就從來沒有停止過 現在,什麽改變了? 人們現在要做什麽 才能區別開 對於知識追求的停滯 和不斷地、開放地探索? 如何區分兩者 無疑地是重要且普遍的真理 這是非常好了解的 麻煩的是,這沒有一個公認的方法 所以,我將告訴你
(Laughter)
但是在這之前我要回溯一點點時間
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,
到科學革命之前 人們認為任何事情都是重要的,可以認知的 而且都已經被知道了 這些蘊藏在古代著作中、習俗中 和一些十分有效的經驗法則中 那些被認為是不可憾動的教義與信條 事實上伴隨著很多漏洞 所以他們認為知識來源於權威 但是其實權威知道的很少 所以知識進步為 學習著去抵抗權威 包括學識淵博的人 神父,習俗傳統和統治者 這就是爲什麽科學革命 擁有更寬廣的背景:
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.
我們稱之的啓蒙運動,就是一場 人們怎樣去獲取知識的革命 他們試圖不依靠權威 "不要把一個人的話當做理所當然的" 但是這些都不能徹底的改變 以前權威也被挑戰過很多次 但是很少 可以引起像科學革命這樣的事件 當時,他們認為 現代科學這種 對無法觀察到的事物進行解釋是頗為激進的想法 這些方法被稱為經驗主義 所有的知道都來自感覺、感官 好了,我們現在知道那不是正確的 但這確實對理解有所幫助 透過觀察和實驗 但是,一開始這就很明顯 這種想法存在著錯誤
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?
知識來自於感覺 透過什麽語言?肯定不是數學語言 伽利略提出正確的聲明 說大自然的著作早已寫成 看看這個世界。你沒有看見任何數學方程式 刻在任何一座山上 如果你看見了,那只是因為人類 刻上去的
(Laughter)
順便說一句,爲什麽我們不那樣做呢?
What's wrong with us?
我們怎麼了?
(Laughter)
(笑)
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?
經驗主義是不夠的 因為 科學理論是通過觀察不到的事物解釋觀察到的現象 那些看不到的,你必須承認 不是通過我們的感覺就能理解的 我們看不到星星上的核子反應 我們看不到物種的起源 我們看不到時空彎曲 和其他宇宙 但是我們知道這些 透過什麽呢?
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.
呃,傳統的經驗主義者的回答是"透過歸納法" 看不到的跟能看到的必定有相似之處 但是事實並不是如此 你知道確鑿的證據表明 如果時空的彎曲 的證據是一張照片,而不是時空本身 有可能是一次日蝕,上面有小點而不是其他地方 再比如說演化的證據 是一些石頭和一些雀科鳥類 平行的宇宙?同樣地:這有小點, 而不是別的地方,顯示在營幕上 我們看到的,在這些例子中 其實跟現實沒什麼太大的關係 我們的結論是非常合理的 只有進行一連串理論上的推理和解釋 才能把事實和現象做連結
"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.
哈!創造論者(相信萬物由上帝一次造成的人)說 你承認這都是解釋了 沒有人看見過演化 我們只看過石頭標本 你有你的解釋。我們有我們的 你的從推測中來 而我們的是從聖經來 但是創造論者和經驗主義者都忽略了 在某種意義上 沒有人看過聖經是如何被創造的 眼睛只感覺光亮,而我們並沒有察覺 大腦只接受神經脈衝 他們並沒有意識到組成脈衝的 其實是電子訊號 所以我們常常不了解現實本身為何物
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.
感官知覺 絕對不是我們用來與現實產生連繫的唯一方法 如同卡爾‧波普爾所說的, 科學理論和人類所掌握到的一切知識,都只不過是推測和假想 科學知識無從根據 就像其他知識一樣。是一種推斷,猜測, 經過觀察的考驗, 而不是發源於知識本身。 所以,這些禁得起測試的推論 是巨大的創新嗎?並且打開了智慧的大門嗎? 不。跟一般說法相反, 可測試性是共通的特點 在神話中和各種其他非理性的想法中。 任何一個怪人都可以聲稱太陽會在下個星期二升起 這就是一個可測試的預測。
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 ...
想想古希臘的神話 解釋季節。 黑帝斯,冥界之神, 綁架了普西芬妮,春天之神, 逼迫她簽下婚姻契約 並且要求她定時回去,然後才能放她走。 每年 她就神奇的歸去 她的母親,迪米特, 大地女神, 十分地傷心,所以便讓土地冰冷和荒蕪。 這個神話可以驗證。 如果冬天是因為迪米特的悲傷, 那一定會同時發生在世界上每一個角落 所以如果古希臘人知道澳洲 在迪米特最傷心的時候是最熱的時段,
(Laughter)
那他們就知道他們理論的錯誤了
they'd have known that their theory is false.
(Laughter)
那些神話
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?
和那些科學的想法有什麽問題嗎? 到底是什麽能引起這麼大的不同呢? 我認為你們只需要關心一件事情 那就是 是否有驗證性,用科學的方法 啓蒙運動,和之前說的一切 這都是非常重要的 常常在故事裡會有所缺陷 我不是指邏輯缺陷。我說的是錯誤的解釋。 這意味這什麽呢?好了,解釋
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.
是一種用看不見的事物 來解釋看的見的東西 所以有關普西芬妮的 婚約導致四季的變化 用其他各種理由 來解釋的話 應該也說的通 爲什麽是婚約而不是其他原因 導致每年四季規律的行為? 這裡有一個原因。普西芬妮並沒有被釋放。 她只是逃跑,然後每年春天回來 向哈德斯報仇 用她的春天的能量。 她用春風給她的領地降溫 讓熱氣到達表面,形成夏天。 這裡用原始的神話解釋了每年同樣的現象。 我們可以測試其正確與否 但是神話聲稱的內容 在真實世界中很多方面都是相反的。 那是因為 神話的細節 跟季節無關
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.
除了透過神話讓兩者產生聯繫以外 這種明顯與現實有差異的 就是一個不良的解釋 因為,沒有一個合理的推理過程 在這些版本中, 支持某一個理由,只因為它比其他的好 是不理性的。 因此,什麽舉動 能引起科學的大步進展 就是尋找一個好的解釋, 這個解釋不是很容易就改變的, 在解釋各種現象的同時。
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.
現在,我們當今對季節的解釋 是地軸像這樣偏轉, 兩個半球輪流在半年中傾斜面向太陽 並且輪流遠離太陽
[Not to scale!]
最好提一下。
Better put that up.
(笑聲)
(Laughter)
這就是一個好的解釋:與現實相符,很難改變,
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.
因為每一個細節都扮演了有效的角色。 比如,我們知道,季節分明, 地球表面遠離 輻射熱導致熱量減少, 地球在空間中旋轉, 向著不變的方向。 而傾斜也能解釋 爲什麽在同一年中太陽高度是不同的仰角 這也預測了 兩個半球的季節會是不同的。 這種理論在當時看來, 肯定是會被駁斥的。 但是現在,事實就是很好的解釋, 很難推翻,與之前的解釋完全不同。
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.
如果古希臘人發現 澳洲的季節與他們不同, 他們可以很簡單的修正他們的神話 去預測並解釋它。 比如,當迪米特傷心了, 她從附近釋放了熱 給另一個半球,這就形成了夏天。 即使,這些透過觀察都證明了是錯誤的, 修正了他們的理論, 這也並不能讓古希臘人 完全明白季節, 因為他們的解釋是不好的:太容易被現實情況推翻 只有那些可禁得起考驗的 才是好的解釋 如果地軸傾斜理論被推翻了, 那些異議者不可能在理論上站的住腳 因為不可能有任何的改變 就能讓傾斜的地軸
The search for hard-to-vary explanations is the origin of all progress.
導致同時在南北半球上有同樣的季節。
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.
追尋符合現實、難以憾動的解釋 就是所有進步的源頭。 這就是啟蒙運動 最基本的原則 所以,在科學領域,有兩個錯誤的方法將會抑制進步。 一個大家都知道的是:無法驗證的理論。 但是另一個更重要的是:沒法解釋的理論。 每當你聽到一些現存的統計趨勢不斷持續, 但是他們並不能給你任何難以撼動的說法 解釋什麽因素導致了這些趨勢,
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.
你就好像被人隨便虎爛 當你被告知胡蘿蔔也享有人權 因為他們與人共享一半的基因 但這不是依照基因百分比授予的權利—而是瞎扯 當有些人聲稱天性與教養的辯論 已經有了結果因為有證據表明 我們個人的政治觀點是 來源於基因本身, 但是他們沒有解釋基因怎麼影響觀點, 他們什麽都沒解決。他們說: 我們的觀點來源於神秘的力量, 其實是他們自己瞎編的。
(Laughter)
真理其實就是
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.
符合現實又難以撼動的解釋或理論 這是最重要的事實 對於這個現實世界。 事實就是雖然看不見, 但是很難改變。謝謝。
Thank you.
(鼓掌)
(Applause)