The great texts of the ancient world don't survive to us in their original form. They survive because medieval scribes copied them and copied them and copied them. And so it is with Archimedes, the great Greek mathematician.
我們看到的偉大古文字 並不是它們的原件。 由於中世紀抄寫員的不斷抄寫, 反覆抄寫,所以它們仍然存在。 阿基米德, 他是個偉大的希臘數學家,
Everything we know about Archimedes as a mathematician we know about because of just three books, and they're called A, B and C. And A was lost by an Italian humanist in 1564. And B was last heard of in the Pope's Library about a hundred miles north of Rome in Viterbo in 1311. Now Codex C was only discovered in 1906, and it landed on my desk in Baltimore on the 19th of January, 1999. And this is Codex C here.
這就是我們所知有關他的東西。 我們從三本書知道他是這樣的一個人, 分別是A,B和C。 在1564年,一個意大利人道主義者遺失了A書; 在1311年,人們最後一次在維泰博羅馬 北面約一百里的教皇的圖書館聽到B書; 在1906,C的抄本被發現, 並運到我在巴爾的摩的辦公桌上。 那是1999年1月19日的事。 而這就是C書的抄本
Now Codex C is actually buried in this book. It's buried treasure. Because this book is actually a prayer book. It was finished by a guy called Johannes Myrones on the 14th of April, 1229. And to make his prayer book he used parchment. But he didn't use new parchment, he used parchment recycled from earlier manuscripts, and there were seven of them. And Archimedes Codex C was just one of those seven. He took apart the Archimedes manuscript and the other seven manuscripts. He erased all of their texts, and then he cut the sheets down in the middle, he shuffled them up, and he rotated them 90 degrees, and he wrote prayers on top of these books. And essentially these seven manuscripts disappeared for 700 years, and we have a prayer book.
事實上,C的抄本是埋在這本書內。 這是被埋藏的寶藏, 因為這是一本禱告書。 約翰內斯在1229年4月14日, 完成了此書。 他用了羊皮紙去釘裝成他的禱告書, 但他沒有用新的羊皮紙。 他用早期的手稿循環再造的羊皮紙, 而那些羊皮紙內有七份手稿, 阿基米德的C手抄本只是其中一份而已。 他把阿基米德的手稿和其他七份拆開, 抹去上面的所有文字, 然後把羊皮只從中間切開。 他把它們洗了牌, 旋轉90度變成橫向, 最後把禱文寫在那些舊書上。 基本上,這七份手稿都已經消失700年了, 而幸好我們有這本禱告書。
The prayer book was discovered by this guy, Johan Ludvig Heiberg, in 1906. And with just a magnifying glass, he transcribed as much of the text as he could. And the thing is that he found two texts in this manuscript that were unique texts. They weren't in A and B at all; they were completely new texts by Archimedes, and they were called "The Method" and "The Stomachion." And it became a world famous manuscript.
在1906年,一名叫約翰•海伯格的男人 發現了這本禱告書。 他僅用了放大鏡, 盡可能抄寫了那些文字下來。 他在整份手稿中 發現了兩份獨特的文本。 它們不是A書或B書, 而是阿基米德所寫的新文本--- 《阿基米德方法》和《胃痛》。 它從此成為世界著名的手稿。
Now it should be clear by now that this book is in bad condition. It got in worse condition in the 20th century after Heiberg saw it. Forgeries were painted over it, and it suffered very badly from mold. This book is the definition of a write-off. It's the sort of book that you thought would be in an institution. But it's not in an institution, it was bought by a private owner in 1998.
所以,現在你們應該很清楚 這本書的保養情況十分惡劣。 在二十世紀經海伯格看完以後, 它的情況更強差人意。 偽造的文字曾被塗在上面, 黴菌更長滿此書。 這本書肯定會被報銷, 它的情況好像 你在機構裡見到的舊書一般。 但它不在機構內, 而被一個人在1998年賣下來。
Why did he buy this book? Because he wanted to make that which was fragile safe. He wanted to make that which was unique ubiquitous. He wanted to make that which was expensive free. And he wanted to do this as a matter of principle. Because not many people are really going to read Archimedes in ancient Greek, but they should have the chance to do it.
為什麼他會買此書呢? 因為他想令脆弱得東西得以安全, 令獨一無二的東西普及, 令昂貴的東西變得免費。 當然,這也是根據他一貫的原則--- 即使只有少數人真的會閱讀阿基米德的古希臘文本, 所有人都應有機會閱讀它。
So he gathered around himself the friends of Archimedes, and he promised to pay for all the work. And it was an expensive job, but actually it wouldn't be as much as you think because these people, they didn't come from money, they came from Archimedes. And they came from all sorts of different backgrounds. They came from particle physics, they came from classical philology, they came from book conservation, they came from ancient mathematics, they came from data management, they came from scientific imaging and program management. And they got together to work on this manuscript.
所以,他召集了一群阿基米德的支持者, 並承諾負擔一切的費用。 預料之內,這是十分昂貴的工作, 但你絕對意想不到 那些人不是為錢而來, 而是為阿基米德而來。 他們來自不同背景, 包括粒子物理、 古典哲學、 書本保養、 古代數學、 數據管理、 科技成像和程序管理。 他們一起開始工作,
The first problem was a conservation problem. And this is the sort of thing that we had to deal with: There was glue on the spine of the book. And if you look at this photograph carefully, the bottom half of this is rather brown. And that glue is hide glue. Now if you're a conservator, you can take off this glue reasonably easily. The top half is Elmer's wood glue. It's polyvinyl acetate emulsion that doesn't dissolve in water once it's dry. And it's much tougher than the parchment that it was written on. And so before we could start imaging Archimedes, we had to take this book apart. So it took four years to take apart. And this is a rare action shot, ladies and gentlemen.
而首個難題是關於書本保養。 這是我們無可避免要處理的難題: 書脊上有膠水。 如果你仔細看看這張照片, 你會發現底下的一半是偏啡色的。 那是隱藏膠水。 假如你是一個管理員, 你會頗容易地把這些膠水剝下來。 但上面的那一半是牛頭牌木膠, 一種乾後不溶於水的 聚醋酸乙烯乳液。 它的質地遠遠比那張羊皮紙硬。 故此,在開始進行影像掃描之前, 我們要把這本書拆開。 我們用了四年才完成。 先生小姐,這可是很不平常的事。
(Laughter)
(笑)
Another thing is that we had to get rid of all the wax, because this was used in the liturgical services of the Greek Orthodox Church and they'd used candle wax. And the candle wax was dirty, and we couldn't image through the wax. So very carefully we had to mechanically scrape off all the wax.
另外,我們還要弄走那些臘, 那是希臘東正教教堂 的禮拜儀式滴留在書上的。 而且,那些是臘燭的臘, 那些臘是很髒的, 而我們更不能透過那些臘進行影像掃描。 所以,我們得小心翼翼地動手刮去所有的臘。
It's hard to tell you exactly how bad this condition of this book is, but it came out in little bits very often. And normally in a book, you wouldn't worry about the little bits, but these little bits might contain unique Archimedes text. So, tiny fragments we actually managed to put back in the right place.
我很難確實地告訴你 這本書有多殘舊, 只能說它的碎片不時的跌出來。 通常,這種大小的碎片你跟本不會在意, 但是這些碎片都可能有獨一無二的阿基米德字跡。 所以,這些小碎片, 我們還是要仔細的放回原頁。
Then, having done that, we started to image the manuscript. And we imaged the manuscript in 14 different wavebands of light. Because if you look at something in different wavebands of light, you see different things. And here is an image of a page imaged in 14 different wavebands of light.
然後,我們開始影像掃描。 我們用了14種光波的波段 來掃描。 當你在不同波段看同一樣東西的時候, 你看到不同的東西。 這一頁上有14種 不同波段的各個映像。
But none of them worked. So what we did was we processed the images together, and we put two images into one blank screen. And here are two different images of the Archimedes manuscript. And the image on the left is the normal red image. And the image on the right is an ultraviolet image. And in the image on the right you might be able to see some of the Archimedes writing. If you merge them together into one digital canvas, the parchment is bright in both images and it comes out bright. The prayer book is dark in both images and it comes out dark. The Archimedes text is dark in one image and bright in another. And it'll come out dark but red, and then you can start to read it rather clearly. And that's what it looks like.
但是,沒有一個可用。 所以我們把那些映像一起處理, 把兩個映像疊在同一頁。 這是阿基米德的兩個不同的綜合手稿。 左邊的映像 是普通的紅色圖像; 右邊的映像則是紫外光的圖像。 右邊的映像 有比較清晰的阿基米德字跡。 當你把這兩個圖像合併成同一個數碼影像, 羊皮紙在原本兩個圖像都是亮色的, 所以它現在是亮色的。 禱告書在兩個圖像都是暗色的, 所以它結果也是暗色的 阿基米德文字在一張是暗的,在另一張是亮的, 所以它結果是暗紅色的。 現在你可以清楚的看到了, 就在這裡。
Now that's a before and after image, but you don't read the image on the screen like that. You zoom in and you zoom in and you zoom in and you zoom in, and you can just read it now.
這是處理前和處理後的圖像, 但是你不會在這種背景去閱讀的。 你把它放大,放大, 放大,然後再放大, 然後再去讀。
(Applause)
(掌聲)
If you process the same two images in a different way, you can actually get rid of the prayer book text. And this is terribly important, because the diagrams in the manuscript are the unique source for the diagrams that Archimedes drew in the sand in the fourth century B.C. And there we are, I can give them to you.
如果你把同樣的圖像用不同的方法處理, 你甚至可以弄走禱告書本身的文字。 這是非常重要的, 因為手稿上的影像 是所有其他合成影像的唯一來源。 阿基米德在公元前四世紀時在沙子上畫的 這裡,我會給你看到,
With this kind of imaging -- this kind of infrared, ultraviolet, invisible light imaging -- we were never going to image through the gold ground forgeries. How were we going to do that? Well we took the manuscript, and we decided to image it in X-ray fluorescence imaging. So an X-ray comes in in the diagram on the left and it knocks out an electron from the inner shell of an atom. And that electron disappears. And as it disappears, an electron from a shell farther out jumps in and takes its place. And when it takes its place, it sheds electromagnetic radiation. It sheds an X-ray. And this X-ray is specific in its wavelength to the atom that it hits.
在影像掃描之下的 紅外線影像,紫外線影像,和透明光影像。 但是,我們還是無法對有金色底稿的偽書進行掃描。 我們怎麼辦呢? 我們拿了那些手稿, 放在螢光X射線下掃描。 所以,一束X射線在圖像左面射進來, 從原子的電子內殼層撞了一顆電子出來, 然後這顆電子消失了。 當它消失的同時,外一層得電子外殼中, 一顆電子跳進內層,取代原本的位置。 同時,那顆電子 釋出一束電磁輻射。 它釋出的便是X射線。 這種X-射線有獨特的波長, 專門為這種原子調校。
And what we wanted to get was the iron. Because the ink was written in iron. And if we can map where this X-ray that comes out, where it comes from, we can map all the iron on the page, then theoretically we can read the image.
我們想要拿到的 是鐵, 因為原手稿的墨水含有鐵的成份。 如果我們可以 把X射線從哪裡射入、那裡射出的地方標記, 我們就可以標示出整頁有鐵成份的地方。 理論上,我們可借此閱讀圖像。
The thing is that you need a very powerful light source to do this. So we took it to the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory in California, which is a particle accelerator. Electrons go around one way, positrons go around the other. They meet in the middle, and they create subatomic particles like the charm quark and the tau lepton. Now we weren't actually going to put Archimedes in that beam. But as the electrons go round at the speed of light, they shed X-rays. And this is the most powerful light source in the solar system. This is called synchrotron radiation, and it's normally used to look at things like proteins and that sort of thing. But we wanted it to look at atoms, at iron atoms, so that we could read the page from before and after. And lo and behold, we found that we could do it. It took about 17 minutes to do a single page.
實際上,我們則需要用一個強大的光源去做這件事。 所以我們把手稿拿去史丹佛的同步輔射實驗室, 坐落於加州的 一部粒子加速器。 電子從一邊走, 正電子則往另一邊, 然後在中間相遇, 合成亞原子粒子, 就好像夸克和τ子。 我們本來沒有打算把阿基米德的手搞放進那光束裡, 但是當電子以光束打圈時, 它們會釋出X射線。 這是太陽系內最強的光源--- 同步輻射, 而我們平常看東西也會用它, 例如蛋白質那類東西。 但現在我們想看到原子,鐵原子, 然後讓我們看到的是處理前和處理後的影像。 你看,我們的確可以做到的。 它用大約17分鐘去完成一頁的掃描。
So what did we discover? Well one of the unique texts in Archimedes is called "The Stomachion." And this didn't exist in Codices A and B. And we knew that it involved this square. And this is a perfect square, and it's divided into 14 bits. But no one knew what Archimedes was doing with these 14 bits. And now we think we know. He was trying to work out how many ways you can recombine those 14 bits and still make a perfect square. Anyone want to guess the answer? It's 17,152 divided into 536 families. And the important point about this is that it's the earliest study in combinatorics in mathematics. And combinatorics is a wonderful and interesting branch of mathematics.
我們發現什麼了? 一份獨特的阿基米德手稿 《胃痛》, 這並不存在於抄本A和抄本B內。 我們知到它談到這個正方形, 這是一個完美的正方形, 然後分成14塊。 沒有人會知道阿基米德用這十四塊做什麼, 而現在,我們認為我們知道了。 他試圖找出 不同方法重新組合這 14 塊 成一個完美的正方形。 有人要猜猜看嗎? 總數是 17,152, 分為 536 類別。 最重要的是, 它是組合數學的最早研究, 組合數學是數學中精彩而有趣的分支。
The really astonishing thing though about this manuscript is that we looked at the other manuscripts that the palimpsester had made, the scribe had made his book out of, and one of them was a manuscript containing text by Hyperides. Now Hyperides was an Athenian orator from the fourth century B.C. He was an exact contemporary of Demosthenes. And in 338 B.C. he and Demosthenes together decided that they wanted to stand up to the military might of Philip of Macedon. So Athens and Thebes went out to fight Philip of Macedon. This was a bad idea, because Philip of Macedon had a son called Alexander the Great, and they lost the battle of Chaeronea.
這份手稿令人驚異的事情 是當我們看著再生羊皮紙卷上的其他的手稿 其他手稿時, 在抄寫員釘裝成它那本禱告書時, 其中一份是包含海柏維特的文字, 海柏維特是西元前四世紀雅典的演說家, 堪稱當代的狄摩西尼。 在西元前 338 年,他和狄摩西尼一起 決定反抗 馬其頓菲力浦的軍隊, 所以雅典人和底比斯人去抵抗馬其頓菲力浦的軍隊。 這是一個糟糕的主意, 因為馬其頓菲力蒲的兒子是亞歷山大大帝, 所以他們在海羅尼亞的戰鬥落敗了。
Alexander the Great went on to conquer the known world; Hyperides found himself on trial for treason. And this is the speech that he gave when he was on trial -- and it's a great speech: "Best of all," he says, "is to win. But if you can't win, then you should fight for a noble cause, because then you'll be remembered. Consider the Spartans. They won enumerable victories, but no one remembers what they are because they were all fought for selfish ends. The one battle that the Spartans fought that everybody remembers is the the battle of Thermopylae where they were butchered to a man, but fought for the freedom of Greece." It was such a great speech that the Athenian law courts let him off. He lived for another 10 years, then the Macedonian faction caught up with him. They cut out his tongue in mockery of his oratory, and no one knows what they did with his body. So this is the discovery of a lost voice from antiquity, speaking to us, not from the grave, because his grave doesn't exist, but from the Athenian law courts.
亞歷山大大帝繼續征服那時的世界 ; 海柏維特則因叛國罪受審。 這是他在判刑時的演說, 一個偉大的演講全文: "最好的結果,"他說:"是勝利。 但如果你贏不了, 你應該為一個崇高的理想去打那場仗, 因為你會名留青史。 試想想斯巴達, 他們贏得不可枚舉的勝利, 但沒有人記得它們是哪些戰場, 因為他們為一己之私而戰。 我們唯一記得斯巴達的 是溫泉關的戰役, 他們完全被宰殺了,戰敗了, 但為希臘的自由而戰鬥。" 這是一個偉大的演講 雅典法院判他無罪釋放。 他又活了十年, 然後,馬其頓派的分子抓到他。 他們砍下他的舌頭,並諷刺 並沒有人會知道他們對他身體做的所作所為。 所以,我們發現了一把在遠古遺失的聲音 對我們說話,不是從墳墓中, 因為他根本沒有墳墓, 而是從雅典法院。
Now I should say at this point that normally when you're looking at medieval manuscripts that have been scraped off, you don't find unique texts. And to find two in one manuscript is really something. To find three is completely weird. And we found three.
現在我應該說明一下 通常當你看到 那些被擦去的中世紀手稿時, 你不會找到獨特的案文。 在一份手稿中找到兩份獨特的案本並不常見, 找到三個則是完全不合乎常理的。 我們發現了三個。
Aristotle's "Categories" is one of the foundational texts of Western philosophy. And we found a third century A.D. commentary on it, possibly by Galen and probably by Porphyry.
亞里斯多德的"類別"---- 西方哲學的基礎文本, 公元後三世紀的評論---- 很大可能由蓋侖或斑岩所寫。
Now all this data that we collected, all the images, all the raw images, all the transcriptions that we made and that sort of thing have been put online under a Creative Commons license for anyone to use for any commercial purpose.
現在我們所收集到的資料, 所有圖像、 所有原始圖像 所有我們的一切抄錄和其他東西 都放在受創作共用許可的保護下的一個網上平臺上, 任何人都可將其用於商業目的。
(Applause)
(掌聲)
Why did the owner of the manuscript do this? He did this because he understands data as well as books. Now the thing to do with books, if you want to ensure their long-term utility, is to hide them away in closets and let very few people look at them. The thing to do with data, if you want it to survive, is to let it out and have everybody have it with as little control on that data as possible. And that's what he did.
為什麼擁有手稿的人會這樣做? 因為他明白資料與書籍的個別用處。 對於書本典籍, 如果要確保其長遠的使用, 就要把它們藏在在櫃子, 讓很少人能夠看到它們。 但如果你想要讓資料長期的被使用, 就要把它發放出去,讓每一個人都擁有它, 盡可能的少控制資料流通性。 這就是他做的事情,
And institutions can learn from this. Because institutions at the moment confine their data with copyright restrictions and that sort of thing. And if you want to look at medieval manuscripts on the Web, at the moment you have to go to the National Library of Y's site or the University Library of X's site, which is about the most boring way in which you can deal with digital data. What you want to do is to aggregate it all together.
其他機構可以向其學習。 因為目前大部份的機構 把許可權制等等的東西限制著他們的資料。 如果你想在線上看看中世紀手稿, 你要去某甲國家總圖的網站 或某乙大學圖書館的網站。 這是最無聊的方式 去處理的數位資料。 你想做的是把它們全部組合在一齊,
Because the Web of the ancient manuscripts of the future isn't going to be built by institutions. It's going to be built by users, by people who get this data together, by people who want to aggregate all sorts of maps from wherever they come from, all sorts of medieval romances from wherever they come from, people who just want to curate their own glorious selection of beautiful things. And that is the future of the Web. And it's an attractive and beautiful future, if only we can make it happen.
因為線上古代手稿的未來 不是由那些機構來建造, 而是依靠使用者。 那些把資料組合在一起的人, 那些想要制作各式各樣的統計圖的人 那些來自世界各地的人, 那些來自世界各處的 各種各樣的中世紀傳奇故事, 那些只是想要策劃 自己喜歡的系列的人 這是網路的未來。 它是有吸引力和美麗的未來, 而只有我們可以讓它發生。
Now we at the Walters Art Museum have followed this example, and we have put up all our manuscripts on the Web for people to enjoy -- all the raw data, all the descriptions, all the metadata. under a Creative Commons license. Now the Walters Art Museum is a small museum and it has beautiful manuscripts, but the data is fantastic. And the result of this is that if you do a Google search on images right now and you type in "Illuminated manuscript Koran" for example, 24 of the 28 images you'll find come from my institution.
現在沃爾特斯藝術博物館已經這樣做了, 我們已經把所有稿件上載到 Web 上, 讓人享受 所有的原始資料,所有的說明,所有中繼資料, 享受創作共用許可的保障。 沃爾特斯藝術博物館是一座小型的博物館, 有美麗的手稿, 精彩的資料。 結果, 如果你現在在谷歌搜索那些影像, 例如,當您可以輸入"亮色手稿古蘭經", 你會發現的 28 幅圖像 中有24 幅來自我的機構。
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Now, let's think about this for a minute. What's in it for the institution? There are all sorts of things that are in it for the institution. You can talk about the Humanities and that sort of thing, but let's talk about selfish things. Because what's really in it for the institution is this: Now why do people go to the Louvre? They go to see the Mona Lisa. Why do they go to see the Mona Lisa? Because they already know what she looks like. And they know what she looks like because they've seen pictures of her absolutely everywhere.
現在,讓我們用一分鐘的時間思考一下。 該機構裡有什麼? 有各種各樣的東西。 你可以談有關人文和諸如此類的事情, 但讓我們談一談自私。 因為這才是機構真正的本質: 為什麼人們去羅浮宮? 他們去看蒙娜麗莎。 他們為什麼會去看蒙娜麗莎? 因為他們已經知道她的樣子。 他們會知道她的樣子是 因為他們在很多地方看過她的圖片。
Now, there is no need for these restrictions at all. And I think that institutions should stand up and release all their data under unrestricted licenses, and it would be a great benefit to everybody. Why don't we just let everybody have access to this data and curate their own collection of ancient knowledge and wonderful and beautiful things and increase the beauty and the cultural significance of the Internet.
所以,我們沒有必要 去設定這些限制。 我認為各機構應該 開放資料數據等的使用權限, 造福每個人。 為什麼我們不讓每個人都有權訪問此資料 和策劃自己的數據集合? 這樣可以讓古代知識和精彩和美麗的東西流傳下去, 和增加互聯網美的價值 和文化意義。
Thank you very much indeed.
謝謝。
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