大学英语精读第册课文全文翻译中英对照

第六册 RESEARCH REPORTS FOR BUSINESS AND THECNICAL WRITING A surprising amount of one's time as a student and professional is spent reporting the results of one's research projects for presentation to teachers, managers, and clients. Indeed, without basic research skills and the ability to present research results clearly and completely, an individual will encounter many obstacles in school and on the job. The need for some research-writing ability is felt nearly equally by college students in all fields, engineering and science as well as business and the humanities. Graduate study often makes great demands on the student's research-writing skills, and most professions continue the demand; education, advertising and marketing, economics and accounting, science and engineering, psychology, anthropology, the arts, and agriculture may all require regular reporting of research data. ELEMENTS OF THE RESEARCH PAPER The standard research report, regardless of the field or the intended reader, contains four major sections. These sections may be broken down into a variety of subsections, and they may be arranged in a variety of ways, but they regularly make up the core of the report. Problem Section. The first required section of a research report is the statement of the problem with which the research project is concerned. This section requires a precise statement of the underlying question which the researcher has set out to answer. In this same section there should be an explanation of the significance -- social, economic, medical, psychological, educational, etc. -- of the question; in other words, why the investigation was worth conducting. Thus, if we set out, for example, to answer the question \"What is the effect of regular consumption of fast foods on the health of the American teenager?\" we must explain that the question is thought to have significant relevance to the health of this segment of the population and might lead to some sort of 商务、技术研究报告的写作 作为学生和专业人员，他们花了大量时间将自己的研究项目的结果报告给老师，经理和委托人。的确，一个人如果没有从事研究工作的基本技能和将研究成果清楚而完整地表达的能力，那么他就会在学习和工作中碰到许多障碍。科研写作能力的需要对于在各个领域的学生都是相等的，无论理工科学生还是商务、人文学科的学生都是这样研究生阶段的学习对学生的科研写作提出了很高的要求，而且大多数职业继续要求这样：教育（学）、广告与市场营销、经济学与会计学，理工科、心理学、人类学、艺术以及农艺可能都要定期报告研究的信息。 研究报告的要素 标准的研究报告，不论是哪个领域或针对哪类读者，都有四个主要部分。这些大的部分可以分成许多小的部分，而且结构安排可以多种多样，但是报告的核心通常由这四大部分组成的。 问题部分。研究报告的首要部分就是陈述研究项目所涉及的问题。这一部分要求准确阐述研究者要问答的根本问题。在这同一个部分里应该从社会、经济，医学、心理、教育方面来解释问题的意义：换言之，为什么值得进行这项研究。这样，举例来说，如果我们开始回答“经常食用快餐食品对美国青少年有什么影响？”那么我们就必须解释，此问题认为同这部分的人口有着非常密切的关系，可能导致对此类食品作出某种规定。 问题这一部分通常有一个小部分对该课题过去的研究民情况进行回顾。这可能包括对这个问题以前的研究者作出的贡献进行总结以及对这些贡献作出某种评价。这一小部regulations on such foods. A frequent subsection of this problem section is a review of past research on the topic being investigated. This would consist of summaries of the contributions of previous researcher to the question under consideration with some assessment of the value of these contributions. This subsection has rhetorical usefulness in that it enhances the credibility of the researcher by indicating that the data presented is based on a thorough knowledge of what has been done in the field and, possibly, grows out of some investigative tradition. Procedures Section. The second major section of the research report details, with as much data as possible, exactly how the study was carried out. This section includes description of any necessary equipment, how the subjects were selected if subjects were used, what statistical technique was used to evaluate the significance of the findings, how many observations were made and when, etc. An investigation of the relative effectiveness of various swim-strokes would have to detail the number of swimmers tested, the nature of the tests conducted, the experience of the swimmers, the weather conditions at the time of the test, and any other factors that contributed to the overall experiment. The goal of the procedures section is to allow the reader to duplicate the experiment if such were desired to confirm, or refute, your findings. Results Section. The third, and perhaps most important, section of the research report is the presentation of the results obtained from the investigation. The basic rule in this section is to give all data relevant to the research question initially asked. Although, of course, one's natural tendency might be to suppress any findings which do not in some way support one's hypothesis, such dishonesty is antithetical to good research reporting in any field. If the experiments undertaken fail to prove anything, if the data was inadequate or contrary to expectations, the report should be honestly written and as complete as possible, just as it would be if the hypothesis were totally proven by the research. Discussion Section. The final required section of a research report is a discussion of the results obtained and a statement of any conclusions which 分具有修辞作用，因为它显示了所提供的资料是在对本领域所取得的成果透彻理解的基础上取得的，因而它提高了对研究者的可信度。并且很可能是从某种调查研究中得出来的。 过程部分。研究报告的第二大部分准确阐述了，用尽可能多的资料，研究是如何进行的。这部分包括说明所需要的设备，实验对象是怎样选择的，如果使用了的话，用什么统计方法来评价实验成果的意义，进行了多少次观察以及什么时候进行的等。如果要对不同泳姿的相应效果进行研究的话，那么就要详细说明参加测试的人数，进行测试的性质，游泳者的经历，进行测试的天气条件，以及对整个实验有影响的其它因素。过程部分的目的是让读者能模拟实验，如果他愿意这么样来证实或驳斥你的结果的话。 结果部分。研究报告的第三，也许是最重要的部分是展示从研究中获得的结果。这部分的基本原则就是对最初提出的问题提供一切有关的资料。当然，虽然人的自然倾向可能是对任何在某方面与自己的假设不符的结果进行隐瞒，可是这种不诚实与任何领域优秀的研究报告是相背的。如果所进行的实验不能证实什么，如果资料不充分或与期望相反，那么研究报告就应该如实而且尽可能完整地写下来，就象假设被研究证实了的那样把它写下来。 讨论部分。研究报告的最后一个必要部分就是讨论所获得的结果，阐述从那些结果中得出的任何结论。在商务和技术的研究报告中，人们主要关注是结果的可靠性，这也是公司决策的依据；我们策划的项目符合联邦环境政策吗？会得到批准进行吗？?这个新项目会吸引技术人材到我们公司来吗？从金融方面看，这项石油回收新技术可行吗？may be drawn from those results. Of primary interest in business and technical research reports is the validity of the results as the bases for company decisions: Will our planned construction project meet federal environmental guidelines and be approved for building? Will this new program attract skilled personnel to our company? Will this new oil recovery technique be financially feasible? Thus, the discussion section of the research report must evaluate the research results fully: were they validly obtained, are they complete or limited, are they applicable over a wide range of circumstances? The discussion section should also point out what question remain unanswered and perhaps suggest directions for further research. STYLE OF RESEARCH REPORTS Research reports are considered formal professional communication. As such, there is little emphasis on a lively style, although, of course, there is no objection to writing that is pleasing and interesting. The primary goals of professional communication are accuracy, clarity, and completeness. The rough draft of any research report should be edited to ensure that all data is correctly presented, that all equipment is listed, that all results are properly detailed. As an aid to the reader, headings indicating at least the major section of the report should be used, and all data should be presented under the proper headings. In addition to their function of suggesting to the reader the contents of each section, headings enhance the formal appearance and professional quality of the report, increase to some degree the writer's credibility by reflecting a logical and methodical approach to the reporting process, and eliminate the need for wordy transitional devices between sections. Research data should be presented in a way that places proper emphasis on major aspect of the project. For different readers different aspects will take on different degrees of importance, and some consideration should be given to structuring research reports differently for different audiences. Management, for example, will be most concerned with the results of a research project, and thus the results section should be emphasized, probably by presenting it immediately after the problem section and before the procedures section. Other 这样，研究报告的讨论必须全面评价研究成果：它们获得是否真实？它们是完整的还是有局限性？它们的应用范围很大吗？讨论部分也应该指出哪些问题仍然没有找到答案，也许对进一步研究提出一些建议。 研究报告的文体 人们认为研究报告是属于正规的专业交流。据此，并不强调用活泼文体，当然也不反对文章写得生动有趣。专业交流的主要目的是准确、明晰，完整。校订任何研究报告初稿都应保证所有资料正确提供，所有设备列出，所有结果恰当详述。为方便读者，应该使用标题，至少标明报告的主要部分，而所有资料都应当在恰当的标题下陈述。标题除了有向读者提示每部分内容的功能外，它还提高了报告的规范性和学术质量，同时报告是按逻辑、有条理地写出来的，因此在某种程度上增加了作者的可信度，消除了报告各部分之间冗长的承上启下的词语。 应该用一种恰当强调项目主要方面的方式陈述研究资料。对于不同的读者来说，不同的方面具有不同的重要性。应该考虑到报告的结构因不同的读者而有所不同。例如：资方对研究项目的结果最为关心，所以这部分应该加以强调。在问题部分之后和过程部分之前有可能立即出现。其他的研究人员对过程部分尤为感兴趣，所以在把研究项目整理成文用于在专业刊物发表或在专业会议上宣读时，这一部分应该着重突出。对于非专业读者和联邦机构来说，首要考虑的是研究结果的含意，对于这部分读者来说，应该强调讨论部分。 另外为了明晰、强调，主要成果不仅应该用书面文字而且还应该用表格，图表，图解，简图等直观形式来表述。 除了检查研究报告是否在技术资料方面表researchers would be most interested in the procedures section, and this should be highlighted in writing up research projects for publication in professional journals or for presentation at professional conferences. For non-technical readers and federal agencies, the implications of the results might be the most important consideration, and emphasis should be placed on the discussion of the report for this readership. For additional clarity and emphasis, major results should be presented in a visual format -- tables, charts, graphs, diagrams -- as well as in a verbal one. Beyond checking the report for clarity and accuracy in the presentation of technical data, the author of a research report should review for basic grammatical and mechanical accuracy. Short sentences are preferable to long in the presentation of complex information. Listings should be used to break up long passages of prose and to emphasize information. The research writer should try to use the simplest possible language without sacrificing the professional quality of the report. Although specialized terms can be used, pretentious jargon should be avoided. A finished research report should be readable and useful document prepared with the reader in mind. CONCLUSION Although we struggle with research reports in high school, dread them in college, and are often burdened by them in our professional live, learning to live comfortably with them is a relatively easy task. A positive attitude (i.e. one that seem the oral or written presentation of research results as of equal importance to the data-gathering process); an orderly approach which includes prewriting (i.e., before any actual research is done, the researcher should try to get down on paper as much about the subject under investigation as possible) and a formal research report structure as the framework for the investigation; and a reasonable approach to the actual writing process including editing for accuracy and clarity, will help one to produce effective research reports efficiently. 达清楚、准确外，作者还应该检查基本语法和打印方面是否准确。在陈述复杂信息时最好使用短句。应该使用列举方法来避免长篇大论，强调信息。研究报告的作者应该在不损害报告的专业质量的情况下尽可能使用最简单的语言。虽然专业术语能够使用，但虚饰的行为应当避免。一篇完整的研究报告应该是一份把读者装在心中，可读而又有用的文献。 结论 虽然我们在中学就努力去写好研究报告，在大学仍有点害怕，在专业生活中还经常感到它是一种负担，然而学会与之泰然相处也是一件相对容易的事。为了帮助人们及时而又有效地写出报告，人们应该做到：有一种积极的态度（即把口头和书面陈述研究成果与资料收集过程看成同样重要）：写作步骤井然有序，包括写作前的准备工作（即在进行实际研究工作之前，研究者应当尽可能多地把与研究课题有关的资料写下来）有一个正式研究报告的构思作为调查的框架；有一个合理的写作方法，包括为了准确、清楚、将会很有效的进行校订过程。 职业的开端 贝尔蒙特宾馆，1952年6月11日 亲爱的妈妈： 你那份令我吃惊的电报，[宣布了由我转寄的＜明顿家的星期天＞、获得了＜小姐＞杂志五百元奖金。它正好是我在阴暗的贝尔蒙特餐厅洗餐桌时收到的我非常激动，大声叫着，竟一把抱住了女服务员领班。毫无疑问，她一定认为我发疯了。不管怎样，从心理上讲，你的电报来得正是时候。那时我觉得很累——人到一个新地方，第一夜总是睡不好的——而我就没有睡多少觉。更糟糕的是，我是这里唯一的女招待。一直要擦洗家具，洗盘子和银餐具，搬桌子等， 从上午８点开始我刚知道，因为我完全没有经THE BEGINNING OF A CARREER Dear Mother, Your amazing telegram [telegram announcing $500 Mademoiselle prize for \"Sunday at the Mintons,\" which I forwarded] came just as I was scrubbing tables in the shady interior of The Belmont dining room. I was so excited that I screamed and actually threw my arms around the head waitress who no doubt thinks I am rather insane! Anyhow, psychologically, the moment couldn't have been better. I felt tired -- one's first night's sleep in a new place never is peaceful -- and I didn't get much! To top it off, I was the only girl waitress here, and had been scrubbing furniture, washing dishes and silver, lifting tables, etc. since 8 a.m. Also, I just learned since I am completely inexperienced, I am not going to be working in the main dining room, but in the \"side hall\" where the managers and top hotel brass eat. So, tips will no doubt net much less during the summer and the company be less interesting. So I was beginning to worry about money when your telegram came. God! To think \"Sunday at the Mintons\" is one of two prize stories to be put in a big national slick! Frankly, I can't believe it! The first thing I though of was: Mother can keep her intersession money and buy some pretty clothes and a special trip or something! At least I get a winter coat and extra special suit out of the Mintons. I think the prize is $500! ME! Of all people!… So it's really looking up around here, now that I don't have to be scared stiff about money … Oh, I say, even if my feet kill me after this first week, and I drop 20 trays, I will have the beach, boys to bring me beer, sun, and young gay companions. What a life. Love, your crazy old daughter. Sivvy June 12. 1952 No doubt after I catch up on sleep, and learn to balance trays high on my left hand, I'll feel much happier. As it is now, I feel stuck in the midst of a lot of loud, brassy Irish Catholics, and the only way I can jolly myself is to say, \"Oh, well, it's only for a summer, and I can maybe write about them all.\" At least I've got a new name for my next protagonist -- Marley, a gabby girl who knows her way around but good. The ration of boys to girls has gotten less 验，将不会让我在正厅工作，而是让我在经理们和主管人员就餐的“侧厅”工作。所有，这个暑假的小费毫无疑问会少得多，并且一起干活的伙伴缺乏风趣。我正开动为缺钱发愁时你的电报来了。上帝啊！想想看，《明顿家的星期天》竟是一家全国性通俗刊物的两篇获奖小说之一！说实话，我真地不敢相信！ 我当时想到的第一件事是：妈妈可以将她要给我暑假用的钱留下，买些好衣服，进行一次特别旅游什么的。至少我能够用《明顿家》获得的奖金买一件冬装和一套非常精美的衣服。奖金有五百元之多啊！ 这么多人中，获奖的竟是我！ 现在这里一切都好起来，因为我不必为钱担心了，……啊，即使这第一个星期之后我双脚疼得要命，即使摔破了二十个盘子我仍然会到海滩去，要侍者为我拿酒，要享受海边的阳光，要与年轻的伙伴同乐。多么美好的生活！ 爱你，你那发疯的女儿。 西维 1952年6月12日 毫无疑问，我睡足觉，学会用左手端稳高高的盘子后， 我会感到更高兴的。现在实际上，我觉得自己陷入一伙闹哄哄、厚脸皮的爱尔兰天主教徒之中，无法脱身，而我能够自乐的唯一办法就是说：“嗯，只是一个夏天，而我还可以把他们写到我的小说里去呢。”至少，我已经为我的下一个主人公取了一个新名字——马莉，一个能说会道熟知人情世故的女孩，小伙子们与大姑娘的比例越来越小。所以如果我被这儿哪个最年轻的小伙子追求的话，那我是很幸运的。这里的很多女孩确实机灵，能喝酒，会调情卖俏。而我因是那种保守、文静、优雅的女孩，所以不太可能和一些帅小伙子约会……要是我能与这些女孩相处很好，作她们朋友而决不让她们知道我是个文雅的知识分子的话，那就好了。 对于《小姐》杂志那条消息，我还是感到不可理解。我曾经确信他们弄错了，或是你杜撰出来让我高兴的。最大的好处将是我不必为这个夏天只能挣到300美金发愁了。不然的话，我会忧心忡忡的。我现在真是急不and less, so I'll be lucky if I get tagged by the youngest kid here. Lots of the girls are really wise, drinking flirts. As for me, being the conservative, quiet, gracious type, I don't stand much chance of dating some of the cutest ones … If I can only get \"in\" as a pal with these girls, and never for a minute let them know I'm the gentle intellectual type, it'll be O.K. As for the Mlle news, I don't think it's really sunk in yet. I felt sure they made a mistake, or that you'd made it up to cheer me. The big advantage will be that I won't have to worry about earning barely $300 this summer. I would really have been sick otherwise. I can't wait till August when I can go casually down to the drug store and pick up a slick copy of Mlle, flip to the index, and see ME, one of two college girls in the U.S.! Really, when I think of how I started it over spring vacation, polished it at school, and sat up till midnight in the Haven House kitchen typing it amidst noise and chatter, I can't get over how the story soared to were it did… I get great pleasure out of sharing it [her feeling about the story] with you, who really understand how terribly much it means as a tangible testimony that I have got a germ of writing ability. The only thing, I probably won't have a chance to win Mlle again, so I'll try for a guest editorship maybe next or my senior year, and set my sights for the Atlantic. God, I'm glad I can talk about it with you -- probably you're the only outlet that I'll have that won't get tired of my talking about writing … Speaking again of Henry and Liz, it was a step for me to a story where the protagonist isn't always ME, and proved that I am beginning to use imagination to transform the actual incident. I was scared that would never happen, but I think it's an indication that my perspective is broadening. Sometime I think -- heck, I don't know why I didn't stay home all summer, writing, doing physical science, and having a small part-time job. I could \"afford\" to now, but it doesn't do much good to yearn about that, I guess. Although it would have been nice. Oh well, I'll cheer up. I love you. Your own Sivvy June 15, 1952 Dear Mother. 可耐地希望八月到来，到那时我可随意走进杂货店拿起一册漂亮的《小姐》杂志，赶快翻到索引部分，看到我，美国两名女大学生之一！ 真的，当我想起整个春假期间怎样着手写这篇小说。在学校修改润色，在海文豪斯厨房喧闹的环境中熬夜打字到深夜的时候，我真的无法相信这篇小说会获得如此大奖…… 因为你能真正理解，它对我来说有多么重要的意义。它充分表明我有创作潜力。唯一的事就是我极有可能再也没有机会获得《小姐》杂志的大奖了。所以也许明年，也许在大四，我要努力争取做一名客座编辑，而且我的目标是要做《大西洋》月刊的客座编辑。天哪，能和你谈论这事，我很高兴——很可能你是我拥有的唯一——一位不厌其烦地听我谈论写作的听众…… 再谈谈亨利和莉兹，它是我小说创作迈出的一步。故事中的主人公不再总是“我”，它还证明我开始动用想象力来改变真事。我还真害怕过这事办不到，不过我想这表明我观察事物的能力在扩大. 有时我想——见鬼，我不知道我为何整个夏天不呆在家里写作、学习自然科学，做一份兼职的小事。我现“有能力”做到了，不过我想过于想得到这个并不一定是好事，虽然这样做了会很好。好啦，我会振作精神的，我爱你。 你的西维 1952年6月12日 亲爱的妈妈， 妈妈，你一定要给我写信，因为我现在处在一种自惭形秽的危险状态……就眼下，生活糟透了。《小姐》获奖好象完全不是真的，我现在总的来说，情绪低落：疲惫、害怕、无能、精力不济…… 在侧厅工作把我撇在一边，我感到孤立无援，非常尴尬。我越是看见正厅的女孩们熟练地准备特别的菜肴， 做刨冰，水果等，就越是感到自叹不如，感到每天在侧厅工作使我大大落后了……但是尽管我受到诱惑去当胆小鬼、爬回家去，我还决心试着干完这一个月——直到7月10日……不要为我担心，不过请一定时常给我寄些简短的建议来。 … Do write me letters, Mommy, because I am in a very dangerous of feeling sorry for myself … Just at present, life is awful. Mademoiselle seems quite unreal, and I am exhausted, scared, incompetent, unenergetic and generally low is spirits … Working in side hall puts me part, and I feel completely uprooted and clumsy. The more I see the main hall girls expertly getting special dishes, fixing shaved ice and fruit, etc., the more I get an inferiority complex and feel that each day in side hall leaves me further behind … But as tempted as I am to be a coward and escape by crawling back home, I have resolved to give it a good month's trial -- till July 10 … Don't worry about me, but do send me little pellets of advice now and then. June 24, 1952 … Last night I went on a \"gang\" birthday party at the \"Sand Bar\" where we sang and talked for a few hours. There were about forty of us kids from the hotel. I managed by some magic to get myself seated next to a fellow in his first year at Harvard Law -- and he was just a dear … The best part was when we came back. It was a beautiful clear starry night, and Clark went in to get me two of his sweaters to wear because it was cold, and brought out a book of T.S. Eliot's poems. So we sat on a bench where I could just barely read the print, and he put his head in my lap and I read aloud to him for a wile. Most nice. The only thing is I am so inclined to get fond of someone who will do things with me like that -- always inclined to be too metaphysical and serious conversationally -- that's my main trouble … So glad to hear the check from Mlle is real. I hardly could believe it. Just now I am mentally so disorganized that I can't retain knowledge or think at all. The work is still new enough to be tiring, what with three changes a day into uniforms, and I am so preoccupied by mechanics of living and people that I can't yet organize and assimilate all the chaos of experience pouring in on me. In spite of everything, I still have my good old sense of humor and manage to laugh a good deal of the time … I'll make the best of whatever comes my way. Much love to you, Sivvy THE QUEST FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL 1952年6月15日 昨天晚上我到“桑德酒吧”参加了一个“同伙”生日聚会。在哪儿我们唱啊、谈啊她几个小时。从宾馆我们去了大约四十个少男少女。受到某种魔力的驱使，我设法挨着一名哈佛法学院的一年级学生坐了下来——而且她的确招人喜爱……最好的时光是我们回来的时候。那是一个美丽、明净、星星满天夜晚，因为天气冷，克拉克进屋去拿了两件毛衣让我穿，还拿出了一本T·S·艾略特诗集。我们坐在一张我能够勉强看得清字的长凳上，他把头靠在我的膝上，我给他念了一会儿诗。真好。唯一的问题就是我非常容易爱上像这样和我一起欣赏诗歌的人了——总是容易谈论非常抽象、严肃的话题——这就是我的主要问题……所以非常高兴听到《小姐》杂志的支票是真的。我简直不敢相信。现在我的思绪混乱，所以完全记不住东西，也不能清楚考虑问题。工作仍然不熟练，觉得累。由于一天要换三次制服。我总是忙于日常琐事、与人交往，还没来得及整理、消化我所经历的这些杂乱的事情。尽管如此，我还是像以往那样具有幽默感，很多时候还是尽量让自己开怀大笑……不管我发生什么事，我都会全力以赴的。 非常爱你的 西维 探寻外星人 自从人类有历史记载以来，我们一直在思索着星星，反复考虑是否只有人类存在，或者说在太空深处的某个地方是否存在其他同我们一样在不停地思索着的生命，也就是宇宙中跟我们一起思考的人。这样的人可能对自己和宇宙算法不同。在别的什么地方可能存在着非常奇异的生物、技术和社会。我们在一种空间和时间都超出人类理解的宇宙环境里感到有点孤独。我们深思着根本的意义，我们这个渺小的但精巧的蓝色星。 探寻外星人就是为人类寻找一个普遍能接受的宇宙环境。从最深层次的意义来说，探寻外星人就是寻找我们自己。 在过去的几年中——在我们人类生活在这个星球上的百万分之一的时间里，——我们已经具有了一种非凡的能力。这种技术INTELLIGENCE Through all of our history we have pondered the stars and mused whether humanity is unique or if, somewhere else in the dark of the night sky, there are other beings who contemplate and wonder as we do, fellow thinkers in the cosmos. Such beings might view themselves and the universe differently. Somewhere else there might be very exotic biologies and technologies and societies. In a cosmic setting vast and old beyond ordinary human understanding, we are a little lonely; and we ponder the ultimate significance, if any, of our tiny but exquisite blue planet. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the search for a generally acceptable cosmic context for the human species. In the deepest sense, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves. In the last few years -- in one-millionth the lifetime of our species on this planet -- we have achieved an extraordinary technological capability which enables us to seek out unimaginably distant civilizations even if they are no more advanced than we. That capability is called radio astronomy and involves single radio telescopes, collections or arrays of radio telescopes, sensitive radio detectors, advanced computers for processing received date, and the imagination and skill of dedicated scientists. Radio astronomy has in the last decade opened a new window on the physical universe. It may also, if we are wise enough to make the effort, cast a profound light on the biological universe. Some scientists working on the question of extraterrestrial intelligence, myself among them, have attempted to estimate the number of advanced technical civilizations -- defined operationally as societies capable of radio astronomy -- in the Milky Way Galaxy. Such estimates are little better than guesses. They require assigning numerical values to quantities such as the numbers and ages of stars; the abundance of planetary systems and the likelihood of the origin of life, which we know less well; and the probability of the evolution of intelligent life and the lifetime of technical civilizations, about which we know very little indeed. When we do the arithmetic, the sorts of numbers we come up with are, characteristically, around a 能力能使我们搜寻到无比遥远的文明世界，即使他们和我们一样不先进。 这种技术能力叫做射电天文学。它涉及到单架射望远镜、阵列射电望远镜、高灵敏度的无线电探测器，用于处理接收的信息的先进计算机以及全身心投入的科学家们的想象力和技能。射电天文学在过去的十年中已经打开了一个研究宇宙的新窗口。如果我们充分发挥自己的聪明才智去努力，它可能会帮助我们弄清楚宇宙生物世界。 一些研究外星人问题的科学家，包括我自己，都已努力设法对银河系的先进技术文明社会的数目进行了估计——先进技术文明社会定义为具有射民天文学能力的社会。这样的估计比猜想强不了多少。 它们要求将这些情况数字化，诸如星球的数量和年龄，有多少个行星系、生命起源的可能性有多大，这些我们较少知道：还有智慧生物进化的可能性和技术文明世界的寿命，这些我们近乎一无所知。 当我们进行计算时我们得出的这类数字是很有特点的大约有一百万个文明世界。想象一下这百万个文明世界的五花八门、这真令人兴奋，各种生活方式以及商业，可是银河系有大约二千五百亿个恒星，即使有一百万个文明世界，可每二十万个恒星中不到一个有文明世界的人居住的行星。既然我们几乎不知道哪些恒星可能存在文明世界，我们将不得不搜寻大量的恒星。这样就意味着探寻外星人可能需要作出极大的努力。 尽管有人声称古代在太空人，见过不明飞行物，然而却缺乏确凿的证据证明过去有其他文明世界的人来过地球。我们只限于运用远距离的通信，在目前我们的技术所能运用的长距离的技术手段中，无线电肯定是最好的。无线电望远镜相对来说价格便宜；无线电象光速那样快速发送信号，而且前没有任何东西快过光速；把无线电用于通讯不是一种短视的或以人类为宇宙中心的行为。无线电具有大部分的电磁波谱，银河系中的任何地方的任何技术文明世界该早就发现无线电，无线电具有大部分的电磁波谱，银河系million technical civilizations. A million civilizations is a breathtakingly large number, and it is exhilarating to imagine the diversity, lifestyles and commerce of those million worlds. But the Milky Way Galaxy contains some 250 billion stars, and even with a million civilizations, less than one star in 200,000 would have a planet inhabited by an advanced civilization. Since we have little idea which stars are likely candidates, we will have to examine a very large number of them. Such considerations suggest that the quest for extraterrestrial intelligence may require a significant effort. Despite claims about ancient astronauts and unidentified flying objects, there is no firm evidence for past visitation of the Earth by other civilizations. We are restricted to remote signaling and, of the long-distance techniques available to our technology, radio is by far the best. Radio telescopes are relatively inexpensive; radio signals travel at the speed of light, faster than which nothing can go; and the use of radio for communication is not a short-sighted or anthropocentric activity. Radio represents a large part of the electromagnetic spectrum and any technical civilization anywhere in the Galaxy will have discovered radio early -- just as in the last few centuries we have explored the entire electromagnetic spectrum from short gamma rays to very long radio waves. Advanced civilizations might very well use some other means of communication with their peers. But if they wish to communicate with backward or emerging civilizations, there are only a few obvious methods, the chief of which is radio. The first serious attempt to listen for possible radio signals from other civilizations was carried out at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Greenbank, West Virginia, in 1959 and 1960. It was organized by Frank Drake, now at Cornel University, and was called Project Ozma, after the princess of the Land of Oz, a place very exotic, very distant and very difficult to reach. Drake examined two nearby stars for a few weeks with negative results. Positive results would have been astonishing because as we have seen, even rather optimistic estimates of the number of technical civilizations in the Galaxy imply that several hundred thousand stars must be examined in order 中的任何地方的任何技术文明世界该早就发现无线电了——正像在过去的几个世纪中我们对从短伽马射线到长线电波的整个电磁波谱已经探索过了一样。先进的文明社会要能使用其它的通讯方式同他们的同辈进行联系。但是，假如他们想和落后的或新兴的文明社会联系，很显然只有几种方法，其中主要的方法就是无线电。 在西旨吉尼亚州格林班克国家无线电天文台第一次认真的尝试收听了来自其他文明的信号。在１９５９年和１９６０年。此项工作是由弗兰克·德雷克主持的，他现在在康乃尔大学。这是以奥兹国公主的名字命名的，叫作奥兹玛项目。奥兹国是个十分奇异、非常遥远，难以到达的地方。德雷克在几个星期里对两个附近的恒星进行了探测，没有取得积极的结果。假如取得了积极的结果，那会令人吃惊的，因为，正象我们已经看到的一样，即使非常乐观地估算一下银河系中的技术文明社会的数目,要想不加选择地探测就取得成功的话，必须探测几十万个恒星。 自从奥兹玛项目以来，又有６到８个这样规模的项目。都是这样的规模，无论是在美国，加拿大和苏联。所有都未取得结果到目前为止用这种方法探测过的恒星总数还不到一千个，也就是我们大约只探测了需要探测的百分之一中的十分之一。可是，种种迹象表明，人们可能在最近的将来作出更大的努力。此外，随着最近无线电技术取得巨大进步，科学界和公众对外星人这一整个课题的认识极大地提高了。这种新态度的一种显着标志就是向火星发射的“海盗”号。这些发射在很大程度上是专门寻找另一个行星上的生命的。 但是在人们正为认真探索奉献更多力量的同时，一种略具否定意味却又十分有趣地声音出现了。有几名科学家最近提出了一个奇怪的问题：如果有大量的外星人存在，为什么我们还没有看到它存在的迹象？ 持怀疑态度的人还对为什么没有明显证据证明外星人到过地球提出了疑问。我们已经发射了to achieve success by random stellar selection. Since Project Ozma, there have been six or eight other such programs, all at a rather modest level, in the United States, Canada and the Soviet Union. All results have been negative. The total number of individual stars examined to date in this way is less than a thousand. We have performed something like one tenth of one percent of the required effort. However, there are signs that much more serious efforts may be mustered in the reasonably near future. Besides, hand in hand with the recent spectacular advances in radio technology, there has been a dramatic increase in the scientific and public respectability of the entire subject of extraterrestrial life. A clear sign of the new attitude is the Viking missions to Mars, which are to a significant extent dedicated to the search for life on another planet. But along with the burgeoning dedication to a serious search, a slightly negative note has emerged which is nevertheless very interesting. A few scientists have lately asked a curious question: If extraterrestrial intelligence is abundant, why have we not already seen its manifestations? Skeptics also ask why there is no clear evidence of extraterrestrial visits to Earth. We have already launched slow and modest interstellar spacecraft. A society more advance than ours should be able to ply the spaces between the stars conveniently if not effortlessly. Over millions of years such societies should have established colonies, which might themselves launch interstellar expeditions. Why are they not here? The temptation is to deduce that there are at most a few advanced extraterrestrial civilizations -- either because statistically we are one of the first technical civilizations to have emerged or because it is the fate of all such civilizations to destroy themselves before they are much further along than we. It seems to me that such despair is quite premature. All such arguments depend on our correctly surmising the intentions of beings far more advanced than ourselves, and when examined more closely I think these arguments reveal a range of interesting human conceits. Why do we expect that it will be easy to recognize the manifestations of very advanced civilizations? Is our situation not closer to that of members of an isolated society in the Amazon basin, say, who lack 速度慢、不太大的星际宇宙飞船。一个比我们先进的社会，如果不是毫不费力的话，也应该能很方便地来往于星际之间。在几百万年的时间中，这样的社会应该早已建立了殖民地， 他们本身可能进行星际远征探险。他们为什么没到这里来？人们很自然地推断地球外最多有几个先进的文明社会——这要么是因为从统计数据上看我们是已经形成的首批技术文明社会之一，要么由于命运不济，所有这样的文明社会在他们发达得远远超过我们之前就自我来亡了。 我认为这种绝望是相当幼稚的。所有这些论断取决于我们对远比我们自己先进行得多的生物的动机是否能作出正确判断：如果对这些论断进行更为细致的审视的话，我认为它们表现出了人类一种有趣的自负心态。我们为什么要指望会很容易地找出非常先进的文明社会存在的迹象呢？我们的境况不是和亚马逊河流域的与世隔绝的社会中的人很接近吗？这些人缺少工具来探测他们周围功率强大的国际间的无线电和电视通讯。天文学中也有大量没有完全理解的现象。肪冲星的调制或者类星体的能量来源,例如，是不是可能源于某种技术？或许银河系有一条不许干涉落后或新兴文明社会的道德规范；或许要等一段时间再进行接触才认为得体，以便给我们一个公平的机会来先毁灭自己。假如我们想这么做的话。或许所有比我们自己要先进得多的社会都已经有效地达到了使每个成员长生不老的阶段，所以以就失去了到星际间去邀游的愿望，而这种愿望可能可是早期文明社会的一种典型的冲动，谁知道呢。或许成熟的文明社会不想污染宇宙。可以说出很多这样的“或许”，但没有几种我们能够肯定地作出估计。在我看来，地球文明社会的问题还远未解决。我个人认为理解在一个宇宙中只有我们这一个技术文明是很困难的。或着少数几个宇宙与想象的一个充满生命的宇宙想比也是一样。幸运的是，这个问题的许多方面可以经得起实践的检验。我们能够搜寻其它恒星，寻找象火星这样离我们很近的行星上的简the tools to detect the powerful international radio and television traffic that is all around them? Also, there is a wide range of incompletely understood phenomena in astronomy. Might the modulation of pulsars or the energy source of quasars, for example, have a technological origin? Or perhaps there is a galactic ethic of noninterference with backward or emerging civilizations. Perhaps there is a waiting time before contact is considered appropriate, so as to give us a fair opportunity to destroy ourselves first, if we are so inclined. Perhaps all societies significantly more advanced than our own have achieved an effective personal immortality and lose the motivation for interstellar gallivanting, which may, for all we know, be a typical urge only of adolescent civilizations. Perhaps mature civilizations do not wish to pollute the cosmos. There is a very long list of such \"perhaps,\" few of which we are in a position to evaluate with any degree of assurance. The question of extraterrestrial civilizations seems to me entirely open. Personally, I think it far more difficult to understand a universe in which we are the only technological civilization, or one of a very few, than to conceive of a cosmos brining over with intelligent life. Many aspects of the problem are, fortunately, amenable to experimental verification. We can search for planets of other stars, seek simple forms of life on such nearby planets as Mars, and perform more extensive laboratory studies on the chemistry of the origin of life. We can investigate more deeply the evolution of organisms and societies. The problem cries out for a long-term, open-minded, systematic search, with nature as the only arbiter of what is or is not likely. 单生命形式，并且在实验室中可以对生命起源的化学机理作更广泛的研究。我们还可以更深入地研究生物和社会的进化原理。这个问题需要人们长期地、不带偏见地、系统地去探索，而只有大自然才是什么可能、什么不可能的唯一仲裁者。 借书证 一天早上，我上班到得早，便走进银行的门廊，里面有一个黑人清洁工在拖地。我站在柜台边，拿了一份孟菲斯《商业呼声报》，读起了免费报纸。我最后翻到社论版，上面登了一篇写关于一名叫H.L.门肯的人的文章。我听说门肯是《美国信使》报的编辑。不过除此之外，对他毫无别的了解。该文言辞激烈地遣责门肯，文章结尾时用了一句辛辣的短句：门肯是个傻子。 我在想这位门肯先生到底做了什么事以至于引得南方对他嘲弄。我所听说过在南方唯一受到谴责的人就是黑人。而此人不是黑人。那么门肯持有什么样的观点使得象《商业呼声》这样的报纸公开攻击他？不用说，他一定是在宣扬南方所不喜欢的思想。 那么我怎样能够弄清楚门肯其人？江边有一大型图书馆，但我知道，正如不许黑人进入城里的公园和运动场一样，他们也同样不被允许进入图书馆。我曾经几次去过那儿，帮正在干活的白人借书。 他们中有哪个人能帮我借书呢？ 我反复琢磨着这些白人的人品。有一个犹太人叫唐，但我信不过他。他的情况并不比我好多少，而且我知道他这个人总是不安分没有安全感。他待我总是满不在乎、傲气十足，对我的轻视几乎也不加掩饰。我不敢要他去帮我借书。他特别渴望表示自己在与白人团结一致反对黑人，这使他有可能会出卖我。 那么老板如何样呢？不成。他是个浸礼会教徒，我有这样的怀疑，就是他可能不大会明白为什么一个黑人孩子想去读门肯的书。上班的还有一些别的白人，但他们的态度明确地表明他们要么是三K党徒，要么是其支持者，要他们帮忙是不可能的。 仅剩一人了，他的态度不属于反黑人的范畴，因为我曾经听白人们叫他为“拍教皇马屁的人”。他是爱尔兰的天主教徒，南方白THE LIBRARY CARD One morning I arrived early at work and went into the bank lobby where the Negro porter was mopping. I stood at a counter and picked up the Memphis Commercial Appeal and began my free reading of the press. I came finally to the editorial page and saw an article dealing with one H. L. Mencken. I knew by hearsay that he was the editor of the American Mercury, but aside from that I knew nothing about him. The article was a furious denunciation of Mencken, concluding with one, hot, short sentence: Mencken is a fool. I wondered what on earth this Mencken had done to call down upon him the scorn of the South. The only people I had ever heard enounced in the South were Negroes, and this man was not a Negro. Then what ideas did Mencken hold that made a newspaper like the Commercial Appeal castigate him publicly? Undoubtedly he must be advocating ideas that the South did not like. Now, how could I find out about this Mencken? There was a huge library near the riverfront, but I knew that Negroes were not allowed to patronize its shelves any more than they were the parks and playgrounds of the city. I had gone into the library several times to get books for the white men on the job. Which of them would now help me to get books? I weighed the personalities of the men on the job. There was Don, a Jew; but I distrusted him. His position was not much better than mine and I knew that he was uneasy and insecure; he had always treated me in an offhand, bantering way that barely concealed his contempt. I was afraid to ask him to help me to get books; his frantic desire to demonstrate a racial solidarity with the whites against Negroes might make him betray me. Then how about the boss? No, he was a Baptist and I had the suspicion that he would not be quite able to comprehend why a black boy would want to read Mencken. There were other white men on the job whose attitudes showed clearly that they were Kluxers or sympathizers, and they were out of the question. There remained only one man whose attitude did not fit into an anti-Negro category, for I had heard the white men refer to him as \"Pope lover\". He was an Irish Catholic and was hated by the white Southerners. I knew that he read books, because I had got him volumes from the library several times. Since he, too, was an object of hatred, I felt that he might refuse me but would hardly betray me. I hesitated, weighing and balancing the imponderable realities. One morning I paused before the Catholic fellow's desk. \"I want to ask you a favor,\" I whispered to him. \"What is it?\" \"I want to read. I can't get books from the library. I wonder if you'd let me use your card?\" He looked at me suspiciously. 人不喜欢他。我知道他常读书。因为我曾经有几次帮他去图书馆借过书。因为他也是白人仇视的对象，我感到他也许会拒绝我但不大可能出卖我。我拿不准，只在心里反复琢磨，反复权衡着这无法估计的事情。 一天早上，我来到这位天主教徒的桌子边停下。 “我想请你帮个忙。”我低声对他说。 “什么忙？” “我想借书。我从图书馆中借不到书。 我不知道你可否让我用一用你的借书证？” 他满心怀疑地看着我。 “我的证大部分时间都借满了，”他说。 “我知道。”我边说边等待着，用沉默来提出我的问题。 “你不是想给我惹麻烦，对吗，小伙子？”他两眼瞪着我。 “噢，不，先生。” “你想借什么书？” “H.L.门肯写的。“ “哪一本？” “我不知道。他写过不止一本书吗？” “他写了好几本。” “我以前不知道。” “你为什么想读门肯的书？” “噢，我刚刚在报纸上看到他的名字。”我说。 “你想读书是不错的，”他说， “不过，你应该读一些好的书。” 我什么也没说。他会不会要监督我的阅读呢？ “让我想一下，我会想出办法的。”他说。 我转过身走开，他把我叫了回来。 有些不解地盯着我说： “理查德，不要对其他的白人讲此事。” “我知道，我是一个字也不会说的。” 几天后，他把我叫了过去。 “我用我妻子的名义搞了张借书证，”他说。“我的这张就给你了。” “谢谢你，先生。” “你认为自己能成功吗？” “我会搞妥的。”我说。 “如果他们怀疑上你，你就麻烦了。”他说。 “我会象你以前让我去借书时一样写张条子给图书馆。”我告诉他说， “我会签上你的名子的。” \"My card is full most of the time,\" he said. \"I see,\" I said and waited, posing my question silently. \"You're not trying to get me into trouble, are you, boy?\" he asked, staring at me. \"Oh, no, sir.\" \"What book do you want?\" \"A book by H. L. Mencken.\" \"Which one?\" \"I don't know. Has he written more than one?\" \"He has written several.\" \"I didn't know that.\" \"What makes you want to read Mencken?\" \"Oh, I just saw his name in the newspaper,\" I said. \"It's good of you to want to read,\" he said. \"But you ought to read the right things.\" I said nothing. Would he want to supervise my reading? \"Let me think,\" he said. \"I'll figure out something.\" I turned from him and he called me back. He stared at me quizzically. \"Richard, don't mention his to the other white men,\" he said. \"I understand,\" I said. \"I won't say a word.\" A few days later he called me to him. \"I've got a card in my wife's name,\" he said. \"Here's mine.\" \"Thank you, sir.\" \"Do you think you can manage it?\" \"I'll manage fine,\" I said. \"If they suspect you, you'll get in trouble,\" he said. \"I'll write the same kind of notes to the library that you wrote when you sent me for books,\" I told him. \"I'll sign your name.\" He laughed. \"Go ahead. Let me see what you get,\" he said. That afternoon I addressed myself to forging a note. Now, what were the name of books written by H. L. Mencken? I did not know any of them. I finally wrote what I thought would be a foolproof note: Dear Madam: Will you please let this nigger boy -- I used the word \"nigger\" to make the librarian feel that I could not possibly be the author of the note -- have some books by H.L. Mecken? I forged the white man's name. I entered the library as I had always done when on errands for whites, but I felt that I would somehow slip up and betray myself. I doffed my hat, stood a respectful distance from the desk, looked as 他听后笑了起来。 “去吧。看看你能借到什么书。” 那天下午，我竭尽全力造了一张假便条。但是，H.L.门肯写的书的书名都是什么呢？我一点也不知道。最后，我写了一张自认为万无一失的条子：亲爱的夫人，请让这个小黑鬼——我使用了“黑鬼”这个词是为了让图书管理员不认为我写这张便条——借几本H.L.门肯的书好吗？在便条上我假冒了这个白人的签名。 我象以往为白人跑腿借书时一样走进了图书馆，但不知怎么搞的，我总觉得自己不知会在什么地方出点岔子，最终暴露自己。我摘下帽子，毕恭毕敬地站在离借书桌有一段距离的地方，显出一副不会读书的样子，等着白人读者先借。桌边已经空无一人了，我仍在等着。 白人管理员看着我问道： “你想干什么，伙计？” 像不会说话一样 我迈向前，一声也没作的把那张伪造的条子递了过去。 “他想借门肯的书？”她问。 “我不知道，夫人。”我躲开了她的双眼。 “这张卡是谁给你的？” “福尔克先生。” “他在哪儿？” “他在工作。在M——光学仪器公司，”我说， “我以前在这儿给他借过书。” “我记得，”她说。“但他从未写过象这样的条子。” 噢，天啊！她有点怀疑了。也许她不会让我借这些书了。如果当时她转过身去的话，我一定会低头冲出门外，再也不回去了。这时，我想出了一个大胆的主意。 “你可以打电话问问他，夫人，”我说道，心里却紧张得砰砰狂跳。 “不是你自己用这些书吧？”她直率地问。 “噢，不会，夫人。我不会认字。” “我不知道他要门肯的什么书？”她低声说道。此时，我知道成功了。她已经忘了种族问题，在考虑其它的问题了。她走到书架前，又转过头来看过我一、两次，似乎仍对我有些怀疑。最后她拿了两本书走了过来。“我借给他两本书。”她说。 unbookish as possible, and waited for the white patrons to be taken care of. When the desk was clear of people, I still waited. The white librarian looked at me. \"What do you want, boy?\" As though I did not possess the power of speech, I stepped forward and simply handed her the forged note, not parting my lips. \"What books by Mencken does he want?\" She asked. \"I don't know, ma'am,\" I said, avoiding her eyes. \"Who gave you this card?\" \"Mr. Falk,\" I said. \"Where is he?\" \"He's at work, at M -- Optical Company,\" I said. \"I've been in here for him before.\" \"I remember,\" the woman said. \"But he never wrote notes like this.\" Oh, God, she's suspicious. Perhaps she would not let me have the books? If she had turned her back at that moment, I would have ducked out the door and never gone back. Then I thought of a bold idea. \"You can call him up, ma'am,\" I said, my heart pounding. \"You're not using these books, are you?\" she asked pointedly. \"Oh, no, ma'am. I can't read.\" \"I don't know what he wants by Mencken,\" she said under her breath. I knew now that I had non; she was thinking of other things and the race question had gone out of her mind. She went to the shelves. Once or twice she looked over her shoulder at me, as though she was still doubtful. Finally she came forward with two books in her hand. \"I'm sending him two books,\" she said. \"But tell Mr. Falk to come in next time, or send me the names of the books he wants. I don't know what he wants to read.\" I said nothing. She stamped the card and handed me the books. Not daring to glance at them. I went out of the library, fearing that the woman would call me back for further questioning. A block away from the library I opened one of the books and read a title: A Book of Prefaces. I was nearing my nineteenth birthday and I did not know how to pronounce the word \"preface\". I thumbed the pages and saw strange words and strange names. I shook my head, disappointed. I looked at the “但你要告诉福尔克先生，下次让他来，要不就告诉他要借的书的名字。我不清楚他借什么书。” 我什么也没有说。她在借书证上盖了章，然后把书交给了我。我连看都没敢看一眼借到的书就走出了图书馆，生怕她会把我叫回去进一步地盘问。走出一个街区后我打开其中一本书，看了一下书名：《序言集》。我马上就十九岁了，可我不知道怎样发“序言”这个词的音。我用手指快速地翻着，看到了一些奇怪的词和句子。我失望地摇了摇头。又去看另一本书。书名叫《偏见》。我知道这个词的含义。我从小到大都一直在听到这个词。我由此一下子对门肯的书有了警觉。为什么一个人要把书名定为《偏见》呢？这个词沾满了我对种族仇恨的所有记忆，我以致于无法想象会有人以它作为书名。也许我错看了门肯？一个带有偏见的人肯定是错的。 当我把书扔给福尔克先生看时，他望了望我皱起了眉头。 “图书管理员可能会给你打电话的。”我先给他提个醒。 “这好办。”他说，“但是当你读完这些书后，希望你能告诉我从中学到了些什么。” 那天晚上，有租来的房间里，我让热水冲着洗碗池里的猪肉烧豆罐头，一边打开那本《序言集》读了起来。我被书中的风格和它那干净、整齐，有力的句子给震惊了。他为什么要这样写呢？又是怎样象这样写成的呢？我把他想象成一个凶狠的魔鬼一样，用手中的笔奋力进攻，内心充满仇恨。对美国的一切进行抨击，而又竭力称颂欧洲或德国的一切东西。他嘲笑人性的弱点，嘲弄上帝和权威。这是怎么回事？我站起来，试图弄明白隐藏在字眼后面的实际情况。是的，这个人一生在战斗，用他手中的笔作武器进行战斗。他就象别人使用棍棒一样使用文字。文字可以作为武器吗？是的，因为在这儿就是如此。不，这种想法把我吓坏了。而是居然会有人有勇气说这些话。 我遇到了很多自己不知其意的词。有些我查了字典，有些词还没等我去查，就又遇见了，通过上下文词义清楚了。世界多么奇特啊！看完书后我得出一个结论，那就是不知由于other book; it was called Prejudices, I knew what that word meant; I had heard it all my life. And right off I was on guard against Mencken's books. Why would a man want to call a book Prejudices? The word was so stained with all my memories of racial hate that I cold not conceive of anybody using it for a title. Perhaps I had made a mistake about Mencken? A man who had prejudices must be wrong. When I showed the books to Mr. Falk, he looked at me and frowned. \"That librarian might telephone you,\" I warned him. \"That's all right,\" he said. \"But when you're through reading those books, I want you to tell me what you get out of them.\" That night in my rented room, while letting the hot water run over my can of pork and beans in the sink, I opened A Book of Preface and began to read. I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? I pictured the man as a raging demon, slashing with his pen, consumed with hate, denouncing everything American, extolling everything European or German, laughing at the weaknesses of people, mocking God, authority. What was this? I stood up, trying to realize what reality lay behind the meaning of the words … Yes, this man was fighting, fighting with words. He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club. Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for there they were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as a weapon? No. It frightened me. I read on and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it. I ran across many words whose meanings I did not know, and either looked them up in a dictionary or, before I had a chance to do that, encountered the word in a context that made its meaning clear. But what strange world was this? I concluded the book with the conviction that I had somehow overlooked something terribly important in life. I had once tried to write, had once reveled in feeling, had let my crude imagination roam, but the impulse to dream had been slowly beaten out of me by experience. Now it surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing. It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I 什么原因，自己忽视了生活中一些重要的东西。我曾经试过写作，也曾十分乐意去感受事物，让我那淳朴的想象云游四方。但人生的经历慢慢地磨灭了这些的冲动的梦想。现在它又冒了出来。我渴望看书，期待着新的观察和理解世界的方法。这不是相信或不相信自己所读到的东西的问题，而是一种对新的东西的感受，受到影响并使世界的面貌有的不同。 我又造了一些假便条，到图书馆去的次数也更多了。读书成了我的一种爱好。我读的第一本严肃小说是辛克莱·刘易斯的《大街》。它让我明白了自己的老板杰的尔德先生。我发现到他是一个典型的美国人。当我看到他拖着高尔夫球袋走进办公室时我总要笑。以前我一直觉得自己和老板间距离很远，现在我感到离他近多了，尽管还有一定的距离。我感到自己真正认识了他，我能够感到他的生活圈子小，具有局限性。因为我读了一本写一个虚构的人物乔治·F·巴比特的小说才有这番变化的。 我读了德莱塞的《珍尼·格哈特》和《嘉莉妹妹》。它们使我又一次真切地感受到了母亲所遭受的苦难。我完全沉浸在书中了。我变得沉默起来，思考着周围的生活。我不可能告诉任何人自己从小说中有什么收获，因为那正是对生活自身的感受。生活的经历使得我喜欢现代小说中的现实主义，自然主义，这些小说中我百读不厌。 我沉浸在新的思想和情绪之中。买了一令纸，我试着写作。可有时我什么也写不出来，有时写出的东西又极为乏味。我发现写作所需要的不仅仅是愿望和感情，于是便放弃了这种想法。但我仍想弄明白怎样才能充分地了解以便能够把他们写出来。我能否真正理解人和生活呢？对我为说，由于自己完全无知和作为黑人在社会中的地位。这似乎是一个可望而不可及的目标。我现在明白了作为一个黑人到底意味着什么。我能够忍受饥饿，也能面对被仇恨的现实。但感觉到自己连某些感情的东西都得不到，就连生活中最基本的东西对我来讲也以难以获取，这一点比其他任何东西都令我伤心。我有了一种新的渴望。 感觉很糟糕的事情为何如此之好？ read, but of feeling something new, of being 可能现在是采用一种新的策略去搞清affected by something that made the look of the 楚为什么今天的生活会如此困难。 world different. 以及该怎样来应付这个问题的时候了。假定I forget more notes and my trips to the library 事物不仅是它们通常看上去的样子， became frequent. Reading grew into a passion. My 当涉及到人的问题的时first serious novel was Sinclair Lewis's Main Street. 它们可能恰好相反。It made me see my boss, Mr. Gerald, and identify 候，一切事情都是自相矛盾的。 him as an American type. I would smile when I saw 例如，人们现在感到不满意，不是因为事情him lugging his golf bags into the office. I had 比以往更糟，而是因为事情比以往任何时候always felt a vast distance separating me from the 都好。以婚姻为例，在加利福利亚，十对夫boss, and now I felt closer to him, though still 妇中有约六对离婚--在一些较富裕的地区distant. I felt now that I knew him, that I could feel 这个比例还要高一些。人们必须承认，这些the very limits of his narrow life. And this had 数字说明了许多不满。但人们通常对此给予happened because I had read a novel about a 的解释--婚姻制度正处于崩溃的状态--根mythical man called George F. Babbitt. I read Dreiser's Jennie Gerhardt and Sister Carrie 本站不住脚。人们从未象现在这样渴望和欢and they revived in me a vivid sense of my 迎婚姻。的确，婚姻是如此地引人入胜，连mother's suffering; I was overwhelmed. I grew 很多正在办离婚的人几乎等不及法律许可silent, wondering about the life around me. It 他们重新结婚。 would have been impossible for me to have told anyone what I derived from these novels, for it was 问题在于人们对婚姻报有的期望从未象现nothing less than a sense of life itself. All my life 在这样高。有史以来，家底就一直是一个生had shaped me for the realism, the naturalism of 存的重要单元。从一个充当肉体生存的防御the modern novel, and I could not read enough of 体系，渐渐地演变成为一个经济生存的单them. 元。现在，毫无疑问，家庭变成了经济和肉Steeped in new moods and ideas, I bought a ream 体上的负担而不是财富。作为一个社会，基of paper and tried to write; but nothing would 人们不come, or what did come was flat beyond telling. I 本的生存和安全需要得到满足之后，discovered that more than desire and felling were 再相互需要去纺纱或是去和印第安人作战人们也不相互需要去洗盘子necessary to write and I dropped the idea. Yet I still 了--进而言之，wondered how it was possible to know people 或是去修电源插头。婚姻和家庭生活的纽带sufficiently to write about them? Could I ever learn 不再是功能性的，而是情感性的了。人们过about life and people? To me, with my vast 去相爱通常是因为他们彼此需要。而今却刚ignorance, my Jim Crow station in life, it seemed a 好相反，人们互相需要是因为他们彼此相task impossible of achievement. I now knew what being a Negro meant. I could endure the hunger. I 爱。 人们很少能听had learned to live with hate. But to feel that there 听一听最近离婚的人的抱怨，were feelings denied me, that the very breath of 到虐待和遗弃的事。常常听到的都是这样的life itself was beyond my reach, that more than 话：我们就是无法好好地沟通。我们之间受anything else hurt, wounded me. I had a new 教育的差距太大，难以逾越。 hunger. 我感到被婚姻束缚住了。他不让我自主行HOW COULD ANYTHING THAT FEELS 事。我们之间不再有很多共同的东西了。 SO BAD BE SO GOOD? 这些抱怨都很有意思。因为它们反映了由于Maybe it is time to adopt a new strategy in trying to figure out why life today is so difficult, and 婚姻未能达到原来人们对其所抱的高期望what can be done about it. Assume that not only 值而引发的高层次的不满。夫妻们现在期望are things often not what they seem, they may be --并要求--相互沟通和理解，共同的价值观just the opposite of what they seem. When it 和目标，精神伴侣，和美妙的亲密时刻。总comes to human affairs, everything is paradoxical. People are discontented these days, for example, not because things are worse than ever, but because things are better than ever. Take marriage. In California there are about six divorces for every ten marriages -- even higher in some of the better communities. One must admit that a good deal of discontent is reflected in those statistics. But the explanation so frequently offered -- that the institution of marriage is in a state of collapse -- simply does not hold. Marriage has never been more popular and desirable than is it now; so appealing in fact, that even those who are in the process of divorce can scarcely wait for the law to allow them to marry again. The problem is that people have never before entered marriage with the high expectations they now hold. Throughout history, the family has been a vital unit for survival, starting as a defense system for physical survival, and gradually becoming a unit for economic survival. Now, of course, the family has become a physical and economic liability rather than an asset. Having met, as a society, the basic survival and security needs, people simply don't need each other anymore to fight Indians or spin yarn -- or wash dishes or repair electrical plugs for that matter. The bonds of marriage and family life are no longer functional, but affectional. People used to come to love each other because they needed each other. Now it's just the other way around. They need each other because they love each other. Listening to the complaints of those recently divorced, one seldom hears of brutality and desertion, but usually something like, \"We just don't communicate very well\differences between us were simply too great to overcome\won't let me be me\common anymore\". These complaints are interesting, because they reflect high-order discontent resulting from the failure of marriage to meet the great expectations held for it. Couples now expect -- and demand -- communication and understanding, shared values and goals, intellectual companionship, great moments of intimacy. By and large, marriage today actually does deliver such moments, but as a result couples have gone on to burden the relationship with even greater demands. To some extent it has been the 体上看，婚姻的确带来了这样的时刻，但正是这样，夫妻们进一步用更高的要求来给婚姻关系增加负担。从某种程度上看，是婚姻的成功产生了这些不满。民权运动的情况也是一样。它所取得的就没有导致满足而是增加了紧张和不满意，特别是在那些从中获益的人中更是如此。 人们的不满情绪北方高于南方，城市高于乡村。 社会变革产生了一种令人不安的矛盾现象。即进步带来了对更多的进步的要求，而且这种要求是以不断加速的形式出现的。所以，与过去相比，社会已经大有进步了；但与将来可能的情形相比，却又远远落后了。由此使人们感到情况很糟，而这正是由于实际情况很好所致。 另一个问题是一切都是短暂的，没有什么是一成不变的。人们从小就养成了一种观念：为了增进个人的安全，我们需要安定，有根基，始终如一，需要了解熟悉周围的一切。但我们生活在一个各个方面都在不停变化着的世界上。无论是说到摩天大楼，还是家庭生活，是科学事实还是宗教信仰，一切都是非常短暂的，并且会越来越短暂。如果要画一张曲线来反映人类历史上发明创造的发生率的话，就会发现变化不仅在增加，而且在加速进行。变化越来越快--从某种意义上看，变化已经成了一种生活方式。在将来的世界上只有那些能够接受和喜欢暂时性制度的人才能够成功地生活下去。 人们还因为现今存在的参与情绪而烦恼。这是一个自己动手干的社会。 每个人都想参与到活动中去。爱默生的自己动手自己干的中号已经成为时代的口头禅。人们不会再做被动的成员，他们如今想成为积极的变革者。 人们可以在现代生活中的各个方面看到这种参与现象，--无论在校园，在教堂，在大众传播媒体中，在艺术上，在商业和工业中，在贫民窟的街道上，还是在家里。 问题是现代人似乎不能重新设计其体制，来不及迅速地容纳那些新的要求。 success of marriage that has created the discontent. The same appears to be true in the civil rights movement. The gains that have been made have led not to satisfaction but to increased tension and dissatisfaction, particularly among those benefiting from such gains. The discontent is higher in the North than in the South, higher in cities than in rural areas. The disturbing paradox of social change is that improvement brings the need for more improvement in constantly accelerating demands. So, compared to what used to be, society is way ahead; compared to what might be, it is way behind. Society is enabled to feel that conditions are rotten, because they are actually so good. Another problem is that everything is temporary, nothing lasts. We have grown up with the idea that in order to develop personal security we need stability, roots, consistency, and familiarity. Yet we live in a world which in every respect is continually changing. Whether we are talking about sky-scrapers or family life, scientific facts or religious values, all are highly temporary and becoming even more so. If one were to plot a curve showing the incidence of invention throughout the history of man, one would see that change is not just increasing but actually accelerating. Changes are coming faster and faster -- in a sense change has become a way of life. The only people who will live successfully in tomorrow's world are those who can accept and enjoy temporary systems. People are also troubled because of the new participative mood that exists today. It's a do-it-yourself society; every layman wants to get into the act. Emerson's \"do your own thing\" has become the cliché of the times. People no longer accept being passive members. They now want to be active changers. This participative phenomenon can be seen in every part of contemporary life -- on campus, in the church, in the mass media, in the arts, in business and industry, on ghetto streets, in the family. The problem is that modern man seems unable to redesign his institution fast enough to accommodate the new demands, the new intelligence, the new abilities of segments of society which, heretofore, have not been taken 新的智慧，新的社会能力。至到如今，仍然没有认真对待。相应的结果是，人们被黑人革命吓怕了，被学生的激进活动惊呆了。现在他们又面临着可能更具破坏性的事情--妇女的反叛。社会只不过以往从未经历过这些问题罢了。要解决这些问题，需要采用与这些问题一样新、一样相异、一样矛盾的策略才行。不要试图去减少不满的情绪，应该去提高不满的水平或质量。也许最有希望在今天的社会上做到的是产生高水平的不满，即对那些真正事关紧要的事情的不满。在估价方案的时候，不要以它们会使人们多么高兴，满意为标准，而要看它们会产生什么样的不满。例如，当一个顾问在评价一个机构是否健全时，他不是去问是不是没有抱怨？而是要问有些什么样的抱怨？ 不要试图渐进地变革，要进行大的变革。毕竟大的变革相对而言比小的变革要容易一些。有些人认为进行改进的方式是使变革小到让人难以察觉得到。这种方法从未成功过。人们不禁要问，为什么这种思想还在继续？人人都知道如何去抵抗小的变革，他们时时都在这样做。然而，如果变革足够大的话，要想对它发起抵抗就不行了。管理部门可以进行大规模的机构改革，但如果让一个经理把某个人的办公桌从一个地方移到另一个地方的话，你就会看到他将遇到的困难会有多大。所有的变革都会有阻力，问题在于怎样使变革的步子大到使之有机会获得成功。 巴克明斯特?富勒说过，社会需要的不是变革而是新的形式。比如，要减少交通事故，就该去改进汽车和公路而不是司机。这一概念也适用于人际关系。有必要根据社会构成考虑问题，提供人员安排，从而引出人们真正想从自己身上看到的东西。人们一直在苦心经营着有形的建筑，现在开始关心人类自身作为其组成成份的系统设计了。但这些设计大多是为了安全、效率和生产力而进行的。系统设计没有影响人们最为关心的生活方面，比如家底生活，谈情说爱和美学欣赏等。在进行超越迄今为止人类所有的一切经seriously. Consequently, people are frightened by the black revolution, paralyzed by student activism, and now face what may be even more devastating -- the women's rebellion. Society simply has not had these kinds of problems before, and to meet them it will have to adopt strategies for their solution that are as new, and as different, and as paradoxical as are the problems themselves. Instead of trying to reduce the discontent felt, try to raise the level or quality of the discontent. Perhaps the most that can be hoped for is to have high-order discontent in today's society, discontent about things that really matter. Rather than evaluating programs in terms of how happy they make people, how satisfied those people become, programs must be evaluated in terms of the quality of the discontent they engender. For example, if a consultant wants to assess whether or not an organization is healthy, he doesn't ask, \"Is there an absence of complaints?\" but rather, \"What kinds of complaints are there?\" Instead of trying to make gradual changes in small increments, make big changes. After all, big changes are relatively easier to make than are small ones. Some people assume that the way to bring about improvement is to make the change small enough so that nobody will notice it. This approach has never worked, and one can't help but wonder why such thinking continues. Everyone knows how to resist small changes; they do it all the time. If, however, the change is big enough, resistance can't be mobilized against it. Management can make a sweeping organizational change, but just let a manager try to change someone's desk from here to there, and see the great difficulty he encounters. All change is resisted, so the question is how can the changes be made big enough so that they have a chance of succeeding? Buckminster Fuller ahs said that instead of reforms society needs new forms; e.g., in order to reduce traffic accidents, improve automobiles and highways instead of trying to improve drives. The same concept should be applied to human relations. There is a need to think in terms of social architecture, and to provide arrangements among people that evoke what they really want to see in themselves. Mankind takes great pains with 历和人际安排时，我们需要社会科学和自然科学的技术。不类不应该成为其环境的受害者，而应该通过自身的环境实现自身的价值。 当今重大的前沿课题是人类潜能的开发。人的那种似乎无限的适应能力。生长，设计其自身命运的能力我们要学很多的东西，但有一点我们早已知晓：我们不必消极地坐等明天，我们可以创造未来。 怪才 他身材矮小，同他的身体相比，头却很大——他是一个常生病的小个子。 他的神经有毛病，他的皮肤也有病。要是贴身穿的衣服比丝绸粗糙一点的话，他就会非常痛苦。而且他还患有狂想症。 他是个自负的怪才。他是一刻都没有正眼看过世界和世人。除了和自己和关在他看来，他不仅是世界上最伟大的剧作家之一、最伟大的思想家之一、最伟大的作曲家之一。听他谈话，他就是集莎士比亚、贝多芬、柏拉图于一身。你如果听他谈话并不会有什么困难。他是人世间最健谈的人之一。你如果听他谈话并不会有什么困难。他是人世间最健谈的人之一。如果和他在一起呆上一个晚上，就等于花一个晚上听他一人独讲。他有时讲得很精彩，有时却让人讨厌。不过无论是精彩还是让人讨厌，他的话题只有一个，那就是他自己，他和所想和他所为。 他有一种癖号，就是认为自己总是对的。对于来自任何人的一点点不同的意见，在这最不起眼的观点上，很可能使他夸夸其谈几个钟头。用各种方法来证明自己是正确的。和尽力流利的证明最后他的听众目瞪口呆，为了息事宁人，只好同意他的观点。 他从来都没有想过，他和他所做的事对于同他有联系的人来说并不是最令人感兴趣的。他对天底下差不多作何事情都有自己的观点。无论是素食主义、戏剧、政治还是音乐。为了证明自已的观点，他写了小册子信，书，physical architecture, and is beginning to concern itself with the design of systems in which the human being is a component. But most of these designs are only for safety, efficiency, or productivity. System designs are not made to affect those aspects of life people care most about such as family life, romance, and esthetic experiences. Social technology as well as physical technology need to be applied in making human arrangements that will transcend anything mankind has yet experienced. People need not be victimized by their environments; they can be fulfilled by them. The great frontier today is the exploration of the human potential man's seemingly limitless ability to adapt, to grow, to invent his own destiny. There is much to learn, but we already know this: the future need not happen to us; we can make it happen. 和成千上万的字。共数百页。通常是靠别人资助－而且总是坐着把这些东西大声的读。一念就是几个小时，给他的朋友和家人。 他写歌剧，一有了故事的概要，他就邀请——说得更准确一点是召唤——他那一帮朋友去他家，听他念故事概要。他请他们来不是听他们批评意见的，而是听他们赞扬的。当歌剧的词全部写完后，他的朋友们还得再来听他读整部戏的歌词。而后你就拿去发表，可有时歌词写好了，数年后其配乐才完成。他弹钢琴象一个作曲家，一样弹得糟糕透顶，而且他还总是坐在钢琴傍，面对有他同时代的最优秀的钢琴家在场的一群人，数小时地为他们演奏；不用说，他演奏的都是自己写的音乐作品。他有作曲家的嗓子。他总是邀请杰出的声乐家到家里，给他们演唱自己写的歌剧，一个人演所有的角色。 他的感情就象6岁孩子那样极不稳定。只要感到不舒服，他总是乱骂一通，直跺脚，要么就情绪极其低落，伤心地说要去东方当和尚，度过余生。十分钟后如果有什么事让他高兴的话，他就会冲出门，在花园里跑来跑去，或者在沙发上跳上跳下，或头朝下倒立着。一只爱犬死了他会痛不欲生，可他要是冷酷起来，连罗马皇帝也会发抖的。 他简直缺乏任何责任感。他不仅好象没有能力养活自己，而且他也从来没有想到有这么做的责任。他坚信人们该养活自己。由于是这样认为的，他向所有的人——无论是男人还是女人，无论是朋友还是陌生人——谁有能力拿出钱来，他就向谁借。他写信向别人乞讨，一写就是二十封；有时奴颜婢膝，毫无羞耻，有时却非常傲慢地把别人给他的特权赏给他心目中的捐助人，如果领受者拒绝接受，他就会万分愤怒。我没有找到他把钱付给或还给没有法律依据的借款人的任何记录。 只要弄得到钱，他就象印度王公那样花销。THE MONSTER He was an undersized little man, with a head too big for his body -- a sickly little man. His nerves were had. He had skin trouble. It was agony for him to wear anything next to his skin coarser than silk. And he had seclusions of grandeur. He was a monster of conceit. Never for one minute did he look at the world or at people, except in relation to himself. He was not only the most important person in the world, to himself; in his own eyes he was the only person who existed. He believed himself to be one of the greatest dramatists in the world, one of the greatest thinkers, and one of the greatest composers. To hear him talk, he was Shakespeare, and Beethoven, and Plato, rolled into one. And you would have had no difficulty in hearing him talk. He was one of the most exhausting conversationalists that ever lived. An evening with him was an evening spent in listening to a monologue. Sometimes he was brilliant; sometimes he was maddeningly tiresome. But whether he was being brilliant or dull, he had one sole topic of conversation: himself. What he thought and what he did. He had a mania for being in the right. The slightest hint of disagreement, from anyone, on the most trivial point, was enough to set him off on a harangue that might last for house, in which he proved himself right in so many ways, and with such exhausting volubility, that in the end his hearer, stunned and deafened, would agree with him, for the sake of peace. It never occurred to him that he and his doing were not of the most intense and fascinating interest to anyone with whom he came in contact. He had theories about almost any subject under the sun, including vegetarianism, the drama, politics, and music; and in support of these theories he wrote pamphlets, letters, books … thousands upon thousands of words, hundreds and hundreds of pages. He not only wrote these things, and published them -- usually at somebody else's expense -- but he would sit and read them aloud, for hours, to his friends and his family. He wrote operas, and no sooner did he have the synopsis of a story, but he would invite -- or rather summon -- a crowed of his friends to his house, and read it aloud to them. Not for criticism. For applause. When the complete poem was written, the friends had to come again, and hear that read aloud. Then he would publish the poem, sometimes years before the music that went with it was written. He played the piano like a composer, in the worst sense of what that implies, and he would sit down at the piano before parties that included some of the finest pianists of his time, and play for them, by the hour, his own music, needless to say. He had a composer's voice. And he would invite eminent vocalists to his house and sing them his operas, taking all the parts. He had the emotional stability of a six-year-old child. When he felt out of sorts, he would rave and stamp, or sink into suicidal gloom and talk darkly of going to the East to end his days as a Buddhist wonk. Ten minutes later, when something pleased him, he would rush out of doors and run around the garden, or jump up and down on the sofa, or stand on his head. He could be grief-stricken over the death of a pet dog, and he could be callous and heartless to a degree that would have made a Roman emperor shudder. He was almost innocent of any sense of responsibility. Not only did he seem incapable of supporting himself, but it never occurred to him that he was under ay obligation to do so. He was convinced that the world owed him a living. In support of this belief, he borrowed money from 一旦他的某部歌剧有望演出，就足以使他欠下的帐单十倍于预计给他的版税。无人会知道——他本人也一定不曾知道——他欠别人多少钱。但我们肯定知道的是，资助他最多的人曾经给过他六千块钱来偿还在某个城市要得最多的欠款。而一年后为了能使他在另一城市生活而不会因债务入狱又不得不给他一万六千元。 在其他方面，他同样肆无忌惮。在他一生中，与他有过关系的女人无计其数。他的第一位妻子和他生活了二十年，容忍、原谅他的种种不忠行为。他的第二位妻子原来是对他最忠诚、最崇拜的朋友的妻子，可他却把她从朋友那里夺走了。更有甚者，当他还在设法说服她离开第一位丈夫时就写信给朋友，问他能否穿针引线介绍某位有钱的女人——只有她有钱，他都会为了她的钱而娶她。 在和他人交往中他也非常自私。他对朋友的喜好完全是由他们对他是否忠诚，或者他们是否在经济上或艺术上对他有用来决定的。要是他们让他有所失望——哪怕是拒绝宴会邀请——或是开始不是那么有用了，他就会毫不犹豫地不与他们往来了。他在晚年只剩一个朋友，而且还是在中年时认识的。 这个怪才名叫理查德·瓦格纳。我所讲的在关他的一切都有案可查——在报纸上，在警方报告中，在认识他的人的证词里，在他自己的信件中，和他自传的字里行间里都能可以找到记录。这个记录奇怪的是它对此人没有丝毫影响。 因为这位身材矮小、多病、难以相处、让人着魔的人一直是正确的。这就给我们开了一个玩笑。他是世界上最伟大的戏剧家之一；他是伟大的思想家；他是最伟大的音乐天才之一。迄今为止世人所看到的。世人的确应养着他。 当你细想他所写的东西时——十三部歌剧和音乐剧，其中十一部仍在上演，八部无可everybody who was good for a loan -- men, women, friends, or strangers. He wrote begging letters by the score, sometimes groveling without shame, at other loftily offering his intended benefactor the privilege of contributing to his support, and being mortally offended if the recipient declined the honor. I have found no record of his ever paying or repaying money to anyone who did not have a legal claim upon it. What money he could lay his hands on he spent like an Indian rajah. The mere prospect of a performance of one of his operas was enough to set him to running up bills amounting to ten times the amount of his prospective royalties. No one will ever know -- certainly he never knew -- how much money he owed. We do know that his greatest benefactor gave him $6,000 to pay the most pressing of his debts in one city, and a year later had to give him $16,000 to enable him to live in another city without being thrown into jail for debt. He was equally unscrupulous in other ways. An endless procession of women marched through his life. His first wife spent twenty years enduring and forgiving his infidelities. His second wife had been the wife of his most devoted friend and admirer, from whom he stole her. And even while he was trying to persuade her to leave her first husband he was writing to a friend to inquire whether he could suggest some wealthy woman -- any wealthy woman -- whom he could marry for her money. He was completely selfish in his other personal relationships. His liking for his friends was measured solely by the completeness of their devotion to him, or by their usefulness to him, whether financial or artistic. The minute they failed him -- even by so much as refusing dinner invitation -- or began to lessen in usefulness, he cast them off without a second thought. At the end of his life he had exactly one friend left whom he had known even in middle age. The name of this monster was Richard Wagner. Everything that I have said about him you can find on record -- in newspapers, in police reports, in the testimony of people who knew him, in his own letters, between the lines of his autobiography. And the curious thing about this record is that it doesn't matter in the least. Because this undersized, sickly, disagreeable, fascinating little man was right all the time. The 争议地列入世界音乐剧名着——当你倾听他所写的一切时，他无论是欠债还是让人伤心，所有这些代价似乎算不了什么。想想曾经给予的那份奢侈吧，由于拿破仑的命运，他毁来了法国，肆虐了欧洲。这样一想，也许你就会同意，几千元的债务用来换取《指环》三部曲，代价并不算高。 就是他对朋友和妻子不忠，又算得了什么？他有一位至死都能忠心耿耿的爱人：音乐。他一刻都没有与自己信仰的，梦想的东西进行妥协。他的音乐中没有一行是一般人所能构思出来的。即使他乏味或极其糟糕，也只是大手笔中的乏味。就是他最严重的错误中也有伟大之处。这可不是原谅不原谅的事情。又抓又扯，想冲出来，尖叫着，要他把身体的乐曲谱出来。奇迹是在短暂的七十年中，他竟然完成了这一切。就算是一个天才，他没有时间做普通人这奇怪吗？ 齐里茨基法 总有一天会有人去研究动物对历史的影响。在这样的研究里，格雷厄姆太太的猫肯定会包括在其中。现在已经确切地证实了，这只猫的经历使人萌发了快速冷冻人体这一想法，而这一想法转而又使齐里茨基法获得了通过。 我们还得回到了1950年，在洛杉矶报纸的合订本中去寻找这个故事。简言之，有位弗雷德·C·格雷厄姆太太，把一大堆食品放进了家用冰柜，就在同一天，她的宠物猫失踪了。她从来没有认为这两件事之间会有联系。猫直到六星期后才被发现当它的主人去冰箱取东西时。然他很爱这宠物，但我们可以想象，发现它时，她的恐惧胜于悲伤。她把被冰裹着的小躯体拎出冰柜，放在地板上；然后，赶在晕倒之前跑到了邻居家。 格雷厄姆太太苏醒过来后变得底里；好几个小时过去了，她才完全平静下来，说服人们所有事情不是她撰的。她劝邻居陪伴她回家。他们在冰柜前发现了一小滩水，一只湿透的猫正忙忙碌碌舐着自己。邻居后来告joke was on us. He was one of the world's greatest dramatists; he was a great thinker; he was one of the most stupendous musical geniuses that, up to now, the world has ever seen. The world did owe him a living. When you consider what he wrote -- thirteen operas and music dramas, eleven of them still holding the stage, eight of them unquestionably worth ranking among the world's great musico-dramatic masterpieces -- when you listen to what he wrote, the debts and heartaches that people had to endure from him don't seem much of a price. Think of the luxury with which for a time, at least, fate rewarded Napoleon, the man who ruined France and looted Europe; and then perhaps you will agree that a few thousand dollars' worth of debts were not too heavy a price to pay for the Ring trilogy. What if he was faithless to his friends and to his wives? He had one mistress to whom he was faithful to the day of his death: Music. Not for a single moment did he ever compromise with what he believed, with what be dreamed. There is not a line of his music that could have been conceived by a little mind. Even when he is dull, or downright bad, he is dull in the grand manner. There is greatness about his worst mistakes. Listening to his music, one does not forgive him for what he may or may not have been. It is not a matter of forgiveness. It is a matter of being dumb with wonder that his poor brain and body didn't burst under the torment of the demon of creative energy that lived inside him, struggling, clawing, scratching to be released; tearing, shrieking at him to write the music that was in him. The miracle is that what he did in the little space of seventy years could have been done at all, even by a great genius. Is it any wonder that he had no time to be a man? 诉记者，这只猫正舐着它的后腿。上面还有一些冰。对于他来说是相信这件事的。 一周以后发表了一篇跟踪报道。报道说，那次冒险经历，未使猫受到伤害。报道进一步引用格雷厄姆太太的话说，这只猫在失踪之前曾大吃了一顿。它一得救，身上一干，便睡了很大一会，跟它往常吃饭后的行为一模一样，而且直到晚上它都没有再饿。生命的进程突然完全中止，而在解冻之后，生命正好在曾经中止的地方重新开始，这一点报道中作了明确的叙述。 也许把所有的责任推给一只不幸的猫不公平。这种事如果发生在国内其它任何地方，都会成为人们的谈资。只有少数人信，多数人不信，接着人们也就会将它遗忘。然而它却发生在洛杉矶。在那个地方，可能也只有在那个地方，这件事根本没被人忘记。它所揭示的原理为一种极为成功的生意打下了基础。 我们该怎样自待齐里茨基兄弟？是罪魁祸首还是开拓者？如果赞成后一种看法，我们就必须承认，他们无疑是具有探索精神和心甘情愿到未知领域去冒险的精神。然而，他们的开拓精神——如果我们同意这样说的话——同样毫无疑问与寻找快速捞钞票的门道有紧密联系。 在他们的第一批顾客中，有的支付了高达一万五千美元的首次冷冻费和每年一千美元的昂贵的储存费。齐氏兄弟拥有并经营的这家工厂，是全世界最大的快速冷冻厂之一。他们宣称道，把冷冻设备改为储藏设备来装人，花费极高，所以收费也随之而高。 那些付过这些高额费用的早期顾客们数年之后解冻了，当他们发现其他顾客只交三千美元就获得了同样的服务。他们扬言要ZERITSKY'S LAW 公开抗议。齐里茨基兄弟为此支付了一笔巨Somebody someday will make a study of the 这时的齐氏兄弟已经能够轻而易举influence of animals on history. Among them, Mrs. 额退款。Graham's cat should certainly be included in any 地付出这笔钱。而且，因为他们不欢迎对他所有的退款都是毫无怨such study. It has now been definitely established 们企业的任何宣传，that the experiences of this cat led to the idea of 言地付出的。三千美元成了标准价，外加每quick-frozen people, which, in turn, led to the 年一百美元的储存费，解冻时不另收费。 passage of Zeritsky's Law. 齐里茨基兄弟是彻头彻尾的生意人。只 We must go back to the files of the Los Angeles newspapers for 1950 to find the story. In brief, a Mrs. Fred C. Graham missed her pet cat on the same day that she put a good deal of food down in her home deep-freeze unit. She suspected no connection between the two events. The cat was not to be found until six days later, when its owner went to fetch something from the deepfreeze. Much as she loved her pet, we may imagine that she was more horror-than grief-stricken at her discovery. She lifted the little ice-encased body out of the deep--freeze and set it on the floor. Then she managed to run as far as the next door neighbor's house before fainting. Mrs. Graham became hysterical after she was revived, and it was several hours before she could be quieted enough to persuade anybody that she hadn't made up the whole thing. She prevailed upon her neighbor to go back to the house with her. In front of the deep-freeze they found a small pool of water, and a wet cat, busily licking itself. The neighbor subsequently told reporters that the cat was concentrating its licking on one of its hind legs, where some ice still remained, so that she, for one, believed the story. A follow-up dispatch, published a week later, reported that the cat was unharmed by the adventure. Further, Mrs. Graham was quoted as saying that the cat had had a large meal just before its disappearance; that as soon after its rescue as it had dried itself off, it took a long nap, precisely as it always did after a meal; and that it was not hungry again until evening. It was clear from the accounts that the life processes had been stopped dead in their tracks, and bad, after defrosting, resumed at exactly the point where they left off. Perhaps it is unfair to pull all the responsibility on one luckless cat. Had such a thing happened anywhere else in the country, it would have been talked about, believed by a few, disbelieved by most, and forgotten. But it happened in Los Angeles. There, and probably only there, the event was anything but forgotten; the principles it revealed became the basis of a hugely successful business. How shall we regard the Zeritsky Brothers? As archvillains or pioneers? In support of the latter view, it must be admitted that the spirit of inquiry and the willingness to risk the unknown were indisputably theirs. However, their pioneering -- if 要付了钱，任何人都可以把自己冷藏起来，想多久就多久，他们不会问任何问题。所有费用必须预先支付，这是铁的规定。 罪犯是第一批申请快速冷冻的顾客。在过去的年月里，他们构成了齐里茨基兄弟主意的主体。抢劫之后，把赃物藏起来（留出至关重要的那笔必须预先支付的款项），然后到齐里茨基兄弟那里，在他们美妙的冷藏室呆上五年或是十年。出来时发现当年追捕他们的叫喊声早已不复存在，他们的罪行已被遗忘。他们取出赃物，奢侈地度过余生。 由于他们的顾客大多声名狼藉，齐里茨基兄弟便用一套数字来记录所有的档案。姓名从不在登记册上出现，保证不让人知道。 寻找逃犯的执法人员，既想不出办法来破除这套体系，也找不到法律条文来证明快速冷冻为非法行为。也许，事实是，他们并没有认真地去寻找可以适用的法律。只要齐里茨基兄弟保持缄默，不做广告，也不引起公众的注意，他们就可以安全地继续从事那种奇特的生意。 洛杉矶的市政官员，尤其是警察，享受了一段从未有过的好日子。于是，他们便永远地告别那份谋生计的辛苦工作。 尽管洛杉矶有相当一部分人成为永久的补贴对象，齐里茨基兄弟的财产还是增长到令人难以置信的地步。到他们去世，把生意传给儿子们的时候，它已是一座金矿，而且是一座用之不竭的金矿。 除罪犯之外，大多数申请快速冷冻的人似乎都是些陷于难以维持的婚姻困境中的丈夫或妻子。后来，他们的经历被详细地写进了忏悔杂志。通常是丈夫逃到洛杉矶，自闭适当的时间，出来后，他那不温柔的妻子早已去世或另作了安排。如果我们相信这些杂志，那么这个计划在大多数情况下都会让人非常满意。 父辈们所犯下的罪孽可能会报应到子辈们身上，但是我们常常看到的是子辈们断送了你辈们的毕生事业，这一古老而熟悉的模式不断反复着！齐里茨基兄弟都是极为谨慎之人。他们监督操作程序中的每一个细节，并we agree to call it that -- was, equally indisputably, bound up with the quest for a fast buck. Some of their first clients paid as high as $15,000 for the initial freezing, and the exorbitant rate of $1,000 per year as a storage charge. The Zeritsky Brothers owned and managed one of the largest quick-freezing plants in the world, and it was their claim that converting the freezing equipment and storage facilities to accommodate humans was extremely expensive, hence the high rates. When the early clients who paid these rates were defrosted years later, and found other clients receiving the same services for as little as $3,000, they threatened a row and the Zeritskys made substantial refunds. By that time they could easily afford it, and since any publicity about their enterprise was unwelcome to them, all refunds were made without a whimper. $3,000 became the standard rate, with $100 per year the storage charge, and no charge for defrosting. The Zeritskys were businessmen, first and last. Anyone who had the fee could put himself away for whatever period of time he wished, and no questions asked, The ironclad rule was that full payment had to be made in advance. Criminals were the first to apply for quick-freezing, and formed the mainstay of the Zeritskys' business through the years. What more easy than to rob, hide the loot (except for that all-important advance payment), present yourself to the Zeritskys and remain in their admirable chambers for five or ten years, emerge to find the hue and cry long since died down and the crime forgotten, recover your haul and live out your life in luxury? Due to the shady character of most of their patrons, the Zeritskys kept all records by a system of numbers. Name never appeared on the books, and anonymity was guaranteed. Law enforcement agents, looking for fugitives from justice, found no way to break down this system, nor any law which they could interpret as making it illegal to quick-freeze. Perhaps the truth is that they did not search too diligently for a law that could be made to apply. As long as the Zeritskys kept things quiet and did not advertise or attract public attention, they could safely continue their bizarre business. City officials of Los Angeles, and particularly members of the police force, enjoyed a period of 用一套反复核实的详尽系统记录档案。他们相当精明，深知自己的生意必须有绝对的可靠性。满意的齐氏顾客才会是沉默的顾客。一名不满意的顾客就足以毁掉他们的整个生意。 齐里茨基兄弟的子辈们由于贪婪，过分扩张生意，以致他们四兄弟也无法亲自监督每一个细节。致命的错误肯定迟早都会发生。错误果然发生了，受害者将他的冤情公布于众。 这篇报道刊登在一家全国性的杂志上。每份杂志一到报摊，一个小时后就销售一空。在《他们强行将我冷冻》的标题下，约翰·A·莫纳汉讲述了他的悲惨故事。三十七岁那年，他不顾一切地爱上了一位十六岁的姑娘。 她尚未成熟，举止轻浮，想在成家过安居生活之前再“玩”几年。 “她对我说”她写道，“五年之后再回来找她，这话让我不得不考虑一个问题，五年之后，我就四十二岁了，一位二十一岁的姑娘要一个比她大两倍的男人干什么？ 约翰·莫纳汉与熟知齐氏家族生意的人有些交往。他不但看到一个机会，可以使心爱的人长到二十一岁，自己仍保持三十七岁。而且还预见到一个无痛苦的办法，能使他度过他必须忍受没有姑娘陪伴的那五个年头。于是，他前去冷冻，预付了3000美元和五百美元的的储存费。他声称，留下了“书面证明，五年后他们出来，以免出错。“ 没有人知道失误是如何发生的，但不知为什么，约翰·A·莫纳斯汉，更确切地说是给他指定的那个号码，在册子上登记的是二十五年，而不是五年。一经解冻，发现一个世纪已过去四分之一，他便勃然大怒。他对心上人的爱，与其他一切一起完好地保存了下来，但是她早已不再等他，成了一位有二儿六女的幸福母亲。 莫纳汉指控齐氏家族“毁了他的一生”，这未必可以完全相信。他依然年轻，而且传闻杂志付给他十万美元的文章版权税，这也是真的。 正如大多数读者所知的那样，现在人所共知unparalleled prosperity. Lawyers and other experts who thought they were on the track of legal means by which to liquidate the Zeritsky empire found themselves suddenly able to buy a ranch or a yacht or both, and retire forever from the arduous task of earning a living. Even with a goodly part of the population of Los Angeles as permanent pensioners, the Zeritsky fortune grew to incredible proportions. By the time the Zeritsky Brothers died and left the business to their sons, it was a gold mine, and an inexhaustible one at that. Next to criminals, the majority of people who applied for quick-freezing seem to have been husbands or wives caught in insupportable marital situations. Their experiences were subsequently written up in the confession magazines. It was usually the husband who fled to Los Angeles and incarcerated himself for an appropriate number of years, at the end of which time his unamiable spouse would have died or made other arrangements. If we can believe the magazines, this scheme worked out very well in most cases. The sins of the fathers may be visited on the sons, but how often we see repeated the old familiar pattern of the sons destroying the lifework of the fathers! The Zeritsky Brothers were fanatically meticulous. They supervised every detail of their operations, and kept their records with an elaborate system of checks and doublechecks. They were shrewd enough to realize that complete dependability was essential to their business. A satisfied Zeritsky client was a silent client. One dissatisfied client would be enough to blow the business apart. The sons, in their greed, over-expanded to the point where they could not, even among the four of them, personally supervise each and every detail. A fatal mistake was bound to occur sooner or later. When it did, the victim broadcast his grievance to the world. The story appeared in a national magazine, every copy of which was sold an hour after it appeared on the stands. Under the title They Put the Freeze on Me! John A. Monahan told his tragic tale. At the age of 37, he had fallen desperately in love with a girl of 16. She was immature and frivolous and wanted to \"play around\" a little more before she settled down. 的“齐里茨基法”，在莫纳汉的故事传开之后的三天，就被国会通过，并由总统签署了。在格雷厄姆太太的猫掉进冰柜七十五年之后，国家法律规定，任何人对任何生命，用快速冷冻施行冰冻，都得处以死刑。论是人还是动物。而且所有快速冷冻的人体必须立即解冻。 洛杉矶报纸报道说，从莫纳汉的故事公布于众的那天起，成千上万的男人们涌进这座城市。他们接踵而至，所有的交通全被堵塞了一连几天，直到齐里茨基法得以通过。 如果我们考虑一下这项法律通过的日期，并还记得由于严峻的国际形势，刚刚通过的一项对十六岁到六十岁的男子全部实行征兵的议案，我们就会明白国会为什么不得不采取行动了。 当然，齐里茨基兄弟是第一批被招进部队的。考虑到他们的经历，他们被安排负责一座军用脱水食品仓库，而且受到警告，别再想做什么新生意。 科幻小说的作用 1972年为世人所瞩目的一件事就是出版了一本颇有争议的书——《增长的极限》。这一有关世界前景的研究，是由麻省理工学院一组科学家借助模拟未来社会的电脑“模型”进行的，预言了人类若不大幅度限制人口增长和自然资源消耗，就会出现全球性的灾难。 该书问世时大多数人吃了一惊。许多人拒绝相信存在发生灾难的可能性、盖然性、必然性——倘使我们不改变对“地球飞船”的管理方式的话。但科幻小说家及其读者却既不惊讶，也不愤慨。事实上，这项研究对他们来说已不是什么新鲜事了。他们毕生都在制作自己的未来世界“模型”，并付诸试验。 因为科学家们试图用电脑模型实现的事与科幻小说作家及其读者数十年来所做的非常相象。科幻小说作家并不依靠电脑来“模拟”一个未来世界，而是凭借人类的想象力。这给了作家某些极为有利的条件。 有利条件之一就是灵活性。 科幻小说作家的职责不在预言未来，他们做的比这重要得多。他们试图展现许多可能出\"She told me,\" he wrote, \"to come back in five years, and that stared me thinking. In five year I'd be 42, and what would a girl of 21 want with a man twice as old as her?\" John Monahan moved in circles where the work of the Zeritskys was well known. Not only did he see an opportunity of being still only 37 when his darling reached 21, but he foresaw a painless way of passing the years which he must endure without her. Accordingly, he presented himself for the deep-freeze, paid his $3000 and the $500 storage charge in advance, and left, he claimed, \"written instructions to let me out in five years, so there'd he no mistakes.\" Nobody knows how the slip happened, but somehow John A. Monahan, or rather the number assigned to him, was entered on the books for 25 years instead of five years. Upon being defrosted, and discovering that a quarter of a century had elapsed, his rage was awesome. Along with everything else, his love for his sweetheart had been perfectly preserved, but she had given up waiting for him and was a happy mother of two boys and six girls. Monahan's accusation that the Zeritskys had \"ruined his life\" may be taken with a grain of salt. He was still a young man, and the rumor that he got a hundred thousand for the magazine rights to his story was true. As most readers are aware, what has come to be known as \"Zeritsky's law\" was passed by Congress and signed by the President three days after Monahan's story broke. Seventy-five years after Mrs. Graham's cat feel into the freezer, it became he law of the land that the mandatory penalty for anyone applying quick-freezing methods to any living thing, human or animal, was death. Also, all quick-frozen people were to be defrosted immediately. Los Angeles papers reported that beginning on the day Monahan's story appeared, men by the thousands poured into the city. They continued to come, choking every available means of transport, for the next two days -- until, that is, Zerisky's Law went through. When we consider the date, and remember that due to the gravity of the international situation, a bill had just been passed drafting all men from 16 to 60, we realize why Congress had to act. 现在我们面前的前景。 因为并非只有一种前途，一种时代会不可避免地降临人间。我们的未来世界是由人类用自身的行动一点一滴地、一分一秒地创造起来的。科幻小说的一个重要作用，便是揭示人类某几种行为的结果会形成哪几种未来世界。 为了展示对可能出现的无穷多的未来世界的种种构想、恐惧和希望、形式和感受，科幻小说作家在很大程度上依赖他们另一个有利条件：虚构艺术。 科学家把资料用表格或图表形式表现出来时，他的工作几乎算完成了，而对科幻小说作家来说，他的工作则刚刚开了个头。他的任务是要讲述与人有关的故事：充当他故事中可能出现的那个未来的科学依据，仅仅是个背景资料。也许“仅仅”这个词的局限性还太大了。许多科幻小说除了背景情况，主要构想和新奇的玩意儿外几乎空无他物。但科幻小说中的上乘之作，即能对几代读者产生持久影响的作品，都是写人的故事。书中人物也许不是人类，可能是机器人或者其他类型的机械装置。但作为人的读者会同情它们，分享它们的喜怒哀乐，为它们遭遇危险而担忧，为它们终于成功而庆幸。从这个意义上说，它们应该算是人。 自史前以来，编故事的艺术并无多大变化。讲个引人入胜的故事仍然沿用老一套：塑造一个性格坚强的人物，一个勇猛无比、感情丰富、行为果断的人物。给他配上一个弱点，使他与另一名强者——或与自然——发生冲突。让主人公的外部冲突反映出自己的内心冲突，反映出他的各种欲望之间的冲突，自身优点与弱点之间的冲突。这样你的故事就编好了。不管故事说的是亚伯拉罕把独生子献给上帝，或帕里斯因一女子而使特洛伊遭受灭顶之灾，还是讲哈姆雷特与克劳狄斯图谋置对方于死地，浮士德对人世间的知识和权力的不断追求——凡是深印在读者脑际的故事都塑造了使人难以忘怀的人物。 只展示别的世界，描述可能形成的未来社会和潜在的问题是不够的。科幻小说作家必须指出这些社会、这些前景如何影响人类。比这项工作还重要得多的是，他必须揭示人类能够而且确实在创造这些未来世界。因为我The Zeritskys, of course, were among the first to be taken. Because of their experience, they were put in charge of a military warehouse for dehydrated foods, and warned not to get any ideas for a new business. THE ROLE OF SCIENCE FICTION The year 1972 was marked by publication of a controversial book, The Limits to Growth, This study of the world's future, done by a team of MIT scientists with the aid of computer \"models\" of the future of our society, forecast a planet wide disaster unless humankind sharply limits its population growth and consumption of natural resources. Most people were caught by surprise when the book came out. Many refused to believe that disaster is possible, probable, inevitable -- if we don't change our mode of running Spaceship Earth. But science fiction people were neither surprised nor outraged. The study was really old news to them. They'd been making their own \"models\" of tomorrow and testing them all them all their lives. For what the scientists attempted with their computer model is very much like the thing that science fiction writers and readers have been doing for decades. Instead of using a computer to \"model\" a future world society, science fiction writers have used their human imaginations. This gives the writers some enormous advantages. One of the advantages is flexibility. Science fiction writers are not in the business of predicting the future. They do something much more important. They try to show the many possible future that lie open to us. For there is not simply a future, a time to come that's inevitable. Our future is built, bit by bit, minute by minute, by the actions of human beings. One vital role of science fiction is to show what kinds of future might result from certain kinds of human actions. To communicate the ideas, the fears and hopes, the shape and feel of all the infinite possible futures, science fiction writers lean heavily on another of their advantages: the art of fiction. For while a scientist's job has largely ended when he's reduced his data to tabular or graph from, the work of a science fiction writer is just beginning. His task is to convey the human story: the scientific basis for the possible future of his story is merely 们的前途主要掌握在我们自己手里。前途不是凭空从天上掉下来的，它是亿万人的行动共同造就的产物。在匆忙浏览报纸大标题时，在忙得焦头烂额的日常生活中，这一点是很容易被遗忘的。但这是科幻小说坚持试图说明的问题：未来属于我们——不管它是什么样子。我们创造未来，我们的行动塑造明天。我们有才智有勇气去建造天堂(至少可以试试)。如果我们失败了，那将是一场悲剧；然而倘若我们连试也不试一下，那就是最大的悲哀了。 因此，科幻小说是沟通科学和艺术的桥梁，是连接精通工艺的工程师与深谙人性的诗人的桥梁。过去从未像现在这样迫切地需要这么一座桥梁。 着名诗人与历史学家罗伯特?格雷夫斯于1972年在英国《新科学家》杂志上撰文说：“如今工业技术和手工在明争，科学则与诗歌在暗斗。” 格雷夫斯的话道出了不少人都怀有的恐惧心理：工业技术已使机器代替了人的体力；现在诸如电子计算机之类的机器似乎可以取代人的智力了。他甚至走得更远，竟批判起科学来，其根据是，真正的人类活动诸如诗歌创作等具有科学家无法认识的威力。 显而易见，格雷夫斯把科学家视为外表严肃、动作缓慢、没有灵魂的思维机器，未经事先深思熟虑从不迈出一步。 但作为历史学家，格雷夫斯应该知道，詹姆斯?克拉克?麦克斯韦尔关于电磁的独到见解——即可见光仅是电磁能光谱的一小部分这一猜想，该猜想为电子技术打下了基础——是凭直觉深入未知世界的。麦克斯韦尔几乎没有丝毫依据来证实他的猜想。证据是后来找到的。那些被认为感觉迟钝、不苟言笑的科学家凭着直觉闯进了未知世界，这样的例子真可谓不胜枚举。 科学家也是人! 他们与别人完全一样，也有人性，也有直觉，也有感情。但大多数人并没有意识到这一点。他们不了解科学家，对科学也不知之甚少。 今天，大多数人对科学家仍然敬而远之。然而，科学家毕竟给我们带来了核武器、现代医学、宇宙航行以及除臭剂。但与此同时，我们看到科学家被讥为头脑混乱的书呆子，the background. Perhaps \"merely\" is too limiting a word. Much of science fiction consists of precious little except the background, the basic idea, the gimmick. But the best of science fiction, the stories that make a lasting impact on generations of readers, are stories about people. The people may be nonhuman. They may be robots or other types of machines. But they will be people, in the sense that human readers can feel for them, share their joys and sorrows, their dangers and their ultimate successes. The art of fiction has not changed much since prehistoric times. The formula for telling a powerful story has remained the same: create a strong character, a person of great strengths, capable of deep emotions and decisive action. Give him a weakness. Set him in conflict with another powerful character -- or perhaps with nature. Let his exterior conflict be the mirror of the protagonist's own interior conflict, the clash of his desires, his own strength against his own weakness. And there you have a story. Whether it's Abraham offering his only son to God, or Paris bringing ruin to Troy over a woman, or Hamlet and Claudius playing their deadly game, Faust seeking the world's knowledge and power -- the stories that stand out in the minds of the reader are those whose characters are unforgettable. To show other worlds, to describe possible future societies and the problems lurking ahead, is not enough. The writer of science fiction must show how these worlds and these futures affect human beings. And something much more important: he must show how human beings can and do literally create these future worlds. For our future is largely in our own hands. It doesn't come blindly rolling out of the heavens; it is the joint product of the actions of billions of human beings. This is a point that's easily forgotten in the rush of headlines and the hectic badgering of everyday life. But it's a point that science fiction makes constantly: the future belongs to us -- whatever it is. We make it, our actions shape tomorrow. We have the brains and guts to build paradise (or at least try). Tragedy is when we fail, and the greatest crime of all is when we fail even to try. Thus science fiction stands as a bridge between science and art, between the engineers of technology and the poets of humanity. Never has 或被嘲为冷酷无情的怪物制造家。科学家是一个少数群体，与大多数少数群体一样，他们往往避开公众视线，藏身于他们自己的聚居区内——实验室、校园、沙漠中或太平洋珊瑚岛上的野外工作场地。 人们先得观察、了解科学家本身，然后才会懂得什么是科学能办到的，什么是科学无法办到的。要了解科学家的工作和目的、他们的梦想、他们的忧虑。 科幻小说有助于向不从事科学工作的人解释科学是怎么一回事，科学家是干什么的。几百所大学和公立中学都开设了科幻小说课程。发现这些课是科学家、工程师和人文主义者聚会的场所，出现这种情况决非偶然。科学和小说可以打通，理智和感情能够交融。 科学态度实质上就是认为人脑能够认识宇宙，人动脑筋、想办法便能移山倒海——实际上人类已经这样做了。从这个意义上说，科学是纯粹人文主义的追求，是颂扬人类智力战胜由于愚昧无知而造成的迷惘、混乱和恐惧。 许多种幻小说歌颂这种精神。很少有科幻小说把人类描绘成消极被动的物种，听任自然力像潮水般肆意流动而不加限制。科幻小说的主人公们——新神话故事中的众神——无论面对全球性山崩地裂的厄运，还是面对贪得无厌的政客的罪恶行径，都挺身而出，勇敢地与黑暗势力作斗争。他们不一定总会成功，但他们总是尽力而为。 然而，科幻小说在现代社会所起作用最重要的方面，也许可以用一个词来贴切地加以概括：变化。 说到底，科幻小说是描写变化的文学作品。每篇小说都宣扬同一个信条：明天与今天不一样，也许大不一样。 科幻小说极其明确地揭示，变化——无论变好还是变糟——是宇宙的一条内在规律。抵制变化是墨守成规，如今则更是危险的了。世界总是要变的。她在不断地变。人类最有成效的行为莫过于确定如何形成这些变化，如何影响这些变化，从而创造一个所发生的变化符合我们需要的自然环境。 也许这就是科幻小说最根本的作用：向人类解释科学。当然，这是一件双刃武器，不仅such a bridge been more desperately needed. Writing in the British journal New Scientist, the famed poet and historian Robert Graves said in 1972, \"Technology is now warring openly against the crafts, and science covertly against poetry.\" What Graves is expressing is the fear that many people have: technology has already allowed machines to replace human muscle power; now it seems that machines such as electronic computers might replace human brainpower. And he goes even further, criticizing science on the grounds that truly human endeavours such as poetry have a power that scientists can't recognize. Apparently Graves sees scientists as a sober, plodding phalanx of soulless thinking machines, never making a step that hasn't been carefully thought out in advance. But as a historian, Graves should be aware that James Clerk Maxwell's brilliant insight about electromagnetism -- the guess that visible light is only one small slice of the spectrum of electromagnetic energy, a guess that forms the basis for electronics technology -- was an intuitive leap into the unknown. Maxwell had precious little evidence to back up his guess. The evidence came later. The list of wild jumps of intuition made by these supposedly stolid, humorless scientists is long indeed. Scientists are human beings! They are just as human, intuitive, and emotional as anyone else. But most people don't realize this. They don't know scientists, any more than they know much about science. Today most people still tend to hold scientists in awe. After all, scientists have brought us nuclear weapons, modern medicines, space flight, and underarm deodorants. Yet at the same time, we see scientists derided as fuzzy-brained eggheads or as coldly ruthless, emotionless makers of monsters. Scientists are minority group, and like most minorities they're largely hidden from the public's sight, tucked away in ghettos -- laboratories, campuses, field sites out in the desert or on Pacific atolls. Before the public can understand and appreciate what science can and cannot do, the people must get to see and understand the scientists themselves. Get to know their work, their aims, their dreams, and their fears. 要宣传讲福音，还要给予警告。科学不仅能够创造，而且能够毁灭；技术能够把人的精神提到想象所及的最高境界，也能够使人麻木不仁。只有具有真知灼见的人士能明智地决定如何利用科学技术造福人类。归根到底，这是一切艺术作品的最根本的作用：让我们自己看清自己，帮助我们认识自己身上的人性。 寻求阴暗面 发愁是我祖父的癖好。尽管业余爱好通常被认为是不能遗传的，但我也是个才气横溢的爱发愁的人。我的父亲的忧愁基因它跳过了我乐观的父亲，而在我身上成了主要因素，时时担忧。比如说吧，几星期前，我得知那些即将崩溃的恒星会很快吞食掉宇宙中存在的一切物质。因为我读了时尚杂志我开始希望这个黑洞是一种时尚，一个天上流行的事情，如科胡特克彗星和ＵＦＯ，但是后来，我看见文章的作者拜访了二次高级研究机构，现在，我明白了又一种危机迫在眉睫了。因为我现在的担忧之处很不幸地就在该研究院不远处的街上。 宇宙要完结了，这本来可激起一种极好的挑战，特别对于我这种天才的发愁者来说，因为它使我意识到自己的忧愁太多了，在黑洞文章之前，我还没有来的急从早先的当心两极冰帽融化，大西洋水位要长高并逐步淹没整个东海岸中抽身出来。我一直在盘算把家搬到萨斯卡切温，但现在我的发愁已远远落后于当今形势我不得不担心是否萨斯卡彻温会比普林斯顿更能吸引黑洞的注意。另一方面，普林斯顿离那些非洲杀人蜂更近。这些毒蜂从巴西一直顽固地向北面逼近，使得我决定去年冬天不到中美洲访问。毒蜂们越来越逼近中美洲，这样巴拿马可能成了唯一能把毒蜂挡回去的地方。当然，即使巴拿马那里光是蝴蝶，作为度假地来说仍然令我担忧，因为那儿和波士顿一样满是反美的情绪。 在这段糟糕的日子里，我经常想到祖父。他生活的时代比现代要单纯幸福得多，也紧张得神经近乎崩溃。他的忧愁稍纵即逝，易于对会：何时梅尔·奥茨会开始重新Science fiction can help to explain what science and scientists are all about to the non-scientists. It is no accident that several hundred universities and public schools are now offering science fiction courses and discovering that these classes are a meeting ground for the scientist-engineers and the humanists. Science and fiction. Reason and emotion. The essence of the scientific attitude is that the human mind can succeed in understanding the universe. By taking thought, men can move mountains -- and have. In this sense, science is an utterly humanistic pursuit, the glorification of human intellect over the puzzling, chaotic, and often frightening darkness of ignorance. Much of science fiction celebrates this spirit. Very few science fiction stories picture humanity as a passive species, allowing the tidal forces of nature to flow unperturbed. The heroes of science fiction stories -- the gods of the new mythology -- struggle manfully against the darkness, whether it's geological doom for the whole planet or the evil of grasping politicians. They may not always win. But they always try. Perhaps, however, the most important aspect of science fiction's role in the modern world is best summed up in a single word: change. After all, science fiction is the literature of change. Each and every story preaches from the same gospel: tomorrow will be different from today, violently different perhaps. Science fiction very clearly shows that changes -- whether good or bad -- are an inherent part of the universe. Resistance to change is an archaic, and nowadays dangerous, habit of thought. The world will change. It is changing constantly. Humanity's most fruitful course of action is to determine how to shape these changes, how to influence them and produce an environment where the changes that occur are those we want. Perhaps this is the ultimate role of science fiction: to act as an interpreter of science to humanity. This is a two-edged weapon, of course. It is necessary to warn as well as evangelize. Science can kill as well as create; technology can deaden the human spirit or life it to the farthermost corners of our imaginations. Only knowledgeable people can wisely decide how to use science and technology for humankind's benefit. In the end, this is the 击球得分？何时埃琳诺·罗斯福会因为四处旅行过多而身体垮掉？何时第三条大街上的高架铁路桥会生锈烂掉？祖父真幸运，没有活在当今世界里去处处发愁。我想念他，但我却一直在考验我的理智，他甚至可能屈服，成为一个乐观的人。这样放弃心爱的嗜好。 祖父令人敬仰的发愁者。当我是个小孩子时，他过去常到房间里去看我，在那儿检查我的功课，然后摇摇头说，“拼写成你这个样子，万万不可能坚持读写医学院了。” “这些单词对我来说太陌生了，”我会很着急地对他说。“和二年级的比起来，今年的拼写难多了。” 他会叹气着说：“我搞不清楚。我甚至不能肯定你是否应该当名医生。据说医生拥有最高的突然死亡率，这个我刚刚看过。” 祖父担心我，担心梅尔·奥茨，担心埃琳诺·罗斯福，他这些奇怪的忧虑足够让同时代的发愁者们羡慕得掉泪。我真想知道，如果他看到了冈纳.默德尔作出的新预测，美国经济会在五年之内全盘崩溃。会如何反应也就是在东部海啸之前，毒蜂们抵达后不久也许他会模仿我的先进的发愁姿态，学会采取用新忧覆旧愁的方法来为新愁挪出地方。比如：我对东部将被淹没的忧虑，挤掉了我过去担忧的拖欠已久的布鲁明代商场帐单的位置；而冈纳·默德尔的警告则挤掉了我对康涅狄格州的古董被搞光了后该如何的担忧； 我听到的毒蜂消息则减轻了我对自己牙髓管的担心。这样使得巴拿马运河取代了其位置而跻身于我二十大忧愁之无列。 多么丰富的一份忧愁单啊！我的忧愁有旧的，也有新的；既有事关宇宙的，也有微不足道的，把平凡的忧愁和古老的忧愁有机地结合在一块儿，梅茨棒球队在太阳灭了的情况下能在夜间打完所有预定的比赛吗？复活了的低温冷冻人需要重新登记去参加选举吗？三分球在没有小脚趾的情况下，能继续在全国足球联赛中发挥这么大的作用吗？ 以毁灭宇宙的黑洞带给我的忧愁程度，实质ultimate role of all art: to show ourselves to ourselves, to help us to understand our own humanity. LOOK FOR THE RUSTY LINING My grandfather's hobby was worrying, and although hobbies are not usually thought of as being inheritable, I am a talented worrier, too. My grandfather's glum genes, which skipped my merry father, have reflowered in me as a major, all-purpose anxiety. A few weeks ago, for example, I learned that collapsing stars called black holes may soon such up all the matter in the universe. Because I read this in Vogue, I hoped at first that the black holes were some kind of fad -- a celestial pop event like Kohoutek or UFOs -- but then I saw that the author of the article had been twice a visiting member at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, and I knew that another crisis was at hand. Ominously, the Institute is just down the street from where I do my worrying. The end of the universe should have been a splendid challenge for a gifted worrier like me, but mostly it upset me in a new and worrisome way, because it made me realize that I was spread too thin. When I found the black-hole story, I hadn't nearly come to the end of an earlier wonderful worry of mine about the polar ice cap melting and raising the level of the Atlantic Ocean enough to submerge the entire East Coast. I had been thinking of moving my family to Saskatchewan, but now that I was falling behind in my worrying, I had to worry if Saskatchewan might be tastier for a black hole than Princeton. On the other hand, Princeton was closer to those African killer bees that have been inexorably moving north from Brazil -- the ones that made me decide not to visit Central America last winter. The bees are getting very close to Central America, and Panama may be the only place where there is a chance to turn them back. Of course, even if it had only butterflies, Panama would still be a worrisome vacation spot for me, because it is said to be riddled with as much anti-American feeling as Boston. In these terrible days, I often think of my grandfather, who was a nervous wreck in a simpler and happier time. His worries were transient and nicely manageable: When would Mel Ott start hitting again? When would Eleanor Roosevelt collapse from too much traveling around? When 上是我以前所有的忧愁无法带来的。我的意思是让我置身其中作出了一切忧愁的宇宙，如果忽然没有了，我的家也再没办法安顿了。我担忧了一辈子，学到了关于发愁的第一原理，这可能是我唯一希望的源泉了。这一原理就是：一些最严重的问题往往是相互抵销的一对问题中的一个。这儿有一个很好的例子：对于可怕的极地冰帽，有的科学家说它不仅没融化，反而很快会开始增大，一直到盖住整个美国，产生一个新的冰河时期。这一冰层，我是从2月9号开始忧虑的，到劳动节左右，就被挤得只剩下冰场大小了，这是我那时对圆腿牛肉底部的价格担忧所造成的。但是，近来我又重新重视冰层起来。冰层是不可能同时既增大又融化的，这是我的担忧所在。必有一种情况是假的，是哪一种呢？一个热忱的忧愁者必须找出这个答案。 同一原理应用到黑洞上的话，那么是否存在某种黑洞的对立面——白洞呢？它们可能是一些存在于宇宙空间中的漂亮的发光的物体。它们不会象黑洞一样吞掉宇宙，相反地，却很乐意把宇宙全吐出来。只要研究院能发表一则有关白洞情况的新的简短消息，我就能消除掉对黑洞的担忧。这正是我目前所需要的一切。这样的话，我就可能会开始担忧麦虱，男性绝经期和所有其他祖父会认可的温和和恐怖了。这样拼写“麦虱”对吗？ 探究未知领域 发现了人类自身的无知，这是二十世纪取得的最伟大的成就。我们生活在困惑中，对自然界以前从未象现在这样困惑过，对宇宙，以及对我们人类自己，对我们人类来说，这是一种新的感受。一百年前，我们在达尔文和华莱尔引起的轰动平息后，就以为自己对进化论的本质内容全部了如指掌了，仅仅只因为我们已领悟和接受了自然选择的观点。在十八世纪时，没有巨大的难解之迷。人们完全凭自己的理性去了解宇宙。在此以前的几个世纪里，教会大多数时间几乎囊括了一切：既提问题又给答案。现在，我们在人类历史上首次，看见了自己理解力的缺would the Third Avenue \"L\" rust away? I miss him, but he is lucky not to be alive and worrying today. I don't think he could have handled all the terrors that keep testing my sanity; he might even have surrendered and become an optimist, thus forfeiting the hobby he loved. He was my inspiration when I was a boy -- a worrier to look up to. He used to visit me in my room, where he would examine my homework and then shake his head and say, \"You'll never get through medical school with spelling like this.\" \"But these are band-new words,\" I would tell him in a worried way. \"Spelling is harder this year than it was in the second grade.\" He would sigh and say, \"I don't know. I'm not even sure you should be a doctor at all. I just read that they have the highest rate for dropping dead.\" My grandfather's quaint worries about me and Mel Ott and Eleanor Roosevelt are enough to make a contemporary worrier weep with envy. I wonder what he would have done if he had read a recent prediction by Gunnar Myrdal that the American economy could utterly collapse within five years -- just before the Eastern tidal wave but shortly after the arrival of the bees. Probably he would have adopted something like my own advanced worrying posture and learned to make room for each new worry by letting it trump one of the old ones. For example, when I read about the inundation of the East I forgot about my overdue Bloomingdale's bill; when I read Gunnar Myrdal's warning I decided to stop worrying about what would happen if Connecticut ever ran out of antiques. When I heard about the bees I eased off my worry about a root canal of mine and let the Panama Canal replace it on the Top Twenty. What a list! Something old and something new, something cosmic yet something trivial too, for the creative worrier must forever blend the pedestrian with the immemorial. If the sun burns out, will the Mets be able to play their entire schedule at night? If cryogenically frozen human beings are ever revived, will they have to re-register to vote? And if the little toe disappears, will field goals play a smaller part in the National Football League? Actually, I've never had a worry as worrisome as the universe-destroying black holes. I mean, the universe is where I do all my worrying, and if it suddenly disappears I may not be able to relocate. 乏。我们象往常那样为解释世界而编出的说法，如今一定得通过实验去证实了再证实，这就是科学的方法。只要我们采用了这种科学方法去开始做某事后，我们无法再往回走了。我们不得不在怀疑一切的环境中成长，我们需要证据来证明每个有关自然界的断言.我们除了马上行动，努力探索，除此之外，别无他法。我们希望将来能理解未知的一切，但是我们在这以前很长一段时间内只能处于理解不完善的阶段。 承认自己是无知的，这会导致进步。不是完全因为这个特别迷的解答直接地增加了一点理解，而是因为这些迷，如果能引起科学家的足够兴趣的话，是它们引导了这个工作。昆虫学中存在一种类似的现象，这种现象被格兰塞称之为“siigmergy”，其含义为“推动去努力。”放在房间内的三四只白蚁会四处毫无目的地乱爬，但是放进更多的白蚁后，它们便会开始建造了。是因为其它白蚁的存在， 达到一定数量后，就紧紧聚在一起，开始工作。它们用对方的小粪团堆起整整齐齐的柱状。那些正好到合适高度的柱状物会横向延伸成为一个个极佳的拱形建筑，构成白蚁们修建蚁窝的基础。一只只单个的白蚁不会做这种事，可一旦数量足够的白蚁聚在一块儿，它们便成了完美的建筑师。这些盲眼白蚁群不仅能察觉彼此间的距离，而且能造成一个巨大的复杂建筑，该建筑还带有自身的空调系统和温度控制系统。在自己建成的生态系统中，白蚁们一直工作着，忙碌一生。我能想起的和蚁窝搭建最相似的人类行为是语言的创造。在终生相互交往的过程中，我们一代接一代地创造语言，并出于某种本能改变其结构。 对于这种集体行为，我们还了解得很少。谈论起“超有机个体”，现在已不时髦了。但是，要解释清楚白蚁现象和其他群居昆虫现象，我们手头上基于单个昆虫研究的资料数量还远远不够。 这些昆虫群的化学反应系统可以由我们作出一些极好的推测，但它们为什么会显现出集体的智慧，这一明明白白的事实却始终是个迷。或者不管怎样也是个带没解答的，也许对整个社会My only hope comes from a first principle of worry that I have learned in a lifetime of anxiety; i.e., some of the biggest problems are half of a self-cancelling pair. A nice example is that dreaded polar ice cap, which some scientists say isn't starting to melt at all but instead will shortly begin to enlarge rapidly, giving birth to a new ice age that soon will cover the entire United States. I worried about this ice layer form last February 9th until about Labor Day, by which time my worry about the price of bottom round had reduced it to the size of a rink. Lately, however, I have turned my mind back to the ice again, and I have been worrying about the fact that you cannot have ice that is growing and melting at the same time. One of these terrors is a dud, and the job of the dedicated worrier is to find out which one it is. Applying this principle to the black holes, I wonder if there may not be some white holes in space as well -- pretty, glowing things that won't digest a universe but may prefer to spit it out again. All I need is a new flash from the Institute about one of these, and then perhaps I will be able to start worrying about chinch bugs and the male menopause and all the other gentle terrors my grandfather could endorse. Is that the right way to spell \"chinch bugs\"? 生活都有重要含义的问题。由此我想到，在大学生物学课上，这个神秘问题应该是最好的开场白。老师们应当告诉学生们这个问题的奇特之处，及意义的含糊之处。这些应该教给医科大学预科生们他们需要在事业开创早期通过上课来了解科学领域内所存在的一些尚未确定的问题。 大学生，还有那些中学生，应该尽早地，也许从一开始，就得去了解目前科学家正在争论不休的一些重大问题。这类重大争论可以激起学生们的兴趣，如果弄得好的话，甚至可以吸引他们全部的注意力。生活中绝大多数事都比不上训练有素，经验丰富的论敌间的激烈辩论引人入胜。不管怎样，对于当代那些主要争论，年轻学生们却不很了解。关于达尔文主义者和他们论敌间所展开的争论，年轻的学生们也许被老师教过一点。但是其他方面正在进行相仿的争论。其中许多已触及到有关我们自然界理解的深奥问题，实际上仍然在继续着并反映了科学进程中的本质特征。这一切，学生们并不了解。我担忧的是，理科老师自己不情愿谈论这事情，因为他们相信学生们对这些争论的理解只能建立在领会掌握了“基本知识”的基础上。我很想看到与这方面相关的一些实验，心目中已有不少当代学术争鸣的例子。即使对这些主题没有深刻，详尽地了解，人们也容易理解争论的大意。 这儿有个例子是有关动物意识问题的。有一派生态学家，他们专门从事动物行为的研究，他们断言道，人类是唯一拥有意识的，在能够仔细考虑事情方面，不同于其他生物，充分利用过去的经验，大胆有根据地推测未来。而其他“低级”动物（黑猩猩，鲸鱼和海豚可能要排除在外），是不能用大脑做出类似事情的。它们大脑只能按一定程序作出，自动的或有条件的反应。对于生活环境中的突发性事件，但他们认为人的心理活动可以通过这种自动的或条件化的反应得以解释。尽管行为心理学家们不太喜欢“心理的”一词，另一派生态学家，则显得更为宽容大度。一般动物完全能够真正地思维并且正在进行大量的思维。他们认为没有理DEBATING THE UNKNOWABLE The greatest of all the accomplishment of twentieth-century science has been the discovery of human ignorance. We live, as never before, in puzzlement about nature, the universe, and ourselves most of all. It is a new experience for the species. A century ago, after the turbulence caused by Darwin and Wallace had subsided and the central idea of natural selection had been grasped and accepted, we thought we knew everything essential about evolution. In the eighteenth century there were no huge puzzles; human reason was all you needed in order to figure out the universe. And for most of the earlier centuries, the Church provided both the questions and the answers, neatly packaged. Now, for the first time in human history, we are catching glimpses of our incomprehension. We can still make up stories to explain the world, as we always have, but now the stories have to be confirmed and reconfirmed by experiment. This is the scientific method, and once started on this line we cannot turn back. We are obliged to grow up in skepticism, requiring proofs for every assertion about nature, and there is no way out except to move ahead and plug away, hoping for comprehension in the future but living in a condition of intellectual instability for the long time. It is the admission of ignorance that leads to progress, not so much because the solving of a particular puzzle leads directly to a new piece of understanding but because the puzzle -- if it interests enough scientists -- leads to work. There is a similar phenomenon in entomology know as stigmergy, a term invented by Grasse, which means \"to incite to work.\" When three or four termites are collected together in a chamber they wander about aimlessly, but when more termites are added, they begin to build. It is the presence of other termites, in sufficient numbers at close quarters, that produces the work: they pick up each other's fecal pellets and stack them in neat columns, and when the columns are precisely the right height, the termites reach across and turn the perfect arches that form the foundation of the termitarium. No single termite knows how to do any of this, but as soon as there are enough termites gathered together they become flawless architects, sensing their distances from each other although blind, building an immensely complicated structure with its own air-conditioning and humidity control. They work their lives away in this ecosystem built by themselves. The nearest thing to a termitarium that I can think of in human behavior is the making of language, which we do by keeping at each other all our lives, generation after generation, changing the structure by some sort of instinct. Very little is understood about this kind of collective behavior. It is out of fashion these days to talk of \"superorganisms\aren't enough reductionist details in hand to explain away the phenomenon of termites and other social insects: some very good guesses can be made about their chemical signaling systems, but the plain fact that they exhibit something like a collective intelligence is a mystery, or anyway an unsolved problem, that might contain important implications for social life in general. This mystery is the best introduction I can think of to biological science in college. It should be taught for its strangeness, and for the ambiguity of its meaning. 由必须去怀疑这一事实。与人类的思维比较起来，动物思维稀疏得多，这也是动物缺乏语言，缺乏比喻去推动思维进程。但无论如何它们是在思维。 争论中，哪一方的事实比另一方的更强有力，更有说服力，这不是争论的意义所在，而是刚好相反。两方想展开真正的长期的争论，但却都没有充分的事实来支持自己的观点。动物意识问题还处于未被解决的状态。 人们开始仔细考虑整个生物圈时，另一个可争论的问题便出现了。生物圈也就是地球上所有连接在一起的生命。它是如何能保持这样稳定、和谐，象一个硕大无比正发育着的胚胎一样的呢？只是由于一个偶然的事件决定其出现的吗?洛夫洛克和马克利斯就这一问题，提出了盖亚假说。用简短的话来说，该假说认为地球本身就是一种生命形式。“这一囊括了地球生物圈、大气层、海洋和土壤的复杂实体，整个构成了一个为地球生命寻求最佳物理和化学环境的反馈或控制系统。拉夫洛克还假定了，地球表面的物理和化学条件，“越来越适宜的大气层由生命本身的存在已经创造出来并且现在仍然在积极地创造着。” 这述观点正开始激起风暴，已有一些迹象表明了这一点。我认为这一观点如果流行的话，生物学界将很快地分裂成怒气十足的两派：一派认为进化了的生物圈是按计划有目的地进行的结果。另一派谴责这类异端邪说。对于这场争论，这认为学生们应尽可能多去了解。 另一场同时存在的争论是在社会生物学家和反社会生物学家之间展开的，它也是一场有关世未知领域的论战。对学生们来说，它提供了一次绝妙的机会使他们拓宽视野。观看这场论战的人们会惊愕得张大嘴。一群科学家，他们聪明绝顶，训练有素，知识广博，想象丰富，主张，基因无疑整个控制了所有动物的或人类的行为；另一群科学家，同样出类拔萃，则坚持环境和文化决定了一切行为。每个大学生都不要错过这场很有教育意义的论战。在这儿，论据的相对可靠程度并不是我们要学的十分必要的一课。实际上，这里的教育意义就在于争论本It should be taught to premedical students, who 身：我们依靠目前的知识想解决这类问题，need lessons early n their careers about the 那还是远远不够的。 uncertainties in science. College students, and for that matter high school students, should be exposed very early, perhaps at the outset, to the big arguments currently going on among scientists. Big arguments stimulate their interest, and with luck engage their absorbed attention. Few things in life are as engrossing as a good fight between highly trained and skilled adversaries. But the young students are told very little about the major disagreements of the day; they may be taught something about the arguments between Darwinians and their opponents a century ago, but they do not realize that similar disputes about other matters, many of them touching profound issues for our understanding of nature, are still going on and, indeed, are an essential feature of the scientific process. There is, I fear, a reluctance on the part of science teachers to talk about such things, based on the belief that before students can appreciate what the arguments are about they must learn and master the \"fundamentals\". I would be willing to see some experiments along this line, and I have in mind several examples of contemporary doctrinal dispute in which the drift of the argument can be readily perceived without deep or elaborate knowledge of the subject. There is, for one, the problem of animal awareness. One school of ethologists devoted to the study of animal behavior has it that human beings are unique in the possession of consciousness, differing from al other creatures in being able to think things over, capitalize on past experience, and hazard informed guesses at the future. Other, \"lower\exceptions made for chimpanzees, whales, and dolphins) cannot do such things with their minds; they live from moment to moment with brains that are programmed to respond, automatically or by conditioning, to contingencies in the environment, Behavioral psychologists believe that this automatic or conditioned response accounts for human mental activity as well, although they dislike that word \"mental\". On the other side are some ethologists who seems to be more generous-minded, who see no compelling reasons to doubt that animals in general are quite capable of real thinking and do quite a lot of it —— thinking that isn't as dense as human thinking, that is sparser because of the lack of language and the resultant lack of metaphors to help the thought along, but thinking nonetheless. The point about this argument is not that one side or the other is in possession of a more powerful array of convincing facts; quite the opposite. There are not enough facts to sustain a genuine debate of any length; the question of animal awareness is an unsettled one. Another debatable question arises when one contemplates the whole biosphere, the conjoined life of the earth. How could it have turned out to possess such stability and coherence, resembling as it does a sort of enormous developing embryo, with nothing but chance events to determine its emergence? Lovelock and Margulis, facing this problem, have proposed the Gaia Hypothesis, which is, in brief, that the earth is itself a form of life, \"a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.\" Lovelock postulates, in addition, that \"the physical and chemical condition of the surface of the Earth, of the atmosphere, and of the oceans has been an is actively made fit and comfortable by the presence of life itself.\" This notion is beginning to stir up a few signs of storm, and if it catches on, as I think it will, we will soon find the biological community split into fuming factions, one side saying that the evolved biosphere displays evidences of design and purpose, the other decrying such heresy. I believe that students should learn as much as they can about the argument. One more current battle involving the unknown is between sociobiologists and antisociobiologists, and it is a marvel for students to behold. To observe, in open-mouthed astonishment, one group of highly intelligent, beautifully trained, knowledgeable, and imaginative scientists maintaining that all behavior, animal and human, is governed exclusively by genes, and another group of equally talented scientists asserting that all behaviors is set and determined by the environment or by culture, is an educational experience that no college student should be allowed to miss. The essential lesson to be learned has nothing to do with the relative validity of the facts underlying the argument. It is the argument itself that is the education: we do not yet know enough to settle such questions.