Almost Everyone's Guide to Science (Excerpt)Concern for man himself and his fate must always be the chief interest of all technical endeavours.., in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
Albert Einstein, Caltech, 1931
我们致力于所有的技术，无非都是为了我们本身和我们的未来……心中所挂念的是为了创造人类的福祉，而不是制造灾祸。在我们以图表和方程式表现时，总要时时秉持这种信念。
爱因斯坦，于加州理工学院，1931
If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.The fate of specialists in any one area of science is to focus more and more narrowly on their special topic, learning more and more about less and less, until eventually they end up knowing everything about nothing.不管在哪个科学领域，专家的命运总是如此：在自己专业的主题上，研究焦点愈来愈集中、愈来愈狭窄，于是渐渐对愈来愈少的事情知道得愈来愈多，终于，达到七窍通了六窍的境界。It was in order to avoid such a fate that, many years ago, I chose to become a writer about science, rather than a scientific researcher. The opportunity this gave me to question real scientists about their work, and to report my findings in a series of books and articles, enabled me to learn less and less about more and more, although as yet I have not quite reached the stage of knowing nothing about everything. After thirty years of this, and many books focusing on specific aspects of science, it seemed a good idea to write a general book, giving a broad overview of science, while I am still at the stage of knowing a little bit about most things scientific.为了避免走上这种路，从许多年前起，我自己就选择要成为一位科学写作者，而不是科学研究者。这样我就有机会多多请教真正的科学家他们在做些什么，再把我发现到的东西写成一系列的文章与书，使我能够对愈来愈多的事情都约略有些了解，即便只是达到七窍通了两三窍的境界而已。经过了三十年，也写了很多针对某些科学特殊领域的书之后，对于大多数的科学学问，我仍然处于几乎一窍不通的阶段。我想到，也许写一本更一般性的书，对科学做个更宏观的描述，是个不错的好点子，那我不是很快就能涉猎到更宽广的科学领域了吗？Usually, when I write a book the target audience is myself - I write the book about, say, quantum physics, or evolution, that I wish somebody else had written for me so that I would not have had to go to the trouble of finding things out for myself. This time I am writing for everybody else, in the hope that there will be something here for almost everyone to enjoy. If you know a little quantum physics (or even a lot), you may find here something you didn't know about evolution; if you know about evolution, you may find something new to you about the Big Bang, and so on.通常我写一本书时，都是以自己为目标读者。譬如说，我在写量子物理学或者是进化论时，总是希望那是别人已经替我写了的书，写得让我在阅读时不会遇到麻烦，轻易就能看懂。而这次我写这本书，则是把每一个人都当成目标读者，希望大家都能乐在其中，有所收获。即使你已经了解一点点量子物理，或甚至懂很多了，也会在这儿发现一些你并不知道的进化论；即使你晓得进化论，也可以从这本书获得大爆炸的新知；等等。So, although I am aware of the ghost of Isaac Asimov looking over my shoulder (I hope with approval) at such a wide-ranging project, this is not 'John Gribbin's Guide to Science', but a guide for almost everyone else. A guide not so much for fans of science and the cognoscenti but more a guide for the perplexed - anyone who is vaguely aware that science is important, and might even be interesting, but is usually scared off by the technical detail. 所以，虽然我了解阿西莫夫的鬼魂一直在注意着我进行这项包罗广泛的计划（这本书理当是艾大师应该完成的著作，我希望已获得他的允许，越俎代庖），但这本书毕竟不是《葛瑞宾的科学须知》，而是给所有国民、不分男女老少的科学须知。这本科学须知不专是给喜好科学的人或行家看门道，更是给那些为科学所惑的人，不管是对科学的重要性茫然不知的人，或是对科学可能有兴趣、但通常畏惧于技术细节的人，大家一起来看热闹。You won't find such technicalities here (they have all been removed by my co-author, who has kept my wilder scientific extravagances in check and has ensured that what remains is intelligible to a lay-person). What you will find is one person's view of how science stands at the end of the twentieth century, and how the different pieces fit together to produce a coherent, broad picture of the Universe and everything it contains.你在这里不会发现太专门的东西；那些都已经被共同作者玛丽·葛瑞宾给删掉了，她让这本书的科学部分不至毫无节制，并确保留下来的内容外行人也容易懂。你在这里将读到的是葛某人在二十世纪末对科学的看法，以及把不同的发现拼凑在一起后，对宇宙及其包含的万物产生广大且一致的图像。The fact that the pieces do fit together in this way is something you might miss from focusing too closely on one aspect of science, such as the Big Bang or evolution, but it is an extremely important feature of science. Both evolution and the Big Bang (and all the rest) are based on the same principles, and you can't pick and choose which bits of the scientific story you are going to accept.你可能会因太专注于某一个科学领域，例如大爆炸或进化论，而忽略了这种方式可以拼凑出来的事物，但那却是科学极端重要的内容。进化论及大爆炸（以及所有其他的领域）都根据相同的原理，你不能够只挑选或选择你能接受的科学情节。I often receive communications from people who, for one reason or another, cannot accept the special theory of relativity, which tells us that moving clocks run slow and moving rulers shrink. Sometimes these people struggle desperately to find a way around this, while still accepting everything else in science. But you cannot. The special theory of relativity does not stand in isolation, as a theory about moving clocks and rulers, but comes into our understanding of, for example, the way mass is converted into energy to keep the Sun shining, and how electrons behave inside atoms. If you threw away the bits of the theory that seem to refute common sense, you would be left with no explanation of why the Sun is shining or of the periodic table of the elements. And this is just one example.我经常收到别人给我的意见，举出他不能接受狭义相对论的各种理由，相对论告诉我们移动中的钟走得较慢、移动中的尺会缩短。这些人仍想相信科学的其他部分，有时候拚命挣扎着想要回避狭义相对论。但这是不可能的。狭义相对论并不是孤立存在的，有关移动中的钟与尺的理论也是如此，这些都是从我们对其他事物的了解而来的，例如，质量转变成能量来维持太阳的发光，以及电子在原子内的行为。如果你抛开一些好像违背常理的理论，那你也将无法用剩下来的理论解释为什么太阳会发光或者元素周期表的道理。这只是一个例子而已。As I hope this book will make clear, everything fits together in the modern scientific world view. This scientific world view is the greatest achievement of the human intellect, and the power of that achievement stands out more dearly from a look at the broad picture than it does from too close attention to any one detail.我希望这本书能够说得很清楚，以符合今日科学世界的观点来拼凑每件事情。这些科学世界的观点是人类智慧的伟大成就，从宏观的图像看待这些成就，要比近观那些枝微末节，更能感受这些成就的力量。There are two remarkable, interconnected features of the scientific world view that are often overlooked, but are well worth pointing out. The whole thing has taken only about four hundred years to develop (starting from the time of Galileo, which seems as good a moment as any from which to date the beginning of modern scientific enquiry). And it can all be understood by a single human mind. 对科学世界的见解有两个值得注意且相关的特点，但常常被忽略，我在这里要予以点出：整个科学的发展差不多也只有四百年（从伽利略的时代算起，此阶段好像比较合适做为现代科学的启元），而且都可以被人类的思考所了解。Maybe we cannot all understand every bit of the scientific world view; but quite a few individual human beings can, even though people have such limited lifespans. And although it may take a genius to come up with an idea like the theory of evolution by natural selection, once that idea is formulated it can be explained to people of average intelligence -- often provoking the initial response, 'How obvious; how stupid of me not to have worked that out for myself.' (This was, for example, pretty much Thomas Henry Huxley's reaction when he first read Charles Darwin's Origin of Species.) As Albert Einstein said in 1936, 'The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.'也许我们不能够通晓科学世界观点的每一细节，但有不少人却可以，即使人的寿命是有限的。虽然如天择演化论的观念需要天纵奇才者方能想得出来，一旦这种观念形成之后，科学家就可以对一般人说明了。不过，在开头时往往会引起以下的反应：“这多么显而易见！我怎么这么愚蠢，竟没有发现！”（例如，赫胥黎第一次读达尔文的《物种原始》[即《物种起源》——编注]时，就有这样的反应。）如同爱因斯坦在1936年所说的：“这个世界的永久奥秘是它的理解能力。”