評論
打印
Do animals think? How could the earth show so many signs of design and purpose and yet berandom? Our best scientists are heatedly debating both sides of these and other scientific questions. In the following essay, the author takes a look at science education and argues that as well as telling students the facts and theories that have already been proved and accepted, science teacher should spend more time introducing their students to the many mysteries that remain unsolved and the arguments taking place between scientists. What better way, he argues, to stimulate their interest in thing scientific?
動物是否會思維？地球怎么會顯示出那么多有計劃有意圖的跡象卻又無一定之規？我們最優秀的科學家正在熱烈地討論這些以及另外一些科學問題的正反兩個方面。在下面這篇文章中，作者審視了科學教育狀況，認為除了告訴學生已被證實已被接受的事實和理論外，教科學的老師應該花更多時間讓學生了解尚未破解的許多奧秘與科學家之間正在進行的爭論。他爭辯說，還有什么更好的方法能激發學生對種種科學問題的興趣呢？
Debating the Unknowable
探索未知世界
Lewis Thomas
劉易斯·托馬斯
The greatest of all the accomplishments 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. Inthe 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 boththe 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 theworld, 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 inthefuture but living in a condition of intellectual instability for the long time.
20世紀科學領域迄今取得的最大成就是發現人類蒙昧無知。我們對自然、宇宙，尤其對我們自身，從來沒有像現在這樣感到困惑不解。這是人類一種新的感受。一百年前，在達爾文和華萊士引起的轟動平靜下來，人們理解并接受了自然選擇的基本觀點之后，我們以為對進化論的實質問題全都一清二楚了。18世紀不存在重大的難解之謎。當時欲知宇宙奧秘，只需借助人的理性就行了。在此以前的若干世紀里，多數時候由教會提出問題同時提供答案，近乎包辦一切。如今，在人類歷史上我們第一次覺察到了自己的無知。我們可以一如既往依舊想出種種說法來解釋世界，但現在這些說法必須通過實驗加以證實，再證實。這是科學方法，一旦開始按照這種方法去做，我們就不能走回頭路了。我們只能始終帶著懷疑的目光，對關于自然的每個論斷都要求拿出證據來。除了行動起來，埋頭探索，沒有其他辦法。我們希望將來能夠找到答案，但在此之前的這段漫長歲月里，我們只好處于一種似懂非懂、一知半解的狀態。
