Very little is understood about this kind of collective behavior. It is out of fashion these days to talk of "superorganisms", but there simply 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. It should be taught to premedical students, who need lessons early in their careers about the uncertainties in science.
人們對這種群體行為知之甚少。如今談“超個體”已不合時尚了，但手頭根本沒有足夠的從研究單個昆蟲著手的資料，可把白蟻和其他群體昆蟲表現(xiàn)出來的這種現(xiàn)象解釋清楚。對它們的化學(xué)信號系統(tǒng)可以作出一些非常合理的猜測，但它們表現(xiàn)出的像有集體智慧這一明擺著的事實，卻叫人捉摸不透，不論怎么說，總是個尚未解決的問題。這一問題也許對一般社會生活具有重要含義。這個謎一般的問題是我能想到的大學(xué)生物學(xué)課的最好的導(dǎo)言。這個問題的奇特之處和模棱兩可的含義都應(yīng)該在課堂上講一講。這個問題應(yīng)該講給醫(yī)科大學(xué)預(yù)科學(xué)生聽，他們在事業(yè)開始之初，就需要通過教學(xué)了解科學(xué)領(lǐng)域中存在的種種未獲定論的問題。
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 essentia 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.
應(yīng)該及早，也許應(yīng)該一開始便讓大學(xué)生甚至中學(xué)生接觸科學(xué)家當(dāng)前爭論的重大問題。重大的論爭會引起他們的興趣，弄得好還能極大地吸引他們的注意力。訓(xùn)練有素、善于辯論的論敵間展開的激烈爭鳴是那樣引人入勝，生活中很少有什么事能與之相媲美。然而，青年學(xué)生對當(dāng)代學(xué)術(shù)上的主要分歧卻知之甚少。老師也許對他們講授一百年前達爾文主義者及其論敵之間的爭論，但他們并不知道，其他問題上類似的爭論——其中許多爭論涉及我們?nèi)绾握J(rèn)識自然的重大問題——仍在繼續(xù)進行，而且確是科學(xué)發(fā)展過程中的主要特點。我擔(dān)心講授科學(xué)的老師不愿談及這些事，他們認(rèn)為，學(xué)生必須先學(xué)習(xí)并掌握“基本知識”，然后才能理解這些爭論是怎么回事。我很想看到有關(guān)這方面的實驗。我想到好幾個當(dāng)代學(xué)術(shù)爭鳴的例子。人們即使對這些課題缺乏深刻、詳盡的了解，仍能很便當(dāng)?shù)仡I(lǐng)會到辯論的大概意思。
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