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A Sense of the Future
未來意識
Jacob Bronowski
雅各布·布羅諾夫斯基
One hundred years ago, if you had walked on a summer evening into the country just beyond Bromley in Kent, you might have come on a remarkable sight. In the greenhouse of one of the larger and uglier houses of the neighborhood, a tall man in his sixties was stooping over potted plants. Beside him sat a younger man just as absorbed; and the younger man was playing the bassoon. This earnest pair was Charles Darwin and his son Frank; and they were making a scientific experiment. Darwin wanted to know exactly what tells an insect-eating plant like the common sundew to close its leaves when a fly settles on it. So he was going through the possible causes methodically one by one. Noise was not a likely cause; but it might just have worked; and Darwin was not the man to rule out anything. He had tried sand and water and bits of hard-boiled egg, and now he was trying Frank's bassoon. Darwin never did get to the bottom of what makes the sundew close. But he almost did, and the nextgeneration finished his work. He was well content with that. Darwin at sixty was a famous scientist who had changed our whole understanding of nature; yet he remained content to do tidy experiments that would bear fruit somewhere, sometime in the future.
一百年前，如果你在某個夏夜走到離布羅姆利縣不遠的肯特郡鄉村，你也許會看到一個引人注目的情景。在鄰近地區有一些房屋比較大，也比較難看，其中一所有個暖房。暖房里有位六十多歲的高個子老漢，彎著腰站在盆栽植物前面。他旁邊坐著一位神情同樣專注、年紀比較輕些的男子;他在吹巴松管。這一對十分認真的人便是查爾斯·達爾文和他的兒子弗蘭克;他們在做一個科學實驗。達爾文想搞清楚，當蒼蠅停到像普通的捕蠅草這類捕食昆蟲的植物上時，究竟是什么促使這些植物立刻合攏上葉子的。因此，他有條不紊地逐一檢驗可能的原因。聲音并不是一個可能性很大的原因，但也難說。達爾文不是那種未加實驗就排除某種可能性的人。在此之前，他已經用沙、水和煮得很老的雞蛋碎屑做過實驗，現在正用弗蘭克的巴松管再做一種實驗。達爾文最終未能弄清是什么使捕蠅草合攏葉子的，但離弄明白真正原因也僅一步之遙，他未竟的工作由下一代人完成了。對此他心滿意足。達爾文在花甲之年已是位著名科學家，改變了我們對大自然的整個認識，但他依然甘愿有條有理地從事在將來某個時候某個地方才有結果的實驗。
