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We owe that miracle to science; and it is a miracle. But the scientists who have worked it have been neither gods nor witch doctors. They have been men: men who had faith in the future; and they have used no magic. What they have used is at bottom only Darwin's method, because that method is science. Science is experiment; science is trying things. It is trying each possible alternative in turn, intelligently and systematically; and throwing away what won't work,and accepting what will,no matter how it goes against our prejudices. And what works adds one more piece to the slow, laborious, but triumphant understanding of our world.
我們把這種奇跡歸功于科學；這確實是奇跡。但創造奇跡的科學家們既不是神，也不是巫醫。他們是人，對未來抱有信心的人。他們從未用過什么巫術，他們用的實質上無非是達爾文的方法，因為那種方法就是科學。科學就是實驗；科學就是對各種事物進行試驗。科學理智地、系統地逐一試驗每種可能性，揚棄不可行的，采納可行的，而不管這種取舍與我們的成見多么相悖。實驗證明可行的，則又增加了一點我們對這個世界緩慢費力然而終將成功的了解。
This is not a secret or a mysterious progress. If it sometimes seems so, that is just because the day-to-day work of science is so unspectacular. You hear nothing from the research worker for years, and then, suddenly, there is the result in the headlines: penicillin or the jet engine or nuclear fission. No one tells the layman about the years of experiment and failure. How is he to know what has not been done, or to guess the labor of what has? What is he to think but to marvel at the skill of science, and to fear its power?
科學進步不是什么秘密，也沒有什么神秘。如果有時顯得神秘莫測的話，那只是因為日常的科研工作根本不會引人注意。許多年來，你聽不到科研人員有什么作為，然后，突然看到報紙的頭條新聞刊著他們的研究成果：青霉素啦，噴氣發動機啦，核裂變啦。門外漢對他們多少年來從事的實驗和遭到的失敗一無所知。他怎能知道科學上還有什么尚待研究，又怎能猜到為了獲得現有的成果科學家們花了多少心血？他除了對科學的技巧驚嘆不已、對其威力產生恐懼之外還能有什么別的想法呢？
