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太平洋地震带-三鲜馅饺子的做法

2020年12月4日发(作者：王文通)
大学英语精读第6册全文课文翻译
第六册

RESEARCH REPORTS FOR BUSINESS AND
THECNICAL WRITING
A surprising amount of one's time as a student
and professional is spent reporting the results of
one's research projects for presentation to
teachers, managers, and clients. Indeed, without
basic research skills and the ability to present
research results clearly and completely, an
individual will encounter many obstacles in school
and on the job. The need for some research-writing
ability is felt nearly equally by college students in
all fields, engineering and science as well as
business and the humanities. Graduate study often
makes great demands on the student's
research-writing skills, and most professions
continue the demand; education, advertising and
marketing, economics and accounting, science and
engineering, psychology, anthropology, the arts,
and agriculture may all require regular reporting of
research data.

ELEMENTS OF THE RESEARCH PAPER
The standard research report, regardless of the
field or the intended reader, contains four major
sections. These sections may be broken down into
a variety of subsections, and they may be arranged
in a variety of ways, but they regularly make up the
core of the report.
Problem Section. The first required section of a
research report is the statement of the problem
with which the research project is concerned. This
section requires a precise statement of the
underlying question which the researcher has set
out to answer. In this same section there should be
an explanation of the significance -- social,
economic, medical, psychological, educational,
etc. -- of the question; in other words, why the
investigation was worth conducting. Thus, if we set
out, for example, to answer the question
the effect of regular consumption of fast foods on
the health of the American teenager?
explain that the question is thought to have
significant relevance to the health of this segment
of the population and might lead to some sort of
商务、技术研究报告的写作
作为学生和专业人员，他们花了大量时
间将自己的研究项目的结果报告给老师，经
理和委托人。的确，一个人如果没有从事研
究工作的基本技能和将研究成果清楚而完
整地表达的能力，那么他就会在学习和工作
中碰到许多障碍。科研写作能力的需要对于
在各个领域的学生都是相等的，无论理工科
学生还是商务、人文学科的学生都是这样研
究生阶段的学习对学生的科研写作提出了
很高的要求，而且大多数职业继续要求这
样：教育（学）、广告与市场营销、经济学
与会计学，理工科、心理学、人类学、艺术
以及农艺可能都要定期报告研究的信息。
研究报告的要素
标准的研究报告，不论是哪个领域或针对哪
类读者，都有四个主要部分。这些大的部分
可以分成许多小的部分，而且结构安排可以
多种多样，但是报告的核心通常由这四大部
分组成的。
问题部分。研究报告的首要部分就是陈述研
究项目所涉及的问题。这一部分要求准确阐
述研究者要问答的根本问题。在这同一个部
分里应该从社会、经济，医学、心理、教育
方面来解释问题的意义：换言之，为什么值
得进行这项研究。这样，举例来说，如果我
们开始回答“经常食用快餐食品对美国青少
年有什么影响？”那么我们就必须解释，此
问题认为同这部分的人口有着非常密切的
关系，可能导致对此类食品作出某种规定。
问题这一部分通常有一个小部分对该课题
过去的研究民情况进行回顾。这可能包括对
这个问题以前的研究者作出的贡献进行总
结以及对这些贡献作出某种评价。这一小部
regulations on such foods.
A frequent subsection of this problem section is a
review of past research on the topic being
investigated. This would consist of summaries of
the contributions of previous researcher to the
question under consideration with some
assessment of the value of these contributions.
This subsection has rhetorical usefulness in that it
enhances the credibility of the researcher by
indicating that the data presented is based on a
thorough knowledge of what has been done in the
field and, possibly, grows out of some investigative
tradition.
Procedures Section. The second major section of
the research report details, with as much data as
possible, exactly how the study was carried out.
This section includes description of any necessary
equipment, how the subjects were selected if
subjects were used, what statistical technique was
used to evaluate the significance of the findings,
how many observations were made and when, etc.
An investigation of the relative effectiveness of
various swim-strokes would have to detail the
number of swimmers tested, the nature of the
tests conducted, the experience of the swimmers,
the weather conditions at the time of the test, and
any other factors that contributed to the overall
experiment. The goal of the procedures section is
to allow the reader to duplicate the experiment if
such were desired to confirm, or refute, your
findings.
Results Section. The third, and perhaps most
important, section of the research report is the
presentation of the results obtained from the
investigation. The basic rule in this section is to
give all data relevant to the research question
initially asked. Although, of course, one's natural
tendency might be to suppress any findings which
do not in some way support one's hypothesis, such
dishonesty is antithetical to good research
reporting in any field. If the experiments
undertaken fail to prove anything, if the data was
inadequate or contrary to expectations, the report
should be honestly written and as complete as
possible, just as it would be if the hypothesis were
totally proven by the research.
Discussion Section. The final required section of a
research report is a discussion of the results
obtained and a statement of any conclusions which
分具有修辞作用，因为它显示了所提供的资
料是在对本领域所取得的成果透彻理解的
基础上取得的，因而它提高了对研究者的可
信度。并且很可能是从某种调查研究中得出
来的。
过程部分。研究报告的第二大部分准确阐述
了，用尽可能多的资料，研究是如何进行的。
这部分包括说明所需要的设备，实验对象是
怎样选择的，如果使用了的话，用什么统计
方法来评价实验成果的意义，进行了多少次
观察以及什么时候进行的等。如果要对不同
泳姿的相应效果进行研究的话，那么就要详
细说明参加测试的人数，进行测试的性质，
游泳者的经历，进行测试的天气条件，以及对整个实验有影响的其它因素。过程部分的
目的是让读者能模拟实验，如果他愿意这么
样来证实或驳斥你的结果的话。
结果部分。研究报告的第三，也许是最重要
的部分是展示从研究中获得的结果。这部分
的基本原则就是对最初提出的问题提供一
切有关的资料。当然，虽然人的自然倾向可
能是对任何在某方面与自己的假设不符的
结果进行隐瞒，可是这种不诚实与任何领域 优秀的研究报告是相背的。如果所进行的实
验不能证实什么，如果资料不充分或与期望
相反，那么研究报告就应该如实而且尽可能
完整地写下来，就象假设被研究证实了的那
样把它写下来。
讨论部分。研究报告的最后一个必要部分就
是讨论所获得的结果，阐述从那些结果中得 出的任何结论。在商务和技术的研究报告
中，人们主要关注是结果的可靠性，这也是
公司决策的依据；我们策划的项目符合联邦
环境政策吗？会得到批准进行吗？?这个新
项目会吸引技术人材到我们公司来吗？从
金融方面看，这项石油回收新技术可行吗？
may be drawn from those results. Of primary
interest in business and technical research reports
is the validity of the results as the bases for
company decisions: Will our planned construction
project meet federal environmental guidelines and
be approved for building? Will this new program
attract skilled personnel to our company? Will this
new oil recovery technique be financially feasible?
Thus, the discussion section of the research report
must evaluate the research results fully: were they
validly obtained, are they complete or limited, are
they applicable over a wide range of
circumstances? The discussion section should also
point out what question remain unanswered and
perhaps suggest directions for further research.

STYLE OF RESEARCH REPORTS
Research reports are considered formal
professional communication. As such, there is little
emphasis on a lively style, although, of course,
there is no objection to writing that is pleasing and
interesting. The primary goals of professional
communication are accuracy, clarity, and
completeness. The rough draft of any research
report should be edited to ensure that all data is
correctly presented, that all equipment is listed,
that all results are properly detailed. As an aid to
the reader, headings indicating at least the major
section of the report should be used, and all data
should be presented under the proper headings. In
addition to their function of suggesting to the
reader the contents of each section, headings
enhance the formal appearance and professional
quality of the report, increase to some degree the
writer's credibility by reflecting a logical and
methodical approach to the reporting process, and
eliminate the need for wordy transitional devices
between sections.
Research data should be presented in a way that
places proper emphasis on major aspect of the
project. For different readers different aspects will
take on different degrees of importance, and some
consideration should be given to structuring
research reports differently for different audiences.
Management, for example, will be most concerned
with the results of a research project, and thus the
results section should be emphasized, probably by
presenting it immediately after the problem section
and before the procedures section. Other
这样，研究报告的讨论必须全面评价研究成
果：它们获得是否真实？它们是完整的还是
有局限性？它们的应用范围很大吗？讨论
部分也应该指出哪些问题仍然没有找到答
案，也许对进一步研究提出一些建议。
研究报告的文体
人们认为研究报告是属于正规的专业交流。
据此，并不强调用活泼文体，当然也不反对
文章写得生动有趣。专业交流的主要目的是
准确、明晰，完整。校订任何研究报告初稿
都应保证所有资料正确提供，所有设备列
出，所有结果恰当详述。为方便读者，应该 使用标题，至少标明报告的主要部分，而所
有资料都应当在恰当的标题下陈述。标题除
了有向读者提示每部分内容的功能外，它还
提高了报告的规范性和学术质量，同时报告
是按逻辑、有条理地写出来的，因此在某种
程度上增加了作者的可信度，消除了报告各
部分之间冗长的承上启下的词语。
应该用一种恰当强调项目主要方面的方式
陈述研究资料。对于不同的读者来说，不同
的方面具有不同的重要性。应该考虑到报告
的结构因不同的读者而有所不同。例如：资方对研究项目的结果最为关心，所以这部分
应该加以强调。在问题部分之后和过程部分
之前有可能立即出现。其他的研究人员对过
程部分尤为感兴趣，所以在把研究项目整理
成文用于在专业刊物发表或在专业会议上
宣读时，这一部分应该着重突出。对于非专
业读者和联邦机构来说，首要考虑的是研究
结果的含意，对于这部分读者来说，应该强
调讨论部分。
另外为了明晰、强调，主要成果不仅应该用
书面文字而且还应该用表格，图表，图解，
简图等直观形式来表述。
除了检查研究报告是否在技术资料方面表
researchers would be most interested in the
procedures section, and this should be highlighted
in writing up research projects for publication in
professional journals or for presentation at
professional conferences. For non-technical
readers and federal agencies, the implications of
the results might be the most important
consideration, and emphasis should be placed on
the discussion of the report for this readership.
For additional clarity and emphasis, major results
should be presented in a visual format -- tables,
charts, graphs, diagrams -- as well as in a verbal
one.
Beyond checking the report for clarity and accuracy
in the presentation of technical data, the author of
a research report should review for basic
grammatical and mechanical accuracy. Short
sentences are preferable to long in the
presentation of complex information. Listings
should be used to break up long passages of prose
and to emphasize information. The research writer
should try to use the simplest possible language
without sacrificing the professional quality of the
report. Although specialized terms can be used,
pretentious jargon should be avoided. A finished
research report should be readable and useful
document prepared with the reader in mind.

CONCLUSION
Although we struggle with research reports in
high school, dread them in college, and are often
burdened by them in our professional live, learning
to live comfortably with them is a relatively easy
task. A positive attitude (i.e. one that seem the oral
or written presentation of research results as of
equal importance to the data-gathering process);
an orderly approach which includes prewriting
(i.e., before any actual research is done, the
researcher should try to get down on paper as
much about the subject under investigation as
possible) and a formal research report structure as
the framework for the investigation; and a
reasonable approach to the actual writing process
including editing for accuracy and clarity, will help
one to produce effective research reports
efficiently.

达清楚、准确外，作者还应该检查基本语法
和打印方面是否准确。在陈述复杂信息时最
好使用短句。应该使用列举方法来避免长篇
大论，强调信息。研究报告的作者应该在不
损害报告的专业质量的情况下尽可能使用
最简单的语言。虽然专业术语能够使用，但
虚饰的行为应当避免。一篇完整的研究报告
应该是一份把读者装在心中，可读而又有用
的文献。
结论
虽然我们在中学就努力去写好研究报
告，在大学仍有点害怕，在专业生活中还经
常感到它是一种负担，然而学会与之泰然相
处也是一件相对容易的事。为了帮助人们及
时而又有效地写出报告，人们应该做到：有
一种积极的态度（即把口头和书面陈述研究
成果与资料收集过程看成同样重要）：写作
步骤井然有序，包括写作前的准备工作（即
在进行实际研究工作之前，研究者应当尽可
能多地把与研究课题有关的资料写下来）有
一个正式研究报告的构思作为调查的框架；
有一个合理的写作方法，包括为了准确、清
楚、将会很有效的进行校订过程。

职业的开端

贝尔蒙特宾馆，1952年6月11日
亲爱的妈妈：
你那份令我吃惊的电报，[宣布了由我
转寄的＜明顿家的星期天＞、获得了＜小姐
＞杂志五百元奖金。它正好是我在阴暗的贝
尔蒙特餐厅洗餐桌时收到的我非常激动，大
声叫着，竟一把抱住了女服务员领班。毫无
疑问，她一定认为我发疯了。不管怎样，从
心理上讲，你的电报来得正是时候。那时我
觉得很累——人到一个新地方，第一夜总是
睡不好的——而我就没有睡多少觉。更糟糕
的是，我是这里唯一的女招待。一直要擦洗
家具，洗盘子和银餐具，搬桌子等，从上
午８点开始我刚知道，因为我完全没有经
THE BEGINNING OF A CARREER
Dear Mother,
Your amazing telegram [telegram announcing
$$500 Mademoiselle prize for
Mintons,
scrubbing tables in the shady interior of The
Belmont dining room. I was so excited that I
screamed and actually threw my arms around the
head waitress who no doubt thinks I am rather
insane! Anyhow, psychologically, the moment
couldn't have been better. I felt tired -- one's first
night's sleep in a new place never is peaceful -- and
I didn't get much! To top it off, I was the only girl
waitress here, and had been scrubbing furniture,
washing dishes and silver, lifting tables, etc. since
8 a.m. Also, I just learned since I am completely
inexperienced, I am not going to be working in the
main dining room, but in the
managers and top hotel brass eat. So, tips will no
doubt net much less during the summer and the
company be less interesting. So I was beginning to
worry about money when your telegram came.
God! To think
prize stories to be put in a big national slick!
Frankly, I can't believe it!
The first thing I though of was: Mother can keep
her intersession money and buy some pretty
clothes and a special trip or something! At least I
get a winter coat and extra special suit out of the
Mintons. I think the prize is $$500!
ME! Of all people!…
So it's really looking up around here, now that I
don't have to be scared stiff about money … Oh, I
say, even if my feet kill me after this first week,
and I drop 20 trays, I will have the beach, boys to
bring me beer, sun, and young gay companions.
What a life.
Love, your crazy old daughter.

Sivvy

June 12. 1952
No doubt after I catch up on sleep, and learn to
balance trays high on my left hand, I'll feel much
happier. As it is now, I feel stuck in the midst of a
lot of loud, brassy Irish Catholics, and the only way
I can jolly myself is to say,
summer, and I can maybe write about them all.
least I've got a new name for my next protagonist
-- Marley, a gabby girl who knows her way around
but good. The ration of boys to girls has gotten less
验，将不会让我在正厅工作，而是让我在经
理们和主管人员就餐的“ 侧厅”工作。所有，
这个暑假的小费毫无疑问会少得多，并且一
起干活的伙伴缺乏风趣。我正开动为缺钱发
愁时你的电报来了。上帝啊！想想看，《明
顿家的星期天》竟是一家全国性通俗刊物的
两篇获奖小说之一！说实话，我真地不敢相
信！
我当时想到的第一件事是：妈妈可以将她要
给我暑假用的钱留下，买些好衣服，进行一
次特别旅游什么的。至少我能够用《明顿家》
获得的奖金买一件冬装和一套非常精美的
衣服。奖金有五百元之多啊！
这么多人中，获奖的竟是我！
现在这里一切都好起来，因为我不必为钱担
心了，…… 啊，即使这第一个星期之后我双
脚疼得要命，即使摔破了二十个盘子我仍然
会到海滩去，要侍者为我拿酒，要享受海边
的阳光，要与年轻的伙伴同乐。多么美好的
生活！
爱你，你那发疯的女儿。
西维
1952年6月12日
毫无疑问，我睡足觉，学会用左手端稳高高
的盘子后，
我会感到更高兴的。现在实际上，我觉得自
己陷入一伙闹哄哄、厚脸皮的爱尔兰天主教
徒之中，无法脱身，而我能够自乐的唯一办
法就是说：“嗯，只是一个夏天，而我还可
以把他们写到我的小说里去呢。”至少，我已经为我的下一个主人公取了一个新名字
——马莉，一个能说会道熟知人情世故的女
孩，小伙子们与大姑娘的比例越来越小。所
以如果我被这儿哪个最年轻的小伙子追求
的话，那我是很幸运的。这里的很多女孩确
实机灵，能喝酒，会调情卖俏。而我因是那
种保守、文静、优雅的女孩，所以不太可能
和一些帅小伙子约会……要是我能与这些女
孩相处很好，作她们朋友而决不让她们知道
我是个文雅的知识分子的话，那就好了。
对于《小姐》杂志那条消息，我还是感到不 可理解。我曾经确信他们弄错了，或是你杜
撰出来让我高兴的。最大的好处将是我不必
为这个夏天只能挣到300美金发愁了。不
然的话，我会忧心忡忡的。我现在真是急不
and less, so I'll be lucky if I get tagged by the
youngest kid here. Lots of the girls are really wise,
drinking flirts. As for me, being the conservative,
quiet, gracious type, I don't stand much chance of
dating some of the cutest ones … If I can only get

minute let them know I'm the gentle intellectual
type, it'll be O.K.
As for the Mlle news, I don't think it's really sunk in
yet. I felt sure they made a mistake, or that you'd
made it up to cheer me. The big advantage will be
that I won't have to worry about earning barely
$$300 this summer. I would really have been sick
otherwise. I can't wait till August when I can go
casually down to the drug store and pick up a slick
copy of Mlle, flip to the index, and see ME, one of
two college girls in the U.S.!
Really, when I think of how I started it over spring
vacation, polished it at school, and sat up till
midnight in the Haven House kitchen typing it
amidst noise and chatter, I can't get over how the
story soared to were it did…
I get great pleasure out of sharing it [her feeling
about the story] with you, who really understand
how terribly much it means as a tangible testimony
that I have got a germ of writing ability. The only
thing, I probably won't have a chance to win Mlle
again, so I'll try for a guest editorship maybe next
or my senior year, and set my sights for the
Atlantic. God, I'm glad I can talk about it with you
-- probably you're the only outlet that I'll have that
won't get tired of my talking about writing …
Speaking again of Henry and Liz, it was a step for
me to a story where the protagonist isn't always
ME, and proved that I am beginning to use
imagination to transform the actual incident. I was
scared that would never happen, but I think it's an
indication that my perspective is broadening.
Sometime I think -- heck, I don't know why I didn't
stay home all summer, writing, doing physical
science, and having a small part-time job. I could

yearn about that, I guess. Although it would have
been nice. Oh well, I'll cheer up. I love you.
Your own Sivvy

June 15, 1952

Dear Mother.
可耐地希望八月到来，到那时我可随意走进
杂货店拿起一册漂亮的《小姐》杂志，赶快
翻到索引部分，看到我，美国两名女大学生
之一！
真的，当我想起整个春假期间怎样着手写这
篇小说。在学校修改润色，在海文豪斯厨房
喧闹的环境中熬夜打字到深夜的时候，我真
的无法相信这篇小说会获得如此大奖……
因为你能真正理解，它对我来说有多么重要
的意义。它充分表明我有创作潜力。唯一的
事就是我极有可能再也没有机会获得《小
姐》杂志的大奖了。所以也许明年，也许在
大四，我要努力争取做一名客座编辑，而且
我的目标是要做《大西洋》月刊的客座编辑。
天哪，能和你谈论这事，我很高兴——很可
能你是我拥有的唯一——一位不厌其烦地
听我谈论写作的听众……
再谈谈亨利和莉兹，它是我小说创作迈出的
一步。故事中的主人公不再总是“ 我”，它还
证明我开始动用想象力来改变真事。我还真
害怕过这事办不到，不过我想这表明我观察
事物的能力在扩大.
有时我想——见鬼，我不知道我为何整个夏
天不呆在家里写作、学习自然科学，做一份
兼职的小事。我现“有能力”做到了，不过我
想过于想得到这个并不一定是好事，虽然这
样做了会很好。好啦，我会振作精神的，我
爱你。
你的西维
1952年6月12日
亲爱的妈妈，
妈妈，你一定要给我写信，因为我现在处在 一种自惭形秽的危险状态……就眼下，生活
糟透了。《小姐》获奖好象完全不是真的，
我现在总的来说，情绪低落：疲惫、害怕、
无能、精力不济……
在侧厅工作把我撇在一边，我感到孤立无
援，非常尴尬。我越是看见正厅的女孩们熟
练地准备特别的菜肴，
做刨冰，水果等，就越是感到自叹不如，感
到每天在侧厅工作使我大大落后了……但是
尽管我受到诱惑去当胆小鬼、爬回家去，我
还决心试着干完这一个月——直到7月10
日……不要为我担心，不过请一定时常给我
寄些简短的建议来。
… Do write me letters, Mommy, because I am in a
very dangerous of feeling sorry for myself … Just at
present, life is awful. Mademoiselle seems quite
unreal, and I am exhausted, scared, incompetent,
unenergetic and generally low is spirits … Working
in side hall puts me part, and I feel completely
uprooted and clumsy. The more I see the main hall
girls expertly getting special dishes, fixing shaved
ice and fruit, etc., the more I get an inferiority
complex and feel that each day in side hall leaves
me further behind … But as tempted as I am to be
a coward and escape by crawling back home, I
have resolved to give it a good month's trial -- till
July 10 … Don't worry about me, but do send me
little pellets of advice now and then.

June 24, 1952
… Last night I went on a
the
hours. There were about forty of us kids from the
hotel. I managed by some magic to get myself
seated next to a fellow in his first year at Harvard
Law -- and he was just a dear … The best part was
when we came back. It was a beautiful clear starry
night, and Clark went in to get me two of his
sweaters to wear because it was cold, and brought
out a book of T.S. Eliot's poems. So we sat on a
bench where I could just barely read the print, and
he put his head in my lap and I read aloud to him
for a wile. Most nice. The only thing is I am so
inclined to get fond of someone who will do things
with me like that -- always inclined to be too
metaphysical and serious conversationally -- that's
my main trouble … So glad to hear the check from
Mlle is real. I hardly could believe it. Just now I am
mentally so disorganized that I can't retain
knowledge or think at all. The work is still new
enough to be tiring, what with three changes a day
into uniforms, and I am so preoccupied by
mechanics of living and people that I can't yet
organize and assimilate all the chaos of experience
pouring in on me. In spite of everything, I still have
my good old sense of humor and manage to laugh
a good deal of the time … I'll make the best of
whatever comes my way.

Much love to you,
Sivvy

THE QUEST FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL
1952年6月15日
昨天晚上我到“桑德酒吧”参加了一个“同
伙”生日聚会。在哪儿我们唱啊、谈啊她几
个小时。从宾馆我们去了大约四十个少男少
女。受到某种魔力的驱使，我设法挨着一名
哈佛法学院的一年级学生坐了下来——而
且她的确招人喜爱……最好的时光是我们回
来的时候。那是一个美丽、明净、星星满天
夜晚，因为天气冷，克拉克进屋去拿了两件
毛衣让我穿，还拿出了一本T·S·艾略特诗
集。我们坐在一张我能够勉强看得清字的长
凳上，他把头靠在我的膝上，我给他念了一
会儿诗。真好。唯一的问题就是我非常容易
爱上像这样和我一起欣赏诗歌的人了——
总是容易谈论非常抽象、严肃的话题——这
就是我的主要问题……所以非常高兴听到
《小姐》杂志的支票是真的。我简直不敢相
信。现在我的思绪混乱，所以完全记不住东
西，也不能清楚考虑问题。工作仍然不熟练， 觉得累。由于一天要换三次制服。我总是忙
于日常琐事、与人交往，还没来得及整理、
消化我所经历的这些杂乱的事情。尽管如
此，我还是像以往那样具有幽默感，很多时
候还是尽量让自己开怀大笑……不管我发生
什么事，我都会全力以赴的。
非常爱你的
西维

探寻外星人

自从人类有历史记载以来，我们一直在
思索着星星，反复考虑是否只有人类存在，
或者说在太空深处的某个地方是否存在其
他同我们一样在不停地思索着的生命，也就
是宇宙中跟我们一起思考的人。这样的人可
能对自己和宇宙算法不同。在别的什么地方
可能存在着非常奇异的生物、技术和社会。
我们在一种空间和时间都超出人类理解的
宇宙环境里感到有点孤独。我们深思着根本
的意义，我们这个渺小的但精巧的蓝色星。
探寻外星人就是为人类寻找一个普遍能接
受的宇宙环境。从最深层次的意义来说，探
寻外星人就是寻找我们自己。
在过去的几年中——在我们人类生活
在这个星球上的百万分之一的时间里，——
我们已经具有了一种非凡的能力。这种技术
INTELLIGENC E
Through all of our history we have pondered
the stars and mused whether humanity is unique
or if, somewhere else in the dark of the night sky,
there are other beings who contemplate and
wonder as we do, fellow thinkers in the cosmos.
Such beings might view themselves and the
universe differently. Somewhere else there might
be very exotic biologies and technologies and
societies. In a cosmic setting vast and old beyond
ordinary human understanding, we are a little
lonely; and we ponder the ultimate significance, if
any, of our tiny but exquisite blue planet.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is
the search for a generally acceptable cosmic
context for the human species. In the deepest
sense, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is
a search for ourselves.
In the last few years -- in one-millionth the lifetime
of our species on this planet -- we have achieved
an extraordinary technological capability which
enables us to seek out unimaginably distant
civilizations even if they are no more advanced
than we. That capability is called radio astronomy
and involves single radio telescopes, collections or
arrays of radio telescopes, sensitive radio
detectors, advanced computers for processing
received date, and the imagination and skill of
dedicated scientists. Radio astronomy has in the
last decade opened a new window on the physical
universe. It may also, if we are wise enough to
make the effort, cast a profound light on the
biological universe.
Some scientists working on the question of
extraterrestrial intelligence, myself among them,
have attempted to estimate the number of
advanced technical civilizations -- defined
operationally as societies capable of radio
astronomy -- in the Milky Way Galaxy. Such
estimates are little better than guesses. They
require assigning numerical values to quantities
such as the numbers and ages of stars; the
abundance of planetary systems and the likelihood
of the origin of life, which we know less well; and
the probability of the evolution of intelligent life
and the lifetime of technical civilizations, about
which we know very little indeed.
When we do the arithmetic, the sorts of numbers
we come up with are, characteristically, around a
能力能使我们搜寻到无比遥远的文明世界，
即使他们和我们一样不先进。
这种技术能力叫做射电天文学。它涉及
到单架射望远镜、阵列射电望远镜、高灵敏
度的无线电探测器，用于处理接收的信息的
先进计算机以及全身心投入的科学家们的
想象力和技能。射电天文学在过去的十年中
已经打开了一个研究宇宙的新窗口。如果我
们充分发挥自己的聪明才智去努力，它可能
会帮助我们弄清楚宇宙生物世界。
一些研究外星人问题的科学家，包括我自
己，都已努力设法对银河系的先进技术文明
社会的数目进行了估计——先进技术文明
社会定义为具有射民天文学能力的社会。这
样的估计比猜想强不了多少。
它们要求将这些情况数字化，诸如星球的数
量和年龄，有多少个行星系、生命起源的可
能性有多大，这些我们较少知道：还有智慧
生物进化的可能性和技术文明世界的寿命，
这些我们近乎一无所知。
当我们进行计算时我们得出的这类数字是
很有特点的大约有一百万个文明世界。想象
一下这百万个文明世界的五花八门、这真令
人兴奋，各种生活方式以及商业，可是银河
系有大约二千五百亿个恒星，即使有一百万
个文明世界，可每二十万个恒星中不到一个
有文明世界的人居住的行星。既然我们几乎 不知道哪些恒星可能存在文明世界，我们将
不得不搜寻大量的恒星。这样就意味着探寻
外星人可能需要作出极大的努力。
尽管有人声称古代在太空人，见过不明飞行
物，然而却缺乏确凿的证据证明过去有其他
文明世界的人来过地球。我们只限于运用远
距离的通信，在目前我们的技术所能运用的
长距离的技术手段中，无线电肯定是最好
的。无线电望远镜相对来说价格便宜；无线
电象光速那样快速发送信号，而且前没有任
何东西快过光速；把无线电用于通讯不是一种短视的或以人类为宇宙中心的行为。无线
电具有大部分的电磁波谱，银河系中的任何
地方的任何技术文明世界该早就发现无线
电，无线电具有大部分的电磁波谱，银河系
million technical civilizations. A million civilizations
is a breathtakingly large number, and it is
exhilarating to imagine the diversity, lifestyles and
commerce of those million worlds. But the Milky
Way Galaxy contains some 250 billion stars, and
even with a million civilizations, less than one star
in 200,000 would have a planet inhabited by an
advanced civilization. Since we have little idea
which stars are likely candidates, we will have to
examine a very large number of them. Such
considerations suggest that the quest for
extraterrestrial intelligence may require a
significant effort.
Despite claims about ancient astronauts and
unidentified flying objects, there is no firm
evidence for past visitation of the Earth by other
civilizations. We are restricted to remote signaling
and, of the long-distance techniques available to
our technology, radio is by far the best. Radio
telescopes are relatively inexpensive; radio signals
travel at the speed of light, faster than which
nothing can go; and the use of radio for
communication is not a short-sighted or
anthropocentric activity. Radio represents a large
part of the electromagnetic spectrum and any
technical civilization anywhere in the Galaxy will
have discovered radio early -- just as in the last
few centuries we have explored the entire
electromagnetic spectrum from short gamma rays
to very long radio waves. Advanced civilizations
might very well use some other means of
communication with their peers. But if they wish to
communicate with backward or emerging
civilizations, there are only a few obvious methods,
the chief of which is radio.
The first serious attempt to listen for possible radio
signals from other civilizations was carried out at
the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in
Greenbank, West Virginia, in 1959 and 1960. It
was organized by Frank Drake, now at Cornel
University, and was called Project Ozma, after the
princess of the Land of Oz, a place very exotic, very
distant and very difficult to reach. Drake examined
two nearby stars for a few weeks with negative
results. Positive results would have been
astonishing because as we have seen, even rather
optimistic estimates of the number of technical
civilizations in the Galaxy imply that several
hundred thousand stars must be examined in order
中的任何地方的任何技术文明世界该早就
发现无线电了 ——正像在过去的几个世纪
中我们对从短伽马射线到长线电波的整个
电磁波谱已经探索过了一样。先进的文明社
会要能使用其它的通讯方式同他们的同辈
进行联系。但是，假如他们想和落后的或新
兴的文明社会联系，很显然只有几种方法，
其中主要的方法就是无线电。
在西旨吉尼亚州格林班克国家无线电天文
台第一次认真的尝试收听了来自其他文明
的信号。在１９５９年和１９６０年。此项
工作是由弗兰克·德雷克主持的，他现在在
康乃尔大学。这是以奥兹国公主的名字命名
的，叫作奥兹玛项目。奥兹国是个十分奇异、
非常遥远，难以到达的地方。德雷克在几个
星期里对两个附近的恒星进行了探测，没有
取得积极的结果。假如取得了积极的结果， 那会令人吃惊的，因为，正象我们已经看到
的一样，即使非常乐观地估算一下银河系中
的技术文明社会的数目,要想不加选择地探
测就取得成功的话，必须探测几十万个恒
星。
自从奥兹玛项目以来，又有６到８个这样规
模的项目。都是这样的规模，无论是在美国，
加拿大和苏联。所有都未取得结果到目前为
止用这种方法探测过的恒星总数还不到一
千个，也就是我们大约只探测了需要探测的
百分之一中的十分之一。可是，种种迹象表
明，人们可能在最近的将来作出更大的努
力。此外，随着最近无线电技术取得巨大进
步，科学界和公众对外星人这一整个课题的
认识极大地提高了。这种新态度的一种显着
标志就是向火星发射的“海盗”号。这些发射
在很大程度上是专门寻找另一个行星上的
生命的。
但是在人们正为认真探索奉献更多力量的
同时，一种略具否定意味却又十分有趣地声
音出现了。有几名科学家最近提出了一个奇 怪的问题：如果有大量的外星人存在，为什
么我们还没有看到它存在的迹象？持怀疑
态度的人还对为什么没有明显证据证明外
星人到过地球提出了疑问。我们已经发射了
to achieve success by random stellar selection.
Since Project Ozma, there have been six or eight
other such programs, all at a rather modest level,
in the United States, Canada and the Soviet Union.
All results have been negative. The total number of
individual stars examined to date in this way is less
than a thousand. We have performed something
like one tenth of one percent of the required effort.
However, there are signs that much more serious
efforts may be mustered in the reasonably near
future. Besides, hand in hand with the recent
spectacular advances in radio technology, there
has been a dramatic increase in the scientific and
public respectability of the entire subject of
extraterrestrial life. A clear sign of the new attitude
is the Viking missions to Mars, which are to a
significant extent dedicated to the search for life on
another planet.
But along with the burgeoning dedication to a
serious search, a slightly negative note has
emerged which is nevertheless very interesting. A
few scientists have lately asked a curious question:
If extraterrestrial intelligence is abundant, why
have we not already seen its manifestations?
Skeptics also ask why there is no clear evidence of
extraterrestrial visits to Earth. We have already
launched slow and modest interstellar spacecraft.
A society more advance than ours should be able to
ply the spaces between the stars conveniently if
not effortlessly. Over millions of years such
societies should have established colonies, which
might themselves launch interstellar expeditions.
Why are they not here? The temptation is to
deduce that there are at most a few advanced
extraterrestrial civilizations -- either because
statistically we are one of the first technical
civilizations to have emerged or because it is the
fate of all such civilizations to destroy themselves
before they are much further along than we.
It seems to me that such despair is quite
premature. All such arguments depend on our
correctly surmising the intentions of beings far
more advanced than ourselves, and when
examined more closely I think these arguments
reveal a range of interesting human conceits. Why
do we expect that it will be easy to recognize the
manifestations of very advanced civilizations? Is
our situation not closer to that of members of an
isolated society in the Amazon basin, say, who lack
速度慢、不太大的星际宇宙飞船。一个比我
们先进的社会，如果不是毫不费力的话，也
应该能很方便地来往于星际之间。在几百万
年的时间中，这样的社会应该早已建立了殖
民地，他们本身可能进行星际远征探险。
他们为什么没到这里来？人们很自然地推
断地球外最多有几个先进的文明社会——
这要么是因为从统计数据上看我们是已经
形成的首批技术文明社会之一，要么由于命
运不济，所有这样的文明社会在他们发达得
远远超过我们之前就自我来亡了。
我认为这种绝望是相当幼稚的。所有这些论
断取决于我们对远比我们自己先进行得多
的生物的动机是否能作出正确判断：如果对
这些论断进行更为细致的审视的话，我认为
它们表现出了人类一种有趣的自负心态。我
们为什么要指望会很容易地找出非常先进
的文明社会存在的迹象呢？我们的境况不
是和亚马逊河流域的与世隔绝的社会中的
人很接近吗？这些人缺少工具来探测他们
周围功率强大的国际间的无线电和电视通
讯。天文学中也有大量没有完全理解的现
象。肪冲星的调制或者类星体的能量来源,
例如，是不是可能源于某种技术？或许银河
系有一条不许干涉落后或新兴文明社会的
道德规范；或许要等一段时间再进行接触才认为得体，以便给我们一个公平的机会来先
毁灭自己。假如我们想这么做的话。或许所
有比我们自己要先进得多的社会都已经有
效地达到了使每个成员长生不老的阶段，所
以以就失去了到星际间去邀游的愿望，而这
种愿望可能可是早期文明社会的一种典型
的冲动，谁知道呢。或许成熟的文明社会不
想污染宇宙。可以说出很多这样的“或许”，
但没有几种我们能够肯定地作出估计。在我
看来，地球文明社会的问题还远未解决。我
个人认为理解在一个宇宙中只有我们这一 个技术文明是很困难的。或着少数几个宇宙
与想象的一个充满生命的宇宙想比也是一
样。幸运的是，这个问题的许多方面可以经
得起实践的检验。我们能够搜寻其它恒星，
寻找象火星这样离我们很近的行星上的简
the tools to detect the powerful international radio
and television traffic that is all around them? Also,
there is a wide range of incompletely understood
phenomena in astronomy. Might the modulation of
pulsars or the energy source of quasars, for
example, have a technological origin? Or perhaps
there is a galactic ethic of noninterference with
backward or emerging civilizations. Perhaps there
is a waiting time before contact is considered
appropriate, so as to give us a fair opportunity to
destroy ourselves first, if we are so inclined.
Perhaps all societies significantly more advanced
than our own have achieved an effective personal
immortality and lose the motivation for interstellar
gallivanting, which may, for all we know, be a
typical urge only of adolescent civilizations.
Perhaps mature civilizations do not wish to pollute
the cosmos. There is a very long list of such

evaluate with any degree of assurance.
The question of extraterrestrial civilizations seems
to me entirely open. Personally, I think it far more
difficult to understand a universe in which we are
the only technological civilization, or one of a very
few, than to conceive of a cosmos brining over with
intelligent life. Many aspects of the problem are,
fortunately, amenable to experimental verification.
We can search for planets of other stars, seek
simple forms of life on such nearby planets as
Mars, and perform more extensive laboratory
studies on the chemistry of the origin of life. We
can investigate more deeply the evolution of
organisms and societies. The problem cries out for
a long-term, open-minded, systematic search,
with nature as the only arbiter of what is or is not
likely.
单生命形式，并且在实验室中可以对生命起
源的化学机理作更广泛的研究。我们还可以
更深入地研究生物和社会的进化原理。这个 问题需要人们长期地、不带偏见地、系统地
去探索，而只有大自然才是什么可能、什么
不可能的唯一仲裁者。

借书证
一天早上，我上班到得早，便走进银行
的门廊，里面有一个黑人清洁工在拖地。我
站在柜台边，拿了一份孟菲斯《商业呼声
报》，读起了免费报纸。我最后翻到社论版，
上面登了一篇写关于一名叫H.L.门肯的人
的文章。我听说门肯是《美国信使》报的编
辑。不过除此之外，对他毫无别的了解。该
文言辞激烈地遣责门肯，文章结尾时用了一
句辛辣的短句：门肯是个傻子。
我在想这位门肯先生到底做了什么事以至
于引得南方对他嘲弄。我所听说过在南方唯
一受到谴责的人就是黑人。而此人不是黑
人。那么门肯持有什么样的观点使得象《商
业呼声》这样的报纸公开攻击他？不用说，
他一定是在宣扬南方所不喜欢的思想。
那么我怎样能够弄清楚门肯其人？江边有
一大型图书馆，但我知道，正如不许黑人进
入城里的公园和运动场一样，他们也同样不
被允许进入图书馆。我曾经几次去过那儿，
帮正在干活的白人借书。
他们中有哪个人能帮我借书呢？
我反复琢磨着这些白人的人品。有一个犹太
人叫唐，但我信不过他。他的情况并不比我
好多少，而且我知道他这个人总是不安分没
有安全感。他待我总是满不在乎、傲气十足，
对我的轻视几乎也不加掩饰。我不敢要他去
帮我借书。他特别渴望表示自己在与白人团
结一致反对黑人，这使他有可能会出卖我。那么老板如何样呢？不成。他是个浸礼会教
徒，我有这样的怀疑，就是他可能不大会明
白为什么一个黑人孩子想去读门肯的书。上
班的还有一些别的白人，但他们的态度明确
地表明他们要么是三K党徒，要么是其支
持者，要他们帮忙是不可能的。
仅剩一人了，他的态度不属于反黑人的范
畴，因为我曾经听白人们叫他为“拍教皇马
屁的人”。他是爱尔兰的天主教徒，南方白 THE LIBRARY CARD
One morning I arrived early at work and went
into the bank lobby where the Negro porter was
mopping. I stood at a counter and picked up the
Memphis Commercial Appeal and began my free
reading of the press. I came finally to the editorial
page and saw an article dealing with one H. L.
Mencken. I knew by hearsay that he was the editor
of the American Mercury, but aside from that I
knew nothing about him. The article was a furious
denunciation of Mencken, concluding with one, hot,
short sentence: Mencken is a fool.
I wondered what on earth this Mencken had done
to call down upon him the scorn of the South. The
only people I had ever heard enounced in the
South were Negroes, and this man was not a
Negro. Then what ideas did Mencken hold that
made a newspaper like the Commercial Appeal
castigate him publicly? Undoubtedly he must be
advocating ideas that the South did not like.
Now, how could I find out about this Mencken?
There was a huge library near the riverfront, but I
knew that Negroes were not allowed to patronize
its shelves any more than they were the parks and
playgrounds of the city. I had gone into the library
several times to get books for the white men on the
job. Which of them would now help me to get
books?
I weighed the personalities of the men on the job.
There was Don, a Jew; but I distrusted him. His
position was not much better than mine and I knew
that he was uneasy and insecure; he had always
treated me in an offhand, bantering way that
barely concealed his contempt. I was afraid to ask
him to help me to get books; his frantic desire to
demonstrate a racial solidarity with the whites
against Negroes might make him betray me.
Then how about the boss? No, he was a Baptist and
I had the suspicion that he would not be quite able
to comprehend why a black boy would want to read
Mencken. There were other white men on the job
whose attitudes showed clearly that they were
Kluxers or sympathizers, and they were out of the
question.
There remained only one man whose attitude did
not fit into an anti-Negro category, for I had heard
the white men refer to him as
an Irish Catholic and was hated by the white
Southerners. I knew that he read books, because I
had got him volumes from the library several
times. Since he, too, was an object of hatred, I felt
that he might refuse me but would hardly betray
me. I hesitated, weighing and balancing the
imponderable realities.
One morning I paused before the Catholic fellow's
desk.

I wonder if you'd let me use your card?
He looked at me suspiciously.
人不喜欢他。我知道他常读书。因为我曾经
有几次帮他去图书馆借过书。因为他也是白
人仇视的对象，我感到他也许会拒绝我但不
大可能出卖我。我拿不准，只在心里反复琢
磨，反复权衡着这无法估计的事情。
一天早上，我来到这位天主教徒的桌子边停
下。
“我想请你帮个忙。”我低声对他说。
“什么忙？”
“我想借书。我从图书馆中借不到书。
我不知道你可否让我用一用你的借书证？”
他满心怀疑地看着我。
“我的证大部分时间都借满了，”他说。
“我知道。”我边说边等待着，用沉默来提出
我的问题。
“你不是想给我惹麻烦，对吗，小伙子？”
他两眼瞪着我。
“噢，不，先生。”
“你想借什么书？”
“H.L.门肯写的。“
“哪一本？”
“我不知道。他写过不止一本书吗？”
“他写了好几本。”
“我以前不知道。”
“你为什么想读门肯的书？”
“噢，我刚刚在报纸上看到他的名字。”我说。
“你想读书是不错的，”他说，
“不过，你应该读一些好的书。”
我什么也没说。他会不会要监督我的阅读
呢？
“让我想一下，我会想出办法的。”他说。
我转过身走开，他把我叫了回来。
有些不解地盯着我说：
“理查德，不要对其他的白人讲此事。”
“我知道，我是一个字也不会说的。”
几天后，他把我叫了过去。
“我用我妻子的名义搞了张借书证，”他说。
“我的这张就给你了。”
“谢谢你，先生。”
“你认为自己能成功吗？”
“我会搞妥的。”我说。
“如果他们怀疑上你，你就麻烦了。”他说。
“我会象你以前让我去借书时一样写张条子
给图书馆。”我告诉他说，
“我会签上你的名子的。”

silently.

bo y?

ough t to read the right things.
I said nothing. Would he want to supervise my
reading?

I turned from him and he called me back. He stared
at me quizzically.

men,

A few days later he called me to him.

you wrote when you sent me for books,

He laughed.

That afternoon I addressed myself to forging a
note. Now, what were the name of books written
by H. L. Mencken? I did not know any of them. I
finally wrote what I thought would be a foolproof
note: Dear Madam: Will you please let this nigger
boy -- I used the word
librarian feel that I could not possibly be the author
of the note -- have some books by H.L. Mecken? I
forged the white man's name.
I entered the library as I had always done when on
errands for whites, but I felt that I would somehow
slip up and betray myself. I doffed my hat, stood a
respectful distance from the desk, looked as
他听后笑了起来。
“去吧。看看你能借到什么书。”
那天下午，我竭尽全力造了一张假便条。但
是，H .L.门肯写的书的书名都是什么呢？我
一点也不知道。最后，我写了一张自认为万
无一失的条子：亲爱的夫人，请让这个小黑
鬼——我使用了“黑鬼”这个词是为了让图
书管理员不认为我写这张便条——借几本
H.L.门肯的书好吗？在便条上我假冒了这
个白人的签名。
我象以往为白人跑腿借书时一样走进了图
书馆，但不知怎么搞的，我总觉得自己不知
会在什么地方出点岔子，最终暴露自己。我
摘下帽子，毕恭毕敬地站在离借书桌有一段
距离的地方，显出一副不会读书的样子，等
着白人读者先借。桌边已经空无一人了，我
仍在等着。
白人管理员看着我问道：
“你想干什么，伙计？”
像不会说话一样
我迈向前，一声也没作的把那张伪造的条子
递了过去。
“他想借门肯的书？”她问。
“我不知道，夫人。”我躲开了她的双眼。
“这张卡是谁给你的？”
“福尔克先生。”
“他在哪儿？”
“他在工作。在M——光学仪器公司，”我说，
“我以前在这儿给他借过书。”
“我记得，”她说。“但他从未写过象这样的
条子。”
噢，天啊！她有点怀疑了。也许她不会让我
借这些书了。如果当时她转过身去的话，我
一定会低头冲出门外，再也不回去了。这时，
我想出了一个大胆的主意。
“你可以打电话问问他，夫人，”我说道，心
里却紧张得砰砰狂跳。
“不是你自己用这些书吧？”她直率地问。
“噢，不会，夫人。我不会认字。”
“ 我不知道他要门肯的什么书？”她低声说
道。此时，我知道成功了。她已经忘了种族
问题，在考虑其它的问题了。她走到书架前，
又转过头来看过我一、两次，似乎仍对我有
些怀疑。最后她拿了两本书走了过来。“我
借给他两本书。”她说。
unbookish as possible, and waited for the white
patrons to be taken care of. When the desk was
clear of people, I still waited.
The white librarian looked at me.

As though I did not possess the power of speech, I
stepped forward and simply handed her the forged
note, not parting my lips.

asked.

wrote notes like this.
Oh, God, she's suspicious. Perhaps she would not
let me have the books? If she had turned her back
at that moment, I would have ducked out the door
and never gone back. Then I thought of a bold idea.

pounding.

pointedly.

under her breath.
I knew now that I had non; she was thinking of
other things and the race question had gone out of
her mind. She went to the shelves. Once or twice
she looked over her shoulder at me, as though she
was still doubtful. Finally she came forward with
two books in her hand.

Falk to come in next time, or send me the names of
the books he wants. I don't know what he wants to
read.
I said nothing. She stamped the card and handed
me the books. Not daring to glance at them. I went
out of the library, fearing that the woman would
call me back for further questioning. A block away
from the library I opened one of the books and read
a title: A Book of Prefaces. I was nearing my
nineteenth birthday and I did not know how to
pronounce the word
pages and saw strange words and strange names.
I shook my head, disappointed. I looked at the
“但你要告诉福尔克先生，下次让他来，要
不就告诉他要借的书的名字。我不清楚他借
什么书。”
我什么也没有说。她在借书证上盖了章，然
后把书交给了我。我连看都没敢看一眼借到
的书就走出了图书馆，生怕她会把我叫回去
进一步地盘问。走出一个街区后我打开其中
一本书，看了一下书名：《序言集》。我马
上就十九岁了，可我不知道怎样发“序言”
这个词的音。我用手指快速地翻着，看到了
一些奇怪的词和句子。我失望地摇了摇头。
又去看另一本书。书名叫《偏见》。我知道
这个词的含义。我从小到大都一直在听到这
个词。我由此一下子对门肯的书有了警觉。为什么一个人要把书名定为《偏见》呢？这
个词沾满了我对种族仇恨的所有记忆，我以
致于无法想象会有人以它作为书名。也许我
错看了门肯？一个带有偏见的人肯定是错
的。
当我把书扔给福尔克先生看时，他望了望我
皱起了眉头。
“图书管理员可能会给你打电话的。”我先给
他提个醒。
“这好办。”他说，“但是当你读完这些书后，
希望你能告诉我从中学到了些什么。”
那天晚上，有租来的房间里，我让热水冲着
洗碗池里的猪肉烧豆罐头，一边打开那本
《序言集》读了起来。我被书中的风格和它
那干净、整齐，有力的句子给震惊了。他为
什么要这样写呢？又是怎样象这样写成的
呢？我把他想象成一个凶狠的魔鬼一样，用
手中的笔奋力进攻，内心充满仇恨。对美国
的一切进行抨击，而又竭力称颂欧洲或德国
的一切东西。他嘲笑人性的弱点，嘲弄上帝
和权威。这是怎么回事？我站起来，试图弄
明白隐藏在字眼后面的实际情况。是的，这个人一生在战斗，用他手中的笔作武器进行
战斗。他就象别人使用棍棒一样使用文字。
文字可以作为武器吗？是的，因为在这儿就
是如此。不，这种想法把我吓坏了。而是居
然会有人有勇气说这些话。
我遇到了很多自己不知其意的词。有些我查
了字典，有些词还没等我去查，就又遇见了，
通过上下文词义清楚了。世界多么奇特啊！
看完书后我得出一个结论，那就是不知由于
other book; it was called Prejudices, I knew what
that word meant; I had heard it all my life. And
right off I was on guard against Mencken's books.
Why would a man want to call a book Prejudices?
The word was so stained with all my memories of
racial hate that I cold not conceive of anybody
using it for a title. Perhaps I had made a mistake
about Mencken? A man who had prejudices must
be wrong.
When I showed the books to Mr. Falk, he looked at
me and frowned.

him.

through reading those books, I want you to tell me
what you get out of them.
That night in my rented room, while letting the hot
water run over my can of pork and beans in the
sink, I opened A Book of Preface and began to
read. I was jarred and shocked by the style, the
clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write
like that? And how did one write like that? I
pictured the man as a raging demon, slashing with
his pen, consumed with hate, denouncing
everything American, extolling everything
European or German, laughing at the weaknesses
of people, mocking God, authority. What was this?
I stood up, trying to realize what reality lay behind
the meaning of the words … Yes, this man was
fighting, fighting with words. He was using words
as a weapon, using them as one would use a club.
Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for there they
were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as a
weapon? No. It frightened me. I read on and what
amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth
anybody had the courage to say it.
I ran across many words whose meanings I did not
know, and either looked them up in a dictionary or,
before I had a chance to do that, encountered the
word in a context that made its meaning clear. But
what strange world was this? I concluded the book
with the conviction that I had somehow overlooked
something terribly important in life. I had once
tried to write, had once reveled in feeling, had let
my crude imagination roam, but the impulse to
dream had been slowly beaten out of me by
experience. Now it surged up again and I hungered
for books, new ways of looking and seeing. It was
not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I
什么原因，自己忽视了生活中一些重要的东
西。我曾经试过写作，也曾十分乐意去感受
事物，让我那淳朴的想象云游四方。但人生
的经历慢慢地磨灭了这些的冲动的梦想。现
在它又冒了出来。我渴望看书，期待着新的观察和理解世界的方法。这不是相信或不相
信自己所读到的东西的问题，而是一种对新
的东西的感受，受到影响并使世界的面貌有
的不同。
我又造了一些假便条，到图书馆去的次数也 更多了。读书成了我的一种爱好。我读的第
一本严肃小说是辛克莱·刘易斯的《大街》。
它让我明白了自己的老板杰的尔德先生。我
发现到他是一个典型的美国人。当我看到他
拖着高尔夫球袋走进办公室时我总要笑。以
前我一直觉得自己和老板间距离很远，现在
我感到离他近多了，尽管还有一定的距离。
我感到自己真正认识了他，我能够感到他的
生活圈子小，具有局限性。因为我读了一本
写一个虚构的人物乔治·F·巴比特的小说才
有这番变化的。
我读了德莱塞的《珍尼·格哈特》和《嘉莉
妹妹》。它们使我又一次真切地感受到了母
亲所遭受的苦难。我完全沉浸在书中了。我
变得沉默起来，思考着周围的生活。我不可
能告诉任何人自己从小说中有什么收获，因
为那正是对生活自身的感受。生活的经历使
得我喜欢现代小说中的现实主义，自然主
义，这些小说中我百读不厌。
我沉浸在新的思想和情绪之中。买了一令
纸，我试着写作。可有时我什么也写不出来，
有时写出的东西又极为乏味。我发现写作所
需要的不仅仅是愿望和感情，于是便放弃了
这种想法。但我仍想弄明白怎样才能充分地
了解以便能够把他们写出来。我能否真正理
解人和生活呢？对我为说，由于自己完全无
知和作为黑人在社会中的地位。这似乎是一
个可望而不可及的目标。我现在明白了作为
一个黑人到底意味着什么。我能够忍受饥
饿，也能面对被仇恨的现实。但感觉到自己
连某些感情的东西都得不到，就连生活中最
基本的东西对我来讲也以难以获取，这一点
比其他任何东西都令我伤心。我有了一种新
的渴望。

感觉很糟糕的事情为何如此之好？

read, but of feeling something new, of being
可能现在是采用一种新的策略去搞清
affected by something that made the look of the
楚为什么今天的生活会如此困难。
world different.
以及该怎样来应付这个问题的时候了。假定
I forget more notes and my trips to the library
事物不仅是它们通常看上去的样子，
became frequent. Reading grew into a passion. My
当涉及到人的问题的时
first serious novel was Sinclair Lewis's Main Street.
它们可能恰好相反。
It made me see my boss, Mr. Gerald, and identify
候，一切事情都是自相矛盾的。
him as an American type. I would smile when I saw
例如，人们现在感到不满意，不是因为事情
him lugging his golf bags into the office. I had
比以往更糟，而是因为事情比以往任何时候
always felt a vast distance separating me from the
都好。以婚姻为例，在加利福利亚，十对夫
boss, and now I felt closer to him, though still
妇中有约六对离婚-- 在一些较富裕的地区
distant. I felt now that I knew him, that I could feel
这个比例还要高一些。人们必须承认，这些
the very limits of his narrow life. And this had
数字说明了许多不满。但人们通常对此给予
happened because I had read a novel about a
的解释--婚姻制度正处于崩溃的状态-- 根
mythical man called George F. Babbitt.
I read Dreiser's Jennie Gerhardt and Sister Carrie
本站不住脚。人们从未象现在这样渴望和欢
and they revived in me a vivid sense of my
迎婚姻。的确，婚姻是如此地引人入胜，连
mother's suffering; I was overwhelmed. I grew
很多正在办离婚的人几乎等不及法律许可
silent, wondering about the life around me. It
他们重新结婚。
would have been impossible for me to have told
anyone what I derived from these novels, for it was
问题在于人们对婚姻报有的期望从未象现
nothing less than a sense of life itself. All my life
在这样高。有史以来，家底就一直是一个生
had shaped me for the realism, the naturalism of
存的重要单元。从一个充当肉体生存的防御
the modern novel, and I could not read enough of
体系，渐渐地演变成为一个经济生存的单
them.
元。现在，毫无疑问，家庭变成了经济和肉
Steeped in new moods and ideas, I bought a ream
体上的负担而不是财富。作为一个社会，基
of paper and tried to write; but nothing would
人们不
come, or what did come was flat beyond telling. I
本的生存和安全需要得到满足之后，
discovered that more than desire and felling were
再相互需要去纺纱或是去和印第安人作战
人们也不相互需要去洗盘子
necessary to write and I dropped the idea. Yet I still
了--进而言之，
wondered how it was possible to know people
或是去修电源插头。婚姻和家庭生活的纽带
sufficiently to write about them? Could I ever learn
不再是功能性的，而是情感性的了。人们过
about life and people? To me, with my vast
去相爱通常是因为他们彼此需要。而今却刚
ignorance, my Jim Crow station in life, it seemed a
好相反，人们互相需要是因为他们彼此相
task impossible of achievement. I now knew what
being a Negro meant. I could endure the hunger. I
爱。
人们很少能听
had learned to live with hate. But to feel that there
听一听最近离婚的人的抱怨，
were feelings denied me, that the very breath of
到虐待和遗弃的事。常常听到的都是这样的
life itself was beyond my reach, that more than
话：我们就是无法好好地沟通。我们之间受
anything else hurt, wounded me. I had a new
教育的差距太大，难以逾越。
hunger.
我感到被婚姻束缚住了。他不让我自主行
HOW COULD ANYTHING THAT FEELS
事。我们之间不再有很多共同的东西了。
SO BAD BE SO GOOD?
这些抱怨都很有意思。因为它们反映了由于
Maybe it is time to adopt a new strategy in
trying to figure out why life today is so difficult, and
婚姻未能达到原来人们对其所抱的高期望
what can be done about it. Assume that not only
值而引发的高层次的不满。夫妻们现在期望
are things often not what they seem, they may be
--并要求-- 相互沟通和理解，共同的价值观
just the opposite of what they seem. When it
和目标，精神伴侣，和美妙的亲密时刻。总
comes to human affairs, everything is paradoxical.
People are discontented these days, for
example, not because things are worse than ever,
but because things are better than ever. Take
marriage. In California there are about six divorces
for every ten marriages -- even higher in some of
the better communities. One must admit that a
good deal of discontent is reflected in those
statistics. But the explanation so frequently offered
-- that the institution of marriage is in a state of
collapse -- simply does not hold. Marriage has
never been more popular and desirable than is it
now; so appealing in fact, that even those who are
in the process of divorce can scarcely wait for the
law to allow them to marry again.
The problem is that people have never before
entered marriage with the high expectations they
now hold. Throughout history, the family has been
a vital unit for survival, starting as a defense
system for physical survival, and gradually
becoming a unit for economic survival. Now, of
course, the family has become a physical and
economic liability rather than an asset. Having
met, as a society, the basic survival and security
needs, people simply don't need each other
anymore to fight Indians or spin yarn -- or wash
dishes or repair electrical plugs for that matter. The
bonds of marriage and family life are no longer
functional, but affectional. People used to come to
love each other because they needed each other.
Now it's just the other way around. They need each
other because they love each other.
Listening to the complaints of those recently
divorced, one seldom hears of brutality and
desertion, but usually something like,
don't communicate very well
differences between us were simply too great to
overcome
won't let me be me
common anymore
interesting, because they reflect high- order
discontent resulting from the failure of marriage to
meet the great expectations held for it. Couples
now expect -- and demand -- communication and
understanding, shared values and goals,
intellectual companionship, great moments of
intimacy. By and large, marriage today actually
does deliver such moments, but as a result couples
have gone on to burden the relationship with even
greater demands. To some extent it has been the
体上看，婚姻的确带来了这样的时刻，但正
是这样，夫妻们进一步用更高的要求来给婚
姻关系增加负担。从某种程度上看，是婚姻
的成功产生了这些不满。民权运动的情况也
是一样。它所取得的就没有导致满足而是增
加了紧张和不满意，特别是在那些从中获益
的人中更是如此。
人们的不满情绪北方高于南方，城市高于乡
村。
社会变革产生了一种令人不安的矛盾现象。
即进步带来了对更多的进步的要求，而且这
种要求是以不断加速的形式出现的。所以， 与过去相比，社会已经大有进步了；但与将
来可能的情形相比，却又远远落后了。由此
使人们感到情况很糟，而这正是由于实际情
况很好所致。
另一个问题是一切都是短暂的，没有什么是
一成不变的。人们从小就养成了一种观念：
为了增进个人的安全，我们需要安定，有根基，始终如一，需要了解熟悉周围的一切。
但我们生活在一个各个方面都在不停变化
着的世界上。无论是说到摩天大楼，还是家
庭生活，是科学事实还是宗教信仰，一切都
是非常短暂的，并且会越来越短暂。如果要
画一张曲线来反映人类历史上发明创造的
发生率的话，就会发现变化不仅在增加，而
且在加速进行。变化越来越快--从某种意义
上看，变化已经成了一种生活方式。在将来
的世界上只有那些能够接受和喜欢暂时性
制度的人才能够成功地生活下去。
人们还因为现今存在的参与情绪而烦恼。这
是一个自己动手干的社会。
每个人都想参与到活动中去。爱默生的自己
动手自己干的中号已经成为时代的口头禅。
人们不会再做被动的成员，他们如今想成为
积极的变革者。
人们可以在现代生活中的各个方面看到这
种参与现象，--无论在校园，在教堂，在大
众传播媒体中，在艺术上，在商业和工业中，
在贫民窟的街道上，还是在家里。
问题是现代人似乎不能重新设计其体制，来
不及迅速地容纳那些新的要求。
success of marriage that has created the
discontent.
The same appears to be true in the civil rights
movement. The gains that have been made have
led not to satisfaction but to increased tension and
dissatisfaction, particularly among those benefiting
from such gains. The discontent is higher in the
North than in the South, higher in cities than in
rural areas.
The disturbing paradox of social change is that
improvement brings the need for more
improvement in constantly accelerating demands.
So, compared to what used to be, society is way
ahead; compared to what might be, it is way
behind. Society is enabled to feel that conditions
are rotten, because they are actually so good.
Another problem is that everything is temporary,
nothing lasts. We have grown up with the idea that
in order to develop personal security we need
stability, roots, consistency, and familiarity. Yet we
live in a world which in every respect is continually
changing. Whether we are talking about
sky-scrapers or family life, scientific facts or
religious values, all are highly temporary and
becoming even more so. If one were to plot a curve
showing the incidence of invention throughout the
history of man, one would see that change is not
just increasing but actually accelerating. Changes
are coming faster and faster -- in a sense change
has become a way of life. The only people who will
live successfully in tomorrow's world are those who
can accept and enjoy temporary systems.
People are also troubled because of the new
participative mood that exists today. It's a
do-it-yourself society; every layman wants to get
into the act. Emerson's
become the cliché of the times. People no longer
accept being passive members. They now want to
be active changers.
This participative phenomenon can be seen in
every part of contemporary life -- on campus, in
the church, in the mass media, in the arts, in
business and industry, on ghetto streets, in the
family.
The problem is that modern man seems unable to
redesign his institution fast enough to
accommodate the new demands, the new
intelligence, the new abilities of segments of
society which, heretofore, have not been taken
新的智慧，新的社会能力。至到如今，仍然
没有认真对待。相应的结果是，人们被黑人
革命吓怕了，被学生的激进活动惊呆了。现
在他们又面临着可能更具破坏性的事情--
妇女的反叛。社会只不过以往从未经历过这
些问题罢了。要解决这些问题，需要采用与
这些问题一样新、一样相异、一样矛盾的策
略才行。不要试图去减少不满的情绪，应该
去提高不满的水平或质量。也许最有希望在
今天的社会上做到的是产生高水平的不满，
即对那些真正事关紧要的事情的不满。在估
价方案的时候，不要以它们会使人们多么高
兴，满意为标准，而要看它们会产生什么样 的不满。例如，当一个顾问在评价一个机构
是否健全时，他不是去问是不是没有抱怨？
而是要问有些什么样的抱怨？
不要试图渐进地变革，要进行大的变革。毕
竟大的变革相对而言比小的变革要容易一
些。有些人认为进行改进的方式是使变革小
到让人难以察觉得到。这种方法从未成功
过。人们不禁要问，为什么这种思想还在继
续？人人都知道如何去抵抗小的变革，他们 时时都在这样做。然而，如果变革足够大的
话，要想对它发起抵抗就不行了。管理部门
可以进行大规模的机构改革，但如果让一个
经理把某个人的办公桌从一个地方移到另
一个地方的话，你就会看到他将遇到的困难
会有多大。所有的变革都会有阻力，问题在
于怎样使变革的步子大到使之有机会获得
成功。
巴克明斯特?富勒说过，社会需要的不是变
革而是新的形式。比如，要减少交通事故，
就该去改进汽车和公路而不是司机。这一概
念也适用于人际关系。有必要根据社会构成
考虑问题，提供人员安排，从而引出人们真
正想从自己身上看到的东西。人们一直在苦
心经营着有形的建筑，现在开始关心人类自
身作为其组成成份的系统设计了。但这些设
计大多是为了安全、效率和生产力而进行
的。系统设计没有影响人们最为关心的生活
方面，比如家底生活，谈情说爱和美学欣赏
等。在进行超越迄今为止人类所有的一切经
serio usly. Consequently, people are frightened by
the black revolution, paralyzed by student
activism, and now face what may be even more
devastating -- the women's rebellion.
Society simply has not had these kinds of problems
before, and to meet them it will have to adopt
strategies for their solution that are as new, and as
different, and as paradoxical as are the problems
themselves.
Instead of trying to reduce the discontent felt, try
to raise the level or quality of the discontent.
Perhaps the most that can be hoped for is to have
high-order discontent in today's society, discontent
about things that really matter. Rather than
evaluating programs in terms of how happy they
make people, how satisfied those people become,
programs must be evaluated in terms of the quality
of the discontent they engender. For example, if a
consultant wants to assess whether or not an
organization is healthy, he doesn't ask,
absence of complaints?
complaints are there?
Instead of trying to make gradual changes in small
increments, make big changes. After all, big
changes are relatively easier to make than are
small ones. Some people assume that the way to
bring about improvement is to make the change
small enough so that nobody will notice it. This
approach has never worked, and one can't help but
wonder why such thinking continues. Everyone
knows how to resist small changes; they do it all
the time. If, however, the change is big enough,
resistance can't be mobilized against it.
Management can make a sweeping organizational
change, but just let a manager try to change
someone's desk from here to there, and see the
great difficulty he encounters. All change is
resisted, so the question is how can the changes be
made big enough so that they have a chance of
succeeding?
Buckminster Fuller ahs said that instead of reforms
society needs new forms; e.g., in order to reduce
traffic accidents, improve automobiles and
highways instead of trying to improve drives. The
same concept should be applied to human
relations. There is a need to think in terms of social
architecture, and to provide arrangements among
people that evoke what they really want to see in
themselves. Mankind takes great pains with
历和人际安排时，我们需要社会科学和自然
科学的技术。不类不应该成为其环境的受害
者，而应该通过自身的环境实现自身的价
值。
当今重大的前沿课题是人类潜能的开发。人
的那种似乎无限的适应能力。生长，设计其
自身命运的能力我们要学很多的东西，但有
一点我们早已知晓：我们不必消极地坐等明
天，我们可以创造未来。
怪才

他身材矮小，同他的身体相比，头却很
大——他是一个常生病的小个子。
他的神经有毛病，他的皮肤也有病。要是贴
身穿的衣服比丝绸粗糙一点的话，他就会非
常痛苦。而且他还患有狂想症。
他是个自负的怪才。他是一刻都没有正
眼看过世界和世人。除了和自己和关在他看
来，他不仅是世界上最伟大的剧作家之一、
最伟大的思想家之一、最伟大的作曲家之 一。听他谈话，他就是集莎士比亚、贝多芬、
柏拉图于一身。你如果听他谈话并不会有什
么困难。他是人世间最健谈的人之一。你如
果听他谈话并不会有什么困难。他是人世间
最健谈的人之一。如果和他在一起呆上一个
晚上，就等于花一个晚上听他一人独讲。他
有时讲得很精彩，有时却让人讨厌。不过无
论是精彩还是让人讨厌，他的话题只有一
个，那就是他自己，他和所想和他所为。
他有一种癖号，就是认为自己总是对
的。对于来自任何人的一点点不同的意见，
在这最不起眼的观点上，很可能使他夸夸其
谈几个钟头。用各种方法来证明自己是正确 的。和尽力流利的证明最后他的听众目瞪口
呆，为了息事宁人，只好同意他的观点。
他从来都没有想过，他和他所做的事对于同
他有联系的人来说并不是最令人感兴趣的。
他对天底下差不多作何事情都有自己的观
点。无论是素食主义、戏剧、政治还是音乐。
为了证明自已的观点，他写了小册子信，书，
physical architecture, and is beginning to concern
itself with the design of systems in which the
human being is a component. But most of these
designs are only for safety, efficiency, or
productivity. System designs are not made to
affect those aspects of life people care most about
such as family life, romance, and esthetic
experiences. Social technology as well as physical
technology need to be applied in making human
arrangements that will transcend anything
mankind has yet experienced. People need not be
victimized by their environments; they can be
fulfilled by them.
The great frontier today is the exploration of the
human potential man's seemingly limitless ability
to adapt, to grow, to invent his own destiny. There
is much to learn, but we already know this: the
future need not happen to us; we can make it
happen.
和成千上万的字。共数百页。通常是靠别人
资助－而且总是坐着把这些东西大声的读。
一念就是几个小时，给他的朋友和家人。
他写歌剧，一有了故事的概要，他就邀请
——说得更准确一点是召唤——他那一帮
朋友去他家，听他念故事概要。他请他们来
不是听他们批评意见的，而是听他们赞扬
的。当歌剧的词全部写完后，他的朋友们还
得再来听他读整部戏的歌词。而后你就拿去
发表，可有时歌词写好了，数年后其配乐才
完成。他弹钢琴象一个作曲家，一样弹得糟
糕透顶，而且他还总是坐在钢琴傍，面对有
他同时代的最优秀的钢琴家在场的一群人，
数小时地为他们演奏；不用说，他演奏的都
是自己写的音乐作品。他有作曲家的嗓子。
他总是邀请杰出的声乐家到家里，给他们演
唱自己写的歌剧，一个人演所有的角色。
他的感情就象6岁孩子那样极不稳定。只要
感到不舒服，他总是乱骂一通，直跺脚，要
么就情绪极其低落，伤心地说要去东方当和
尚，度过余生。十分钟后如果有什么事让他
高兴的话，他就会冲出门，在花园里跑来跑
去，或者在沙发上跳上跳下，或头朝下倒立
着。一只爱犬死了他会痛不欲生，可他要是
冷酷起来，连罗马皇帝也会发抖的。
他简直缺乏任何责任感。他不仅好象没有能
力养活自己，而且他也从来没有想到有这么
做的责任。他坚信人们该养活自己。由于是
这样认为的，他向所有的人——无论是男人
还是女人，无论是朋友还是陌生人——谁有
能力拿出钱来，他就向谁借。他写信向别人
乞讨，一写就是二十封；有时奴颜婢膝，毫
无羞耻，有时却非常傲慢地把别人给他的特
权赏给他心目中的捐助人，如果领受者拒绝
接受，他就会万分愤怒。我没有找到他把钱
付给或还给没有法律依据的借款人的任何
记录。
只要弄得到钱，他就象印度王公那样花销。
THE MONSTER
He was an undersized little man, with a head
too big for his body -- a sickly little man. His nerves
were had. He had skin trouble. It was agony for
him to wear anything next to his skin coarser than
silk. And he had seclusions of grandeur.
He was a monster of conceit. Never for one
minute did he look at the world or at people, except
in relation to himself. He was not only the most
important person in the world, to himself; in his
own eyes he was the only person who existed. He
believed himself to be one of the greatest
dramatists in the world, one of the greatest
thinkers, and one of the greatest composers. To
hear him talk, he was Shakespeare, and
Beethoven, and Plato, rolled into one. And you
would have had no difficulty in hearing him talk. He
was one of the most exhausting conversationalists
that ever lived. An evening with him was an
evening spent in listening to a monologue.
Sometimes he was brilliant; sometimes he was
maddeningly tiresome. But whether he was being
brilliant or dull, he had one sole topic of
conversation: himself. What he thought and what
he did.
He had a mania for being in the right. The
slightest hint of disagreement, from anyone, on
the most trivial point, was enough to set him off on
a harangue that might last for house, in which he
proved himself right in so many ways, and with
such exhausting volubility, that in the end his
hearer, stunned and deafened, would agree with
him, for the sake of peace.
It never occurred to him that he and his doing were
not of the most intense and fascinating interest to
anyone with whom he came in contact. He had
theories about almost any subject under the sun,
including vegetarianism, the drama, politics, and
music; and in support of these theories he wrote
pamphlets, letters, books … thousands upon
thousands of words, hundreds and hundreds of
pages. He not only wrote these things, and
published them -- usually at somebody else's
expense -- but he would sit and read them aloud,
for hours, to his friends and his family.
He wrote operas, and no sooner did he have the
synopsis of a story, but he would invite -- or rather
summon -- a crowed of his friends to his house,
and read it aloud to them. Not for criticism. For
applause. When the complete poem was written,
the friends had to come again, and hear that read
aloud. Then he would publish the poem,
sometimes years before the music that went with it
was written. He played the piano like a composer,
in the worst sense of what that implies, and he
would sit down at the piano before parties that
included some of the finest pianists of his time, and
play for them, by the hour, his own music, needless
to say. He had a composer's voice. And he would
invite eminent vocalists to his house and sing them
his operas, taking all the parts.
He had the emotional stability of a six-year-old
child. When he felt out of sorts, he would rave and
stamp, or sink into suicidal gloom and talk darkly of
going to the East to end his days as a Buddhist
wonk. Ten minutes later, when something pleased
him, he would rush out of doors and run around the
garden, or jump up and down on the sofa, or stand
on his head. He could be grief-stricken over the
death of a pet dog, and he could be callous and
heartless to a degree that would have made a
Roman emperor shudder.
He was almost innocent of any sense of
responsibility. Not only did he seem incapable of
supporting himself, but it never occurred to him
that he was under ay obligation to do so. He was
convinced that the world owed him a living. In
support of this belief, he borrowed money from
一旦他的某部歌剧有望演出，就足以使他欠
下的帐单十倍于预计给他的版税。无人会知
道——他本人也一定不曾知道——他欠别 人多少钱。但我们肯定知道的是，资助他最
多的人曾经给过他六千块钱来偿还在某个
城市要得最多的欠款。而一年后为了能使他
在另一城市生活而不会因债务入狱又不得
不给他一万六千元。
在其他方面，他同样肆无忌惮。在他一生中，
与他有过关系的女人无计其数。他的第一位
妻子和他生活了二十年，容忍、原谅他的种
种不忠行为。他的第二位妻子原来是对他最
忠诚、最崇拜的朋友的妻子，可他却把她从
朋友那里夺走了。更有甚者，当他还在设法
说服她离开第一位丈夫时就写信给朋友，问
他能否穿针引线介绍某位有钱的女人——
只有她有钱，他都会为了她的钱而娶她。
在和他人交往中他也非常自私。他对朋友的
喜好完全是由他们对他是否忠诚，或者他们
是否在经济上或艺术上对他有用来决定的。
要是他们让他有所失望——哪怕是拒绝宴
会邀请——或是开始不是那么有用了，他就
会毫不犹豫地不与他们往来了。他在晚年只
剩一个朋友，而且还是在中年时认识的。
这个怪才名叫理查德·瓦格纳。我所讲的在
关他的一切都有案可查——在报纸上，在警
方报告中，在认识他的人的证词里，在他自
己的信件中，和他自传的字里行间里都能可
以找到记录。这个记录奇怪的是它对此人没
有丝毫影响。
因为这位身材矮小、多病、难以相处、让人
着魔的人一直是正确的。这就给我们开了一
个玩笑。他是世界上最伟大的戏剧家之一；
他是伟大的思想家；他是最伟大的音乐天才
之一。迄今为止世人所看到的。世人的确应
养着他。
当你细想他所写的东西时——十三部歌剧
和音乐剧，其中十一部仍在上演，八部无可
everybody who was good for a loan -- men,
women, friends, or strangers. He wrote begging
letters by the score, sometimes groveling without
shame, at other loftily offering his intended
benefactor the privilege of contributing to his
support, and being mortally offended if the
recipient declined the honor. I have found no
record of his ever paying or repaying money to
anyone who did not have a legal claim upon it.
What money he could lay his hands on he spent like
an Indian rajah. The mere prospect of a
performance of one of his operas was enough to
set him to running up bills amounting to ten times
the amount of his prospective royalties. No one will
ever know -- certainly he never knew -- how much
money he owed. We do know that his greatest
benefactor gave him $$6,000 to pay the most
pressing of his debts in one city, and a year later
had to give him $$16,000 to enable him to live in
another city without being thrown into jail for debt.
He was equally unscrupulous in other ways. An
endless procession of women marched through his
life. His first wife spent twenty years enduring and
forgiving his infidelities. His second wife had been
the wife of his most devoted friend and admirer,
from whom he stole her. And even while he was
trying to persuade her to leave her first husband he
was writing to a friend to inquire whether he could
suggest some wealthy woman -- any wealthy
woman -- whom he could marry for her money.
He was completely selfish in his other personal
relationships. His liking for his friends was
measured solely by the completeness of their
devotion to him, or by their usefulness to him,
whether financial or artistic. The minute they failed
him -- even by so much as refusing dinner
invitation -- or began to lessen in usefulness, he
cast them off without a second thought. At the end
of his life he had exactly one friend left whom he
had known even in middle age.
The name of this monster was Richard Wagner.
Everything that I have said about him you can find
on record -- in newspapers, in police reports, in the
testimony of people who knew him, in his own
letters, between the lines of his autobiography.
And the curious thing about this record is that it
doesn't matter in the least.
Because this undersized, sickly, disagreeable,
fascinating little man was right all the time. The
争议地列入世界音乐剧名着——当你倾听
他所写的一切时，他无论是欠债还是让人伤
心，所有这些代价似乎算不了什么。想想曾
经给予的那份奢侈吧，由于拿破仑的命运，
他毁来了法国，肆虐了欧洲。这样一想，也
许你就会同意，几千元的债务用来换取《指
环》三部曲，代价并不算高。
就是他对朋友和妻子不忠，又算得了什么？
他有一位至死都能忠心耿耿的爱人：音乐。
他一刻都没有与自己信仰的，梦想的东西进
行妥协。他的音乐中没有一行是一般人所能
构思出来的。即使他乏味或极其糟糕，也只
是大手笔中的乏味。就是他最严重的错误中
也有伟大之处。这可不是原谅不原谅的事
情。又抓又扯，想冲出来，尖叫着，要他把
身体的乐曲谱出来。奇迹是在短暂的七十年
中，他竟然完成了这一切。就算是一个天才，
他没有时间做普通人这奇怪吗？
齐里茨基法

总有一天会有人去研究动物对历史的
影响。在这样的研究里，格雷厄姆太太的猫
肯定会包括在其中。现在已经确切地证实
了，这只猫的经历使人萌发了快速冷冻人体
这一想法，而这一想法转而又使齐里茨基法
获得了通过。
我们还得回到了1950年，在洛杉矶报
纸的合订本中去寻找这个故事。简言之，有
位弗雷德·C·格雷厄姆太太，把一大堆食品
放进了家用冰柜，就在同一天，她的宠物猫
失踪了。她从来没有认为这两件事之间会有
联系。猫直到六星期后才被发现当它的主人
去冰箱取东西时。然他很爱这宠物，但我们
可以想象，发现它时，她的恐惧胜于悲伤。
她把被冰裹着的小躯体拎出冰柜，放在地板
上；然后，赶在晕倒之前跑到了邻居家。
格雷厄姆太太苏醒过来后变得底里；好
几个小时过去了，她才完全平静下来，说服
人们所有事情不是她撰的。她劝邻居陪伴她
回家。他们在冰柜前发现了一小滩水，一只
湿透的猫正忙忙碌碌舐着自己。邻居后来告
joke was on us. He was one of the world's greatest
dramatists; he was a great thinker; he was one of
the most stupendous musical geniuses that, up to
now, the world has ever seen. The world did owe
him a living.
When you consider what he wrote -- thirteen
operas and music dramas, eleven of them still
holding the stage, eight of them unquestionably
worth ranking among the world's great
musico-dramatic masterpieces -- when you listen
to what he wrote, the debts and heartaches that
people had to endure from him don't seem much of
a price. Think of the luxury with which for a time, at
least, fate rewarded Napoleon, the man who ruined
France and looted Europe; and then perhaps you
will agree that a few thousand dollars' worth of
debts were not too heavy a price to pay for the Ring
trilogy.
What if he was faithless to his friends and to his
wives? He had one mistress to whom he was
faithful to the day of his death: Music. Not for a
single moment did he ever compromise with what
he believed, with what be dreamed. There is not a
line of his music that could have been conceived by
a little mind. Even when he is dull, or downright
bad, he is dull in the grand manner. There is
greatness about his worst mistakes. Listening to
his music, one does not forgive him for what he
may or may not have been. It is not a matter of
forgiveness. It is a matter of being dumb with
wonder that his poor brain and body didn't burst
under the torment of the demon of creative energy
that lived inside him, struggling, clawing,
scratching to be released; tearing, shrieking at him
to write the music that was in him. The miracle is
that what he did in the little space of seventy years
could have been done at all, even by a great
genius. Is it any wonder that he had no time to be
a man?
诉记者，这只猫正舐着它的后腿。上面还有
一些冰。对于他来说是相信这件事的。
一周以后发表了一篇跟踪报道。报道
说，那次冒险经历，未使猫受到伤害。报道
进一步引用格雷厄姆太太的话说，这只猫在
失踪之前曾大吃了一顿。它一得救，身上一
干，便睡了很大一会，跟它往常吃饭后的行
为一模一样，而且直到晚上它都没有再饿。
生命的进程突然完全中止，而在解冻之后，
生命正好在曾经中止的地方重新开始，这一
点报道中作了明确的叙述。
也许把所有的责任推给一只不幸的猫
不公平。这种事如果发生在国内其它任何地
方，都会成为人们的谈资。只有少数人信，
多数人不信，接着人们也就会将它遗忘。然
而它却发生在洛杉矶。在那个地方，可能也
只有在那个地方，这件事根本没被人忘记。
它所揭示的原理为一种极为成功的生意打
下了基础。
我们该怎样自待齐里茨基兄弟？是罪
魁祸首还是开拓者？如果赞成后一种看法，
我们就必须承认，他们无疑是具有探索精神
和心甘情愿到未知领域去冒险的精神。然
而，他们的开拓精神——如果我们同意这样
说的话——同样毫无疑问与寻找快速捞钞
票的门道有紧密联系。
在他们的第一批顾客中，有的支付了高
达一万五千美元的首次冷冻费和每年一千
美元的昂贵的储存费。齐氏兄弟拥有并经营
的这家工厂，是全世界最大的快速冷冻厂之
一。他们宣称道，把冷冻设备改为储藏设备
来装人，花费极高，所以收费也随之而高。
那些付过这些高额费用的早期顾客们
数年之后解冻了，当他们发现其他顾客只交
三千美元就获得了同样的服务。他们扬言要
ZERITSKY'S LAW
公开抗议。齐里茨基兄弟为此支付了一笔巨
Somebody someday will make a study of the
这时的齐氏兄弟已经能够轻而易举
influence of animals on history. Among them, Mrs.
额退款。
Graham's cat should certainly be included in any
地付出这笔钱。而且，因为他们不欢迎对他
所有的退款都是毫无怨
such study. It has now been definitely established
们企业的任何宣传，
that the experiences of this cat led to the idea of
言地付出的。三千美元成了标准价，外加每
quick-frozen people, which, in turn, led to the
年一百美元的储存费，解冻时不另收费。
passage of Zeritsky's Law.
齐里茨基兄弟是彻头彻尾的生意人。只
We must go back to the files of the Los Angeles
newspapers for 1950 to find the story. In brief, a
Mrs. Fred C. Graham missed her pet cat on the
same day that she put a good deal of food down in
her home deep-freeze unit. She suspected no
connection between the two events. The cat was
not to be found until six days later, when its owner
went to fetch something from the deepfreeze.
Much as she loved her pet, we may imagine that
she was more horror-than grief-stricken at her
discovery. She lifted the little ice-encased body out
of the deep--freeze and set it on the floor. Then she
managed to run as far as the next door neighbor's
house before fainting.
Mrs. Graham became hysterical after she was
revived, and it was several hours before she could
be quieted enough to persuade anybody that she
hadn't made up the whole thing. She prevailed
upon her neighbor to go back to the house with
her. In front of the deep-freeze they found a small
pool of water, and a wet cat, busily licking itself.
The neighbor subsequently told reporters that the
cat was concentrating its licking on one of its hind
legs, where some ice still remained, so that she, for
one, believed the story.
A follow-up dispatch, published a week later,
reported that the cat was unharmed by the
adventure. Further, Mrs. Graham was quoted as
saying that the cat had had a large meal just before
its disappearance; that as soon after its rescue as it
had dried itself off, it took a long nap, precisely as
it always did after a meal; and that it was not
hungry again until evening. It was clear from the
accounts that the life processes had been stopped
dead in their tracks, and bad, after defrosting,
resumed at exactly the point where they left off.
Perhaps it is unfair to pull all the responsibility on
one luckless cat. Had such a thing happened
anywhere else in the country, it would have been
talked about, believed by a few, disbelieved by
most, and forgotten. But it happened in Los
Angeles. There, and probably only there, the event
was anything but forgotten; the principles it
revealed became the basis of a hugely successful
business.
How shall we regard the Zeritsky Brothers? As
archvillains or pioneers? In support of the latter
view, it must be admitted that the spirit of inquiry
and the willingness to risk the unknown were
indisputably theirs. However, their pioneering -- if
要付了钱，任何人都可以把自己冷藏起来，
想多久就多久，他们不会问任何问题。所有
费用必须预先支付，这是铁的规定。
罪犯是第一批申请快速冷冻的顾客。在过去的年月里，他们构成了齐里茨基兄弟主
意的主体。抢劫之后，把赃物藏起来（留出
至关重要的那笔必须预先支付的款项），然
后到齐里茨基兄弟那里，在他们美妙的冷藏
室呆上五年或是十年。出来时发现当年追捕
他们的叫喊声早已不复存在，他们的罪行已
被遗忘。他们取出赃物，奢侈地度过余生。
由于他们的顾客大多声名狼藉，齐里茨
基兄弟便用一套数字来记录所有的档案。姓
名从不在登记册上出现，保证不让人知道。
寻找逃犯的执法人员，既想不出办法来破除
这套体系，也找不到法律条文来证明快速冷
冻为非法行为。也许，事实是，他们并没有
认真地去寻找可以适用的法律。只要齐里茨
基兄弟保持缄默，不做广告，也不引起公众
的注意，他们就可以安全地继续从事那种奇
特的生意。
洛杉矶的市政官员，尤其是警察，享受了一
段从未有过的好日子。于是，他们便永远地
告别那份谋生计的辛苦工作。
尽管洛杉矶有相当一部分人成为永久的补
贴对象，齐里茨基兄弟的财产还是增长到令
人难以置信的地步。到他们去世，把生意传
给儿子们的时候，它已是一座金矿，而且是
一座用之不竭的金矿。
除罪犯之外，大多数申请快速冷冻的人似乎
都是些陷于难以维持的婚姻困境中的丈夫
或妻子。后来，他们的经历被详细地写进了
忏悔杂志。通常是丈夫逃到洛杉矶，自闭适
当的时间，出来后，他那不温柔的妻子早已
去世或另作了安排。如果我们相信这些杂
志，那么这个计划在大多数情况下都会让人
非常满意。
父辈们所犯下的罪孽可能会报应到子辈们
身上，但是我们常常看到的是子辈们断送了
你辈们的毕生事业，这一古老而熟悉的模式
不断反复着！齐里茨基兄弟都是极为谨慎之
人。他们监督操作程序中的每一个细节，并
we agree to call it that -- was, equally indisputably,
bound up with the quest for a fast buck.
Some of their first clients paid as high as $$15,000
for the initial freezing, and the exorbitant rate of
$$1,000 per year as a storage charge. The Zeritsky
Brothers owned and managed one of the largest
quick-freezing plants in the world, and it was their
claim that converting the freezing equipment and
storage facilities to accommodate humans was
extremely expensive, hence the high rates.
When the early clients who paid these rates were
defrosted years later, and found other clients
receiving the same services for as little as $$3,000,
they threatened a row and the Zeritskys made
substantial refunds. By that time they could easily
afford it, and since any publicity about their
enterprise was unwelcome to them, all refunds
were made without a whimper. $$3,000 became the
standard rate, with $$100 per year the storage
charge, and no charge for defrosting.
The Zeritskys were businessmen, first and last.
Anyone who had the fee could put himself away for
whatever period of time he wished, and no
questions asked, The ironclad rule was that full
payment had to be made in advance.
Criminals were the first to apply for quick- freezing,
and formed the mainstay of the Zeritskys' business
through the years. What more easy than to rob,
hide the loot (except for that all-important advance
payment), present yourself to the Zeritskys and
remain in their admirable chambers for five or ten
years, emerge to find the hue and cry long since
died down and the crime forgotten, recover your
haul and live out your life in luxury?
Due to the shady character of most of their
patrons, the Zeritskys kept all records by a system
of numbers. Name never appeared on the books,
and anonymity was guaranteed.
Law enforcement agents, looking for fugitives from
justice, found no way to break down this system,
nor any law which they could interpret as making it
illegal to quick-freeze. Perhaps the truth is that
they did not search too diligently for a law that
could be made to apply. As long as the Zeritskys
kept things quiet and did not advertise or attract
public attention, they could safely continue their
bizarre business.
City officials of Los Angeles, and particularly
members of the police force, enjoyed a period of
用一套反复核实的详尽系统记录档案。他们
相当精明，深知自己的生意必须有绝对的可
靠性。满意的齐氏顾客才会是沉默的顾客。
一名不满意的顾客就足以毁掉他们的整个
生意。
齐里茨基兄弟的子辈们由于贪婪，过分扩张
生意，以致他们四兄弟也无法亲自监督每一
个细节。致命的错误肯定迟早都会发生。错
误果然发生了，受害者将他的冤情公布于
众。
这篇报道刊登在一家全国性的杂志上。每份
杂志一到报摊，一个小时后就销售一空。在
《他们强行将我冷冻》的标题下，约翰·A ·莫
纳汉讲述了他的悲惨故事。三十七岁那年，
他不顾一切地爱上了一位十六岁的姑娘。
她尚未成熟，举止轻浮，想在成家过安居生
活之前再“玩”几年。
“她对我说”她写道，“五年之后再回来找她，
这话让我不得不考虑一个问题，五年之后，
我就四十二岁了，一位二十一岁的姑娘要一
个比她大两倍的男人干什么？
约翰·莫纳汉与熟知齐氏家族生意的人有些
交往。他不但看到一个机会，可以使心爱的
人长到二十一岁，自己仍保持三十七岁。而
且还预见到一个无痛苦的办法，能使他度过
他必须忍受没有姑娘陪伴的那五个年头。于
是，他前去冷冻，预付了3000美元和五百
美元的的储存费。他声称，留下了“书面证
明，五年后他们出来，以免出错。“
没有人知道失误是如何发生的，但不知为什
么，约翰·A·莫纳斯汉，更确切地说是给他
指定的那个号码，在册子上登记的是二十五
年，而不是五年。一经解冻，发现一个世纪
已过去四分之一，他便勃然大怒。他对心上
人的爱，与其他一切一起完好地保存了下来，但是她早已不再等他，成了一位有二儿
六女的幸福母亲。
莫纳汉指控齐氏家族“毁了他的一生”，这未
必可以完全相信。他依然年轻，而且传闻杂
志付给他十万美元的文章版权税，这也是真
的。
正如大多数读者所知的那样，现在人所共知
unparalleled prosperity. Lawyers and other experts
who thought they were on the track of legal means
by which to liquidate the Zeritsky empire found
themselves suddenly able to buy a ranch or a yacht
or both, and retire forever from the arduous task of
earning a living.
Even with a goodly part of the population of Los
Angeles as permanent pensioners, the Zeritsky
fortune grew to incredible proportions. By the time
the Zeritsky Brothers died and left the business to
their sons, it was a gold mine, and an inexhaustible
one at that.
Next to criminals, the majority of people who
applied for quick-freezing seem to have been
husbands or wives caught in insupportable marital
situations. Their experiences were subsequently
written up in the confession magazines. It was
usually the husband who fled to Los Angeles and
incarcerated himself for an appropriate number of
years, at the end of which time his unamiable
spouse would have died or made other
arrangements. If we can believe the magazines,
this scheme worked out very well in most cases.
The sins of the fathers may be visited on the sons,
but how often we see repeated the old familiar
pattern of the sons destroying the lifework of the
fathers! The Zeritsky Brothers were fanatically
meticulous. They supervised every detail of their
operations, and kept their records with an
elaborate system of checks and doublechecks.
They were shrewd enough to realize that complete
dependability was essential to their business. A
satisfied Zeritsky client was a silent client. One
dissatisfied client would be enough to blow the
business apart.
The sons, in their greed, over-expanded to the
point where they could not, even among the four of
them, personally supervise each and every detail.
A fatal mistake was bound to occur sooner or later.
When it did, the victim broadcast his grievance to
the world.
The story appeared in a national magazine, every
copy of which was sold an hour after it appeared on
the stands. Under the title They Put the Freeze on
Me! John A. Monahan told his tragic tale. At the age
of 37, he had fallen desperately in love with a girl of
16. She was immature and frivolous and wanted to

down.
的“齐里茨基法” ，在莫纳汉的故事传开之后
的三天，就被国会通过，并由总统签署了。
在格雷厄姆太太的猫掉进冰柜七十五年之
后，国家法律规定，任何人对任何生命，用
快速冷冻施行冰冻，都得处以死刑。论是人
还是动物。而且所有快速冷冻的人体必须立
即解冻。
洛杉矶报纸报道说，从莫纳汉的故事公布于
众的那天起，成千上万的男人们涌进这座城
市。他们接踵而至，所有的交通全被堵塞了
一连几天，直到齐里茨基法得以通过。
如果我们考虑一下这项法律通过的日期，并 还记得由于严峻的国际形势，刚刚通过的一
项对十六岁到六十岁的男子全部实行征兵
的议案，我们就会明白国会为什么不得不采
取行动了。
当然，齐里茨基兄弟是第一批被招进部队 的。考虑到他们的经历，他们被安排负责一
座军用脱水食品仓库，而且受到警告，别再
想做什么新生意。
科幻小说的作用
1972年为世人所瞩目的一件事就是
出版了一本颇有争议的书——《增长的极
限》。这一有关世界前景的研究，是由麻省
理工学院一组科学家借助模拟未来社会的
电脑“模型”进行的，预言了人类若不大幅度
限制人口增长和自然资源消耗，就会出现全
球性的灾难。
该书问世时大多数人吃了一惊。许多人拒绝
相信存在发生灾难的可能性、盖然性、必然
性——倘使我们不改变对“地球飞船”的管
理方式的话。但科幻小说家及其读者却既不
惊讶，也不愤慨。事实上，这项研究对他们
来说已不是什么新鲜事了。他们毕生都在制
作自己的未来世界“模型”，并付诸试验。
因为科学家们试图用电脑模型实现的事与
科幻小说作家及其读者数十年来所做的非
常相象。科幻小说作家并不依靠电脑来“模
拟 ”一个未来世界，而是凭借人类的想象力。
这给了作家某些极为有利的条件。
有利条件之一就是灵活性。
科幻小说作家的职责不在预言未来，他们做
的比这重要得多。他们试图展现许多可能出

years, and that stared me thinking. In five year I'd
be 42, and what would a girl of 21 want with a man
twice as old as her?
John Monahan moved in circles where the work of
the Zeritskys was well known. Not only did he see
an opportunity of being still only 37 when his
darling reached 21, but he foresaw a painless way
of passing the years which he must endure without
her. Accordingly, he presented himself for the
deep-freeze, paid his $$3000 and the $$500 storage
charge in advance, and left, he claimed,
instructions to let me out in five years, so there'd
he no mistakes.
Nobody knows how the slip happened, but
somehow John A. Monahan, or rather the number
assigned to him, was entered on the books for 25
years instead of five years. Upon being defrosted,
and discovering that a quarter of a century had
elapsed, his rage was awesome. Along with
everything else, his love for his sweetheart had
been perfectly preserved, but she had given up
waiting for him and was a happy mother of two
boys and six girls.
Monahan's accusation that the Zeritskys had

He was still a young man, and the rumor that he
got a hundred thousand for the magazine rights to
his story was true.
As most readers are aware, what has come to be
known as
and signed by the President three days after
Monahan's story broke.
Seventy- five years after Mrs. Graham's cat feel
into the freezer, it became he law of the land that
the mandatory penalty for anyone applying
quick-freezing methods to any living thing, human
or animal, was death. Also, all quick- frozen people
were to be defrosted immediately.
Los Angeles papers reported that beginning on the
day Monahan's story appeared, men by the
thousands poured into the city. They continued to
come, choking every available means of transport,
for the next two days -- until, that is, Zerisky's Law
went through.
When we consider the date, and remember that
due to the gravity of the international situation, a
bill had just been passed drafting all men from 16
to 60, we realize why Congress had to act.
现在我们面前的前景。因为并非只有一种前途，一种时代会不可避
免地降临人间。我们的未来世界是由人类用
自身的行动一点一滴地、一分一秒地创造起
来的。科幻小说的一个重要作用，便是揭示
人类某几种行为的结果会形成哪几种未来
世界。
为了展示对可能出现的无穷多的未来世界
的种种构想、恐惧和希望、形式和感受，科
幻小说作家在很大程度上依赖他们另一个
有利条件：虚构艺术。
科学家把资料用表格或图表形式表现出来
时，他的工作几乎算完成了，而对科幻小说
作家来说，他的工作则刚刚开了个头。他的
任务是要讲述与人有关的故事：充当他故事
中可能出现的那个未来的科学依据，仅仅是
个背景资料。也许“仅仅”这个词的局限性还
太大了。许多科幻小说除了背景情况，主要
构想和新奇的玩意儿外几乎空无他物。但科
幻小说中的上乘之作，即能对几代读者产生
持久影响的作品，都是写人的故事。书中人
物也许不是人类，可能是机器人或者其他类
型的机械装置。但作为人的读者会同情它
们，分享它们的喜怒哀乐，为它们遭遇危险
而担忧，为它们终于成功而庆幸。从这个意
义上说，它们应该算是人。
自史前以来，编故事的艺术并无多大变化。
讲个引人入胜的故事仍然沿用老一套：塑造
一个性格坚强的人物，一个勇猛无比、感情
丰富、行为果断的人物。给他配上一个弱点，
使他与另一名强者——或与自然——发生
冲突。让主人公的外部冲突反映出自己的内
心冲突，反映出他的各种欲望之间的冲突，
自身优点与弱点之间的冲突。这样你的故事
就编好了。不管故事说的是亚伯拉罕把独生
子献给上帝，或帕里斯因一女子而使特洛伊
遭受灭顶之灾，还是讲哈姆雷特与克劳狄斯
图谋置对方于死地，浮士德对人世间的知识
和权力的不断追求——凡是深印在读者脑
际的故事都塑造了使人难以忘怀的人物。
只展示别的世界，描述可能形成的未来社会
和潜在的问题是不够的。科幻小说作家必须
指出这些社会、这些前景如何影响人类。比
这项工作还重要得多的是，他必须揭示人类
能够而且确实在创造这些未来世界。因为我
The Zeritskys, of course, were among the first to
be taken. Because of their experience, they were
put in charge of a military warehouse for
dehydrated foods, and warned not to get any ideas
for a new business.
THE ROLE OF SCIENCE FICTION
The year 1972 was marked by publication of a
controversial book, The Limits to Growth, This
study of the world's future, done by a team of MIT
scientists with the aid of computer
future of our society, forecast a planet wide
disaster unless humankind sharply limits its
population growth and consumption of natural
resources.
Most people were caught by surprise when the
book came out. Many refused to believe that
disaster is possible, probable, inevitable -- if we
don't change our mode of running Spaceship Earth.
But science fiction people were neither surprised
nor outraged. The study was really old news to
them. They'd been making their own
tomorrow and testing them all them all their lives.
For what the scientists attempted with their
computer model is very much like the thing that
science fiction writers and readers have been doing
for decades. Instead of using a computer to

writers have used their human imaginations. This
gives the writers some enormous advantages.
One of the advantages is flexibility.
Science fiction writers are not in the business of
predicting the future. They do something much
more important. They try to show the many
possible future that lie open to us.
For there is not simply a future, a time to come
that's inevitable. Our future is built, bit by bit,
minute by minute, by the actions of human beings.
One vital role of science fiction is to show what
kinds of future might result from certain kinds of
human actions.
To communicate the ideas, the fears and hopes,
the shape and feel of all the infinite possible
futures, science fiction writers lean heavily on
another of their advantages: the art of fiction.
For while a scientist's job has largely ended when
he's reduced his data to tabular or graph from, the
work of a science fiction writer is just beginning.
His task is to convey the human story: the scientific
basis for the possible future of his story is merely
们的前途主要掌握在我们自己手里。前途不
是凭空从天上掉下来的，它是亿万人的行动
共同造就的产物。在匆忙浏览报纸大标题
时，在忙得焦头烂额的日常生活中，这一点是很容易被遗忘的。但这是科幻小说坚持试
图说明的问题：未来属于我们——不管它是
什么样子。我们创造未来，我们的行动塑造
明天。我们有才智有勇气去建造天堂(至少
可以试试)。如果我们失败了，那将是一场
悲剧；然而倘若我们连试也不试一下，那就
是最大的悲哀了。 因此，科幻小说是沟通科学和艺术的桥梁，
是连接精通工艺的工程师与深谙人性的诗
人的桥梁。过去从未像现在这样迫切地需要
这么一座桥梁。
着名诗人与历史学家罗伯特?格雷夫斯于
1972年在英国《新科学家》杂志上撰文说：
“如今工业技术和手工在明争，科学则与诗 歌在暗斗。”
格雷夫斯的话道出了不少人都怀有的恐惧
心理：工业技术已使机器代替了人的体力；
现在诸如电子计算机之类的机器似乎可以
取代人的智力了。他甚至走得更远，竟批判
起科学来，其根据是，真正的人类活动诸如
诗歌创作等具有科学家无法认识的威力。
显而易见，格雷夫斯把科学家视为外表严
肃、动作缓慢、没有灵魂的思维机器，未经
事先深思熟虑从不迈出一步。
但作为历史学家，格雷夫斯应该知道，詹姆
斯?克拉克?麦克斯韦尔关于电磁的独到见
解——即可见光仅是电磁能光谱的一小部
分这一猜想，该猜想为电子技术打下了基础
——是凭直觉深入未知世界的。麦克斯韦尔
几乎没有丝毫依据来证实他的猜想。证据是
后来找到的。那些被认为感觉迟钝、不苟言
笑的科学家凭着直觉闯进了未知世界，这样
的例子真可谓不胜枚举。
科学家也是人! 他们与别人完全一样，也有
人性，也有直觉，也有感情。但大多数人并
没有意识到这一点。他们不了解科学家，对
科学也不知之甚少。
今天，大多数人对科学家仍然敬而远之。然
而，科学家毕竟给我们带来了核武器、现代
医学、宇宙航行以及除臭剂。但与此同时，
我们看到科学家被讥为头脑混乱的书呆子，
the background. Perhaps
word. Much of science fiction consists of precious
little except the background, the basic idea, the
gimmick. But the best of science fiction, the stories
that make a lasting impact on generations of
readers, are stories about people. The people may
be nonhuman. They may be robots or other types
of machines. But they will be people, in the sense
that human readers can feel for them, share their
joys and sorrows, their dangers and their ultimate
successes.
The art of fiction has not changed much since
prehistoric times. The formula for telling a powerful
story has remained the same: create a strong
character, a person of great strengths, capable of
deep emotions and decisive action. Give him a
weakness. Set him in conflict with another
powerful character -- or perhaps with nature. Let
his exterior conflict be the mirror of the
protagonist's own interior conflict, the clash of his
desires, his own strength against his own
weakness. And there you have a story. Whether it's
Abraham offering his only son to God, or Paris
bringing ruin to Troy over a woman, or Hamlet and
Claudius playing their deadly game, Faust seeking
the world's knowledge and power -- the stories
that stand out in the minds of the reader are those
whose characters are unforgettable.
To show other worlds, to describe possible future
societies and the problems lurking ahead, is not
enough. The writer of science fiction must show
how these worlds and these futures affect human
beings. And something much more important: he
must show how human beings can and do literally
create these future worlds. For our future is largely
in our own hands. It doesn't come blindly rolling
out of the heavens; it is the joint product of the
actions of billions of human beings. This is a point
that's easily forgotten in the rush of headlines and
the hectic badgering of everyday life. But it's a
point that science fiction makes constantly: the
future belongs to us -- whatever it is. We make it,
our actions shape tomorrow. We have the brains
and guts to build paradise (or at least try). Tragedy
is when we fail, and the greatest crime of all is
when we fail even to try.
Thus science fiction stands as a bridge between
science and art, between the engineers of
technology and the poets of humanity. Never has
或被嘲为冷酷无情的怪物制造家。科学家是
一个少数群体，与大多数少数群体一样，他
们往往避开公众视线，藏身于他们自己的聚
居区内——实验室、校园、沙漠中或太平洋
珊瑚岛上的野外工作场地。
人们先得观察、了解科学家本身，然后才会
懂得什么是科学能办到的，什么是科学无法
办到的。要了解科学家的工作和目的、他们
的梦想、他们的忧虑。
科幻小说有助于向不从事科学工作的人解
释科学是怎么一回事，科学家是干什么的。
几百所大学和公立中学都开设了科幻小说
课程。发现这些课是科学家、工程师和人文
主义者聚会的场所，出现这种情况决非偶
然。科学和小说可以打通，理智和感情能够
交融。
科学态度实质上就是认为人脑能够认识宇
宙，人动脑筋、想办法便能移山倒海——实
际上人类已经这样做了。从这个意义上说，
科学是纯粹人文主义的追求，是颂扬人类智
力战胜由于愚昧无知而造成的迷惘、混乱和
恐惧。
许多种幻小说歌颂这种精神。很少有科幻小
说把人类描绘成消极被动的物种，听任自然
力像潮水般肆意流动而不加限制。科幻小说
的主人公们——新神话故事中的众神——
无论面对全球性山崩地裂的厄运，还是面对
贪得无厌的政客的罪恶行径，都挺身而出， 勇敢地与黑暗势力作斗争。他们不一定总会
成功，但他们总是尽力而为。
然而，科幻小说在现代社会所起作用最重要
的方面，也许可以用一个词来贴切地加以概
括：变化。
说到底，科幻小说是描写变化的文学作品。
每篇小说都宣扬同一个信条：明天与今天不
一样，也许大不一样。
科幻小说极其明确地揭示，变化——无论变
好还是变糟——是宇宙的一条内在规律。抵
制变化是墨守成规，如今则更是危险的了。
世界总是要变的。她在不断地变。人类最有 成效的行为莫过于确定如何形成这些变化，
如何影响这些变化，从而创造一个所发生的
变化符合我们需要的自然环境。
也许这就是科幻小说最根本的作用：向人类
解释科学。当然，这是一件双刃武器，不仅
such a bridge been more desperately needed.
Writing in the British journal New Scientist, the
famed poet and historian Robert Graves said in
1972,
the crafts, and science covertly against poetry.
What Graves is expressing is the fear that many
people have: technology has already allowed
machines to replace human muscle power; now it
seems that machines such as electronic computers
might replace human brainpower. And he goes
even further, criticizing science on the grounds
that truly human endeavours such as poetry have
a power that scientists can't recognize.
Apparently Graves sees scientists as a sober,
plodding phalanx of soulless thinking machines,
never making a step that hasn't been carefully
thought out in advance.
But as a historian, Graves should be aware that
James Clerk Maxwell's brilliant insight about
electromagnetism -- the guess that visible light is
only one small slice of the spectrum of
electromagnetic energy, a guess that forms the
basis for electronics technology -- was an intuitive
leap into the unknown. Maxwell had precious little
evidence to back up his guess. The evidence came
later. The list of wild jumps of intuition made by
these supposedly stolid, humorless scientists is
long indeed.
Scientists are human beings! They are just as
human, intuitive, and emotional as anyone else.
But most people don't realize this. They don't know
scientists, any more than they know much about
science.
Today most people still tend to hold scientists in
awe. After all, scientists have brought us nuclear
weapons, modern medicines, space flight, and
underarm deodorants. Yet at the same time, we
see scientists derided as fuzzy-brained eggheads
or as coldly ruthless, emotionless makers of
monsters. Scientists are minority group, and like
most minorities they're largely hidden from the
public's sight, tucked away in ghettos --
laboratories, campuses, field sites out in the desert
or on Pacific atolls.
Before the public can understand and appreciate
what science can and cannot do, the people must
get to see and understand the scientists
themselves. Get to know their work, their aims,
their dreams, and their fears.
要宣传讲福音，还要给予警告。科学不仅能
够创造，而且能够毁灭；技术能够把人的精
神提到想象所及的最高境界，也能够使人麻
木不仁。只有具有真知灼见的人士能明智地
决定如何利用科学技术造福人类。归根到
底，这是一切艺术作品的最根本的作用：让
我们自己看清自己，帮助我们认识自己身上
的人性。
寻求阴暗面

发愁是我祖父的癖好。尽管业余爱好通
常被认为是不能遗传的，但我也是个才气横
溢的爱发愁的人。我的父亲的忧愁基因它跳
过了我乐观的父亲，而在我身上成了主要因
素，时时担忧。比如说吧，几星期前，我得
知那些即将崩溃的恒星会很快吞食掉宇宙
中存在的一切物质。因为我读了时尚杂志我
开始希望这个黑洞是一种时尚，一个天上流
行的事情，如科胡特克彗星和ＵＦＯ，但是
后来，我看见文章的作者拜访了二次高级研
究机构，现在，我明白了又一种危机迫在眉
睫了。因为我现在的担忧之处很不幸地就在
该研究院不远处的街上。
宇宙要完结了，这本来可激起一种极好
的挑战，特别对于我这种天才的发愁者来
说，因为它使我意识到自己的忧愁太多了，
在黑洞文章之前，我还没有来的急从早先的
当心两极冰帽融化，大西洋水位要长高并逐
步淹没整个东海岸中抽身出来。我一直在盘
算把家搬到萨斯卡切温，但现在我的发愁已
远远落后于当今形势我不得不担心是否萨
斯卡彻温会比普林斯顿更能吸引黑洞的注
意。另一方面，普林斯顿离那些非洲杀人蜂更近。这些毒蜂从巴西一直顽固地向北面逼
近，使得我决定去年冬天不到中美洲访问。
毒蜂们越来越逼近中美洲，这样巴拿马可能
成了唯一能把毒蜂挡回去的地方。当然，即
使巴拿马那里光是蝴蝶，作为度假地来说仍
然令我担忧，因为那儿和波士顿一样满是反
美的情绪。
在这段糟糕的日子里，我经常想到祖
父。他生活的时代比现代要单纯幸福得多，
也紧张得神经近乎崩溃。他的忧愁稍纵即
逝，易于对会：何时梅尔·奥茨会开始重新
Science fiction can help to explain what science and
scientists are all about to the non- scientists. It is
no accident that several hundred universities and
public schools are now offering science fiction
courses and discovering that these classes are a
meeting ground for the scientist-engineers and the
humanists. Science and fiction. Reason and
emotion.
The essence of the scientific attitude is that the
human mind can succeed in understanding the
universe. By taking thought, men can move
mountains -- and have. In this sense, science is an
utterly humanistic pursuit, the glorification of
human intellect over the puzzling, chaotic, and
often frightening darkness of ignorance.
Much of science fiction celebrates this spirit. Very
few science fiction stories picture humanity as a
passive species, allowing the tidal forces of nature
to flow unperturbed. The heroes of science fiction
stories -- the gods of the new mythology --
struggle manfully against the darkness, whether
it's geological doom for the whole planet or the evil
of grasping politicians. They may not always win.
But they always try.
Perhaps, however, the most important aspect of
science fiction's role in the modern world is best
summed up in a single word: change.
After all, science fiction is the literature of change.
Each and every story preaches from the same
gospel: tomorrow will be different from today,
violently different perhaps.
Science fiction very clearly shows that changes --
whether good or bad -- are an inherent part of the
universe. Resistance to change is an archaic, and
nowadays dangerous, habit of thought. The world
will change. It is changing constantly. Humanity's
most fruitful course of action is to determine how
to shape these changes, how to influence them and
produce an environment where the changes that
occur are those we want.
Perhaps this is the ultimate role of science fiction:
to act as an interpreter of science to humanity. This
is a two-edged weapon, of course. It is necessary
to warn as well as evangelize. Science can kill as
well as create; technology can deaden the human
spirit or life it to the farthermost corners of our
imaginations. Only knowledgeable people can
wisely decide how to use science and technology
for humankind's benefit. In the end, this is the
击球得分？何时埃琳诺·罗斯福会因为四处
旅行过多而身体垮掉？何时第三条大街上
的高架铁路桥会生锈烂掉？祖父真幸运，没
有活在当今世界里去处处发愁。我想念他，
但我却一直在考验我的理智，他甚至可能屈
服，成为一个乐观的人。这样放弃心爱的嗜
好。
祖父令人敬仰的发愁者。当我是个小孩子 时，他过去常到房间里去看我，在那儿检查
我的功课，然后摇摇头说，“拼写成你这个
样子，万万不可能坚持读写医学院了。”
“这些单词对我来说太陌生了，”我会很着急
地对他说。“和二年级的比起来，今年的拼
写难多了。”
他会叹气着说：“我搞不清楚。我甚至不能 肯定你是否应该当名医生。据说医生拥有最
高的突然死亡率，这个我刚刚看过。”
祖父担心我，担心梅尔·奥茨，担心埃琳
诺·罗斯福，他这些奇怪的忧虑足够让同时
代的发愁者们羡慕得掉泪。我真想知道，如
果他看到了冈纳.默德尔作出的新预测，美
国经济会在五年之内全盘崩溃。会如何反应
也就是在东部海啸之前，毒蜂们抵达后不久
也许他会模仿我的先进的发愁姿态，学会采
取用新忧覆旧愁的方法来为新愁挪出地方。
比如：我对东部将被淹没的忧虑，挤掉了我
过去担忧的拖欠已久的布鲁明代商场帐单
的位置；而冈纳·默德尔的警告则挤掉了我
对康涅狄格州的古董被搞光了后该如何的
担忧；我听到的毒蜂消息则减轻了我对自
己牙髓管的担心。这样使得巴拿马运河取代
了其位置而跻身于我二十大忧愁之无列。
多么丰富的一份忧愁单啊！我的忧愁有旧
的，也有新的；既有事关宇宙的，也有微不
足道的，把平凡的忧愁和古老的忧愁有机地
结合在一块儿，梅茨棒球队在太阳灭了的情
况下能在夜间打完所有预定的比赛吗？复 活了的低温冷冻人需要重新登记去参加选
举吗？三分球在没有小脚趾的情况下，能继
续在全国足球联赛中发挥这么大的作用
吗？
以毁灭宇宙的黑洞带给我的忧愁程度，实质
ultimate role of all art: to show ourselves to
ourselves, to help us to understand our own
humanity.
LOOK FOR THE RUSTY LINING
My grandfather's hobby was worrying, and
although hobbies are not usually thought of as
being inheritable, I am a talented worrier, too. My
grandfather's glum genes, which skipped my
merry father, have reflowered in me as a major,
all-purpose anxiety. A few weeks ago, for example,
I learned that collapsing stars called black holes
may soon such up all the matter in the universe.
Because I read this in Vogue, I hoped at first that
the black holes were some kind of fad -- a celestial
pop event like Kohoutek or UFOs -- but then I saw
that the author of the article had been twice a
visiting member at the Institute for Advanced
Study, in Princeton, and I knew that another crisis
was at hand. Ominously, the Institute is just down
the street from where I do my worrying.
The end of the universe should have been a
splendid challenge for a gifted worrier like me, but
mostly it upset me in a new and worrisome way,
because it made me realize that I was spread too
thin. When I found the black-hole story, I hadn't
nearly come to the end of an earlier wonderful
worry of mine about the polar ice cap melting and
raising the level of the Atlantic Ocean enough to
submerge the entire East Coast. I had been
thinking of moving my family to Saskatchewan, but
now that I was falling behind in my worrying, I had
to worry if Saskatchewan might be tastier for a
black hole than Princeton. On the other hand,
Princeton was closer to those African killer bees
that have been inexorably moving north from
Brazil -- the ones that made me decide not to visit
Central America last winter. The bees are getting
very close to Central America, and Panama may be
the only place where there is a chance to turn them
back. Of course, even if it had only butterflies,
Panama would still be a worrisome vacation spot
for me, because it is said to be riddled with as much
anti-American feeling as Boston.
In these terrible days, I often think of my
grandfather, who was a nervous wreck in a simpler
and happier time. His worries were transient and
nicely manageable: When would Mel Ott start
hitting again? When would Eleanor Roosevelt
collapse from too much traveling around? When
上是我以前所有的忧愁无法带来的。我的意
思是让我置身其中作出了一切忧愁的宇宙，
如果忽然没有了，我的家也再没办法安顿
了。我担忧了一辈子，学到了关于发愁的第
一原理，这可能是我唯一希望的源泉了。这
一原理就是：一些最严重的问题往往是相互
抵销的一对问题中的一个。这儿有一个很好
的例子：对于可怕的极地冰帽，有的科学家
说它不仅没融化，反而很快会开始增大，一
直到盖住整个美国，产生一个新的冰河时
期。这一冰层，我是从2月9号开始忧虑
的，到劳动节左右，就被挤得只剩下冰场大
小了，这是我那时对圆腿牛肉底部的价格担
忧所造成的。但是，近来我又重新重视冰层
起来。冰层是不可能同时既增大又融化的，
这是我的担忧所在。必有一种情况是假的，
是哪一种呢？一个热忱的忧愁者必须找出
这个答案。
同一原理应用到黑洞上的话，那么是否存在
某种黑洞的对立面——白洞呢？它们可能
是一些存在于宇宙空间中的漂亮的发光的
物体。它们不会象黑洞一样吞掉宇宙，相反
地，却很乐意把宇宙全吐出来。只要研究院
能发表一则有关白洞情况的新的简短消息，
我就能消除掉对黑洞的担忧。这正是我目前
所需要的一切。这样的话，我就可能会开始
担忧麦虱，男性绝经期和所有其他祖父会认
可的温和和恐怖了。这样拼写“麦虱”对吗？
探究未知领域

发现了人类自身的无知，这是二十世纪
取得的最伟大的成就。我们生活在困惑中，
对自然界以前从未象现在这样困惑过，对宇
宙，以及对我们人类自己，对我们人类来说，
这是一种新的感受。一百年前，我们在达尔
文和华莱尔引起的轰动平息后，就以为自己
对进化论的本质内容全部了如指掌了，仅仅
只因为我们已领悟和接受了自然选择的观
点。在十八世纪时，没有巨大的难解之迷。
人们完全凭自己的理性去了解宇宙。在此以
前的几个世纪里，教会大多数时间几乎囊括
了一切：既提问题又给答案。现在，我们在
人类历史上首次，看见了自己理解力的缺
would the Third Avenue
but he is lucky not to be alive and worrying today.
I don't think he could have handled all the terrors
that keep testing my sanity; he might even have
surrendered and become an optimist, thus
forfeiting the hobby he loved.
He was my inspiration when I was a boy -- a
worrier to look up to. He used to visit me in my
room, where he would examine my homework and
then shake his head and say,
through medical school with spelling like this.

a worried way.
was in the second grade.
He would sigh and say,
sure you should be a doctor at all. I just read that
they have the highest rate for dropping dead.
My grandfather's quaint worries about me and Mel
Ott and Eleanor Roosevelt are enough to make a
contemporary worrier weep with envy. I wonder
what he would have done if he had read a recent
prediction by Gunnar Myrdal that the American
economy could utterly collapse within five years --
just before the Eastern tidal wave but shortly after
the arrival of the bees. Probably he would have
adopted something like my own advanced
worrying posture and learned to make room for
each new worry by letting it trump one of the old
ones. For example, when I read about the
inundation of the East I forgot about my overdue
Bloomingdale's bill; when I read Gunnar Myrdal's
warning I decided to stop worrying about what
would happen if Connecticut ever ran out of
antiques. When I heard about the bees I eased off
my worry about a root canal of mine and let the
Panama Canal replace it on the Top Twenty.
What a list! Something old and something new,
something cosmic yet something trivial too, for the
creative worrier must forever blend the pedestrian
with the immemorial. If the sun burns out, will the
Mets be able to play their entire schedule at night?
If cryogenically frozen human beings are ever
revived, will they have to re-register to vote? And if
the little toe disappears, will field goals play a
smaller part in the National Football League?
Actually, I've never had a worry as worrisome as
the universe-destroying black holes. I mean, the
universe is where I do all my worrying, and if it
suddenly disappears I may not be able to relocate.
乏。我们象往常那样为解释世界而编出的说法，如今一定得通过实验去证实了再证实，
这就是科学的方法。只要我们采用了这种科
学方法去开始做某事后，我们无法再往回走
了。我们不得不在怀疑一切的环境中成长，
我们需要证据来证明每个有关自然界的断
言.我们除了马上行动，努力探索，除此之
外，别无他法。我们希望将来能理解未知的
一切，但是我们在这以前很长一段时间内只
能处于理解不完善的阶段。承认自己是无
知的，这会导致进步。不是完全因为这个特
别迷的解答直接地增加了一点理解，而是因
为这些迷，如果能引起科学家的足够兴趣的
话，是它们引导了这个工作。昆虫学中存在
一种类似的现象，这种现象被格兰塞称之为
“siigmergy”，其含义为“推动去努力。”放在房间内的三四只白蚁会四处毫无目的地
乱爬，但是放进更多的白蚁后，它们便会开
始建造了。是因为其它白蚁的存在，达到
一定数量后，就紧紧聚在一起，开始工作。
它们用对方的小粪团堆起整整齐齐的柱状。
那些正好到合适高度的柱状物会横向延伸
成为一个个极佳的拱形建筑，构成白蚁们修
建蚁窝的基础。一只只单个的白蚁不会做这
种事，可一旦数量足够的白蚁聚在一块儿，
它们便成了完美的建筑师。这些盲眼白蚁群
不仅能察觉彼此间的距离，而且能造成一个 巨大的复杂建筑，该建筑还带有自身的空调
系统和温度控制系统。在自己建成的生态系
统中，白蚁们一直工作着，忙碌一生。我能
想起的和蚁窝搭建最相似的人类行为是语
言的创造。在终生相互交往的过程中，我们
一代接一代地创造语言，并出于某种本能改
变其结构。对于这种集体行为，我们还了
解得很少。谈论起“超有机个体”，现在已不
时髦了。但是，要解释清楚白蚁现象和其他
群居昆虫现象，我们手头上基于单个昆虫研
究的资料数量还远远不够。这些昆虫群的
化学反应系统可以由我们作出一些极好的
推测，但它们为什么会显现出集体的智慧，
这一明明白白的事实却始终是个迷。或者不
管怎样也是个带没解答的，也许对整个社会
My only hope comes from a first principle of worry
that I have learned in a lifetime of anxiety; i.e.,
some of the biggest problems are half of a
self-cancelling pair. A nice example is that dreaded
polar ice cap, which some scientists say isn't
starting to melt at all but instead will shortly begin
to enlarge rapidly, giving birth to a new ice age that
soon will cover the entire United States. I worried
about this ice layer form last February 9th until
about Labor Day, by which time my worry about
the price of bottom round had reduced it to the size
of a rink. Lately, however, I have turned my mind
back to the ice again, and I have been worrying
about the fact that you cannot have ice that is
growing and melting at the same time. One of
these terrors is a dud, and the job of the dedicated
worrier is to find out which one it is.
Applying this principle to the black holes, I wonder
if there may not be some white holes in space as
well -- pretty, glowing things that won't digest a
universe but may prefer to spit it out again. All I
need is a new flash from the Institute about one of
these, and then perhaps I will be able to start
worrying about chinch bugs and the male
menopause and all the other gentle terrors my
grandfather could endorse.
Is that the right way to spell
生活都有重要含义的问题。由此我想到，在
大学生物学课上，这个神秘问题应该是最好
的开场白。老师们应当告诉学生们这个问题
的奇特之处，及意义的含糊之处。这些应该
教给医科大学预科生们他们需要在事业开
创早期通过上课来了解科学领域内所存在
的一些尚未确定的问题。大学生，还有那
些中学生，应该尽早地，也许从一开始，就
得去了解目前科学家正在争论不休的一些
重大问题。这类重大争论可以激起学生们的
兴趣，如果弄得好的话，甚至可以吸引他们
全部的注意力。生活中绝大多数事都比不上
训练有素，经验丰富的论敌间的激烈辩论引
人入胜。不管怎样，对于当代那些主要争论，年轻学生们却不很了解。关于达尔文主义者
和他们论敌间所展开的争论，年轻的学生们
也许被老师教过一点。但是其他方面正在进
行相仿的争论。其中许多已触及到有关我们
自然界理解的深奥问题，实际上仍然在继续
着并反映了科学进程中的本质特征。这一
切，学生们并不了解。我担忧的是，理科老
师自己不情愿谈论这事情，因为他们相信学
生们对这些争论的理解只能建立在领会掌
握了“基本知识”的基础上。我很想看到与这
方面相关的一些实验，心目中已有不少当代
学术争鸣的例子。即使对这些主题没有深
刻，详尽地了解，人们也容易理解争论的大
意。这儿有个例子是有关动物意识问题
的。有一派生态学家，他们专门从事动物行
为的研究，他们断言道，人类是唯一拥有意
识的，在能够仔细考虑事情方面，不同于其
他生物，充分利用过去的经验，大胆有根据
地推测未来。而其他“低级”动物（黑猩猩，
鲸鱼和海豚可能要排除在外），是不能用大
脑做出类似事情的。它们大脑只能按一定程
序作出，自动的或有条件的反应。对于生活
环境中的突发性事件，但他们认为人的心理
活动可以通过这种自动的或条件化的反应
得以解释。尽管行为心理学家们不太喜欢
“心理的”一词，另一派生态学家，则显得更
为宽容大度。一般动物完全能够真正地思维
并且正在进行大量的思维。他们认为没有理
DEBATIN G THE UNKNOWABLE
The greatest of all the accomplishment 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. In the 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 both the 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 the world, 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 in the future but living in
a condition of intellectual instability for the long
time. It is the admission of ignorance that leads
to progress, not so much because the solving of a
particular puzzle leads directly to a new piece of
understanding but because the puzzle -- if it
interests enough scientists -- leads to work. There
is a similar phenomenon in entomology know as
stigmergy, a term invented by Grasse, which
means
termites are collected together in a chamber they
wander about aimlessly, but when more termites
are added, they begin to build. It is the presence of
other termites, in sufficient numbers at close
quarters, that produces the work: they pick up
each other's fecal pellets and stack them in neat
columns, and when the columns are precisely the
right height, the termites reach across and turn the
perfect arches that form the foundation of the
termitarium. No single termite knows how to do
any of this, but as soon as there are enough
termites gathered together they become flawless
architects, sensing their distances from each other
although blind, building an immensely complicated
structure with its own air- conditioning and
humidity control. They work their lives away in this
ecosystem built by themselves. The nearest thing
to a termitarium that I can think of in human
behavior is the making of language, which we do
by keeping at each other all our lives, generation
after generation, changing the structure by some
sort of instinct. Very little is understood about this
kind of collective behavior. It is out of fashion these
days to talk of
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.
由必须去怀疑这一事实。与人类的思维比较
起来，动物思维稀疏得多，这也是动物缺乏
语言，缺乏比喻去推动思维进程。但无论如
何它们是在思维。争论中，哪一方的事实
比另一方的更强有力，更有说服力，这不是
争论的意义所在，而是刚好相反。两方想展
开真正的长期的争论，但却都没有充分的事
实来支持自己的观点。动物意识问题还处于
未被解决的状态。人们开始仔细考虑整个
生物圈时，另一个可争论的问题便出现了。
生物圈也就是地球上所有连接在一起的生
命。它是如何能保持这样稳定、和谐，象一
个硕大无比正发育着的胚胎一样的呢？只
是由于一个偶然的事件决定其出现的吗?洛
夫洛克和马克利斯就这一问题，提出了盖亚
假说。用简短的话来说，该假说认为地球本
身就是一种生命形式。“这一囊括了地球生物圈、大气层、海洋和土壤的复杂实体，整
个构成了一个为地球生命寻求最佳物理和
化学环境的反馈或控制系统。拉夫洛克还假
定了，地球表面的物理和化学条件，“越来
越适宜的大气层由生命本身的存在已经创
造出来并且现在仍然在积极地创造着。”
这述观点正开始激起风暴，已有一些迹象表
明了这一点。我认为这一观点如果流行的
话，生物学界将很快地分裂成怒气十足的两
派：一派认为进化了的生物圈是按计划有目
的地进行的结果。另一派谴责这类异端邪
说。对于这场争论，这认为学生们应尽可能
多去了解。另一场同时存在的争论是在社
会生物学家和反社会生物学家之间展开的，
它也是一场有关世未知领域的论战。对学生
们来说，它提供了一次绝妙的机会使他们拓
宽视野。观看这场论战的人们会惊愕得张大
嘴。一群科学家，他们聪明绝顶，训练有素，
知识广博，想象丰富，主张，基因无疑整个
控制了所有动物的或人类的行为；另一群科
学家，同样出类拔萃，则坚持环境和文化决
定了一切行为。每个大学生都不要错过这场
很有教育意义的论战。在这儿，论据的相对
可靠程度并不是我们要学的十分必要的一
课。实际上，这里的教育意义就在于争论本
It should be taught to premedical students, who
身：我们依靠目前的知识想解决这类问题，
need lessons early n their careers about the
那还是远远不够的。
uncertainties in science. 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 essential 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
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. There is, for one, the problem of animal
awareness. One school of ethologists devoted to
the study of animal behavior has it that human
beings are unique in the possession of
consciousness, differing from al other creatures in
being able to think things over, capitalize on past
experience, and hazard informed guesses at the
future. Other,
exceptions made for chimpanzees, whales, and
dolphins) cannot do such things with their minds;
they live from moment to moment with brains that
are programmed to respond, automatically or by
conditioning, to contingencies in the environment,
Behavioral psychologists believe that this
automatic or conditioned response accounts for
human mental activity as well, although they
dislike that word
some ethologists who seems to be more
generous- minded, who see no compelling reasons
to doubt that animals in general are quite capable
of real thinking and do quite a lot of it —— thinking
that isn't as dense as human thinking, that is
sparser because of the lack of language and the
resultant lack of metaphors to help the thought
along, but thinking nonetheless. The point about
this argument is not that one side or the other is in
possession of a more powerful array of convincing
facts; quite the opposite. There are not enough
facts to sustain a genuine debate of any length; the
question of animal awareness is an unsettled
one. Another debatable question arises when one
contemplates the whole biosphere, the conjoined
life of the earth. How could it have turned out to
possess such stability and coherence, resembling
as it does a sort of enormous developing embryo,
with nothing but chance events to determine its
emergence? Lovelock and Margulis, facing this
problem, have proposed the Gaia Hypothesis,
which is, in brief, that the earth is itself a form of
life,
biosphere, atmosphere, oceans and soil; the
totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic
system which seeks an optimal physical and
chemical environment for life on this planet.
Lovelock postulates, in addition, that
and chemical condition of the surface of the Earth,
of the atmosphere, and of the oceans has been an
is actively made fit and comfortable by the
presence of life notion is beginning to
stir up a few signs of storm, and if it catches on, as
I think it will, we will soon find the biological
community split into fuming factions, one side
saying that the evolved biosphere displays
evidences of design and purpose, the other
decrying such heresy. I believe that students
should learn as much as they can about the
argument. One more current battle involving
the unknown is between sociobiologists and
antisociobiologists, and it is a marvel for students
to behold. To observe, in open- mouthed
astonishment, one group of highly intelligent,
beautifully trained, knowledgeable, and
imaginative scientists maintaining that all
behavior, animal and human, is governed
exclusively by genes, and another group of equally
talented scientists asserting that all behaviors is
set and determined by the environment or by
culture, is an educational experience that no
college student should be allowed to miss. The
essential lesson to be learned has nothing to do
with the relative validity of the facts underlying the
argument. It is the argument itself that is the
education: we do not yet know enough to settle
such questions.

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经济和金融的区别-哈纳斯湖

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