身為藝術家的其中一個好處是沒有人能說你做錯了事情。畢加索的畫沒有對或錯，馬勒的樂曲中也沒有是或者非。當然了，那就是藝術作品的本質。
The opposite is true for science — and that's how it should be too. The scientific method is defined by the search for the irreducible truth. The riddle of a disease isn't solved till you've isolated the virus; no particle is fully understood till it's been successfully smashed. It's not for nothing that recent news of a neutrino that may have traveled .0025% faster than light is causing such a stir. If that vanishingly tiny anomaly can't be resolved and disproven, a century of physics could collapse.
科學則相反——這也是科學的本質。科學方法論就是尋找不可被再簡化的事實。一個疾病的難題直到分離出病毒才能被解決；粒子只有在被成功粉碎后才能被全面的認識清楚。最近關于中微子能比光快0.0025%的速度運動的消息不是鬧著玩的。如果這個細小得不可見的異?，F(xiàn)象不能被正確解釋或者證實是錯誤的話，一個世紀的物理學體系會崩潰。
But the stone walls between art and science aren't nearly as thick as they seem; indeed, in some ways they're entirely permeable. That's a lesson we badly need to learn if we're going to make sound policy decisions in an era in which science and politics seem increasingly at odds.
但是藝術和科學之間的那堵石墻不是看起來的那般厚；其實，在某些地方，他們是完全可穿透的。如果我們準備在這個科學與政治越來越相左的時代做出良好的政治決策的話，這是一個我們需要迫切地去學習的教訓。
In the Oct. 3 issue of TIME, theoretical physicist Lisa Randall of Harvard University made a plea for greater deference to reason in the still-young but already-ugly 2012 presidential campaign. Randall lamented "the fundamental disregard for rational and scientific thinking" in a political culture in which Texas governor Rick Perry can dismiss evolution as "merely a theory that's out there," and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann can traffic in poppycock about the HPV vaccine causing mental retardation.
在十月3日出版的時代周刊里，哈佛大學的理論物理學家Lisa Randal在剛開始但是已經十分丑陋的2012總統(tǒng)選舉活動中為了更多的尊重進行懇求勸告。Randal 哀悼德州州長Rick Perry的駁斥進化論的觀點：“那僅僅是一個存在的理論而已” 是政治文化中“從根本上對理性和科學思考的漠視”。而明尼蘇達州的國會議員Michele Bachmann 竟能胡扯說HPV疫苗會導致精神癡呆。
Randall's new book, Knocking on Heaven's Door, takes the case one intriguing step further. The book explores some of the biggest ideas in contemporary physics and how they undergird such everyday matters as risk assessment, logic and even our understanding of beauty. But it's in her chapter on creativity — not a quality always associated with the data-crunching business of science — that she makes her most compelling case against the willful know-nothingism that plagues public debate.
Randall的新書——《敲響天堂之門》使用了讓人更進一步感興趣的案例。這本書探索了當代物理學中的某一些宏大的理念以及它們是如何支持日常生活總的一些諸如評估行為，邏輯甚至乎對于美的理解。不過正是在她書中關于創(chuàng)造力(一個怎么與科學的數(shù)據(jù)處理有關的性質）的這一章節(jié)中，她寫出了與給社會輿論造成困惑的不可知論立場相反的而最讓人引起興趣的例子。
It takes a certain kind of hubris to be a pundit or politician and tell scientists — often many, many scientists — that they're wrong about what their studies have shown them. One of the things that makes it easy to make such counterfactual arguments is that there are often studies to back them up. The nonsense about vaccines causing autism began with a now- discredited 1998 paper by British physician Andrew Wakefield that linked the disorder to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. A far greater number of studies have shown that climate change is by no means fully understood. Anyone — scientist or not — can read papers on both sides and seem to come to a well-reasoned conclusion either way.
成為專家或者政治家和科學家往往會有一種目中無人的自傲——常常有很多這樣的科學家——他們對與其研究的成果和觀點往往是錯誤的。 其中使做這樣一種違反現(xiàn)實的論證更容易的事情是他們有太多的研究結果是支持他們的觀點。關于疫苗會導致孤獨癥的胡說是從一篇現(xiàn)在已經喪失名譽的1998年的英國內科醫(yī)生Andrew Wakefield的論文開始的，他認為精神失常是與麻疹、腮腺炎和風疹的疫苗有關。有多得多的研究已經表明氣候的變化是不可能完全被了解認識的。但很多人——不論是否科學家——不管怎么樣，都可以看報紙并得出一個看起來很有根據(jù)的結論。
What distinguishes scientists from the rest of us is their ability not just to understand the data but to derive the data — which is a bit like the difference between being able to graph a 95-yd. touchdown run and being able to execute one, cutting across the seam and exploiting the gaps in coverage that the average person would never see. That's what good scientists do every day. "The cracks and discrepancies that might seem too small or obscure for some," Randall writes, "can be the portal to new concepts and ideas for those who look at the problem the right way."
決定科學家與眾不同的一點是他們的獲取數(shù)據(jù)的能力而非僅僅明白認識數(shù)據(jù)本身。這有點像能夠用圖表示一個95碼的觸地得分的跑動過程和能夠真實去抄近路，利用普通人永遠看不到的缺口去執(zhí)行它之間的區(qū)別。 這是一個好的科學家每天做的事情。Randall 寫到：”那些對某些人來說太小了而無法觀察到的裂縫和不一致的的地方可以成為以正確方法看待問題的人的通往新的概念和理念的門?！?b class="label bg2" jquery1318554678703="37">
That's not easy, and not even all scientists do it artfully or well. Randall cites autistics and — not entirely in jest — bureaucrats and academics as good examples of how simply having extraordinary technical skills can be meaningless without the creativity to exploit them. She quotes Pushkin, who once said that "Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as much as in poetry." Similarly, some of the most touching scenes in the movie Rainman are those in which the autistic lead character recites Abbott and Costello's brilliant "Who's on first" sketch, hitting all of the words but understanding none of the wit.
這不是容易的事情，并且不是所有的科學家都能很好地、巧妙地做到。Randall引用自閉癥患者（不完全是在開玩笑）、官僚和學者作為很好的例子來闡述為什么僅有卓越的技術而不能富有創(chuàng)造力地去利用它是沒有意義的。她引用Pushkin曾經說過的話：“幾何學研究中需要靈感，正如詩歌創(chuàng)造中需求的一樣”。同樣的，電影《雨人》中某幾幕最感人的畫面是自閉癥主角背誦Abbott and Costello（美國著名滑稽秀演員）的精彩的《Who's on first》講稿，背出了每一個單詞但不明白其中任何的意思。
For any highly accomplished person, creativity begins with the least creative mindset possible — a near-obsessive ability to think endlessly about a problem, and indeed an inability not to think about it. "Even if golf pros perfect their swing over countless repeated attempts," Randall writes, "I don't believe everyone can hit a ball a thousand times without becoming exceedingly bored or frustrated." Tiger Woods could do that and — at least before his current woes on the links — the results showed not just in championship play, but in flat-out inspirational play. Something similar is true of science too.
對于任何富有成就的人，創(chuàng)造力來源于至少存在的創(chuàng)造性的思維模式——一種近乎不可控制的去對一個問題進行無盡思考的能力以及實際上一種不能停止對其思考的無能?！凹词谷绻郀柗蜻\動員們進行無數(shù)次的揮桿練習來追求更好的技術，”Randall 寫到，“我不相信每個人都能夠擊球一千次而不感到過于乏悶或沮喪?！盩iger Woods在他現(xiàn)時的性丑聞之前能夠做到并且這樣訓練的結果不僅僅體現(xiàn)在冠軍的表演中，還體現(xiàn)在平直而富有靈感地表演中。在科學中，同樣是類似的道理。
"Once skills...become second nature, you can call them up much more easily when you need them," Randall writes. "Such embedded skills often continue operating in the background — even before they push good ideas into your conscious mind." Larry Page once told Randall that the "seed idea" for Google came to him in a dream, but that was only after he had been absorbed by the problem for months. We never questioned Woods' swing, and we certainly don't question the brilliance of what Page helped invent. But we feel free to sneer at what scientists tell us when it serves our political ends.
“一旦技能...成為了第二天性，你可以更容易地駕馭它們，”Randall 寫到?！斑@樣的嵌入的技能常常持續(xù)地在背地里工作——即便是在他們推送好的主意到你的意識中之前”。Larry Page 曾告訴Randall 關于Google的“種子理念”來自他的一個夢，不過那也是在他被這個問題纏身了幾個月后的事情。我們絕不會質疑Woods'的揮桿，我們也當然不會質疑在Page參與發(fā)明出的輝煌成果。但科學家告訴我們的東西是為政治目的服務的時候，我們盡情嘲笑它們。
None of this means we should defer to scientists simply because they have the degrees to back up their claims. That kind of blind belief in the well-lettered has led to everything from the disgrace that was the eugenics movement to the nincompoopery of the vaccine scare. What's more, Randall herself is a scientist and not above a little inside-the-clubhouse bias. Still, history has tended to prove the points she makes.
這并不意味著因為科學家們擁有支持他們言論的學位而我們就應該對他們言聽計從。這種受過良好教育的人們中村子啊盲目的信仰已經導致了令人丟臉的優(yōu)生運動甚至愚蠢的關于疫苗的聳言。更重要的是，Randall她自己是一個科學家并且沒有一點那種象牙塔的偏見。然而，歷史已經證明她提出的一些觀點。
Several years ago, when I was writing a book about the polio vaccine, I had the opportunity to spend months wading through the personal papers of Jonas Salk. It was only when I had gone through few the first few thousand letters, memos, notebooks and even scrawled phone messages that it occurred to me that I hadn't stumbled on a single doodle — not one. It became something of a game to look for one and finally, deep in a notebook in which Salk was recording data from a mouse study, there it was — a tiny triangular design made of perhaps six or seven pen strokes. That was it, the entire body of Jonas Salk's art work. And yet the inspiration to create a vaccine that hundreds of other scientists had sought — and the millions of lives that were saved as a result of it — is surely artistry of a far higher kind.
幾年前，當我正在寫一本關于小兒麻痹癥的疫苗的書時，我有幸花了幾個月來研讀Jonas Salk的個人論文。當我看完前幾千的信函、備忘錄，筆記本甚至潦草的電話信息時，我突然發(fā)現(xiàn)我閱讀其涂鴉般的筆記沒有任何問題。于是找尋這個（找不能理解的東西）成了一種游戲，而最后終于找到了——在一本筆記本中的一個可能6到7筆畫出的細小三角形標志。就是它了，Jonas Salk的作品的全部。它就是（Salks）研發(fā)出其他千百個科學家想研發(fā)出的疫苗的靈感——并且是億萬生命因此獲救的原因，這當然是更高遠的一種藝術才能。
Scientists aren't always right, but when they talk, they deserve at least the initial presumption of wisdom. All of us — especially the people who seek to lead us — could well learn something from listening to what they have to say.
科學家不總是正確的，不過當他們的發(fā)言應得到是“智慧的”的假設。我們所有人，特別是尋求帶領大家的人，總能從科學家們說的東西中學到一些東西。
