TED演讲:科学解释之新探(3)

 　　At the time, what they thought  在那个时候，启蒙学者们认为

　　distinguished 1 science was a radical 2 idea about things unseen, known as empiricism. 科学的独特标志是一个关于不可见事物的激进看法，叫做经验主义
　　All knowledge derives 3 from the senses.  认为所有的知识来自我们的感官
　　Well, we've seen that that can't be true.  呵呵，我们知道这样说有些偏颇
　　It did help by promoting observation and experiment. 但经验主义成就了科学观察与实验
　　But, from the outset, it was obvious that there was something horribly wrong with it. 然而乍一看之下，似乎很明显地经验主义存在着可怕的漏洞
　　Knowledge comes from the senses. “知识源自感官”
　　In what language? Certainly not the language of mathematics,  那么感官得来的知识由什么语言承载呢？肯定不会是数学语言吧
　　in which, Galileo rightly said, the book of nature is written. 可伽利略却有此精辟一语，“自然之书乃数学著成”
　　Look at the world. You don't see equations carved on to the mountainsides. 看看这世界，你看不到山崖上刻着方程式
　　If you did, it would be because people had carved them. 就算碰巧看到了，那也是因为人们刻上去的
　　By the way, why don't we do that?  顺便问一句，我们干嘛不这样做呢？
　　What's wrong with us?  这不是有毛病嘛？
　　Empiricism is inadequate 4 because, well, 经验主义本身是不足的，这大概是因为
　　scientific theories explain the seen in terms of the unseen.  科学理论用不可见的来解释可见的
　　And the unseen, you have to admit, doesn't come to us through the senses. 而那些不可见的--你得承认--可不是从感官得来的
　　We don't see those nuclear reactions in stars.  我们可看不见恒星中的核反应
　　We don't see the origin of species.  看不见物种起源
　　We don't see the curvature of space-time, and other universes. 还有时空弯曲其他的平行宇宙
　　But we know about those things. How? 但我们知道这些。我们是怎么做到的呢？
　　Well, the classic empiricist answer is induction 5.  经验主义的经典的答案是“归纳法”
　　The unseen resembles the seen. But it doesn't. 认为不可见的与可见的相似。其实不然
　　You know what the clinching 6 evidence was that space-time is curved? 你能找到一个决定性的反例。比如：时空是弯曲的这一事实
　　It was a photograph, not of space-time,  我们知道它的证据是一张照片，不是关于时空本身
　　but of an eclipse, with a dot there rather than there.  而是拍摄的一次日食，上面有个小点在这儿而不在那儿
　　And the evidence for evolution?  至于物种起源的证据呢？
　　Some rocks and some finches.  一些岩石和雀类化石
　　And parallel universes? Again: dots there, rather than there, on a screen. 平行宇宙的证据何在啊？又是屏幕上这儿有些点，而不是那儿
　　What we see, in all these cases,  这些事例中我们眼睛观察到的
　　bears no resemblance to the reality that we conclude is responsible 和事实没有什么相似之处，所以前面的“相似说”不成立
　　only a long chain of theoretical reasoning and interpretation 7 connects them. 只有一条长长的理论推导与解读的链条，把它们连在一起
　　"Ah!" say creationists.  于是那些神创论者就说:“啊哈！”
　　"So you admit it's all interpretation. “所以你承认这些科学理论都只是某种解读
　　No one has ever seen evolution. We see rocks. 没人知道答案是什么。我们都看得见石头
　　You have your interpretation. We have ours.  你有你的理解，我们有我们的
　　Yours comes from guesswork, ours from the Bible." 你的理解来自理论猜测，我们的来自圣经。”
　　But what creationist and empiricists both ignore is that, in that sense, 可是有一点神创论者和经验主义者同时忽略了，那就是，从先前的那种意义上看
　　no one has ever seen a bible either,  没有人真正切实“观察”到一本圣经
　　that the eye only detects light, which we don't perceive.  眼睛只是探测到阳光，而我们无法有意识地感知它
　　Brains only detect nerve impulses.  大脑只侦测神经脉冲
　　And they don't perceive even those as what they really are, namely electrical crackles. 但却无法感知它们究竟本身是什么，而它们其实是带电粒子“小爆破”
　　So we perceive nothing as what it really is.  如此说来我们无法感知任何事物的现实究竟是什么