"無知"是科學的翅膀 Study the Birds and the Bees

We live in an age of science, therefore of accuracy and an opposition to amateurishness. While commendable in many ways, this attitude has an unfortunate tendency to kill enthusiasm—for if success in an area is connected to the precise mastery of an unholy amount of detail, we may be frightened away without having our curiosity properly engaged.

我們生活在一個科學的時代，因此，對於準確性的追求受到推崇，而非專業的探索則遭到反對。這種態度在許多方面值得提倡，但令人遺憾的是，它具有抹殺人類激情的傾向——原因在於，如果在某一領域取得成功就意味着要準確掌握數不勝數的細節的話，我們很可能在好奇心被充分點燃之前就已經被嚇跑了。

Take attitudes to natural science. I was a keen amateur scientist until I was 12, when I gave up for fear that too much had already been catalogued and known. It seemed as if it would be 20 years before I would encounter a real mystery again. Like thousands of others, I saw my spontaneous interest in science and the natural world killed by a secondary education that unwittingly suggested that everything was already known and categorised.

就拿對待自然科學的態度來說吧。在12歲以前，我一直是一個非常熱愛科學的業餘科學家，可到了12歲時我放棄了研究科學的想法，因爲太多的科學知識已經被分門別類併爲世人所知，這讓我感到恐懼：似乎我要等上20年纔會再遇到一個真正的難解之謎。與芸芸衆生一樣，我對科學和自然界自發產生的興趣慘遭中學教育的扼殺，它無意間向我們暗示了一個信息：一切都是已知的，一切都是歸好類的。

To remember what popular science could and should be, it’s instructive to consider the case of England’s greatest amateur scientist, Gilbert White. White published his extraordinary (but too little read) book, The Natural History of Selborne, in 1789, setting out his observations of the animals, birds and insects of his native Hampshire village: squirrels rustling in bushes, spiders levering themselves across cobwebs, slugs pulling themselves across dew-coated lawns and insects dancing above ponds.

要想重新記起大衆科學可以而且應該是什麼樣子，可以參考一下英國最偉大的業餘科學家吉爾伯特·懷特的事例，你會深受啓發。懷特在1789年發表了非凡的著作《賽耳彭自然史》(但很少有人讀過)，講述了他在家鄉漢普郡小鎮觀察到的動物、鳥類和昆蟲：松鼠穿梭在灌木叢中，窸窸窣窣；蜘蛛盤踞在蜘蛛網上，翹首張望；鼻涕蟲拖着身子爬過掛滿露珠的草地；昆蟲在池塘上方翩翩起舞。

Like many of his contemporaries, White believed that God had, on the fifth day of creation, quite literally brought into life all the animals on earth; he had put the stripes on the tiger and the antlers on the deer. The animal kingdom bore testimony to the benevolence, greatness and, at times, the sense of humour of God. The belief may have been nonsense, but the attitude that it inspired in White was perhaps less so, for it led him to express sentiments of uninhibited wonder about animals which we have in subsequent ages grown shy of expressing. White had another advantage over secular modern people. Much about animals was still unknown. Science had not yet defined or answered all the questions—leaving those interested in animals with the freedom to follow up their own curiosity, to ask “What interests me?” rather than “What must one know?”. Reading White evokes the excitement that all subjects take on when we feel ourselves moving from the rank of pupils to that of explorers. White was struck by a host of questions. Why do cats like eating fish so much? When do the sparrows’ eggs hatch? Can bees hear anything?

和同時代的許多人一樣，懷特相信上帝在創世的第五天確確實實爲地球創造了所有的飛禽走獸；他給老虎畫上了斑紋，給鹿安上了鹿角。動物王國見證了上帝的仁慈、偉大和偶爾流露的幽默。這種信仰可能是荒謬的，但懷特受之激發而產生的態度或許就不那麼荒謬了，因爲正是它引導懷特表達出了自己對動物世界毫無拘束的驚歎與嚮往及由此而來的所感所想，而在後來的年代裏，我們卻漸漸羞於表達這種感想。與當代的普通人相比，懷特還有一個優勢。那時，人們對動物界知之甚少，科學還沒有定義與回答所有的問題，這就給那些對動物感興趣的人留下了自由的空間，他們可以聽從自己的好奇心，去問自己“什麼東西能引發我的興趣”，而不是“什麼東西我必須知道”。走近懷特，我們感到自己從學生的行列跨入了探索家的行列，所有事物所具有的驚人之處都被喚起，呈現在我們的眼前。懷特總能想到一大堆的問題：爲什麼貓那麼喜歡吃魚？麻雀什麼時候孵蛋？蜂蜜可以聽到聲音嗎？

Because no one knew, White was free to carry out some touchingly homespun investigations: “It does not appear from experiment that bees are in any way capable of being affected by sounds: for I have often tried my own with a large speaking trumpet held close to their hives, and with such an exertion of voice as would have hailed a ship at the distance of a mile, and still these insects pursued their various employments undisturbed, and without showing the least sensibility or resentment.” White was similarly curious about the key that owls sing in and found that it was B flat. It may be a good thing for science that many facts are now known, but it’s a sadder thing for the curiosity of most mortals.

因爲沒有人知道答案，懷特可以自由地開展一些手段簡陋卻扣人心扉的調查。“從實驗中看，蜜蜂似乎怎麼也不會受到聲音的影響。我常常在挨近蜂巢的地方拿着大擴音器盡力大聲呼喊，這聲音在一英里外的船上都能聽見，但是這些昆蟲卻沒受到任何影響，照舊各司其職地幹活，絲毫沒有表現出有所察覺或流露出怨恨之情。”懷特對貓頭鷹唱歌的音調也抱有同樣的好奇，並發現它最終唱的是降B調。對於科學來說，許多事實爲世人所知可能是件好事，但對於大多數普通人的好奇心來說，這就是一件比較悲哀的事情了。

White constantly encourages his readers to focus on the number of animals that live alongside us but that we typically ignore, seeing them only out of the corner of our eye, having no appreciation of what they are up to and want. White prompted his readers to abandon their usual perspective to consider for a time how the world might look through other eyes. One autumn, he reported: “Swallows and martins have forsaken us sooner this year than usual; for on September 22nd, they rendezvoused in a neighbour’s walnut tree, where it seemed probable they had taken up their lodging for the night. At the dawn of the day, which was foggy, they arose all together in infinite numbers, occasioning such a rushing from the strokes of their wings against the hazy air, as might be heard to a considerable distance: since then no flock has appeared, only a few stragglers.”

懷特一直鼓勵讀者們去關注自己身邊的動物，通常我們都會忽略這些動物，僅會用餘光瞥一瞥它們，並不關心它們幹些什麼以及想要什麼。懷特鼓勵讀者們暫時放下慣有的觀點，暫且用另外的視角去看這個世界的樣子。一個秋天，他這樣寫道：“今年，雨燕和紫崖燕離開我們的時間比往常要早些。9月22日，它們聚集在鄰居家的胡桃樹上。那天，它們似乎就是在那裏過的夜。破曉時分，霧靄茫茫，多得數不清的燕子齊刷刷地振翅飛翔，直衝朦朧的天空，振翅的聲音似乎在很遠的地方都能聽到。從那之後，除了幾隻掉隊的，再也沒有出現成羣的燕子。”

It would have been easy to overlook that they had ever been in Selborne. Just the odd sound and sight, invisible to the unfocused villager more concerned with news from London or with the harvest or church gossip. And yet the swallows had been in Selborne since the end of February, the martins since the early weeks of April. They had spent the spring building their nests in chimneys, in forked boughs of trees or beneath eaves—gathering mud in their bills and applying it with trembling movements of their chins. They had searched for insects for their young, swooping low over hedges and ponds (while humans were baking bread and having arguments and darning socks). The swallows had sung in a soft low-twittering song—feet-feet feet-a-feetit—and the martins in a slightly lower chrrp chrrp, with the occasional treep at a moment of alarm. And now they were leaving Selborne on their immense journey back to the equatorial regions of Africa in which they wintered. White’s discussion of the birds guided us to view the world through a different lens: no longer just the human lens, in which Selborne was a village 50 miles southwest of England’s capital city, with a baker and a lawyer and a church, but through a swallows-and-martins lens, in which it was a set of nameless eaves and trees in which to build nests and hatch children and one stop in a year that had perhaps begun and would end again in a quiet lagoon in Madagascar.

人們很容易忽略掉這些燕子，不曾留意它們在賽耳彭生活過。村民更加關心的是倫敦來的消息、糧食的收成或教堂的閒聊，而對燕子奇特的叫聲和身影卻聽而不聞、視若無睹。但是，雨燕從2月末開始就入住賽耳彭，紫崖燕也在4月的最初幾周開始生活於此。整個春天，它們都忙着到處築巢：或在煙囪裏，或在分叉的樹枝上，或在屋檐下。它們用喙銜泥，然後靠着下巴的顫動把泥黏結。燕子們時而俯衝向下，低飛於樹籬與池塘之上，爲仔燕們尋覓食物(而此時，人們正忙着烘烤麪包、互相爭論和織補襪子)。雨燕的聲音是溫柔的，似呢喃細語，“唧唧—唧唧”地低唱着；而紫崖燕的聲音要稍微低沉點，總是“啾啾—啾啾”地唱着，只是在偶爾受到驚嚇時，纔會“嘶嘶”地高鳴一聲。現在，它們要離開賽耳彭，開始長途跋涉，迴歸非洲赤道附近的區域過冬。懷特關於鳥兒的討論指引我們用一個全新的視角來看待世界：不再是從人的視角來看待，而是從雨燕和紫崖燕的視角看待。如果只從人的視角出發，賽耳彭只是一個距英國首都50英里的西南方村莊，那裏有一個麪包師、一個律師和一個教堂。而如果從雨燕和紫崖燕的視角來看，賽耳彭是一排排無名的屋檐和樹木，燕子們在那兒築巢、孵蛋，它也是燕子一年生活中的一個逗留站，燕子們一年生活的開始是在馬達加斯加靜謐的潟湖旁，而這一年生活的結束也在那裏。

The martins and swallows were but one example of the many life-forms co-existing so unobtrusively alongside humans, and for which familiar objects and places had entirely different meanings. White’s book, which rooted the observation of animals in a specific human context (the village of Selborne) encourages us to shuttle between the human and animal perspective; to consider for a moment how everything might seem to a swallow, to look at Selborne through the eyes of an ant—and hence to appreciate the narrowness of our previous view of reality.

人類的身邊有着衆多朝夕共處但並不顯眼的生物，雨燕和紫崖燕只是其中一例。正是因爲它們的存在，人類所熟知的事物和地方纔擁有了全新的意義。懷特書裏對動物的觀察是以一個特定的人類居住環境(賽耳彭村莊)爲基礎的。他的書鼓勵我們用人和動物兩種不同的視角輪番觀察事物，鼓勵我們抽出片刻時間來思考雨燕看到的是怎樣一個世界，螞蟻眼中的賽耳彭面貌又如何——如此，我們便能認識到自己以前看待現實世界的視角是多麼狹窄。

When we are feeling out of sync with our era or society, there may be relief in coming upon reminders of the diversity of life on the planet, in holding in mind that alongside the main business of our species there are also swallows that build nests and quietly set off over the English Channel for Madagascar.

當我們感到自己與時代或社會步調不一致時，如果能在偶然遇到某些動物時，想起這個星球上生命的豐富多彩，能謹記這個世界除了我們人類的那套俗事之外，還有燕子在築巢，而後悄然動身離開，穿越英吉利海峽，飛向馬達加斯加，或許，我們就能感到釋然。

It’s often remarked that learning anything at school tends to kill the subject, be it literature or biology. Less explored is the reason for this. It may have to do with curiosity’s relationship to authority. In order to remain personally engaged with a subject, we have to feel, however naively and narcissistically, that we could at some level make a contribution to it. The best teachers give their pupils a sense that they too could, after mastering the basics, become pioneers. But because this hasn’t generally been true for the teachers themselves, they often imply the contrary message and so quash ambition.

人們常說，在學校學任何東西都會扼殺相應的學科，文學和生物皆不例外。但人們卻很少探尋這背後的原因。其實，這可能和好奇心與權威之間的關係脫不了干係。爲了保持自己能投入於某一學科，天真也罷，自戀也罷，我們必須認定自己在某種程度上能爲這一學科作出點貢獻。最優秀的老師能讓他的學生意識到，在掌握了基本的知識後，他們也可以成爲科學的先鋒者。但是，因爲很多老師自身基本上沒有認識到這一點，因而他們常常向學生暗示相反的信息，進而摧毀了學生的壯志雄心。

If a love of science and the natural world is to take firm and wide roots, we should remember the underlying lesson of Gilbert White: that ignorance and certain clumsiness are the necessary building blocks on which mature research and insights develop.

如果想讓自己對科學和自然的熱愛在廣泛的範圍內紮下牢固的根基，我們就應該銘記蘊含在吉爾伯特·懷特身上的啓示：些許的無知和適度的笨拙是成熟的考察研究和洞察能力得以發展的必要基石。