雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第3章:思考什麼是思考(66)
Meanwhile to the New Statesman, Hitler’s rancour at the Treaty of Versailles only vindicated what Keynes and Lowes Dickinson had always said.
The difficulty was that being fair to Germany now meant making concessions to a barbarous regime.
問題是，現在對德國公平，就意味着對暴行讓步。Conservative opinion, however, perceived the new Germany in terms of a balance of nation states, in which it was a renewed potential threat to Britain, but also a strong ‘bulwark’ against the Soviet Union.
保守的觀點是，新的德國對英國來說，是一個潛在的威脅，但它同時也是一個對抗蘇聯的堡壘。
It was in this context that the Cambridge Anti-War movement revived in November 1933. Alan wrote:
1933年11月，劍橋再度掀起反戰熱潮。艾倫寫道：12/11/33
33年11月12日There has been a lot happening this week.
這周有一些事情。The Tivoli Cinema had arranged to shew a film called ‘Our Fighting Navy’ which was blatant militarist propaganda.
帝威利電影院安排播放《我們英勇的海軍》，這明顯是軍事家的鼓吹。The Anti-War movement organized a protest.
反戰組織進行了抗議活動，The organization wasn’t very good and we only got 400 signatures of which 60 or more were from King’s.
但不是很順利，一共收集了400個簽名，60幾個來自國王學院。The film was eventually withdrawn, but this was on account of the shindy that the militarists made outside the cinema when they had heard of our protest and had got it into their heads that we were going to break up the Cinema.
電影到了後來，誰也不說話了，因爲主戰派知道了我們的抗議，聽說我們想中斷電影，就守在了電影院門口。A further comment, that ‘There was a very successful Anti-War demonstration yesterday’, referred to the Armistice Day wreath-laying ceremony, which this year had more the flavour of a political statement.
還有一個評論，是他認爲在停戰日的花環典禮上的反戰示威很成功。This was not wholly pacifist in spirit.
艾倫的想法並不是完全的和平主義，Alan’s friend James Atkins had decided that he was a pacifist, and Alan himself that he was not.
他的朋友詹姆斯·阿特金斯是一個和平主義者，但艾倫並不是。But very influential was the suggestion that the First World War had been whipped up by the self-interest of the armament manufacturers.
但是，軍火商對第一次世界大戰的自私的推崇，對他產生了很大影響。There was great feeLing, in which probably Alan shared, that glorification of weapons should not be allowed to make a second great war more likely.
他有一種強烈的感覺，不應該因爲對武力的讚頌，來製造第二次大戰。It was Eddington, who as a Quaker was a pacifist and internationalist, who stimulated the next outward and visible step in Alan’s career.
愛丁頓，一個貴格會教徒，一個和平主義者和國際主義者，他將艾倫的生涯推進到下一步。This time it was not in connection with the ‘Jabberwocky’ of quantum mechanics, but through his course of lectures on the methodology of science which Alan attended in the autumn of 1933.
這次不是關於量子力學的“無意義的話”，而是關於科學方法論的講座，艾倫在1933年秋天參加了該講座。Eddington touched upon the tendency of scientific measurements to be distributed, when plotted on a graph, on what was technically called a ‘normal’ curve.
愛丁頓談到測量結果的分佈，以及它的圖象，術語叫作“正態曲線”。Whether it was the wingspans of Drosophilae, or Alfred Beuttell’s winnings at Monte Carlo, the readings would tend to bunch around a central value, and die away on either side, in a specific way.
比如說，果蠅的翼展會趨向於一箇中心值，並且以一種特定的方式，向兩端逐漸消失。To explain why this should be so was a problem of fundamental importance in the theory of probability and statistics.
爲什麼這會這樣，是概率與數理統計中的一個關鍵問題。Eddington offered an outline of why it was to be expected, but this did not satisfy Alan, who, sceptical as ever, wanted to prove an exact result by rigorous pure-mathematical standards.
愛丁頓給出了一份大綱，解釋爲什麼會這樣，但這不能滿足艾倫。艾倫和以往任何時候一樣，抱着一種懷疑態度，他要通過嚴格的純數學標準，給出一個精確的證明。By the end of February 1934 he had succeeded.
1934年2月底，他成功了。It did not require a conceptual advance, but still this was the first substantial result of his own.
這並不是一個開拓性的成果，但這是他的第一個獨立提出的有影響的成果。Typically, for him, it was one that connected pure mathematics with the physical world.
尤其是，對他來說，這就是一個聯繫純數學和物質世界的方法。But when he showed his work to someone else, he was told that the Central Limit Theorem, as the result was called, had already been proved in 1922 by a certain Lindeberg.
但是，當他向別人展示這項成果時，別人告訴他，中心極限定理已經在1922年被林德伯格證明了。Working in his self-contained way, he had not thought to find out first whether his objective had already been attained.
艾倫只按自己的想法工作，他並沒有先看看他的目標是否已經被實現了。But he was also advised that provided due explanation was given, it might still be acceptable as original work for a King’s fellowship dissertation.
但別人建議他，如果附一個解釋，也許仍然可以用來申請國王學院的研究員。From 16 March to 3 April 1934, Alan joined a Cambridge party to go skiing in the Austrian Alps.
1934年，從3月16日到4月3日，艾倫參加一個劍橋的活動，去奧地利的阿爾卑斯山玩滑雪。It had a vaguely Quaker, internationalist link with Frankfurt University, whose ski-hut near Lech on the Austro-German border they flavour of cooperation was soured by the fact that the German ski coach was an ardent Nazi.
靠貴格會的一些關係，他們可以使用法蘭克福大學在奧德邊境的萊西附近的滑雪小屋。On his return, Alan wrote:
在他回來的路上，艾倫寫道：… We had a very amusing letter from Micha, the German leader of the skiing party … He said ‘… but in thoughts I am in your middle’…
……我們收到了一封有趣的米查的來信，他是滑雪黨的德國那邊的領導……他說“……但我的思想與你們在一起……”
