這篇文章是通俗科學. 主題與他的哲學等密切相關. 他可以有深入的說法.
此篇有許多說法也很沒說服力......
哪些科學理念已到退休年齡？
2014年01月17日
當你開始新的一年時，以下是一些你可能考慮要和聖誕節包裝紙一起扔掉的概念，它們是「人性」、「因果」、「萬物法則」、「自由意志」和「循證醫學」。
在新近發佈的一個包含166名（人數還在增加中）深度思想家、科學家、作家、大話家——具體屬哪一類請自行判斷——的文章集錦中，提到了眾多類似這樣的過時信念、現代思想根基或痴心妄想（還是那句話：請自行判斷），它們都是要回答一個問題：哪些科學理念已經到了退休年齡？
- 檢視大圖
Elwood H. Smith
整個討論被貼在了edge.org上。去看看。不管你是誰，你都一定會找到某些讓你發狂的答案。
自1998年以來，約翰·布羅克曼(John
Brockman)一直在張貼類似的問題。其中包括那些東西是你深信不疑但卻無法證明的，互聯網正在給一切帶來怎樣的改變，以及有哪些東西你已經改變了看
法。布洛克曼是一名作家經紀人，一個愛挑釁的人，在他的在線沙龍Edge上主持知識分子之間的論戰。
「其實每次爭的都是同一件事，」布羅克曼在電話里說，他解釋說，今年的問題出現在去年夏天的一次社會學會議上，立即引發了一場關於該問題是否適合Edge論壇的辯論。
布羅克曼的投稿者是一幫唯恐天下不亂的傢伙，他們能聚到一起，基本是出於對想法的熱情以及對精彩論戰的熱愛，其中的許多人是他的客戶。（布羅克曼代理着幾名《紐約時報》作者，不過本文作者不是。）
其中的一些人是科普界赫赫有名的人物，比如普林斯頓高等研究院(Institute for Advanced Study)數學家兼未來學家弗里曼·戴森(Freeman Dyson)；哈佛大學(Harvard University)語言學家、暢銷書作家斯蒂文·平克(Steven Pinker)；牛津大學(Oxford University)進化生物學家、無神論者、暢銷書作家理乍得·道金斯(Richard Dawkins)；發明了「心流」概念的心理學家米哈里•奇克森特米哈伊(Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)，心流是指一個人完全迷失在自己所做的事務中，奇克森特米哈伊說，科學家們需要放棄一個觀念，即他們發現的真理永遠是放之四海而皆準的。
「有些真理的確如此，「奇克森特米哈伊說，「可是有一些則取決於眾多的先決條件，這些條件如此之多，以至於現實和虛構的界線變得模糊起來。」
這種看法得到了演員和科普人士艾倫·阿爾達(Alan Alda)的呼應，他批判了那種事物非真即假的概念，那是邏輯學和數學裡的基本概念。有些時候是要考慮語境的。
拿死亡來說，這似乎是一種定義非常清晰的狀態。阿爾達說，「屍體就是一塊肉，生命消失了。可是，如果你退一步看，它實際上處在一種過渡狀態，它會慢慢變成肥料——以另一種方式存在下去。」
諾貝爾物理學獎得主、麻省理工學院(MIT)的弗蘭克·維爾切克(Frank Wilczek)建議放棄精神和物質之間的差異，這是自笛卡爾(Descartes)時代以來的一個基礎概念，至少在西方是這樣。維爾切克說，目前，我們對物質和原子有了更多的了解，物質「可以以一種錯綜複雜的動態模式翩翩起舞；它能利用環境資源，能自行組合和釋放熵。
我們能教它下棋。
不過，別過於激動了。非營利組織教育引擎(Engines for Education)的電腦科學家、心理學家羅傑·尚克(Roger Schank)說，能下棋的電腦無助於我們理解人類如何下棋、為什麼下棋，也不會下棋下得無聊了想起來去玩一種新的遊戲。他說，我們應該廢除「人工智能」這個術語，他還說：「本來就沒必要創造人造人類。真人已經夠多的了。」
曾創辦《全球目錄》(Whole Earth Catalog)等刊物的斯圖爾特·布蘭德(Stewart Brand)打
算談談核能，他認為一個無法證實的觀念阻撓了核能的發展，即任何程度的核輻射都是不安全的，無論這個程度有多低。結果，人們要額外花無數的錢，圍繞着核電
廠建立起「毫無意義的安全防護」，之所以說它毫無意義，是因為我們的細胞含有某些機制，能修復被輻射破壞的DNA，還有一條更重要的原因，那就是「我們都
會死」。
道金斯教授和西北大學(Northeastern University)心理學家莉莎·費德曼·巴瑞特(Lisa Feldman Barrett)均批判了本質主義的概念，這種概念認為，狗和貓、三角形和樹木、空間和時間、情感和思想等事物都有一種使其自成一體的內在本質。道金斯提出，這個概念在數學上是可行的，可是一旦被用到物種上，或是政治上，就成了一場災難，因為它杜絕了事物出現變化或漸變的可能性。
「即使直接投票結果不相上下，弗羅里達州的25張選舉人票最後要麼全體倒向共和黨，要麼全體倒向民主黨人，」他抱怨道。（這個數字現在已經是29。）「可是美國的州不應該被視為大體上是紅的或者藍的：它們是紅藍比各異的混合體。」
麻省理工學院(MIT)的宇宙學家馬克斯·鐵馬克(Max
Tegmark)提出，即使沒有「無限」的概念，我們一樣可以過得不錯。科技公司應用思維(Applied
Minds)的電腦科學家W·丹尼爾·希利斯(W. Daniel
Hillis)提出，沒有「因果」的概念，我們也能過下去，他說，「因果」只是我們的大腦為了滿足說故事的嗜好而弄出的產物。MIT電腦科學家希斯·羅埃
德(Seth Lloyd)說，到了放棄宇宙這個概念的時候了。
不錯，沒有什麼是神聖不可侵犯的。我們不妨拿醫療新時代風
靡一時的循證醫學為例。宏觀認知公司(MacroCognition)心理學家加里·克萊因 (Gary
Klein)說，由於循證醫學的概念會阻撓醫生嘗試沒有被隨機控制試驗驗證過的其他療法，所以,這個概念可能會阻撓醫學的發展。他舉了一個例子，許多患者
所患的疾病，要多於試驗能控制的疾病類型。
小說家伊恩·麥克尤恩(Ian
McEwan)對今年的問題本身提出了質疑。他說，什麼概念都不用消失；科學需要堅持自己的傳統和理念。他說，「亞里士多德對人類的各個知識領域都廣有涉
獵，不過其大部分見解都是錯的。然而，他發明了動物學，單這一件事就是無價的功勞。你會把他推到一邊嗎？誰知道呢，說不定哪一天你就需要一個老概念。」
整個討論的篇幅超出了12萬字。你可以瀏覽其任何一部分，為它發狂、迷惑或激動。如果說這場論戰有一個全局性的觀點，那就是根本沒有蠢問題這麼一說。
畢竟，科學界的硬通貨不是信仰、甚至不是真理，而是懷疑。
難以想像類似的嘗試會來自天主教樞機團(College of
Cardinals)，或是中國共產黨的中央政治局。和民主制度下的社會一樣，在科學界，人們可以質疑所有一切。當科學家和其他知識分子停止爭執之時，我
們就會知道，我們有麻煩了。
翻譯：張薇Over the Side With Old Scientific Tenets
January 17, 2014
Here are some concepts you
might consider tossing out with the Christmas wrappings as you get
started on the new year: human nature, cause and effect, the theory of
everything, free will and evidence-based medicine.
Those are only a few of the
shibboleths, pillars of modern thought or delusions — take your choice —
that appear in a new compendium of essays by 166 (and counting) deep
thinkers, scientists, writers, blowhards (again, take your choice) as
answers to the question: What scientific idea is ready for retirement?
- 查看大图
Elwood H. Smith
The discussion is posted at edge.org. Take a look. No matter who you are, you are bound to find something that will drive you crazy.
John Brockman, the literary
agent and provocateur who presides over intellectual bar fights at
Edge, his online salon, has been posing questions like this one since
1998. The questions have included what you believe but can’t prove, how
the Internet is changing everything, and what you’ve changed your mind
about.
“It’s really the same thing
every time,” Mr. Brockman said over the phone, explaining that this
year’s question had arisen at a conference on the social sciences last
summer and immediately engendered a debate about whether it was suitable
for the Edge forum.
Mr. Brockman’s
contributors, many of whom are his clients, are a rambunctious lot who
are unified by little more than a passion for ideas and the love of a
good fight. (He represents several New York Times writers, although not
this one.)
Some are boldface names in the pop-science firmament, like Freeman Dyson, the mathematician and futurist at the Institute for Advanced Study; Steven Pinker, the best-selling linguist from Harvard; Richard Dawkins,
the evolutionary biologist and best-selling atheist from Oxford
University; and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who invented
the notion of flow,
or being completely lost in what you are doing, and who says scientists
need to let go of the idea that the truths they find are good for all
time and place.
“Some are indeed true,” Dr.
Csikszentmihalyi says, “but others depend on so many initial conditions
that they straddle the boundary between reality and fiction.”
That thought was echoed by
Alan Alda, the actor and science popularizer who criticizes the idea
that things are either true or false, a staple of logic and math.
Sometimes context matters.
Take death, which seems a
pretty definitive state. “The body is just a lump,” Mr. Alda says. “Life
is gone. But if you step back a bit, the body is actually in a
transitional phase while it slowly turns into compost — capable of
living in another way.”
Frank Wilczek of M.I.T., a Nobel Prize
winner in physics, would retire the distinction between mind and
matter, a bedrock notion, at least in the West, since the time of Descartes.
We know a lot more about matter and atoms now, Dr. Wilczek says, and
about the brain. Matter, he says, “can dance in intricate, dynamic
patterns; it can exploit environmental resources, to self-organize and
export entropy.”
We can teach it to play chess.
But don’t get too excited. Roger Schank, a computer scientist and psychologist for the nonprofit group Engines for Education,
says that a chess-playing computer won’t tell us anything about how or
why humans play chess nor will it get interested in a new game when it
gets bored. We should abolish the term “artificial intelligence,” he
says, adding: “There really is no need to create artificial humans
anyway. We have enough real ones already.”
Stewart Brand,
founder of the “Whole Earth Catalog,” among many things, wants to talk
about nuclear power, which he argues has been hampered by the unprovable
notion that no level of radiation, no matter how low, is safe. As a
result, billions of extra dollars have been spent to provide
“meaningless levels of safety” around nuclear power plants — meaningless
because our cells contain mechanisms for repairing radiation damage to
DNA and because, moreover, “we all die.”
Professor Dawkins and Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychologist from Northeastern University, both attack the concept of essentialism,
which holds that things like dogs and cats, triangles and trees, space
and time, emotions and thoughts — all have an underlying essence that
makes them what they are. This works great in math, Professor Dawkins
argues, but is a disaster when applied to species or politics,
disallowing the possibility of change or gradation.
“Florida must go either
wholly Republican or wholly Democrat — all 25 Electoral College votes —
even though the popular vote is a dead heat,” he complains. (The number
is now 29.) “But states should not be seen as essentially red or blue:
they are mixtures in various proportions.”
Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at M.I.T., claims we could get along just fine without the notion of infinity. The computer scientist W. Daniel Hillis of the technology company Applied Minds claims we can get along without the notion of cause and effect, which he says is just an artifact of our brains’ penchant for storytelling. Seth Lloyd, a computer scientist at M.I.T., says it’s time to lose the notion of a universe.
Yes, nothing is sacred. Take evidence-based medicine, all the rage in the new age of health care. Gary Klein,
a psychologist for the company MacroCognition, says the idea can impede
medical progress by discouraging doctors from trying alternative
treatments that have not been blessed by randomized controlled trials.
He points out, for example, that many patients suffer from more
conditions than experiments can control for.
Ian McEwan, the novelist,
attacks this year’s question itself. Retire nothing, he says; science
needs to hang onto its traditions and ideas. “Aristotle ranged over the
whole of human knowledge and was wrong about much,” he says. “But his
invention of zoology alone was priceless. Would you cast him aside? You
never know when you might need an old idea.”
The whole thing runs more
than 120,000 words. You can dip into it anywhere and be maddened,
confused or stirred. If there is an overall point, it is that there is
no such thing as a stupid question.
The true currency of
science, after all, is not faith or even truth, but doubt. It’s hard to
imagine a similar effort coming out of the College of Cardinals or the
Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. In science, as in democracy,
everything has to be up for grabs. When the scientists and other
intellectuals stop squabbling, then we will know we are in trouble.
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