Philip Ball on the Interplay of Science, Society, and the Quest for Understanding (Ep. 220)

Thank you to Elazar Guttman for sponsoring this transcript “in tribute to Harsha Marti, who first introduced me to Tyler and to many other interesting and fun ideas and people.”

感谢 Elazar Guttman 赞助这份文字记录，“向 Harsha Marti 致敬，是他首先向我介绍了 Tyler 以及许多其他有趣的想法和人。”

He was an editor at Nature for about 20 years.

他在《自然》杂志担任编辑约 20 年。

His books cover such diverse topics as chemistry, physics, the history of experiments, social science, color, the elements, water, water in China, Chartres Cathedral, music, and more.

他的书籍涵盖化学、物理、实验史、社会科学、颜色、元素、水、中国的水、沙特尔大教堂、音乐等多种主题。

But most notably, he has a new book out this year, a major work called How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology.

但最值得注意的是，他今年出版了一本新书，一本名为《生命如何运作：新生物学用户指南》的重要著作。

Philip, welcome.

菲利普，欢迎。

On the whole, the scientists acquiesced to what the regime wanted them to do.

总的来说，科学家们默许了政权的要求。

Very few of them were actively sympathetic to the Nazi party, but they mounted no real effective opposition whatsoever.

他们中很少有人积极同情纳粹党，但他们却没有发起任何真正有效的反对。

I’m afraid that looking at that as a case study, really, made me realize that it’s actually very hard to find any time in history where scientists have actively mounted an effective opposition to that kind of imposition of some kind of ideology, or political power, or whatever.

我担心，将其作为一个案例研究，真的让我意识到，实际上在历史上很难找到科学家积极有效地反对这种强加某种意识形态、政治权力或其他什么的时期。

History doesn’t give us a very encouraging view of that.

历史并没有给我们一个非常令人鼓舞的观点。

That said, I think it’s fair to say, science is doing better these days.

也就是说，我认为可以公平地说，如今科学做得更好了。

I think there’s a recognition that at an institutional level, science needs to be able to mobilize its resources when it’s threatened in this way.

我认为人们认识到，在机构层面上，科学在受到这种威胁时需要能够调动其资源。

I think we’re starting to see that, certainly, with climate change.

我认为，随着气候变化，我们确实开始看到这一点。

Scientists have come under fire a huge amount in that arena.

科学家们在这个领域受到了大量的批评。

I think there’s more institutional understanding of what to do about that.

我认为对于如何应对这一问题有更多的机构理解。

Scientists aren’t being so much left to their own devices to cope as best they can individually.

科学家们并没有太多依靠自己的设备来单独应对。

But I think that there’s this attitude that is still somewhat prevalent within science, that’s a bit like, “We’re above that.” This is exactly what some of the German physicists, particularly Werner Heisenberg, said during the Nazi regime, that science is somehow operating in a purer sphere, and that it’s removed from all the nastiness and the dirtiness that goes on in the political arena.

但我认为这种态度在科学界仍然普遍存在，有点像“我们超越了这一点”。这正是一些德国物理学家，特别是维尔纳·海森堡在纳粹政权期间所说的，科学在某种程度上是在一个更纯粹的领域中运作的，它远离了政治舞台上发生的所有肮脏和肮脏的事情。

I think that that attitude hasn’t gone completely, but I think it needs to go.

我认为这种态度还没有完全消失，但我认为它需要消失。

I think scientists need to get real, really, about the fact that they are working within a social and political context that they have to be able to work with, and to be able to — when the occasion demands it — take some control of, and not simply be pushed around by.

我认为科学家需要认清这样一个事实：他们是在一个社会和政治背景下工作的，他们必须能够与之合作，并且能够“——”当场合需要时”——“采取一定的控制权，而不是简单地被摆布。

That, I think, is something that can only happen when there are institutional structures to allow it to happen, so that scientists are not left to their own individual devices and their own individual sense of morality to do something about it.

我认为，只有当有制度结构允许它发生时，这种情况才可能发生，这样科学家就不会依靠自己的个人手段和个人道德感来对此采取行动。

I’m hoping that science will do better in the future than it’s done in the past.

我希望科学在未来会比过去做得更好。

It’s very clear that certainly pharmaceutical companies themselves tend to underreport any work that seems to conflict with the message they want to put out if they’re developing a drug.

很明显，制药公司本身往往会少报任何与他们在开发药物时想要传达的信息相冲突的工作。

There’s underreporting of negative effects or of null effects.

负面影响或无效影响的报告不足。

I think that the conflict between scientific research and the commercial interests relating to it is one area where there are real problems to be solved and questions to be asked.

我认为科学研究和与之相关的商业利益之间的冲突是一个真正需要解决和提出问题的领域。

I think that there’s also now an increasing problem simply within the structures of academia itself.

我认为学术界本身的结构现在也存在一个日益严重的问题。

This is the thing that perhaps worries me most about the way science is being steered or pushed these days.

这也许是我对当今科学的引导或推动方式最担心的事情。

There are these tremendous pressures, absolutely unrealistic pressures on scientists — particularly young scientists starting their careers — to publish as much as they can.

科学家——尤其是刚刚开始职业生涯的年轻科学家——面临着巨大的压力，绝对不切实际的压力，要求他们尽可能多地发表论文。

I commonly hear the complaint from young scientists that they have no time to think anymore.

我经常听到年轻科学家抱怨他们没有时间思考了。

You’ve just got to do.

你只需要做。

You’ve just got to put work out there.

你只需要把工作放在那里即可。

It has led, in recent times, to some quite high-profile cases of scientific misconduct where, basically, data has just been invented to create a publishable piece of work.

近年来，它导致了一些相当引人注目的科学不端行为案例，这些案例基本上只是为了创造可发表的作品而发明数据。

I think that even when that’s not quite so obviously fraudulent, there are strong pressures on scientists to find the results that they are hoping to find.

我认为，即使这不是那么明显的欺诈，科学家们也面临着巨大的压力，要求他们找到他们希望找到的结果。

There’s a strong pressure for cognitive biases to creep in.

认知偏差面临着巨大的压力。

This is something that ought to be eminently fixable because there is no reason science has to be this way, that there have to be these tremendous pressures on scientists to constantly be producing results, constantly be chasing after what sometimes seems like the diminishing pools of funding.

这个问题应该是完全可以解决的，因为科学没有理由一定要这样，科学家必须承受巨大的压力，不断地产出成果，不断地追逐有时看似不断减少的资金池。

There must be better ways of doing things than this, but we haven’t yet found them.

一定有比这更好的做事方法，但我们还没有找到。

I think that’s really one of the things that the scientific community, as a whole, has to address.

我认为这确实是整个科学界必须解决的问题之一。

How can we reverse these unrealistic pressures to produce in science?

我们如何才能扭转这些不切实际的科学创作压力？

From what I saw, I think that it absolutely wasn’t the case with the vaccines.

据我所见，我认为疫苗绝对不是这样的。

I think that the balance was exactly right there, that they were properly tested while still being accelerated to a degree that we absolutely needed.

我认为平衡是正确的，它们经过了适当的测试，同时仍然加速到我们绝对需要的程度。

That was really a question of money more than anything else.

这实际上是一个钱的问题。

There was so much money thrown at the problem that it was possible to do things all at once that normally would have been done in succession, that the drug companies could afford to take those risks because they had the financial backing.

为了解决这个问题投入了如此多的资金，以至于可以一次性完成通常需要连续完成的所有事情，制药公司有能力承担这些风险，因为他们有财政支持。

In terms of things like that, in terms of the safety of pharmaceuticals, I think that at the moment, I see no cause for concern.

就诸如此类的事情而言，就药品的安全性而言，我认为目前没有理由担心。

There have been worries about whether scientists have been too cautious in their views about climate change.

人们担心科学家对气候变化的看法是否过于谨慎。

Some people say, “Surely, we knew 20 or 30 years ago that this was already a huge problem.

有人说：“当然，我们在20、30年前就知道这已经是一个大问题了。

Why weren’t scientists making much more noise about it then, as they are now, when things are getting to a really desperate stage?”

当事情已经发展到一个非常绝望的阶段时，为什么科学家们没有像现在这样发出更多的声音呢？”

That was a process that I really saw unfold as an editor of Nature.

作为《自然》杂志的编辑，我亲眼目睹了这个过程。

We were handling a lot of the top climate papers at that time, when the worries of climate change were starting to be raised.

当时我们正在处理许多顶级气候论文，当时人们开始提出对气候变化的担忧。

I saw scientists going through an incredibly careful and cautious process of not wanting to be alarmist, not wanting to claim more than the data allowed them to say with confidence.

我看到科学家们经历了一个极其谨慎和谨慎的过程，他们不想危言耸听，不想做出超出数据允许他们自信地说的事情。

It felt to me as though that was right.

我觉得这似乎是对的。

It felt to me as though that is why today we can say with such confidence that climate change is real, and that we know something about the causes, and that it seems clear that they’re primarily anthropogenic because there was that very cautious, very careful checking-out of the grounds for saying that during those years.

在我看来，这就是为什么今天我们可以如此自信地说气候变化是真实的，我们对其原因有所了解，而且很明显它们主要是人为的，因为在那些年里，我们对这样说的理由进行了非常谨慎、非常仔细的检查。

It may well be the case that, because of that caution, the alarm wasn’t raised soon enough.

很可能，由于这种谨慎，警报没有足够快地发出。

It’s very hard to know how to manage that discrepancy, but I do feel that now we can be very confident in the conclusions that have been reached.

很难知道如何处理这种差异，但我确实觉得现在我们可以对已经得出的结论非常有信心。

It’s absolutely right that climate scientists, in particular, are really making strong statements and raising the alarm about what the future holds in this regard.

尤其是气候科学家，确实做出了强有力的声明，并对这方面的未来发出了警报，这是绝对正确的。

I don’t think that there’s too much caution there.

我不认为那里有太多的谨慎。

We’re getting closer.

我们越来越近了。

It’s an incredibly slow process, and we’re coming at it from both directions now.

这是一个极其缓慢的过程，我们现在从两个方向着手。

There are technologies now that are being used to keep alive babies who are born very, very prematurely that would previously have died.

现在有一些技术被用来维持那些非常非常早产的婴儿的生命，而这些婴儿以前可能会死亡。

Then, from the other direction, it’s becoming possible to grow embryos for longer and longer periods outside the womb.

然后，从另一个方向来看，胚胎在子宫外生长的时间越来越长成为可能。

This isn’t done with human embryos because in just about all countries, that’s forbidden for longer than 14 days.

这不适用于人类胚胎，因为几乎所有国家都禁止这样做超过 14 天。

But with animal embryos, it’s clear that they can be grown for much longer than that, almost to the point of full gestation, actually — certainly up until about halfway through, where you’ve really got something like a fetus.

但对于动物胚胎来说，很明显它们的生长时间可以比这长得多，几乎可以达到完全妊娠的程度，实际上 ——当然可以直到大约一半的时间，那时你就真的有了像胎儿一样的东西。

We have the technologies that are getting there from these two directions.

我们拥有从这两个方向实现这一目标的技术。

I think the broader question is, why would we need a technology like that to do the whole job?

我认为更广泛的问题是，为什么我们需要这样的技术来完成整个工作？

Certainly, for humans, it’s not clear that there’s a call for it.

当然，对于人类来说，尚不清楚是否有这样的需求。

It’s not clear that there’s any real social driver for that sort of technology.

目前尚不清楚此类技术是否有任何真正的社会驱动力。

Not only because we have no means of doing that at the moment, not only because we don’t understand all of the ethical and safety issues associated with a potential technology like that, but also because, if there is a decline in fertility, in fertility rates, in the number of children being born in some countries, that isn’t because it’s impossible.

不仅因为我们目前没有办法做到这一点，不仅因为我们不了解与此类潜在技术相关的所有道德和安全问题，还因为，如果生育率、生育率、某些国家的出生儿童数量下降，那并不是因为这是不可能的。

That is because of social changes that are the things that we need to be looking at if we’re concerned about a problem like that.

这是因为如果我们担心这样的问题，我们需要关注社会变化。

It’s not clear to me that it actually is a problem at the moment.

我不清楚目前这是否确实是一个问题。

The problem of population growth is the problem that we still face.

人口增长问题是我们仍然面临的问题。

I’m not sure that we are going to see artificial wombs developed in the near future for human reproduction because I don’t think that there’s a clear need for them.

我不确定我们是否会在不久的将来看到用于人类繁殖的人造子宫，因为我认为没有明确的需求。

I’m no expert in demographics, but it’s been predicted by demographers for a long time that, actually, we were going to go, and are going to go, through a population hump, that it’s going to peak at maybe something like nine billion or so.

我不是人口统计学方面的专家，但人口统计学家长期以来一直预测，实际上，我们将会并且将会经历人口高峰，人口峰值可能会达到 90 亿左右。

Then it’s predicted to decrease to something more like perhaps six billion, which I think would be a fantastic thing because that is one of the big challenges that we have been facing: the growth in population, the demands that creates for food production, for energy, for economic growth generally.

然后预计会减少到大约 60 亿，我认为这将是一件了不起的事情，因为这是我们一直面临的巨​​大挑战之一：人口的增长，对粮食生产、能源和总体经济增长产生的需求。

I don’t see any reason to believe that a decline from that — if we reach that figure of nine billion — that a decline from that is going to be inherently bad in itself.

我看不出有任何理由相信，从这个数字开始下降——如果我们达到 90 亿这个数字——从这个数字开始下降本身就很糟糕。

I certainly don’t think that, at this point, there is any reason for anyone to fear that somehow the population is going to shrink to nothing.

我当然认为，在这一点上，任何人都没有任何理由担心人口会以某种方式减少到零。

I don’t think anyone feels that’s the case.

我认为没有人这么认为。

If there are concerns of that sort to be raised, then what we need to be asking is, what is behind this decline in fertility?

如果有人提出这样的担忧，那么我们需要问的是，生育率下降的背后是什么？

It’s not fertility in the technical sense, it’s not infertility.

这不是技术意义上的生育能力，也不是不孕不育。

There are issues there to some degree, but that doesn’t seem to be causing the decline in birth rate.

虽然存在一定程度的问题，但这似乎并没有导致出生率下降。

It seems to be the choices that people are making.

这似乎是人们正在做出的选择。

So, why are they making those choices?

那么，他们为什么做出这些选择呢？

That’s what we really need to understand.

这才是我们真正需要理解的。

I think that’s a terrible attitude to take.

我认为这种态度很糟糕。

I think it absolutely has to be a matter of personal choice.

我认为这绝对是个人选择的问题。

There are all sorts of reasons why this seems to be happening.

造成这种情况的原因有很多。

For some people, it may be an economic one.

对于某些人来说，这可能是一种经济因素。

Kids cost a lot of money, and not everyone can afford that.

孩子要花很多钱，并不是每个人都能负担得起。

My understanding is, certainly, that in some Asian countries where birth rates are falling — and I think this may be true, actually, in some African countries as well — there seems to be some connection to the increasing empowerment of women, which has to be a good and important thing.

当然，我的理解是，在一些出生率正在下降的亚洲国家——我认为实际上在一些非洲国家也可能是这样——这似乎与妇女赋权的不断增强有某种联系，这一定是一件好事和重要的事情。

Particularly, in some Asian countries, women are increasingly thinking, “Why should I follow the traditional route of getting married young and raising a family rather than having a career?”

特别是在一些亚洲国家，女性越来越多地思考：“为什么我应该走年轻结婚、养家糊口的传统路线，而不是去事业发展？”

Also, as women in those countries get greater access to education, they become a bit more discerning about what they’re going to accept and what they’re going to look for in a partner, and what they’re not.

此外，随着这些国家的女性获得更多的教育机会，她们对自己要接受什么、想要在伴侣中寻找什么、不想要什么变得更加挑剔。

I think that too has to be a good thing.

我认为这也一定是一件好事。

If that’s the case, if women are finding, “Actually, you know what?

如果是这样的话，如果女性发现，“实际上，你知道吗？

I would rather not start a family young, get married young.

我宁愿不年轻就成家，年轻就结婚。

I would rather actually have a career.

我宁愿真正拥有一份职业。

I would rather have my own independence.”

我宁愿拥有自己的独立性。”

It seems to me that not only is that a positive thing in itself, but that is something we need to understand — why are the women faced with making that choice?

在我看来，这不仅本身是一件积极的事情，而且是我们需要理解的事情——“为什么女性面临做出这样的选择？”

Why are they faced with the choice of either a career or a conventional family life?

为什么他们面临职业或传统家庭生活的选择？

Again, these seem to me to be social questions that we need to ask that don’t have, and shouldn’t have, a technological solution.

同样，在我看来，这些都是我们需要提出的社会问题，但没有也不应该有技术解决方案。

It’s really fascinating to see how that happens.

看到这是如何发生的真的很有趣。

When you start to think about it, it’s not obvious why it should happen at all.

当你开始思考它时，你根本就不清楚为什么会发生这种情况。

If we start from this symmetrical bundle of cells, how does that symmetry get broken in the first place to create any sort of structure?

如果我们从这个对称的细胞束开始，那么这种对称性首先是如何被打破以创建任何类型的结构的？

We have some understanding of how it happens developmentally, but whether there’s an adaptive benefit or a physiological benefit to these small asymmetries that appear internally in the body, I’m really not sure.

我们对它在发育过程中如何发生有一些了解，但对于身体内部出现的这些微小的不对称是否有适应性益处或生理益处，我真的不确定。

It may just, in some cases, be an evolutionary accident.

在某些情况下，这可能只是进化上的意外。

He’s just going about his job as a shepherd, and then he comes across this ring, and what does he do?

他正在做牧羊人的工作，然后他偶然发现了这枚戒指，他会做什么？

The first thing he does is, he gets to go on the expedition — I guess it’s taking the taxes or something to the king.

他做的第一件事就是开始远征 —— 我猜是为了给国王带来税收什么的。

And he uses the ring to kill the king, seduce the queen, and become a ruler, a tyrant, in fact, of the population.

他利用戒指杀死了国王，引诱了王后，并成为了统治者，实际上是人民的暴君。

The message that Plato wanted us to get from that story, and that H.G.

柏拉图希望我们从这个故事中得到的信息，以及 H.G.

Wells wanted us to get when he rewrote it as The Invisible Man, is, invisibility corrupts.

当威尔斯将其重写为《隐形人》时，他希望我们明白，隐形腐败。

Invisibility there is a metaphor for lack of responsibility.

隐形有一个比喻缺乏责任感。

When you can evade responsibility for your actions, which is exactly what you’re talking about we could do if we had this ring of invisibility — that is a corrupting capability to have.

当你可以逃避对自己行为的责任时，这正是你所说的，如果我们有这枚隐形戒指，我们就可以做到——这是一种腐败的能力。

It seems almost inevitable that that is what happens.

发生这种情况似乎几乎是不可避免的。

In fact, it’s what we see happening all the time now, particularly on the internet, where that anonymity — effectively, that invisibility — that the internet provides, that social media can provide to some people, or they think it provides anyway.

事实上，这就是我们现在经常看到的情况，尤其是在互联网上，互联网提供的匿名性——实际上，隐形性——社交媒体可以为某些人提供，或者他们认为它无论如何都可以提供。

We see that that encourages them to do things and to say things that they would never do to someone in person.

我们发现这鼓励他们做一些他们永远不会当面对别人做的事情和说一些事情。

Sometimes it’s even called the Gyges effect.

有时它甚至被称为盖吉斯效应。

These stories that we have told traditionally about invisibility seem to have this moral conclusion that, actually, invisibility sounds like it would be a wonderful superpower, but we have to really beware of that temptation because it’s a very strong corrupting influence.

我们传统上讲述的这些关于隐形的故事似乎有这样的道德结论：实际上，隐形听起来像是一种奇妙的超级大国，但我们必须真正提防这种诱惑，因为它具有非常强大的腐败影响。

Of course, that’s what happened in The Lord of the Rings.

当然，这就是《指环王》中发生的事情。

That was entirely the metaphor of the Rings of Power there.

这完全就是那里的力量之戒的隐喻。

I would say, in military terms, invisibility would probably be worth enormous amounts.

我想说，从军事角度来说，隐形技术可能价值巨大。

The military, in particular, is investing in research that is trying to find materials and so forth that can confer some degree of invisibility, whether it’s to radar or to infrared or whatever.

尤其是军方正在投资研究，试图寻找能够赋予一定程度隐形性的材料等，无论是雷达、红外线还是其他什么。

But I think the message from history and from mythology is that invisibility is a power to be very wary of.

但我认为历史和神话传达的信息是，隐形是一种需要非常警惕的力量。

If one had it, then, of course, the sky’s the limit.

如果有人拥有它，那么，当然，天空是极限。

You could take what you liked, and that’s the worry.

你可以拿走你喜欢的东西，这就是担忧。

For me, I would love to feel that I would resist that temptation.

对我来说，我很乐意感觉到我能抵制这种诱惑。

Space, in reality — when we’re out there, when people are out there, it’s constantly trying to kill us in all sorts of ways.

事实上，太空 ——当我们在那里，当人们在那里时，它不断地试图以各种方式杀死我们。

With radiation, obviously; it’s incredibly cold; it’s a vacuum.

显然，有辐射；非常冷；这是一个真空。

So, it’s a deathly place.

所以，这是一个死亡之地。

I think that the space looks beautiful to us from Earth, from this place of safety.

我认为从地球上、从这个安全的地方来看，这个太空对我们来说看起来很美丽。

It’s because it’s a place of safety that actually, I think space reminds us of how precious — or should remind us of how precious this place is, this place where we have the privilege of being able to look out onto the stars from somewhere that gives us everything we need.

因为它是一个安全的地方，实际上，我认为太空提醒我们多么珍贵，或者应该提醒我们这个地方是多么珍贵，这个地方我们有幸能够从某个地方眺望星星，为我们提供我们需要的一切。

From that perspective, it is awe inspiring.

从这个角度来看，这是令人敬畏的。

I guess, when I look out on a night like that, when I’m away from London, away from the light pollution, that what I feel is awe in the old sense, in the 19th-century sense of the sublime, this slightly terrified awe of what is out there, of our — I wouldn’t say our insignificance, but our small part in something that is just so vast.

我想，当我在那样的夜晚，当我远离伦敦，远离光污染时，我所感受到的是旧意义上的敬畏，19世纪崇高意义上的敬畏，对外面的事物，对我们的——我不会说我们的微不足道，而是我们在如此巨大的事物中的微小部分的敬畏。

When you really think about what all these pinpricks of light represent, certainly, if you look through a telescope, some of them being entire galaxies, and we have no idea.

当你真正思考所有这些光点代表什么时，当然，如果你通过望远镜观察，其中一些是整个星系，而我们不知道。

We really have no idea how far that goes out to.

我们真的不知道这会持续到什么程度。

There’s a beauty to it, but it’s a terrifying beauty.

它有一种美丽，但却是一种可怕的美丽。

Plato had this idea that the whole of the cosmos was built on principles of a cosmic harmony that involved geometric ratios between things.

柏拉图认为，整个宇宙是建立在宇宙和谐原则之上的，其中涉及事物之间的几何比例。

The Gothic cathedrals themselves are planned according to ideal ratios, simple ratios of height and width and so on, of proportion, ratios of 1:2 and 2:3.

哥特式大教堂本身是按照理想比例、简单的高度和宽度比例等规划的，比例为1:2和2:3。

That design and that wish to convey, somehow, this sense of order and cosmic harmony — that’s, I think, what we respond to even today in those places, even though we, of course, can’t see them through medieval eyes.

这种设计和希望以某种方式传达这种秩序感和宇宙和谐——我认为，这就是我们今天在这些地方所做出的反应，尽管我们当然无法通过中世纪的眼睛看到它们。

We’re used to seeing, now, gigantic constructions of all sorts.

现在，我们已经习惯了看到各种巨大的建筑。

But nevertheless, for me, the Gothic cathedrals still retain something that modern architecture hasn’t managed to capture, in the sense of conveying that sense of harmony and order.

但尽管如此，对我来说，哥特式大教堂仍然保留了现代建筑未能捕捉到的东西，即传达和谐与秩序的感觉。

That’s absolutely what the Gothic cathedrals were aiming to do.

这绝对是哥特式大教堂的目标。

We know that the people who were designing them — we would now think of them as the architects — were drawing on those Platonic ideas of harmony and trying to express them explicitly in what they did.

我们知道，设计它们的人——“我们现在将他们视为建筑师”——正在借鉴柏拉图式的和谐理念，并试图在他们所做的事情中明确地表达它们。

It starts to sound like we’re getting into Dan Brown territory here.

听起来我们好像进入了丹·布朗的领域。

People have claimed — and I think it’s probably claimed in Dan Brown’s novels — that there are all sorts of hidden codes and so on within the Gothic cathedrals.

人们声称——“我认为丹·布朗的小说中可能也有这样的说法”——哥特式大教堂内存在各种隐藏的密码等等。

But I think, actually, the real meaning is there in plain sight because we can see that they are built according to these principles of proportion that we know were important to the theologians and to the architects who worked for them.

但我认为，实际上，真正的意义是显而易见的，因为我们可以看到它们是根据这些比例原则建造的，我们知道这些原则对神学家和为其工作的建筑师很重要。

Again, there is something about that terrifying awe, but I think there, it’s also a kind of an awe just at the sheer feat of engineering that they represent.

再说一次，这种可怕的敬畏是有的，但我认为，这也是对它们所代表的工程壮举的一种敬畏。

That was done, obviously, by hand with very primitive machinery for lifting and so on.

显然，这是用非常原始的起重机械等手工完成的。

But there was no mechanization there, and so the sheer fact that these places were built, and that they are still standing, so many of them, after a thousand years is truly extraordinary.

但那里没有机械化，因此，这些地方被建造起来，并且在一千年后仍然矗立着，其中许多地方仍然矗立着，这一事实确实是非同寻常的。

I thought you might be talking about the fact that you do also, literally, in some of these cathedrals, have the demons around you.

我想你可能在谈论这样一个事实：从字面上看，在其中一些大教堂中，你周围也有恶魔。

You have the gargoyles up there looking down at you.

石像鬼在上面俯视着你。

I think that, to some extent, we can see this in what was actually depicted.

我认为，在某种程度上，我们可以从实际描绘的内容中看到这一点。

To some extent, there’s a playfulness there that I think people have always had, that the stonemasons had.

在某种程度上，我认为人们一直都有一种顽皮的感觉，石匠们也有这种感觉。

There’s a delight that they had in creating these grotesque and often quite playful carvings high up there, out of sight, perhaps, of the priests, where they were free to let their imagination have free rein.

他们很高兴在高处创作这些怪诞且常常相当有趣的雕刻，也许在祭司的视线之外，在那里他们可以自由地发挥自己的想象力。

Britain, I have to say, England was very much an intellectual backwater at that time.

英国，我不得不说，当时的英国在很大程度上是知识分子的死水。

France was certainly one of the regions where there was this resurgence of learning.

法国无疑是学习复兴的地区之一。

There was some of it happening in Germany as well, but France was a more unified country, and it had been so to some extent ever since the Emperor Charlemagne in the ninth century.

德国也有这样的情况，但法国是一个更加统一的国家，从九世纪查理曼大帝起就在某种程度上如此。

It had had this stability, and Charlemagne, in fact, himself famously wanted to bring about a resurgence of learning.

它具有这种稳定性，事实上，查理曼本人也以想要复兴学习而闻名。

It only really kicked off around the 11th century.

它直到 11 世纪才真正开始。

The 11th to 12th centuries were often called the Medieval Renaissance.

11世纪至12世纪通常被称为中世纪文艺复兴时期。

But I have to say that a lot of that learning was imported, was brought from the Islamic countries, from Spain, which was occupied by what were then called the Moors.

但我不得不说，很多知识都是进口的，是从伊斯兰国家、从西班牙带来的，西班牙当时被摩尔人占领。

In the centuries preceding that era was the era of the golden age of learning in the Islamic nations.

在那个时代之前的几个世纪里，是伊斯兰国家学习的黄金时代。

The Islamic scholars translated a lot of the works of the ancient Greeks — Aristotle and Plato and many others — into Arabic.

伊斯兰学者将古希腊人——亚里士多德和柏拉图以及其他许多人——的许多著作翻译成阿拉伯语。

The European scholars — many of them from France, but also from Germany and from Britain — were coming down to Spain to get hold of those works, and to translate them, to learn Arabic, and to translate them from Arabic to Latin.

欧洲学者——其中许多来自法国，但也有来自德国和英国的——来到西班牙获取这些著作，翻译它们，学习阿拉伯语，并将它们从阿拉伯语翻译成拉丁语。

That was really what created this influx of learning into Western Europe at that time.

这确实是当时学术涌入西欧的原因。

It was coming from translations of Arabic works.

它来自阿拉伯语作品的翻译。

They had different ways of understanding that, and of expressing that, but for those scholars, that was just a given, so that informed everything that they were doing.

他们有不同的理解方式和表达方式，但对于那些学者来说，这只是一个给定的，所以这告诉了他们所做的一切。

For some people — for example, the Anglo-Irish scientist, as we now see him, Robert Boyle in the 17th century — it was a Christian mission to try to find out all that we could about God’s creation, about this world that God had created.

对于某些人来说——比如我们现在看到的英国裔爱尔兰科学家，17 世纪的罗伯特·博伊尔——基督教的使命是尽力找出关于上帝的创造、关于上帝创造的这个世界的一切。

That was a duty, a Christian duty, to be curious, to be interested in everything in nature.

这是一种责任，基督徒的责任，对自然界的一切保持好奇和兴趣。

Boyle would make these long lists, this random list of things he wanted to find out about, things he wanted to discover.

博伊尔会列出这些长长的清单，这个随机的清单，列出了他想要了解的事情，他想要发现的事情。

It was really the first golden age of curiosity, that time.

那段时间确实是好奇心的第一个黄金时代。

To my mind, that’s a better way of looking at it than calling it the Scientific Revolution.

在我看来，这是比称之为科学革命更好的看待它的方式。

It was the age when curiosity was liberated.

那是好奇心被解放的年纪。

In earlier times, in medieval times, there was often a sense expressed by some theologians that curiosity was something to be, at best, cautious of, and at worst, very suspicious of, or even condemning of, because they saw it as prying into things that it was not humankind’s preserve to ask about.

在早期，在中世纪，一些神学家经常表达这样一种感觉，即好奇心充其量是值得警惕的，最坏的情况是非常怀疑甚至谴责，因为他们认为好奇心是对人类不该询问的事情的窥探。

Whereas by the 17th century, really, through the process of the Renaissance, and the humanism, and the resurgence of learning, it became acceptable to have this almost universal curiosity about the world.

然而到了 17 世纪，实际上，通过文艺复兴、人文主义和学术的复兴，人们对世界的这种几乎普遍的好奇心变得可以接受。

And that’s absolutely something that we see in people like Boyle and Newton, and the fellows of the Royal Society in London, but also of other scientific societies that started elsewhere in Europe.

这绝对是我们在波义耳和牛顿等人、伦敦皇家学会的研究员以及欧洲其他地方成立的其他科学学会的研究员身上看到的。

As I say, underpinning all of that was a profound religious faith.

正如我所说，支撑这一切的是深刻的宗教信仰。

Sometimes that was a motivation for that curiosity, and sometimes it was — in the case of Isaac Newton, for example — the framework within which he was developing his theory of gravitation.

有时这是好奇心的动机，有时它是“（例如，以艾萨克·牛顿为例）”他发展万有引力理论的框架。

The picture that he presented of the planets revolving around the sun and the moon revolving around the earth because of gravitational force, being held there by gravity — that was all very well, but the question was, “Well, how did that get started?

他所展示的图像是，行星由于引力而绕着太阳旋转，月亮绕着地球旋转，并被引力固定在那里——这一切都很好，但问题是，“那么，这是如何开始的呢？

What got them moving in the first place?”

最初是什么让他们搬家？”

We understand now that once they are moving, they’ll continue to do so.

我们现在明白，一旦他们开始行动，他们就会继续这样做。

For Newton, that wasn’t really a question at all because, of course, God did it.

对于牛顿来说，这根本不是一个真正的问题，因为当然，上帝做到了。

It was God’s creation.

这是上帝的创造。

It gave a coherence, really, to the picture that he was looking for.

这确实与他正在寻找的图片具有连贯性。

You can certainly find, of course, the obvious counterexample in the persecution of Galileo, which is often misrepresented.

当然，你当然可以在伽利略的迫害中找到明显的反例，而伽利略的迫害经常被歪曲。

Galileo was, to some extent, the architect of his own misfortune, which is in no way to excuse the kind of treatment that he got from the Catholic Church.

在某种程度上，伽利略是他自己不幸的始作俑者，这决不能成为他受到天主教会对待的借口。

Absolutely, there were tensions between this new understanding, this new way of thinking about the world and the old idea, according to some, that you shouldn’t ask too much or that, well, it was just God that did it all.

当然，这种新的理解、这种思考世界的新方式和旧观念之间存在着紧张关系，有些人认为，你不应该要求太多，或者，好吧，这一切都是上帝做的。

There were tensions there, but I don’t know that we need put it as weighing in the balance, the pros and the cons.

那里存在紧张局势，但我不知道我们是否需要权衡利弊。

It was simply how history was.

历史就是这样。

It was simply how ideas evolved.

这就是想法的演变过程。

For most of the history of science, religion has been there as the backdrop, whether it’s Islam or whether it’s Christianity or whether it’s Judaism.

在科学史上的大部分时间里，宗教一直是背景，无论是伊斯兰教、基督教还是犹太教。

It’s been there, and science developed.

它一直在那里，科学也随之发展。

I think this idea that there was somehow a big tension between science and religion, in many ways, it’s a modern construct.

我认为科学与宗教之间存在某种巨大紧张关系的想法在很多方面都是现代的建构。

It’s something that really only started to be emphasized in the late 19th century for various polemical reasons.

由于各种争论原因，直到 19 世纪末才真正开始强调这一点。

I don’t think it is something that we can really see throughout the history of science.

我认为这是我们在整个科学史上无法真正看到的东西。

I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that we have stopped this process of inventing modern myths, but I feel that it probably takes at least 50 years before some new narrative clearly acquires that mythic status.

我不认为有任何理由相信我们已经停止了创造现代神话的过程，但我觉得可能至少需要 50 年时间，一些新的叙述才能清楚地获得这种神话地位。

I think that one of them that is now emerging is the zombie myth.

我认为现在正在出现的其中之一就是僵尸神话。

The idea of zombies is an old one.

僵尸的概念由来已久。

It started to become popularized in western culture in the 1930s, but I think it was really crystallized in the B movie horror films of the 1960s, particularly the George Romero films.

它在 20 世纪 30 年代开始在西方文化中流行，但我认为它在 20 世纪 60 年代的 B 级恐怖片中真正得到体现，尤其是乔治·罗梅罗 (George Romero) 电影。

I think that we now all have a sense that the zombie myth is something about the zombie apocalypse.

我认为我们现在都有一种感觉，僵尸神话是关于僵尸启示录的。

It’s not individual zombies; it’s humanity overrun by a horde of mindless zombies.

这不是单个僵尸，而是单个僵尸。这是一群没有思想的僵尸占领的人类。

That’s the basis of the myth.

这就是神话的基础。

We have that now, and I think it’s inevitable that we’re going to continue to develop myths.

我们现在已经做到了这一点，而且我认为我们不可避免地会继续发展神话。

What I argue in that book is that these narratives acquire mythic status because they satisfy some need in us to explore social anxieties in stories in a way that allows us to look at them and explore them and think about them.

我在那本书中认为，这些叙述获得了神话般的地位，因为它们满足了我们探索故事中的社会焦虑的某些需要，使我们能够审视它们、探索它们并思考它们。

Myths are tools for thinking with.

神话是思考的工具。

They don’t have a moral; they don’t have a clear conclusion.

他们没有道德；他们没有明确的结论。

They allow us to explore those anxieties.

它们让我们能够探索这些焦虑。

Sadly, there will always be new anxieties that arise.

可悲的是，总会有新的焦虑出现。

We already have to some extent a mythology of AI.

在某种程度上，我们已经拥有了人工智能的神话。

That’s absolutely going to be a nexus around which certain mythologies are going to start growing.

这绝对将成为某些神话将开始发展的纽带。

That’s because it’s a new technology.

那是因为它是一项新技术。

It’s an old idea, but now that it’s becoming a reality, those anxieties are really, really strong and with us and prevalent.

这是一个古老的想法，但现在它正在成为现实，这些焦虑真的非常非常强烈，并且在我们身边普遍存在。

So, we’re going to need myths to explore them.

因此，我们需要神话来探索它们。

One thing I feel about that is that there are pros and cons to that, because the myth that we have around AI — and it’s one that’s being fed at the moment, sometimes, by tech companies even — is of the AI apocalypse, the AI takeover: that suddenly AI becomes super intelligent and it has no need for us, and it wipes out humanity.

我的感觉是，这有利有弊，因为我们对人工智能的误解——有时甚至是科技公司正在灌输的神话——是人工智能的末日，人工智能的接管：人工智能突然变得超级智能，它不需要我们，它消灭了人类。

That, I think, is a very convenient myth for AI companies because it’s something that’s out there in the indefinite future, and they can say, “Oh, sure, we’re worrying about that, and we’re taking care of that.”

我认为，这对于人工智能公司来说是一个非常方便的神话，因为它是在不确定的未来存在的东西，他们可以说，“哦，当然，我们正在担心这个，我们正在处理这个问题。”

Whereas the real dangers and risks and things to be worried about with AI are much more mundane things that are here and now: deep fakes, the production of misinformation, the trivial but sometimes important misuses of AI because we attribute it too much power.

然而，人工智能真正的危险和风险以及需要担心的事情是此时此地更为平常的事情：深度造假、错误信息的产生、人工智能的微不足道但有时很重要的滥用，因为我们认为它拥有太多的权力。

Those are the things that we should really be concerned about now.

这些才是我们现在真正应该关心的事情。

It could be that the myths that we develop get in the way of the things we should really be worrying about in the here and now.

我们所形成的神话可能会妨碍我们此时此地真正应该担心的事情。

Some creatures can, and certainly salamanders can, axolotls can.

有些生物可以，当然蝾螈可以，蝾螈可以。

They can regrow limbs that they have lost.

他们可以重新长出失去的肢体。

Some complex creatures can do this, and we don’t know exactly what enables them to do that, other than that in order to do that, you will have to have a reserve of something like stem cells, something that maintains the stem cell–like state, like the cells that we grew from in the early embryo.

一些复杂的生物可以做到这一点，我们不知道到底是什么让它们能够做到这一点，除此之外，为了做到这一点，你必须储备一些像干细胞这样的东西，一种维持干细胞样状态的东西，就像我们在早期胚胎中生长的细胞一样。

Those are stem cells, cells that, in the early embryo, are able to grow into any tissue type in the body.

这些是干细胞，在早期胚胎中能够生长成体内任何组织类型的细胞。

In our bodies we have what are called adult stem cells, which can produce a limited number of tissue types.

在我们的体内，我们有所谓的成体干细胞，它可以产生有限数量的组织类型。

We have them, for example, in our bone marrow.

例如，我们的骨髓中就有它们。

They continually produce the different types of cells in our blood, but they can’t produce muscle cells or brain cells or something.

它们不断地在我们的血液中产生不同类型的细胞，但它们不能产生肌肉细胞或脑细胞或其他东西。

Whereas in creatures that can regenerate their limbs, they seem to have a kind of stem cell that can regrow into all the tissue types that that limb requires.

而在可以再生肢体的生物中，它们似乎有一种干细胞，可以再生为肢体所需的所有组织类型。

The question of how that is done in a body that is already grown, rather than an embryo where everything is growing and communicating and finding its way together — that is a profound one that I think we don’t yet fully know the answer to.

这是如何在一个已经长大的身体中完成的问题，而不是在一个万物都在生长、交流并找到共同方式的胚胎中完成的问题——这是一个深刻的问题，我认为我们还没有完全知道答案。

It’s an area of intense research at the moment, not least because it raises that prospect of regenerative medicine, perhaps even in humans.

目前这是一个热门研究领域，尤其是因为它提高了再生医学的前景，甚至可能在人类身上。

If we understood how that is possible in a complex creature like an axolotl, might it not be possible to develop some kind of capability like that in humans?

如果我们了解蝾螈这样的复杂生物是如何做到这一点的，那么是否就不可能发展出类似人类的某种能力呢？

We don’t know the answer to that, but it’s not obviously the case that we couldn’t.

我们不知道答案，但显然我们不知道答案。

That could be one way of thinking about it, but we don’t know the language, really, of that computation, other than that we know that cells communicate with one another in various ways.

这可能是一种思考方式，但我们实际上并不知道这种计算的语言，除了我们知道细胞以各种方式相互交流之外。

They can exchange chemical signals just as they do in our synapses.

它们可以像在我们的突触中一样交换化学信号。

In our brains, they can exchange mechanical signals so that if you tug on the membrane of a cell, that can induce the cell to do something or to grow or develop in a certain way that it wouldn’t have done otherwise.

在我们的大脑中，它们可以交换机械信号，因此，如果你拉动细胞膜，就可以诱导细胞做某事或以某种方式生长或发育，否则它不会这样做。

They also communicate electrically.

它们还进行电力通信。

Not just neurons, but all cell types pretty much in the human body have the potential to communicate with one another, to sense the electric signals that other cells can produce, and to respond to those.

不仅是神经元，人体内几乎所有类型的细胞都有潜力相互交流，感知其他细胞产生的电信号，并对这些信号做出反应。

So, we know the languages that cells use, but we don’t really understand the kinds of conversations that they’re having in a creature like an axolotl to produce a fully formed, fully developed replacement limb.

所以，我们知道细胞使用的语言，但我们并不真正了解细胞在蝾螈这样的生物中进行什么样的对话，以产生完全成形、完全发育的替代肢体。

But you can see why that analogy is made, because the neurons in our brains and other cell types are wired into networks that are clearly sending electrical pulses to one another and triggering each other to do likewise.

但你可以明白为什么要做这样的类比，因为我们大脑中的神经元和其他细胞类型都连接到网络中，这些网络清楚地相互发送电脉冲并触发彼此做同样的事情。

It looks very much like, in some ways, the exchange of electrical pulses between transistors on silicon chips.

在某些方面，它看起来非常像硅芯片上晶体管之间的电脉冲交换。

But there are differences in that process as well, sometimes profound differences.

但这个过程也存在差异，有时甚至是深刻的差异。

It’s really not clear at the moment whether there is any straightforward or even any translation at all between the kind of computation that is done by silicon circuits and the kind of cognitive processing that is being done by neurons.

目前还不清楚硅电路完成的计算与神经元完成的认知处理之间是否存在任何直接的甚至任何转换。

If we mean computation in that sense of simply interactions between particles, then sure, I think at the most fundamental level, that seems to be what we’re going to find.

如果我们指的是粒子之间简单相互作用意义上的计算，那么当然，我认为在最基本的层面上，这似乎就是我们将要发现的。

Whether that means we can usefully use computational concepts to try to understand brain circuitry is another matter entirely.

这是否意味着我们可以有效地使用计算概念来尝试理解大脑回路，这完全是另一回事。

In some ways, we talk about them in similar terms.

在某些方面，我们用类似的术语谈论它们。

We talk about memory and data storage and so on.

我们谈论内存和数据存储等等。

I think there are absolutely analogies to be had there, but whether there are strict, formal parallels between those two processes, I think, is something that is yet to be decided.

我认为这绝对有相似之处，但我认为这两个过程之间是否存在严格、正式的相似之处还有待确定。

And perhaps more importantly, it’s yet to be decided whether that will be a useful way to think about those two processes, whether it will help neuroscientists formulate theories and understanding of how the brain works.

也许更重要的是，尚未确定这是否是思考这两个过程的有用方法，是否有助于神经科学家制定理论和理解大脑如何工作。

I think that’s still an open question.

我认为这仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。

In what way has it been useful?

它在什么方面有用？

How to put it in the right container, I suppose.

我想如何将它放入正确的容器中。

The way I saw it is this.

我看到的情况是这样的。

I’m going to set aside the question of selfishness, which I’ll come back to in a minute — whether that’s a good metaphor — but the idea that we can essentially reduce everything in biology to what the genes are doing.

我将把自私的问题放在一边，稍后我会回到这个问题——“这是否是一个很好的比喻”——但我们可以将生物学中的一切归结为基因在做什么。

That is a picture that has been very productive to evolutionary geneticists to understand how particular mutations of genes — alleles, as they’re called, different variations of a given gene — how they spread in a population.

这幅图画对于进化遗传学家来说非常有成效，可以帮助他们理解基因的特定突变——所谓的等位基因，给定基因的不同变异——它们如何在群体中传播。

If you get an allele arise that — a mutation of a gene that conveys some kind of property on the organism that gives it an adaptive advantage, an advantage in competition with all the others, then that allele is likely to spread because that organism will have more offspring, and so on.

如果你得到一个等位基因，那么该等位基因可能会传播，因为该生物体将产生更多的后代，等等。

This is standard neo-Darwinian theory, and all of that is perfectly valid.

这是标准的新达尔文理论，所有这些都是完全有效的。

Within that picture, a gene-centered view of that process of how alleles spread has been useful in that arena.

在这张图片中，以基因为中心的等位基因传播过程的观点在该领域非常有用。

The problem I have is when that comes to be seen as the basis for understanding everything that life is.

我遇到的问题是，当它被视为理解生命的一切的基础时。

Because the problem with that is that there is no life in that picture.

因为问题是那张照片里没有生命。

It’s as simple as that.

就这么简单。

I think it’s really interesting what happens there, that the genes themselves in that picture are portrayed as little agents.

我认为那里发生的事情真的很有趣，图片中的基因本身被描绘成小代理。

Richard Dawkins more or less explicitly does that.

理查德·道金斯或多或少明确地做到了这一点。

Of course, he’s not saying they have any purposes or any goals or intentions, or any life in reality, but that is how they are portrayed, as though they are little organisms competing with one another with goals, their goal being to replicate as much as possible.

当然，他并不是说它们有任何目的、任何目标或意图，或者现实中的任何生命，但这就是它们的描述方式，就好像它们是小有机体，为了目标相互竞争，它们的目标是尽可能多地复制。

Even the fact that they can replicate — they’re portrayed as being able to replicate.

即使他们可以复制这一事实——他们也被描绘成能够复制。

No gene replicates.

没有基因复制。

Genes are replicated.

基因被复制。

They are replicated within cells by cells.

它们在细胞内被细胞复制。

That’s an important distinction if we’re going to think about how life works, but it may not be an important distinction to make in the context of evolutionary genetics.

如果我们要思考生命如何运作，这是一个重要的区别，但在进化遗传学的背景下，这可能不是一个重要的区别。

That’s really where I want to locate that picture of that gene-centric view, that it’s a particular model.

这确实是我想要找到以基因为中心的观点的图片的地方，它是一个特定的模型。

The selfish-gene metaphor is a metaphor for that particular model for use within evolutionary genetics.

自私基因隐喻是进化遗传学中使用的特定模型的隐喻。

It does not speak about what genes are in a biochemical sense or what they are in a developmental sense.

它没有谈论什么是生化意义上的基因或什么是发育意义上的基因。

In fact, it seems fairly clear that when we’re talking about genes in terms of how an organism develops and what the role this particular bit of the DNA seems to play in that development, that’s a rather different notion of a gene to this notion of the selfish gene in a pool of different alleles replicating.

事实上，似乎相当清楚的是，当我们从生物体如何发育以及 DNA 的这一特定位点在发育中所扮演的角色来谈论基因时，基因的概念与不同等位基因复制池中自私基因的概念截然不同。

The evolutionary gene and the developmental gene aren’t necessarily the same thing.

进化基因和发育基因不一定是同一件事。

Certainly, when we try to think about a gene in molecular terms, it’s become very fuzzy.

当然，当我们尝试从分子角度思考基因时，它就变得非常模糊。

More and more fuzzy the more we’ve looked into what genomes really are and what they really do, what our DNA does, and what the different sequences of DNA do.

我们对基因组到底是什么、它们的真正作用、我们的 DNA 的作用以及 DNA 的不同序列的作用了解得越多，就越模糊。

We find that what we think of as genes seems to overlap.

我们发现我们所认为的基因似乎是重叠的。

There are some things that we call pseudogenes that maybe once were genes and aren’t any longer, but maybe they can come back as genes.

有些东西我们称之为假基因，它们可能曾经是基因，但现在不再是了，但也许它们可以作为基因回归。

There are regions outside the parts that we think of as genes that actually seem to have some important role in development.

在我们认为基因的部分之外，还有一些区域实际上似乎在发育中发挥着重要作用。

So, the whole picture becomes very fuzzy.

所以，整个画面变得非常模糊。

Also, within that picture, I think the question of selfishness is important because the selfishness refers to the tendency of a particular gene variant, an allele, to spread at the expense of other variants of that particular gene.

另外，在这张图片中，我认为自私问题很重要，因为自私是指特定基因变体（等位基因）以牺牲该特定基因的其他变体为代价而传播的倾向。

That’s very different from the notion of a set of genes in a genome working together to make an organism.

这与基因组中的一组基因共同作用形成有机体的概念非常不同。

They have to work together to make an organism, so they’re not competing with each other.

它们必须共同努力才能形成有机体，因此它们不会相互竞争。

The gene that produces one enzyme isn’t competing with a gene that produces some other enzyme.

产生一种酶的基因不与产生另一种酶的基因竞争。

They have to work together, so they’re cooperative.

他们必须一起工作，所以他们是合作的。

I think that that selfish metaphor isn’t saying anything about what genes do biochemically.

我认为这个自私的比喻并没有说明基因在生化方面的作用。

It’s talking about that particular model.

它正在谈论那个特定的模型。

It’s absolutely the case, as you say, that we can use now a gene-editing technique like CRISPR, and we’re getting better ones now, more accurate ones even.

正如你所说，情况确实如此，我们现在可以使用像 CRISPR 这样的基因编辑技术，而且我们现在正在获得更好的技术，甚至更准确的技术。

We can use that to address some diseases that are caused by a gene mutation.

我们可以用它来解决一些由基因突变引起的疾病。

It’s been used, for example, to cure sickle cell anemia, which comes about because of a gene, a mutation to one particular gene.

例如，它被用来治疗镰状细胞贫血症，这种贫血症是由基因（某个特定基因的突变）引起的。

It’s possible that it might be used for things like cystic fibrosis, for which that is also true.

它有可能用于治疗囊性纤维化等疾病，这也是事实。

All of these applications are for diseases that are — in sickle cell anemia, maybe this is less so — but most of them are rare, and they are traced back to just one particular gene or maybe a couple of genes.

所有这些应用都是针对“镰状细胞性贫血，也许情况不那么严重”的疾病，但大多数都很罕见，而且它们只能追溯到一个特定的基因或可能是几个基因。

They’re monogenic.

它们是单基因的。

In those situations, we can edit that gene, whether, in principle, in the embryo or sometimes in the adult body, as is being done in sickle cell anemia.

在这些情况下，我们可以编辑该基因，无论是原则上在胚胎中还是有时在成人体内，就像在镰状细胞性贫血中所做的那样。

We can make that edit, and we can have a predictable response on the whole, a predictable response from that edit.

我们可以进行编辑，并且我们可以从整体上获得可预测的响应，从该编辑中获得可预测的响应。

That’s absolutely true because the condition is being caused by a single gene.

这是绝对正确的，因为这种情况是由单个基因引起的。

Most of the health conditions that concern the developed world — most, in fact, that concern the entire world — heart conditions, obesity, diabetes — as well as just about all the physical traits we have — height and intelligence and so on — cannot be traced back to just one or two genes.

大多数与发达国家有关的健康状况——事实上，大多数与整个世界有关——心脏病、肥胖、糖尿病——以及我们所拥有的几乎所有身体特征——“身高和智力等等”——不能仅仅追溯到一两个基因。

Differences in different individuals seem to be correlated with differences in the genetic profile of many genes, sometimes hundreds, sometimes even thousands of genes, a significant part of our total complement of genes.

不同个体的差异似乎与许多基因的遗传谱差异相关，有时是数百个，有时甚至是数千个基因，它们是我们基因总数的重要组成部分。

That is what’s become clear, and that is why it’s not at all clear that techniques like CRISPR gene editing are going to be at all useful to address diseases like that.

这就是我们已经清楚的事情，也正是因为如此，我们还不清楚像 CRISPR 基因编辑这样的技术是否能有效解决此类疾病。

Not only because you’d have so many targets you’d have to try to hit, and you’re going to get some off-target hits, and that’s going to cause problems.

不仅因为你有太多的目标，你必须尝试击中，而且你会得到一些偏离目标的命中，这会导致问题。

Also, because all of those genes — they’re not just involved in that one thing.

而且，因为所有这些基因 — 它们不仅仅涉及那一件事。

They’re doing all kinds of tasks.

他们正在做各种各样的任务。

They’re doing many things.

他们正在做很多事情。

If you start changing them around, you don’t know what else you’re going to be producing, what other kind of phenotypic changes you’re going to produce.

如果你开始改变它们，你不知道你还会产生什么，你会产生什么其他类型的表型变化。

What we need to understand is not to identify the genes and think we can address the problem or the condition there, because it’s arising at some other level in the organism, at a higher level, somehow, in the way all these genes are interacting with each other and with the other components of the genome, the other components of the body, perhaps in directing cells to do something different.

我们需要理解的不是识别出基因并认为我们可以解决那里的问题或状况，因为它是在生物体的其他层面上产生的，在更高的层面上，以某种方式，所有这些基因彼此相互作用，以及与基因组的其他组成部分、身体的其他组成部分相互作用，也许是在指导细胞做不同的事情。

It’s at a higher level that the real causation of a lot of these conditions arises.

许多这些情况的真正原因是在更高的层次上出现的。

It’s there that we need to be thinking about intervening.

我们需要考虑进行干预。

That’s really one of the messages that I’m wanting to get across in the book.

这确实是我想在书中传达的信息之一。

It absolutely doesn’t bring into question that idea that, for some conditions, we can identify specific genes that are in a real sense the cause of that outcome.

这绝对不会质疑这样的想法：在某些情况下，我们可以识别出真正意义上导致该结果的特定基因。

But for most of the way life works, for most of the things we’re interested in, in development and in medicine, that’s not going to do the job.

但对于生活的大多数方式，对于我们感兴趣的大多数事情，发展和医学，这并不能完成任务。

We have to have a higher level of understanding how that condition, how that trait is coming about.

我们必须有更高层次的了解这种情况、这种特征是如何发生的。

That’s a more complex business that I’m trying to tease apart in my book.

这是一个更复杂的事情，我试图在书中进行梳理。

But others have said — and I think this is a common complaint I might have about these kinds of .

但其他人说过“——”我认为这是我对此类问题的常见抱怨。

.

。

.

。

In some ways, they tend to be theories of everything, or theories of a very big thing, at least.

在某些方面，它们往往是一切事物的理论，或者至少是一个非常大事物的理论。

Sometimes, in order to be so, they become so abstract, so mathematically abstract that it becomes very hard to see how you relate the ideas — which are interesting and maybe even productive in themselves — but how to relate them to the lab work that a biologist, that a neuroscientist is doing.

有时，为了做到这一点，它们变得如此抽象，在数学上如此抽象，以至于很难看出你如何将这些想法联系起来——“这些想法本身很有趣，甚至可能富有成效”——但如何将它们与生物学家、神经科学家正在做的实验室工作联系起来。

How does it relate to what they’re actually finding out?

它与他们实际发现的内容有何关系？

How does it help them to pose new questions and to construct and devise new experiments?

它如何帮助他们提出新问题并构建和设计新实验？

At the moment, it feels to me as though it’s at the stage of quite an abstract idea that people are trying to find ways of turning into something more concrete to address a specific problem — whether it’s in neuroscience or elsewhere, or maybe even computer science — to see whether it’s going to be useful.

目前，我觉得好像正处于一个相当抽象的想法阶段，人们正在试图找到将其转化为更具体的东西来解决特定问题的方法——无论是在神经科学还是其他领域，甚至可能是计算机科学——看看它是否有用。

I applaud the fact that we have theories like this that are very general theories that are trying to understand something.

我很高兴我们有这样的理论，它们是试图理解某些东西的非常普遍的理论。

In this case, Karl thinks that in some sense, it can be considered a generalized theory of agency.

在这种情况下，卡尔认为，从某种意义上来说，它可以被认为是一种广义的代理理论。

Whether or not that’s true, I think that a generalized theory of agency is absolutely something that science needs.

无论这是否属实，我认为科学绝对需要一个广义的代理理论。

It’s also sometimes suggested that some of the additives, the plasticizers that are added to plastics like this can function a little bit .

有时还建议像这样添加到塑料中的某些添加剂、增塑剂可以发挥一点作用。

.

。

.

。

They look chemically or a little bit like certain hormones, so they can mimic hormones and induce hormonal changes in the body.

它们在化学上看起来有点像某些激素，因此它们可以模仿激素并引起体内激素的变化。

There’s a lot of research going to that at the moment that I’m absolutely not an expert in, but that’s one of the concerns that’s being raised about them.

目前有很多研究正在进行，我绝对不是这方面的专家，但这是人们对它们提出的担忧之一。

Certainly, if we’re trying to understand the topology of the universe, say, we can’t expect to see much commercial return from that, certainly not directly.

当然，如果我们试图了解宇宙的拓扑结构，比如说，我们不能指望从中看到太多的商业回报，当然不是直接的。

But I think that what I do see happening is that increasing the expansion of science — really, maybe it is, to some extent, a victim of its own success, that you see the increasing institutionalization of science.

但我认为我确实看到正在发生的事情是科学的不断扩展——实际上，也许在某种程度上，科学本身的成功的受害者，你看到科学的日益制度化。

Sometimes, it seems that it gives rise to a more conservative approach to things, a more cautious approach to things, so that it becomes harder for scientists who are working at what you might think of as a more high-risk frontier of research.

有时，它似乎会导致人们对事物采取更加保守的态度，更加谨慎的态度，因此对于那些从事你可能认为风险更高的研究前沿的科学家来说，事情变得更加困难。

It becomes harder for them to do that.

对他们来说，这样做变得更加困难。

It becomes harder for them to find funding, becomes harder for them to get their papers published because of this increasing caution.

由于这种日益谨慎的态度，他们变得更难找到资金，也更难发表论文。

There’s what statisticians might say is a regression to the mean.

统计学家可能会说这是均值回归。

Everything becomes a little bit more mediocre and safe.

一切都变得平庸了一点，安全了一点。

A lot of people in science complain that blue-skies research, as they call it, research that is just saying, “What if?

许多科学界人士抱怨说，他们所说的蓝天研究只是在说：“如果呢？

What happens if?

如果会发生什么？

What would happen?” Just curiosity-driven research — that’s becoming harder and harder to do because there’s an increasing demand for short-term commercial return on scientific research.

会发生什么？只是好奇心驱动的研究 ——这变得越来越难，因为人们对科学研究的短期商业回报的需求越来越大。

That perhaps gives rise to a greater timidity in what science is being permitted.

这也许会导致人们对科学被允许的领域更加胆怯。

I think that that does seem to be a problem.

我认为这似乎确实是一个问题。

I think it’s hard to know what to expect, I have to say, because one could also argue, “Well, we’ve got all the low-hanging fruit.

我不得不说，我认为很难知道会发生什么，因为人们也可能会说：“好吧，我们已经得到了所有唾手可得的成果。

All the easier stuff to figure out about how the world works and about what things to make — we’ve done that.

所有更容易弄清楚世界如何运作以及制造什么东西的事情 ——我们已经做到了。

Now we’re on to the really hard stuff, so it’s diminishing returns.”

现在我们正在处理真正困难的事情，所以回报递减。”

Now, I don’t know if that’s true.

现在，我不知道这是不是真的。

I think that there are still immense questions that we haven’t answered in science, but they seem to be incredibly hard ones, questions like what is consciousness, which we don’t even know if science will ever really answer that or whether it’s a philosophical question.

我认为科学上仍然有很多问题没有得到解答，但它们似乎是非常困难的问题，比如什么是意识，我们甚至不知道科学是否会真正回答这个问题，或者它是否是一个哲学问题。

But it’s possible that part of that decline in science is because we’re looking at more challenging problems now.

但科学衰退的部分原因可能是因为我们现在正在研究更具挑战性的问题。

I also devoured the works of J.G.

我还如饥似渴地阅读了 J.G. 的作品。

Ballard.

巴拉德。

It was very interesting to me how, back in those days, Ballard was just dismissed as a genre writer, a science fiction writer, and he never had any proper characters and so forth.

对我来说非常有趣的是，在那些日子里，巴拉德只是被视为流派作家、科幻作家，而他从来没有任何合适的角色等等。

These days, Ballard is seen as a total visionary, as he clearly is.

如今，巴拉德被视为一位完全有远见的人，他显然就是这样。

He saw so much of what was coming back in the 1960s.

他看到了 20 世纪 60 年代发生的很多事情。

I would certainly name those two as two of my favorite science fiction writers.

我当然会把这两个人列为我最喜欢的科幻小说作家。

I would say, for anyone thinking about wanting to go into science book writing, it’s really important that you aren’t doing it so that you’re going to become rich because it’s the same for any writer, actually.

我想说，对于任何想从事科学书籍写作的人来说，重要的是你不要这样做，这样你就会变得富有，因为实际上这对任何作家来说都是一样的。

This is not a way to become rich.

这不是致富的方法。

You have to love what you’re doing.

你必须热爱你正在做的事情。

You have to have a real passion for what you’re doing.

你必须对你正在做的事情有真正的热情。

Certainly, for book writing, it feels to me like you have to have something to say.

当然，对于写书，我觉得你必须有话要说。

It’s not enough to just do a translation job of a difficult field.

仅仅完成困难领域的翻译工作是不够的。

You really need to have something to bring to it, some insight to bring to it.

你确实需要有一些东西可以带来，一些洞察力可以带来。

Figure out what it is you want to say, and figure out what kind of voice you want to say it in.

弄清楚你想说什么，并弄清楚你想用什么样的声音说。

The way to do that is to read, to read very widely, and to find out what works for you, what sort of voice works for you.

做到这一点的方法就是阅读，广泛阅读，找出什么适合你，什么样的声音适合你。

There are some writers — not just in science — who decide, “This is going to be my area.

有些作家 ——“不仅仅是在科学领域”—— 他们决定，“这将是我的领域。

I’m going to become a specialist in this area.

我要成为这个领域的专家。

I’m going to become known for writing about this topic.” That’s fine if you clearly want to do that, but for me, it’s just such a wonderful opportunity to express and give free rein to my curiosity, to find out about these new topics.

我将因撰写有关这个主题的文章而出名。”如果你明确想要这样做，那很好，但对我来说，这只是一个表达和自由发挥我的好奇心、了解这些新话题的绝佳机会。

They pop up.

他们突然出现。

They suggest themselves.

他们自己建议。

I would never have imagined myself way back when, working for Nature, writing a book about Gothic cathedrals.

我永远不会想象自己在为《自然》工作时写一本关于哥特式大教堂的书。

That presented itself in one way or another.

这以这样或那样的方式呈现出来。

The more I started looking into it, the more I thought, “There’s a story here, and it’s a story that I haven’t really seen told, a story about how the cathedrals were built in connection with an emerging new view of the cosmos, a new view of how the world worked in the Middle Ages.” That’s the kind of thing that I look for.

我越开始研究它，我就越想：“这里有一个故事，这是一个我从未真正见过的故事，一个关于大教堂是如何与新兴的宇宙新观、中世纪世界如何运作的新观联系在一起建造的故事。”这就是我所寻找的东西。

I’m waiting for the penny to drop of “Aha.

我正在等待“啊哈”的一分钱掉落。

I can see something new in here, and this is an area that I’m going to be enriched by spending two or three years finding out about.”

我可以在这里看到一些新的东西，这是一个我将通过花两三年的时间来了解的领域。”

As I knew I would, I’ve had a fantastic time writing it, and I know that, because I’ve worked with these people before, it is going to look absolutely gorgeous.

正如我所知道的那样，我在写这本书的过程中度过了一段美妙的时光，而且我知道，因为我以前曾与这些人一起工作过，所以它看起来绝对华丽。

An illustrated history of alchemy.

炼金术的插图历史。