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Do animals think? How could the earth show so many signs of design and purpose and yet berandom? Our best scientists are heatedly debating both sides of these and other scientific questions. In the following essay, the author takes a look at science education and argues that as well as telling students the facts and theories that have already been proved and accepted, science teacher should spend more time introducing their students to the many mysteries that remain unsolved and the arguments taking place between scientists. What better way, he argues, to stimulate their interest in thing scientific?
动物是否会思维？地球怎么会显示出那么多有计划有意图的迹象却又无一定之规？我们最优秀的科学家正在热烈地讨论这些以及另外一些科学问题的正反两个方面。在下面这篇文章中，作者审视了科学教育状况，认为除了告诉学生已被证实已被接受的事实和理论外，教科学的老师应该花更多时间让学生了解尚未破解的许多奥秘与科学家之间正在进行的争论。他争辩说，还有什么更好的方法能激发学生对种种科学问题的兴趣呢？
Debating the Unknowable
探索未知世界
Lewis Thomas
刘易斯·托马斯
The greatest of all the accomplishments of twentieth-century science has been the discovery of human ignorance. We live, as never before, in puzzlement about nature, the universe, and ourselves most of all. It is a new experience for the species. A century ago, after the turbulence caused by Darwin and Wallace had subsided and the central idea of natural selection had been grasped and accepted, we thought we knew everything essential about evolution. Inthe eighteenth century there were no huge puzzles; human reason was all you needed in order to figure out the universe. And for most of the earlier centuries, the Church provided boththe questions and the answers, neatly packaged. Now, for the first time in human history, we are catching glimpses of our incomprehension. We can still make up stories to explain theworld, as we always have, but now the stories have to be confirmed and reconfirmed by experiment. This is the scientific method, and once started on this line we cannot turn back. We are obliged to grow up in skepticism, requiring proofs for every assertion about nature, and there is no way out except to move ahead and plug away, hoping for comprehension inthefuture but living in a condition of intellectual instability for the long time.
20世纪科学领域迄今取得的最大成就是发现人类蒙昧无知。我们对自然、宇宙，尤其对我们自身，从来没有像现在这样感到困惑不解。这是人类一种新的感受。一百年前，在达尔文和华莱士引起的轰动平静下来，人们理解并接受了自然选择的基本观点之后，我们以为对进化论的实质问题全都一清二楚了。18世纪不存在重大的难解之谜。当时欲知宇宙奥秘，只需借助人的理性就行了。在此以前的若干世纪里，多数时候由教会提出问题同时提供答案，近乎包办一切。如今，在人类历史上我们第一次觉察到了自己的无知。我们可以一如既往依旧想出种种说法来解释世界，但现在这些说法必须通过实验加以证实，再证实。这是科学方法，一旦开始按照这种方法去做，我们就不能走回头路了。我们只能始终带着怀疑的目光，对关于自然的每个论断都要求拿出证据来。除了行动起来，埋头探索，没有其他办法。我们希望将来能够找到答案，但在此之前的这段漫长岁月里，我们只好处于一种似懂非懂、一知半解的状态。
