中英对照：真正的“两种文化”的鸿沟

　　An influential lecture on the cultural significance of science remains as relevant today as when it was delivered 50 years ago.

　　英国化学家C·P·斯诺50年前就科学的文化意义所做的一次有影响力的演讲，直到今天还掷地有声。

　　 Fifty years ago this month C.P. Snow, an eminent British chemist-turned-novelist, gave a lecture at the University of Cambridge. He originally intended to emphasise how a lack of access to science and technology was separating the rich from the poor.

　　50年前的这个月，一位著名的英国化学家改行的小说家C·P·斯诺在剑桥大学作了一场演讲。他本来打算强调缺乏对科学技术的获取正在把富人和穷人分开。

　　But when he came to deliver it, the lecture's focus had shifted to the tensions and misunderstandings between scientists and literary intellectuals. This idea, summarised in Snow's subsequent book, The Two Cultures, rapidly became both widely known and hotly debated around the English-speaking world.

　　但是当他作这场演讲的时候，演讲的重点转移到了科学家和文人知识分子之间的张力和误解。这个观点在斯诺后来的《两种文化》一书中得到了总结，它迅速在英语世界里变得广为人知且引起了激烈争论。

　　 And it has remained so ever since. Even though the tensions Snow identified may have softened since the 1950s — many contemporary novelists, for example, write knowledgeably about scientific ideas — they still surface in widespread distrust of scientific thinking.

　　而且这种情况从那以后一直没有变化。尽管斯诺提到的张力自从20世纪50年代已经被软化了——例如，许多当代小说家在描写科学观点的时候很在行——它们在对科学思想的普遍不信任中浮现出来。

　　Meanwhile, the idea that Snow himself considered to be more important — namely science's role in bridging the gap between the rich and poor — has been forgotten as the motivating theme behind his lecture.

　　与此同时，人们已经忘记了斯诺本人认为更加重要的一个观点——也就是科学在弥合富人和穷人之间的鸿沟方面担任的角色——是促成他的这场演讲的主题。

　　Science for transformation

　　促进变革的科学

　　Yet this idea is as relevant today as it was then, particularly when considering Snow's insistence that unless modern science and technology was widely adopted, the social and economic problems of the developing world would not be solved.

　　然而，这一观点在今天仍然有重大意义，特别是考虑到斯诺坚持认为只有广泛采用现代科学技术，才能解决发展中国家的社会和经济问题。

　　He pointed presciently to countries such as China and India that were building their modernisation plans around science. In doing so, they were already promising to transform from rural to industrial economies in decades rather than the centuries the West had taken.

　　他颇有预见力地指出诸如中国和印度等国家正在围绕科学建立它们的现代化的规划。在这个过程中，它们已经有望在数十年内从农业经济转变为工业经济，而不像西方那样用了几个世纪的时间。

　　Snow also argued passionately that Western societies, working with their scientific communities, had a moral responsibility to provide the human and financial resources needed to enable a similar process elsewhere across the developing world.

　　斯诺还充满热情地提出，西方社会有一种道义责任，与它们的科学界合作，为发展中国家提供实施类似的过程所必需的人力和财政资源。

　　His specific remedies, such as deploying massive armies of Western scientists and engineers to developing countries, may seem old-fashioned. But the overall message remains highly relevant — perhaps, as recent commentators point out, even more relevant than the controversial "two cultures" idea (see, for example, a recent Nature editorial 'Doing good, 50 years on').

　　他的特效药——诸如在发展中国家配备大批西方科学家和工程师——可能看上去是过时的。但是这个观念在总体上仍然是非常重要的——或许正如近来的评论家指出的，它比那个具有争议性的“两种文化”的观念更重要（例如，参见《自然》杂志近来的一篇社论《造福人类，50年之后》）。

　　Scientific arrogance?

　　科学的傲慢？

　　But another aspect of Snow's lecture is less commendable. He appears to assert the superiority of scientific over non-scientific culture with a confidence sometimes bordering on the arrogance for which he criticised others.

　　但是斯诺的演讲的另一个方面就不那么值得表扬。他似乎主张科学对非科学文化具有优越性，其中的自信有时候近乎他所批评的其他人的傲慢自大。

　　This is perhaps best summed up in his widely quoted phrase that scientists "have the future in their bones". Scientists, he declared, look forward, and are optimistic about the future; other intellectuals merely look back, and complain about the world's prospects.

　　或许，他被广为引用的科学家“在骨子里拥有未来”的这句话能最好地总结这一点。他声称科学家向前看，而且对未来感到乐观；而其他知识分子只是向后看，而且抱怨这个世界的前景。

　　Ironically, Snow's own predictions undermine this conclusion.

　　讽刺的是，斯诺自己的预言破坏了这个结论。

　　He confidently predicted that the gap between the rich and poor would disappear by the year 2000 — once other developing countries realised what China and India could achieve.

　　他自信地预测说，一旦其他发展中国家意识到了中国和印度能够实现什么，到2000年富人和穷人的鸿沟将消失。

　　But almost a decade past 2000, the gap is still widening in many regions. Snow's optimism that the world as a whole would, by now, have enough to eat and keep its people healthy was widely off the mark. Many countries are not anticipated to reach the 2015 Millennium Development Goals.

　　但是在2000年后的将近10年过去了，这个鸿沟在许多地区仍然正在扩大。斯诺乐观地认为如今整个世界将拥有足够的食物而且让人们身体健康，这个预测在很大程度上失败了。许多国家预计无法实现2015年的千年发展目标。

　　 Science: Essential but not sufficient

　　科学：关键但不够

　　Both the strength and continued value of Snow's analysis lies in his advocacy that all societies, both rich and poor, should recognise and accept science as an important strand of their culture. It is this idea, for example, that underpins recent efforts in developed and developing countries alike to promote the public's understanding of science.

　　斯诺的分析的活力和仍然存在的价值在于它倡导所有社会无论贫富都应该承认并接受科学作为它们的文化的重要组成部分。例如，正是这种观点支持了近来在发达国家和发展中国家同样地促进公众理解科学的举措。

　　But his analysis is too shallow. There is an underlying assumption that once countries invest enough in science and technology (and the education that underpins it), social progress will virtually automatically follow.

　　但是他的分析太浅薄了。有一个潜在的假定，即一旦各国向科学技术（以及支持它的教育）投入了足够的资金，社会进步将近乎自发地随之而来。

　　The shortcomings of this scientific determinism became apparent in the decades following Snow's lecture. In that period, political discourse became increasingly centred not on science's promises, but on its unacceptable side-effects — from nuclear weapons and environmental pollution to global warming and climate change.

　　这种科学决定论的缺点在斯诺的演讲之后的几十年中显现出来。在那段时间里，政治话语变得越来越集中在科学令人无法接受的副作用——从核武器和环境污染到全球变暖和气候变化——而不是集中在科学的前景上。

　　Since then, the distrust of science has, to some extent, been thankfully redressed. But there is still some way to go, particularly since those who were educated at the height of this critical discourse now occupy influential positions in both government and civil society.

　　之后，令人欣慰的是，对科学的不信任在一定程度上得到了纠正。但是仍然要继续纠正，特别是由于那些在这种批判性话语最盛行的时候接受教育的人们如今占据了政府和民间组织有影响力的职位。

　　The real cultural divide is not between those who have faith in science and those who do not. It is between those whose beliefs are fundamentalist, projecting either the value or dangers of modern science as absolute truths, and those who see science as a necessary but not sufficient condition of human progress.

　　真正的文化鸿沟不在于那些相信科学和不相信科学的人们之间。它在于那些具有原教旨主义信仰、把现代科学的价值或危险表达成绝对真理的人们和那些认为科学是人类进步的必要条件但不是充分条件的人们之间。

　　That applies in rich and poor countries alike.

　　这同样适用于富国和穷国。

　　David Dickson

　　Director, SciDev.Net

　　David Dickson

　　科学与发展网络（SciDev.Net）主任

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