2011年考研英語特訓：看閱讀背單詞(4)

　　Science has long had an uneasy relationship with other aspects of culture. Think of Galileo’s 17th century trial for his rebelling belief before the Catholic Church or poet William Blake’s harsh remarks against the mechanistic worldview of Isaac Newton. The schism between science and the humanities has, if anything, deepened in this century.

　　Until recently, the scientific community was so powerful that it could afford to ignore its critics - but no longer. As funding for science has declined, scientists have attacked “anti-science” in several books, notably Higher Superstition, by Paul R. Gross, a biologist at the University of Virginia, and Norman Levitt, a mathematician at Rutgers University; and The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan of Cornell University.

　　Defenders of science have also voiced their concerns at meetings such as “The Flight from Science and Reason,” held in New York City in 1995, and “Science in the Age of (Mis)information,” which assembled last June near Buffalo.

　　Anti-science clearly means different things to different people. Gross and Levitt find fault primarily with sociologists, philosophers and other academics who have questioned science’s objectivity. Sagan is more concerned with those who believe in ghosts, creationism and other phenomena that contradict the scientific worldview.

　　A survey of news stories in 1996 reveals that the anti-science tag has been attached to many other groups as well, from authorities who advocated the elimination of the last remaining stocks of smallpox virus to Republicans who advocated decreased funding for basic research.

　　Few would dispute that the term applies to the Unabomber, those manifesto, published in 1995, scorns science and longs for return to a pretechnological utopia. But surely that does not mean environmentalists concerned about uncontrolled industrial growth are anti-science, as an essay in US News & World Report last May seemed to suggest.

　　The environmentalists, inevitably, respond to such critics. The true enemies of science, argues Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, a pioneer of environmental studies, are those who question the evidence supporting global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer and other consequences of industrial growth.

　　Indeed, some observers fear that the anti-science epithet is in danger of becoming meaningless. “The term ´anti-science´ can lump together too many, quite different things,” notes Harvard University philosopher Gerald Holton in his 1993 work Science and Anti Science. “They have in common only one thing that they tend to annoy or threaten those who regard themselves as more enlightened. ”

　　譯文

　　科學與文化的其他方面的關系一直都很不穩定。想想看，17世紀伽利略由于他叛逆性的信仰而遭受到天主教會的審判，詩人威廉•布萊克對艾薩克•牛頓的機械論世界觀進行尖銳地批判。本世紀，科學與人文之間的分裂加劇了。

　　直到前不久，科學界有著如此之強大的權威以致可以對其批評者不予理會——但是現在不是這樣的情況了。由于科研經費減少，所以科學家出了幾本書對 “反科學”勢力進行批評，其中值得注意的有弗吉尼亞大學生物學家保羅•R•格羅斯和拉特格斯大學的數學家諾曼•萊維特合著的《高級迷信》及康奈爾大學的卡爾•薩根著的《鬼怪世界》。

　　科學的捍衛者們也在一些會議上表示了他們的擔憂。比如，1995年在紐約市召開的“遠離科學和理性”會議，以及去年6月在布法羅市召開的“信息(迷信)時代的科學”會議。

　　顯然，對于不同的人反科學有著不同的含義。格羅斯和萊維特主要對質疑科學客觀性的社會學家、哲學家和其他學者進行批評。薩根則更關注那些相信鬼怪、上帝造物論和其他與科學世界觀不同的人。

　　1996年的一項新聞調查報道表明，反科學的標簽也貼在了許多其他的群體上，例如從提倡消滅所有現存的天花病毒的官員到支持削減基礎研究基金的共和黨人大都有著反科學的傾向。

　　如果把這一詞用在仇視現代文明的恐怖主義者身上，也不會引起太多的爭議，因為他們曾在1995年公開發表過對科學的蔑視并且渴望回到前技術時代理想社會的聲明。但是并不意味著那些對毫無控制的工業發展表示憂慮的環境主義者也是反科學的，正如去年5月份一篇刊登在《美國新聞和世界報導》的文章似乎暗示過這樣的例子。

　　環境主義者毫無疑問要對此類的批評做出回應。斯坦福大學的保羅•埃利希是環境研究的先驅者，他認為，科學的真正的敵人是那些對工業增長帶來的全球變暖、臭氧層稀薄及其他后果的證據提出質疑的人。

　　確實，一些觀察者擔心反科學這個詞正處于消失的邊際。哈佛大學的哲學家杰拉爾德•霍爾頓在1993年的著作《科學和反科學》的一書中寫道“‘反科學’這個詞可以包含很多迥然不同的東西，他們只有一點是相同的，就是會激怒或威脅那些自以為比別人更有見識的人。”