2011年考研英語(yǔ)特訓(xùn)：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(xué)與文化的其他方面的關(guān)系一直都很不穩(wěn)定。想想看，17世紀(jì)伽利略由于他叛逆性的信仰而遭受到天主教會(huì)的審判，詩(shī)人威廉•布萊克對(duì)艾薩克•牛頓的機(jī)械論世界觀進(jìn)行尖銳地批判。本世紀(jì)，科學(xué)與人文之間的分裂加劇了。

　　直到前不久，科學(xué)界有著如此之強(qiáng)大的權(quán)威以致可以對(duì)其批評(píng)者不予理會(huì)——但是現(xiàn)在不是這樣的情況了。由于科研經(jīng)費(fèi)減少，所以科學(xué)家出了幾本書(shū)對(duì) “反科學(xué)”勢(shì)力進(jìn)行批評(píng)，其中值得注意的有弗吉尼亞大學(xué)生物學(xué)家保羅•R•格羅斯和拉特格斯大學(xué)的數(shù)學(xué)家諾曼•萊維特合著的《高級(jí)迷信》及康奈爾大學(xué)的卡爾•薩根著的《鬼怪世界》。

　　科學(xué)的捍衛(wèi)者們也在一些會(huì)議上表示了他們的擔(dān)憂。比如，1995年在紐約市召開(kāi)的“遠(yuǎn)離科學(xué)和理性”會(huì)議，以及去年6月在布法羅市召開(kāi)的“信息(迷信)時(shí)代的科學(xué)”會(huì)議。

　　顯然，對(duì)于不同的人反科學(xué)有著不同的含義。格羅斯和萊維特主要對(duì)質(zhì)疑科學(xué)客觀性的社會(huì)學(xué)家、哲學(xué)家和其他學(xué)者進(jìn)行批評(píng)。薩根則更關(guān)注那些相信鬼怪、上帝造物論和其他與科學(xué)世界觀不同的人。

　　1996年的一項(xiàng)新聞?wù){(diào)查報(bào)道表明，反科學(xué)的標(biāo)簽也貼在了許多其他的群體上，例如從提倡消滅所有現(xiàn)存的天花病毒的官員到支持削減基礎(chǔ)研究基金的共和黨人大都有著反科學(xué)的傾向。

　　如果把這一詞用在仇視現(xiàn)代文明的恐怖主義者身上，也不會(huì)引起太多的爭(zhēng)議，因?yàn)樗麄冊(cè)��?995年公開(kāi)發(fā)表過(guò)對(duì)科學(xué)的蔑視并且渴望回到前技術(shù)時(shí)代理想社會(huì)的聲明。但是并不意味著那些對(duì)毫無(wú)控制的工業(yè)發(fā)展表示憂慮的環(huán)境主義者也是反科學(xué)的，正如去年5月份一篇刊登在《美國(guó)新聞和世界報(bào)導(dǎo)》的文章似乎暗示過(guò)這樣的例子。

　　環(huán)境主義者毫無(wú)疑問(wèn)要對(duì)此類的批評(píng)做出回應(yīng)。斯坦福大學(xué)的保羅•埃利希是環(huán)境研究的先驅(qū)者，他認(rèn)為，科學(xué)的真正的敵人是那些對(duì)工業(yè)增長(zhǎng)帶來(lái)的全球變暖、臭氧層稀薄及其他后果的證據(jù)提出質(zhì)疑的人。

　　確實(shí)，一些觀察者擔(dān)心反科學(xué)這個(gè)詞正處于消失的邊際。哈佛大學(xué)的哲學(xué)家杰拉爾德•霍爾頓在1993年的著作《科學(xué)和反科學(xué)》的一書(shū)中寫(xiě)道“‘反科學(xué)’這個(gè)詞可以包含很多迥然不同的東西，他們只有一點(diǎn)是相同的，就是會(huì)激怒或威脅那些自以為比別人更有見(jiàn)識(shí)的人。”