【英文原声版16】Sam Gershman：The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

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Why do Aristotle’s ideas not make sense to us?

我们会什么会觉得亚里士多德的观点很荒谬？

Zachary Davis: I have a seven-year-old son named Ari, and after school every day we like to go to the park nearby and play. Sometimes we play hide and seek, sometimes we climb on the jungle gym. But the other day, Ari wanted to play baseball. He wanted to play catch, throw a ball. And so we got our gloves, he brought the ball, and we started throwing. And I threw the ball to him, and then he threw the ball back to me. And it was a great throw. It arced up high, it was sailing across the sky, and then all of a sudden, it dropped like a brick.

扎卡里·戴维斯：我有一个七岁的儿子，名字叫阿里。每天他放学后，我们喜欢去附近的公园玩耍。有时我们玩捉迷藏，有时我们爬攀爬架。但有一天，阿里想玩棒球，想要接球、投球。于是我们戴上手套，把球拿出来，开始投球。我把球投给他，他再把球投回来。他投得很漂亮，棒球沿着抛物线在空中高高地飞着，突然之间，它像砖头一样掉了下来。

Zachary Davis: Of course, that’s not how it happened. Things don’t just suddenly drop. They continue on in an even manner. But this is how the ancient philosopher Aristotle thought movement on Earth worked.

扎卡里·戴维斯：当然，情况其实并不是这样的。物体不会突然下落，它们会继续匀速前进。但古代哲学家亚里士多德认为地球上的物体就是这么运动的。

Zachary Davis: He believed that there were five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and ether. Earth elements—like rocks and plants—move down toward the earth. Air and fire move up into the air. Heavier objects fall more quickly than lighter objects: a large rock—or a baseball— will fall more quickly than a pen.

扎卡里·戴维斯：他相信世界上有五种元素：土、水、火、气和以太。岩石、植物等土元素向下移动，落到地面。气元素和火元素向上飘到空中。较重的物体比较轻的物体下落速度更快，比如大石头或棒球比钢笔下落速度更快。

Zachary Davis: The 20th century philosopher Thomas Kuhn was struck by Aristotle’s beliefs about motion. To Kuhn, these theories made no sense. Kuhn knew that objects fall because of gravity, not because of their elemental makeup. He knew that rocks and pens fall at the same speed, no matter how heavy or light they are. But he also knew that Aristotle was one of the smartest philosophers of the ancient world.

扎卡里·戴维斯：20世纪的哲学家托马斯·库恩对亚里士多德的想法深感震惊。在库恩看来，这些理论毫无道理。库恩知道物体下落是因为重力，而不是因为它们由什么元素构成。他知道无论石头和钢笔是轻是重，它们都以相同的速度下落。但他也清楚亚里士多德是古代世界上最聪明的哲学家之一。

Samuel Gershman: There is a moment that Kuhn had where he sort of saw the world through Aristotle's eyes. He saw how Aristotle's ideas, even though to us they don't really make sense, they could have made sense to someone as smart as Aristotle.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：库恩曾经以亚里士多德的视角来观察世界。他发现了尽管亚里士多德的这些观点对我们来说不可理喻，但在和亚里士多德一样聪明的人眼里，这些观点为什么会合情合理。

Zachary Davis: That’s Samuel Gershman, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这位是哈佛大学心理学系副教授塞缪尔·格雷施曼。

Zachary Davis: Kuhn realized that Aristotle believed what he did for a reason. He didn’t know about gravity. He didn’t even know that the Earth revolves around the sun, and not the other way around. Aristotle had a basic set of assumptions that he thought were right—a paradigm that he believed to be true—and he understood the world according to that paradigm. Aristotle’s conclusions weren’t the problem; the problem was his assumptions.

扎卡里·戴维斯：库恩意识到，亚里士多德有理由相信自己的这些观点。他不知道重力，甚至也不知道地球绕太阳公转，而不是太阳绕地球公转。亚里士多德提出了一套基本的假设，并且深信不疑。他提出了一个自以为正确的范式，基于这个范式理解整个世界。有问题的不是亚里士多德的结论，而是他的假设。

Zachary Davis: Then, Kuhn took this idea one step further: If Aristotle was stuck within his own way of seeing the world, then so are we.

扎卡里·戴维斯：然后，库恩将这个想法拓展开来：如果亚里士多德局限在自己理解世界的方式中，那我们也不例外。

Samuel Gershman: It's entirely possible and indeed probable that at some point people are going to look back on us in the exact same way that we look back on Aristotle. How could they have been thinking those things? How could they have seen the world in such manifestly false ways?

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：未来某个时候，人们完全有可能像如今我们看待亚里士多德那样看待我们的观点。他们会想：这些人怎么会一直在想这些事呢？他们怎么会用如此明显错误方式看待世界呢？

Samuel Gershman: And for me personally reading this book, that kind of was a moment where the scales dropped from my eyes, and I realized that, of course, this makes complete sense. You know, I could be seeing the world through my own eyes and things that I just completely took for granted could be false.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：就我自己而言，读这本书的时候，我恍然大悟了。我意识到这完全是有可能的。一直以来我都在以自己的视角看待世界，我觉得理所当然的事情有可能是错的。

Zachary Davis: Welcome to Writ Large, a podcast about how books change the world. I’m Zachary Davis. In each episode, I talk with one of the world’s leading scholars about one book that changed the course of history. For this episode, I sat down with Professor Gershman to talk about Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

扎卡里·戴维斯：欢迎收听：100本改变你和世界的书，在这里我们为大家讲述改变世界的书籍。我是扎卡里·戴维斯。每一集，我都会和一位世界顶尖学者探讨一本影响历史进程的书。在本集，我和格雷施曼教授一起讨论托马斯·库恩的《科学革命的结构》。

Zachary Davis: Thomas Kuhn was an American philosopher of science. He published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962, and in it, he introduced his theory of scientific revolutions—what would later be called a paradigm shift. This idea runs counter to the way science is generally taught.

扎卡里·戴维斯：托马斯·库恩是美国科学哲学家。他于1962年出版了《科学革命的结构》，在书中介绍了自己的科学革命理论，这一理论后来被称为“范式转换”。这个理论和我们一贯进行的科学教育截然不同。

Samuel Gershman: When you're taught science in school, you see scientific history as a kind of linear progression where scientific theories are continually improving upon one another. And so the hope is that eventually you will thoroughly understand a phenomenon or an area of study, and then you'll be done. And certainly that's the way many practicing scientists would like it to be. But the reality is much more complicated.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：在学校里学习科学时，你会认为科学史是线性发展的过程，科学理论在不断地进步。所以你会乐观地认为，最终你会彻底弄清楚某一现象或某个领域，进而大获成功。当然这是很多实验科学家希望的情况，但实际情况要复杂得多。

Zachary Davis: In the book, Kuhn sets up a distinction between what he calls “normal science” and “scientific revolutions”. Normal science is that story we learn in school: Scientists make discoveries and improve on their research, and over time, they get closer and closer to the truth. For normal science to work, scientists need to agree about a few key things.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在书中，库恩区分了他所谓的“常规科学”与“科学革命”。常规科学是我们在学校学到的科学故事：科学家们探索发现，改进研究，经年累月，愈发接近真理。为了让常规科学发挥作用，科学家需要就一些关键问题达成共识。

Samuel Gershman: Scientists, even though they might disagree about particular theoretical interpretations, there's a minimal foundation for agreement. So, for example, we can minimally agree about what are the data that need to be explained. So you look through a telescope, you see some stars, and you could develop a theory about the motions of celestial bodies and try to predict where those bodies will be at some point in time. And the basic data there are the positions of those bodies in space.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：即使科学家们对某些理论解释持不同意见，但他们还是会在某些小的基本点上形成一致。比如，我们可以就什么是需要解读的数据这个小点达成共识。当你通过望远镜观察天空时，你会看到一些恒星，可以提出天体运动的理论，并试着预测这些天体在未来某个时间的位置，计算出它们在宇宙中位置的基本数据。

Zachary Davis: This might seem obvious: two scientists look through a telescope, they both see the stars, and they agree about where the stars are.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这似乎显而易见：两位科学家通过望远镜观察，他们都看到了恒星，并且就恒星的位置达成了共识。

Samuel Gershman: But you have to keep in mind that we're not measuring the positions of stars directly. We're measuring them through a telescope. We have a measuring instrument. And in fact, when the telescope was first deployed by Galileo, there were huge arguments about the measurement device itself.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：但是你要记住，我们不是在直接测量恒星的位置，而是在通过望远镜对其测量。我们有测量仪器。实际上，当伽利略首次使用望远镜时，就有很多关于测量仪器本身的争论。

Zachary Davis: When the telescope was invented in the 1600s, it gave people a new view of the heavens. Stars, planets, and moons that were invisible to the naked eye could suddenly be seen.

扎卡里·戴维斯：17世纪望远镜发明，人们能够以新的视角观察天空。透过望远镜，肉眼看不到的恒星、行星和卫星一下子清晰可见。

Zachary Davis: The Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei used the telescope to identify the four biggest moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and the phases of Venus, and he concluded that the earth revolved around the sun, and not the other way around.

扎卡里·戴维斯：意大利天文学家伽利略·伽利雷通过望远镜发现了木星的四颗最大的卫星、以及土星环和金星的盈亏。他还得出结论：地球围绕太阳旋转，而不是太阳围绕地球旋转。

Zachary Davis: To believe Galileo’s conclusions, we have to know that his data is correct. But how do we know his data correct? We can’t fly into space to measure where the planets are, so do we just trust the telescope?

扎卡里·戴维斯：要相信伽利略的结论，我们必须确定他的数据是正确的。但是我们怎么知道他的数据是否正确呢？我们无法飞入太空来测量行星的位置，所以我们只能相信望远镜吗？

Zachary Davis: How do we know what we know? The study of this question is called epistemology. And people have been debating epistemology for hundreds of years.

扎卡里·戴维斯：我们怎么知道我们所知道的？对这个问题的研究叫认识论。数百年来，关于认识论人们一直有诸多争论。

Why do we take paradigms for granted?

为什么我们会自然而然地接受范式？

Samuel Gershman: But Kuhn was interested in more than just epistemology. He was interested in, if you sort of move away from the measurement part of it and go inside the scientist’s head, what are the assumptions inside the scientist’s head that are so basic that the scientist doesn't even think about them as assumptions at all, and yet they pervade the entire way that the scientist sees the world, or at least this area of study, and interprets his or her measurements, and builds theories around those measurements?

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：不过库恩感兴趣的不仅仅是认识论。他感兴趣的是，抛开测量的环节，如果你挖掘科学家的思路，会发现他脑海中的假设是多么基础，甚至连他自己都没把它看作假设。然而这些假设贯穿了他观察世界的整个过程，至少贯穿了他在这一领域的研究以及对测量结果的分析。基于这些测量结果，他提出自己的理论。

Zachary Davis: This is what Kuhn called the research paradigm: it’s a set of theories, beliefs, norms, and practices that are fundamental to a scientist’s work. Research paradigms are a key part of normal science.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这就是库恩所说的研究范式，它是一系列理论、信念、规范与实践，是科学家研究工作的基础。研究范式是常规科学的关键部分。

Zachary Davis: Kuhn said that for normal science to work, scientists have to agree on what to measure: we agree to look at the stars. But they also have to agree about the basic assumptions they’re building on. They have to be working with the same paradigm. The paradigm is so fundamental that the scientist might not even know it’s there.

扎卡里·戴维斯：库恩说，如果要让常规科学发挥作用，科学家们必须就测量标准达成共识，一致认同该如何观测恒星。他们还必须就观测所依据的基本假设达成共识，必须使用相同的范式来工作。范式的作用如此基础，以至于科学家甚至都意识不到它的存在。

Zachary Davis: So what did he end up arguing? What was his insight into how our mind structures what we begin to take for granted?

扎卡里·戴维斯：那么他最后提出了什么观点？关于我们的思维结构如何让我们自然而然地认同范式，他有什么见解呢？

Samuel Gershman: One of the things that Kuhn points out is that we're all used to a particular example of changing perspectives, which is over the course of scientific training, you start as a student and you see some data and it could be just meaningless numbers, let's say, as you know, points on a piece of paper. But then over the course of training, that information becomes meaningful to you.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：库恩的一个观点是，我们都习惯了某种改变思考方式的过程。在科学训练的过程中，你从学生时代起便会看到一些数据，对于那时的你来说，它们可能只是毫无意义的数字，在你看来它们就像纸张上的点。但是在训练的过程中，你会觉得这些信息变得有意义了。

Zachary Davis: You walk into class on day 1 and see a lot of data points on a graph. You have no idea what these data points mean. But over the course of the semester, you learn more and more about the data. Once you understand the data, you can start to interpret it.

扎卡里·戴维斯：走进课堂的第一天，你会看到图表上的许多数据点。你不知道这些数据点意味着什么。但在整个学期里，你会了解到越来越多的关于数据的知识。一旦理解了数据，你就可以开始解读它们。

Samuel Gershman: I train you until you see things the same way that I see them. And then you may go on to develop new theories, but without necessarily questioning the basic kind of perceptual and conceptual assumptions.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：我会训练你，直到你能够以和我相同的方式看待事物。然后你会继续发展新的理论，但不会质疑感知和概念上的那些基本的假设。

Zachary Davis: This is how a paradigm gets passed from one person to the next. A teacher instructs a student. The student builds on what they learned from the teacher, gathering new information and developing new theories. Then, the student teaches what they know to someone else. The student might come up with a brand new way of interpreting the data, but they accept the paradigm.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这就是范式如何从一个人传给另一个人。老师指导学生，学生以他们从老师那儿学来的东西为基础，收集新的信息，发展新的理论。然后学生再向别人传授自己学到的内容。学生可能会想出全新的方式来解读数据，但他们接受了范式。

Samuel Gershman: Kuhn's point was that you and I, in order to communicate about science, have to basically at some level see the world in the same way. And when that starts to break down, that's when scientific revolutions happen—when there could be a totally new way of seeing the world that is basically incompatible with the old way of measuring the world.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：库恩的意思是，为了交流科学见解，在某种程度上我和你不得不以基本相同的方式看待世界。而一旦这种情况被打破，科学革命便会发生。那时会出现一种全新的看待世界的方式，与原来衡量世界的方式发生基本冲突。

Zachary Davis: In the time of Galileo, there were two competing theories about the planets’ movements: some people thought the sun revolved around the earth (that was one paradigm) and some people thought the earth revolved around the sun (that was the other).

扎卡里·戴维斯：在伽利略的时代，围绕着行星运动有两种针锋相对的理论：有人认为太阳绕着地球转，这是一种范式；还有人认为地球绕着太阳转，这是另一种范式。

Zachary Davis: This was no longer normal science. This was a paradigm shift. The scientists might have agreed about how the telescope worked and what it was showing them, but they didn’t agree on the fundamental beliefs about the way the system operated. The problem wasn’t their conclusions—it was their assumptions.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这已经不再是常规科学，而是范式的转变了。科学家们或许一致认同望远镜的工作原理以及用它能看到什么。但在太阳系的基本运行方式上，他们的基本观点并不统一。有问题的不是他们的结论，而是他们的假设。

Zachary Davis: In developing his theory of paradigm shifts, Kuhn was influenced by an 18th century movement called psychophysics. Psychophysics was developed by German physicists who wanted to study how people experience the world.

扎卡里·戴维斯：库恩在发展他的范式转换理论时，受到了18世纪精神物理学运动的启发。精神物理学是由德国物理学家创立的，他们希望研究人们是如何感知世界的。

Samuel Gershman: They were interested in the relationship between some external stimulus, like the loudness of a tone, and a person's internal representation of that stimulus.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：他们乐于了解高音量的声音等外部刺激与人们对这些刺激的心理反应有什么关系。

Zachary Davis: Of course, the scientists couldn’t directly measure the way their subjects represented a stimulus. They couldn’t see what people were thinking. Instead, they measured the way a subject reacted.

扎卡里·戴维斯：当然，科学家无法直接衡量出受试者对刺激的心理反应方式，他们看不到人们在想什么。于是，他们转而衡量了受试者的外在反应。

Samuel Gershman: So, for example, they might ask you to discriminate between two tones of different levels of loudness. By changing the stimulus and then measuring your changes in behavior, they could try to reconstruct something about your internal representation of that stimulus.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：比如，他们可能会要你区分音量不同的两段声音。他们会更改刺激，然后衡量您的行为变化，并试着据此重现你对这个刺激的心理反应。

Zachary Davis: A scientist turns the volume up and sees how your behavior changes. From there, they can draw conclusions.

扎卡里·戴维斯：一位科学家调高了音量，观察你的行为如何变化。根据这个，他们可以得出结论。

Zachary Davis: Another group, called the Gestalt psychologists, built on these findings.

扎卡里·戴维斯：基于这些发现出现了另一批心理学家，他们被称为“格式塔心理学家”。

Samuel Gershman: The Gestalts psychologists kind of took that on in a more radical way by showing how your perception of all sorts of things like motion, geometric form, brightness, all depend on various kinds of contextual factors.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：格式塔心理学家以一种更为激进的方式接受了这一观点。他们指出人们对运动、几何图案、亮度等各种事物的感知如何取决于形形色色的情境。

Zachary Davis: For example, a sound might seem louder or quieter depending if you’re on a busy street or in a silent house. The Gestaltpsychologists also found that some stimuli could appear to be two different things at once. This is how many optical illusions work.

扎卡里·戴维斯：比如，某个声音听起来更大还是更小，取决于你是在繁忙的街道上还是在安静的屋里。格式塔心理学家还发现，某些刺激似乎可以一下子看上去像是两种不同的东西。视错觉就是这么产生的。

Samuel Gershman: So, for example, there are some common ones that many people know, like the duck-rabbit illusion, where the same stimulus can look at one moment like a duck and then another moment like a rabbit.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：比如一些大家都知道的、普遍的视错觉。其中之一便是鸭兔错觉：就是同一刺激在某个时刻看起来像鸭子，在另一个时刻看起来又像兔子。

Zachary Davis:Blue dress or white dress.

扎卡里·戴维斯：还有那个蓝黑裙子还是白金裙子的例子。

Samuel Gershman: Right. Yeah. So that's a modern example of that. And Kuhn was very interested in that because he thought that provided some kind of insight into the way that scientists see the world that you could see the same measurement and at one moment interpret it one way and then at the next moment interpret it another way. That was very significant for Kuhn.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：没错，这就是当代的一个例子。库恩对此非常感兴趣，因为他觉得这在某种程度上揭示了科学家观察世界的方式。你可以看到和科学家同样的测量结果，在某个时刻以一种方式解读它，在另一个时刻又以另一种方式来解读。这个发现对库恩来说意义重大。

How do paradigms change?

范式转换是如何发生的？

Zachary Davis: So that example, I think, is really helpful, that it's not about the data because it can be interpreted in multiple ways. How did that insight lead into his theory of change or his theory of scientific change? He has a story about how paradigms change. What is that story?

扎卡里·戴维斯：我觉得这个例子确实有用。它强调的不是数据，因为它可以用多种方式来解读。这个发现如何衍生出了他的转换理论、或者说他的科学转换理论呢？他提出了一个关于范式转换的理论，这个理论讲了什么呢？

Samuel Gershman: Well, the essence of the story is that there's an accumulation of discrepancies.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：嗯，范式转换根本上在于差异的累积。

Zachary Davis: One view of science says that instead of looking for evidence that will prove their theories correct, scientists should instead look for evidence that will prove their theories wrong.

扎卡里·戴维斯：一种科学观点认为，科学家不应该寻找能够证明其理论正确的证据，而应该寻找能够证明其错误的证据。

Samuel Gershman: You have to kill theories by bludgeoning them with data that they can't explain. But many people have pointed out that really doesn't do justice to the way science actually works because we're constantly encountering discrepancies all the time and we sort of sweep them under the rug or we invoke various kinds of auxiliary hypotheses to explain away the discrepancies.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：你必须找到那些用理论无法解读的数据，用它们来反驳理论、推翻理论。但许多人指出这确实与科学实际的运作方式不符，因为我们一直不断地遇到差异，我们总是将它们囊括在范式之下，或是提出各种辅助性假设来解释这些差异。

Zachary Davis: Here’s a famous example: It’s the 19th century, astronomers agree that the earth revolves around the sun, but they don’t know exactly where the planets are. According to the laws of gravity, the planets they know about should behave differently than they do. The data isn’t lining up with their theory.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这儿有一个著名的例子：19世纪，天文学家一直认为地球绕着太阳转，但他们不知道行星的确切位置。他们根据万有引力定律推测出的行星的情况与实际观测的情况有所不同。数据与他们的理论不一致。

Samuel Gershman: Instead of abandoning the theory entirely, like, they posited that there were hidden variables that could explain away the discrepancy, sometimes long before those variables were directly measured. So, for example, you know, this is how planets, some planets have been discovered.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：他们没有否定这个理论，而是假设存在某些不为人知的变量，可以解释这些差异，有时候过了很久这些变量才被直接测量出来。举例来说，有些行星就是这么被发现的。

Zachary Davis: Well, and I think some of the early astronomers came up with really elaborate, kind of, orbital patterns that in retrospect, seem really outlandish because they really wanted it to fit their model.

扎卡里·戴维斯：嗯，我认为一些早期的天文学家提出了一种非常精妙、类似于轨道的模型。这个模型回想起来似乎很古怪，因为天文学家们真的希望它能符合自己的理论。

Samuel Gershman: There is a famous French astronomer named Le Verrier who was concerned about these discrepancies between the predictions of the Newtonian theory of gravitation and the motions of planets in the solar system. And he posited that there was a planet there that later was observed, and that's where Neptune came from.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：著名的法国天文学家勒维耶非常关注万有引力定律的推测结果与太阳系行星运动情况之间的差异。他推算出太阳系还存在一颗新行星，这颗行星后来被观测到，就是海王星。

Samuel Gershman: But actually, later in his life, he tried to pull the same trick again and posited that there is a planet called Vulcan in this solar system and died believing that there was such a planet. But in point of fact, there was no planet. Basically, the same trick that had served him so well failed him later on.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：其实，勒维耶后来准备用同样的方式来推算太阳系中存在一颗他称为“伏尔甘”的行星（也就是我们常说的“祝融星”）直到逝世，他都坚信这颗行星确实存在。但其实太阳系中并没有这颗行星。所以，这种推算行星方法曾助他一臂之力，后来却辜负了他的期望。

Zachary Davis: There are a lot of examples like this one in the history of science. It can be a challenge for scientists to figure out when it makes sense to say there’s a hidden explanation—like an undiscovered planet—and when it doesn’t.

扎卡里·戴维斯：科学史上有很多这样的例子。弄清楚什么时候应该相信有一个未被发现的解释，如这个例子中未被发现的行星，什么时候不应该这么想，这对科学家来说可谓是个挑战。

Samuel Gershman: Kuhn’s point was really that there comes a point at which the auxiliary hypotheses can no longer kind of hold back the tide of discrepancies.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：库恩其实认为，到某个时候，辅助性假设并不能扭转差异产生的趋势。

Zachary Davis: One contradictory data point won’t kill a theory. A scientist will suggest another way to fit this data into their paradigm. But when there are a lot of data points that don’t match up with the theory, then the theory falls apart.

扎卡里·戴维斯：一个矛盾的数据点并不会扼杀整个理论，科学家会提出另一种方法让数据适用于这一范式。但当许多数据点都与理论不符时，这个理论就会崩塌。

Samuel Gershman: Basically, our understanding gets thrown into temporary chaos until the observations can coalesce around some new paradigm, and then it kind of starts over again.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：总的来说，我们的理解会暂时变得混乱，直到观测结果可以吻合新的范式，然后一切又会重新开始。

Zachary Davis: Could a possible metaphor for this story be something like the Jenga game, where you can take out, piece by piece, various blocks from the tower and it still stands, but at some crucial moment, you take out the last piece, and it collapses.

扎卡里·戴维斯：可以把这个过程比作层层叠游戏：你可以一层层地在积木塔中抽出许多块积木，而塔仍然不会倒。但在某个关键时刻，你抽出了最后一块积木，结果塔倒了。

Samuel Gershman: Mhm. Something like that. Yeah. But it's possible that, you know, the Jenga pieces aren't even Jenga pieces. And once we can't even agree on what the Jenga pieces are, then that's another way that the theory can collapse.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：嗯，确实像这样，没错。但是要知道，层层叠积木块甚至有可能并不是层层叠积木块。一旦我们没法一致同意哪些是层层叠积木块，理论就会以另一种方式崩塌。

What are the examples of paradigm shift?

有哪些范式转换的例子？

Zachary Davis: Let’s return to Aristotle. Aristotle was working within the paradigm of his time. If we were living in that paradigm, his conclusions would make sense to us. But in the past 2,500 years, the paradigms have shifted. Scientists discovered more and more data that contradicted Aristotle’s theories, and eventually, those theories fell apart. From that chaos, a new paradigm was born.

扎卡里·戴维斯：让我们回顾一下亚里士多德的理论。亚里士多德在他那个时代的范式下开展研究。如果我们生活在这种范式中，那他的结论对我们来说便讲得通。但在过去的2500年里，范式发生了转换。科学家发现越来越多的数据与亚里士多德的理论相矛盾。最终亚里士多德提出的这些理论崩溃了。而在这片混乱之中诞生出了新的范式。

Zachary Davis: To help illustrate this further, let’s look at an example from Professor Gershman’s field: cognitive neuroscience. One way that neuroscientists study the brain is by putting a person in an MRI machine and measuring how their brain responds to a stimulus—like a picture or a sound. Then, they try to establish a relationship between the brain signals and the stimulus.

扎卡里·戴维斯：为了进一步说明这一点，我们来看一下格雷施曼教授从事的认知神经科学研究中的一个例子。神经学家研究大脑的一个方法是，将人放入核磁共振成像机中，测量他们的大脑对图片、声音等刺激的反应。随后，他们尝试找出大脑信号与刺激之间的联系。

Samuel Gershman: It's a way of realizing the dream of the German psychophysicist that you could actually measure something that's inside the brain, not just the stuff coming in and going out.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：这个方法实现了德国精神物理学家的理想，可以测量出大脑内部的反应，而不仅仅是测量他们接收了哪些刺激，做出哪些行为反应。

Zachary Davis: For example, the scientist might put a woman in an MRI machine and show her a picture of a boat. When she sees the boat, there’s a whole bunch of activity in the visual cortex in her brain. If the scientist flips the boat upside down, the activity slows. When the scientist puts the boat right side up again, the activity speeds up. By changing just the orientation of the boat—right-side-up or upside-down—the scientist can identify which parts of her brain care about orientation. This seems pretty straightforward—within a certain paradigm.

扎卡里·戴维斯：比如，科学家可能会把一个女人放到核磁共振成像机中，然后给她看船的图片。当她看到了船，大脑的视觉皮层有很多活动。如果科学家将船颠倒过来，活动会变慢。当科学家再次将船的方向颠倒回去时，活动又会加快。仅仅改变船的方向，让它正面朝上或是颠倒过来，科学家就能识别出大脑的哪些部位分辨方向。在特定的范式中，这似乎非常直观。

Samuel Gershman: Prior to even getting to that point, you have to decide what are the properties that you want to look for. So there's a hidden assumption here that these are the right things to measure.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：在快要达到这一点之前，你必须确定想要研究的属性。所以这里隐含着一个假设，假设这些都是应当测量的内容。

Zachary Davis: Scientists come up with questions and hypotheses based on their hidden assumptions. They look where they think they’ll find the answer, and they look for the answer they think they’ll find.

扎卡里·戴维斯：科学家根据其隐含的假设提出了问题和猜想。他们从自认为可以找到答案的角度，寻找自认为可以找到的答案。

Zachary Davis: A famous anecdote illustrates this phenomenon.

扎卡里·戴维斯：一个很有名的小故事便阐述了这一现象。

Samuel Gershman: The story is that there's a drunk that's searching for his keys under a lamp at nighttime next to a park. And a police officer comes up and he says, “What are you doing here?” And the guy says, “I'm looking for my keys.” And he says, “Did you lose them over here?” And he says, “No, I lost them over in the park.” And the police officer says, “Well, why are you looking here?” And he says, “Because that's where the light is.”

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：故事是这样的：一个醉汉半夜在公园旁边的灯下寻找自己的钥匙。一位警察走了过来，问道：“你在这里做什么？”醉汉说：“我在找钥匙。”警察又问：“你是在这里丢的吗？”他说：“不，我在公园里弄丢的。”警察说：“诶，那你为什么在这里找？”他说：“因为光线在这儿。”

Samuel Gershman: I think that's true to some extent for, for neuroscience. We look for things that we know how to conceive of. And even when we recognize the limits of that approach, that there might be things that the brain codes that we haven't even thought of, we still end up kind of trapped in our own conceptual apparatus. But we only kind of break free of our concepts when we can somehow equip ourselves with some new theoretical notions that makes certain things visible that used to be invisible.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：我觉得神经科学在某种程度上就是像这个小故事一样。我们探索我们知道如何设想的东西，即使我们认识到这种方法的局限性，认识到有些我们没想到的大脑区域或许也在活动。但是我们只有了解一些新的理论概念，让过去不为人知的东西为人所知，我们才能打破自己的观念。

Zachary Davis: According to Kuhn, this is how scientific revolutions happen. When the invisible assumptions become visible, they can be reimagined. Then, the paradigm shifts.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在库恩看来，科学革命就是这么发生的。当不为人知的假设为人所知之后，人们会重建自己的假设，于是范式就会改变。

Zachary Davis: So is there any way to leave all our paradigms behind? Can we live with no paradigm?

扎卡里·戴维斯：那有什么方法可以让我们摆脱所有的范式呢？我们生活中可以没有范式吗？

Samuel Gershman: In his writings, John Ruskin, the art critic, sometimes invoked this notion of the innocent eye—this idea that you could just look at things and see things the way that really are. And one of the messages from modern psychology that influenced Kuhn a lot was that you can't do that. There is no innocent eye. And we have to reckon with the fact that all of our observations are not innocent. They're informed by our theories.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：艺术评论家约翰·拉斯金有时会在他的作品中提出“纯真眼眸”的观点，也就是只以事物真实存在的方式来看待它们。而现代心理学认为这完全不可能，根本不会有所谓的“纯真眼眸”。这个观点对库恩影响很大。我们必须认识到，所有的观察不可能是全然纯真的，多少会受我们理论的影响。

Zachary Davis: This isn't the same thing as saying there's no such thing as objective truth, is it? How does it differ from that kind of sphere of argument? Or is it in line with that?

扎卡里·戴维斯：这个观点和“不存在客观真理”这个观点不同，对吗？它们有哪些不同呢？或是它们真的一致吗？

Samuel Gershman: The way that I interpret the message from Kuhn's book is that even if there was an objective truth, we might not be able to access it because our access to the world is mediated not only by various kinds of measurement devices, but also the kind of conceptual lens through which we see the world, our theories. That observations really aren't theory-independent.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：我是这样理解库恩书中的观点的：即使存在客观真理，我们也无法触及它们，因为我们不仅通过各种测量设备来感知世界，还透过概念透镜，也就是我们的理论来认识世界。这些观察结果确实并非独立于理论之外的。

Samuel Gershman: Some people think of this as deeply depressing about science, that somehow we can't get rid of the human factor. But I guess I have the disposition of a humanist and I I'm not really afraid of that possibility. I think that we should embrace the human factor and accept that the limits of our understanding of the world are at least partly marked by the limits of our ingenuity in thinking about the world. It's kind of a beautiful thing. Like, we can constantly explore new ways of thinking about the world. We're not just going to reach truth and then everybody can retire.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：有些人因此对科学深感沮丧，认为我们无论如何都摆脱不了人为因素。不过我倒觉得像我这种人文主义者反而并不担心可能会出现这种情况。我觉得我们应当接纳这些人为因素，坦然接受一个事实，那就是我们对世界的理解之所以有限，部分是因为我们对世界的思考能力有限。这是件美妙的事。我们可以不断探索思考世界的新方法，不仅要找到真理，而且在找到之后我们也不能懈怠。

Zachary Davis: If we can’t reach objective truth, then controlling the paradigm can mean controlling how we understand our reality. The paradigm is power.

扎卡里·戴维斯：如果我们无法找到客观真理，那么控制范式就意味着控制我们对现实的理解方式。范式就是力量。

Samuel Gershman: All scientific frameworks, you know, normal science in general is going to impose a power structure because it's excluding certain kinds of explanations as being valid.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：要知道，所有科学框架、所有常规科学往往都会构建一种权力结构，因为它们否定了其他类型解释的合理性。

Zachary Davis: If you believe one of these quote-unquote “invalid” theories, you can’t fit within the paradigm. But there’s a benefit to accepting that we can’t reach objective truth: nobody can say their paradigm is perfect.

扎卡里·戴维斯：如果你相信某个所谓的“不合理的”理论，那么你就无法融入这一范式。接受人们无法找到客观真理这个事实也有好处，这样一来，没有人可以说自己的范式是完美的。

Samuel Gershman: We have to always at least leave open the possibility that we're wrong, and I like that aspect of science. It's, to me, it's a sort of liberating message that you can appeal to outsiders, and crackpots, and poets, and novelists for your inspiration, that there's gonna be, there's always gonna be cracks in the facade that can let in light in unexpected ways.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：我们至少必须要知道自己有可能会是错的，这就是科学让我喜欢的一点。对我而言这释放了某种自由的信号，你可以从外行、怪咖、诗人和小说家那儿获取灵感，总会有光不经意间从墙缝中透过来。

How did the book influence the world?

这本书是如何影响世界的？

Zachary Davis: That’s beautifully put. How did this book influence the field of psychology?

扎卡里·戴维斯：这个说法太美了。那么，这本书是如何影响心理学界的呢？

Samuel Gershman: I actually think that this book has not influenced psychology enough, nor has it influenced neuroscience enough. My presumption is that scientists in general are very resistant to relativistic notions because they see it as some kind of humanist plot to undermine science or something like that. You know, for them, they've set up their, their paradigm. They're doing normal science for the most part, and they don't see anything wrong with that.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：其实我觉得这本书对心理学的影响倒不是很大，对神经科学也一样。我推测或许是因为科学家往往会排斥相对主义的观点，把它们看作人文主义者颠覆科学的阴谋诡计。要知道他们已经建立了自己的范式，多数时候都在做常规科学研究，也并不觉得这有什么问题。

Samuel Gershman: And I think in some ways, Kuhn wouldn't see anything wrong with that either. But the problem comes when there's some attempt to disintegrate the paradigm. And that, obviously that's not something that's appreciated by people who are pursuing normal science. I don't think they're quite ready to reckon with that. I mean, some of them are.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：我感觉从某种角度上看，库恩也并不觉得这有什么问题。但是一旦有人试图推翻这种范式，问题便会出现。显然追求常规科学的人并不喜欢这种情况。我觉得他们还没准备好考虑这种情况。起码，有一部分人是没准备好的。

Zachary Davis: Well, it's always hard to eat humble pie, I guess, as a scholar. But it's interesting that, the book begins with a moment of historical empathy and a kind of intellectual humility, like, oh, I could have been wrong, too. And the lesson for scientists as a whole is always remember, you know, you're in a particular paradigm. It's not that there's no truth. It's just that it's maybe never complete.

扎卡里·戴维斯：嗯，我猜对学者来说，承认错误往往很难。不过有意思的是，这本书是以那些历史移情（指研究者要将自己移入到研究对象的历史情境中，包括思想和情感两个方面，让自己像历史人物那样思考，同时体会历史人物在当时情境中的情感和心理）和智识谦逊的时刻开篇的，提到了那些科学家意识到自己可能犯了错。这给所有科学家的教训就是，记住自己总是处于特定的范式中的。并不是说真理不存在，而是我们可能永远无法完整地认识真理。

Samuel Gershman: Yeah. Yeah, I like thinking about it as never being complete.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：嗯，嗯。我喜欢这么想：真理永无止境。

Zachary Davis: So what fields has it taken hold in more? This book I read as an undergrad. It's an important book, a very important book. And it's influenced a lot of people. But where has its ideas taken hold the most, in your view?

扎卡里·戴维斯：那么这本书在哪些领域影响更大呢？我读本科的时候看了这本书。这本书非常重要，影响了很多人。在您看来，书里的思想对哪个领域影响最大呢？

Samuel Gershman: Well, certainly in philosophy of science, it was hugely influential, and it caused a lot of debate about to what extent we should be thinking about objective knowledge as being something kind of fundamentally elusive. Or is it possible to define the boundaries of knowledge in such a way that we don't have to completely give up the notion of objective truth or accessing objective truth? And other thinkers have kind of spun similar ideas about scientific paradigms and sort of the social and psychological aspects of science. So I think that was really a big turning point.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：嗯，当然在科学哲学领域，它影响深远，引发了很多争论，探讨我们应当在多大程度上认为客观知识从根本上难以捉摸，或是有没有可能在不用完全否定客观真理的存在、以及否定无法发现客观真理的前提下，定义知识的边界。其他思想家也提出了类似的科学范式以及科学社会与科学心理方面的观点。所以我认为这本书确实标志了一个重大的转折。

Zachary Davis: Yeah. It strikes me just as you said, what's powerful about this is it seems to be a middle way between those who say there's absolute objective truth, we can access it, humans are powerful, perfect creatures, and there is another side that says we can't know anything, all truth is biased, there's no such thing as any kind of objective truth, in fact, therefore, who's to say what anything is? They’re both extremes, I suppose. But Kuhn offers this other way, which is still confident about what science can achieve but preserves a humility about any one particular moment in which it's all contained.

扎卡里·戴维斯：嗯，就像您说的，它让我印象深刻。它的强大之处在于似乎提供了一条中间路线，既不认为存在绝对真理，人类可以发现绝对真理，人类无所不能、非常完美；也不认为人类无法知道任何事情，所有真理都是有偏见的，不存在客观真理，所以实际上又有谁能弄明白所有事情呢。这两种观点都很极端，而库恩提供了另一种思路，既让人相信科学所能取得的成就，又为科学史上的任一时刻留有一丝纠错的余地。

Samuel Gershman: Right. Yeah. Yeah, it certainly does not deny the successes of science. We can send rockets to the moon. That's because of science. It's not like there's no there. Right? But just because we can send rockets to the moon doesn't mean that our conceptualization of the laws of science have been kind of fixed within a single framework.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：嗯，没错。它当然并没有否定科学的成功。我们可以把火箭送上月球，这得归功于科学。科学并非一无是处，对吧？但仅仅因为我们可以将火箭送上月球，并不意味着我们对科学定律的理解应当局限在一个框架里。

Zachary Davis: Could you give us the cocktail party answer to what is this book about and why does it matter? Why is this a book that's changed the world?

扎卡里·戴维斯：若在鸡尾酒会上发言，您会怎么说这本书讲了什么、它为何重要、如何改变了世界呢？

Samuel Gershman: The book is important because it develops a picture of how science actually works and the philosophical implications of that picture. And in particular, the idea that science does not progress linearly but moves in kind of discrete jumps between different paradigms in which the set of assumptions are relatively stable until they break down in the face of stress from observations that don't fit with the prevailing paradigm. And when that happens, you have a revolution.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：这本书之所以重要，是因为它描绘了科学实际的运作方式以及这种运作方式的哲学内涵，特别是它提出了，科学并非是在线性发展，而是在不同的范式间间歇性地跳跃发展。在范式中一组假设往往会保持相对稳定，然而当观测结果与公认的范式不相符时，该范式便会面临挑战，最终破裂。这时候便会掀起一场科学革命。

Samuel Gershman: And Kuhn's contribution was to try to really get to the heart of what a revolution was in the context of science as a kind of conceptual overturning, not just of a particular theory, but of a whole way of seeing the world. And in that way, this work, which is in part about the history of science, also intersects with the philosophy of science and the psychology of science and the sociology of science. And it's a really unique work at the intersection of those fields. There's really nothing quite like it.

塞缪尔·格雷施曼：库恩的贡献在于，他试图探究了科学革命的真正内核，把它视作观念上的巨变，视作对世界认知方式的转变，而不仅仅是某个理论革新。这样来看，这本书既涉及到了科学史，又涉及到了科学哲学、科学心理学和科学社会学。这本书交叉融合了这些领域，令人称奇。可谓是绝无仅有。

Zachary Davis: Writ Large is a production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Galen Beebe and me, Zachary Davis, with help from Feiran Du, Ariel Liu, Wendy Wu, and Monica Zhang. Our theme song is by Ian Coss. Don’t miss an episode. Subscribe today in the Ximalaya app. Thanks for listening.

扎卡里·戴维斯：本节目由喜马拉雅独家制作播出。感谢您的收听，我们下期再见！