第1集 【费曼访谈】发现的乐趣

[段 1]

I have a friend who’s an artist and he’s sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say, look how beautiful it is. And I’ll agree. And he says, you see, as I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing. And I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too. I believe, although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is, that I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions, which also have a beauty. I mean, it’s not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter. There’s also beauty at a smaller dimension. The inner structure, also the processes, the fact that the colors and the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting. It means that insects can see the color. It adds a question.

[译文 1]

我有一个朋友是艺术家，他有时持一种我不太赞同的观点。他会举起一朵花说，你看它多美丽。我会同意他的说法。然后他说，你看，作为艺术家我能看到这朵花有多美，但作为科学家，哦，你把它拆开就变成了一件乏味的东西。我觉得他有点古怪。首先，他所看到的美其他人也能看到，我也能看到。我相信，尽管我在审美上可能不如他那么精致，但我也能欣赏一朵花的美。同时，我所看到的这朵花比他看到的要多得多。我能想象里面的细胞，那些复杂的活动，它们同样具有美感。我的意思是，美不仅仅存在于这个一厘米的尺度上。更小的维度上也有美。内部结构、各种过程，以及花朵的颜色进化出来是为了吸引昆虫授粉，这些都很有趣。这意味着昆虫能看到颜色。这又增添了一个问题。

[段 2]

Does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms that are…sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts. I can’t think of anything to say on top of all this. It’s too much for a human mind. You have to tell me when you’re going to drown my mouth. Yeah, all right, tell me. You get time to compose yourself. The trouble is you look good and the pictures never match it. You’re gonna be alright. You always say that Richard. I know. And I’m almost always right. I’ve always been rather very one-sided about the science and when I was younger I concentrated almost all my effort on it. I didn’t have time to learn and I had no much patience with what’s called the humanities, even though in the university there were humanities that you had to take, I tried my best to avoid somehow to learn anything and to work at it. It’s only afterwards when I’ve gotten older and I’m more relaxed that I’ve spread out a little bit.

[译文 2]

这种审美感受在较低等的生物中也存在吗？为什么它是审美的？各种各样有趣的问题，科学知识只是为花朵增添了更多的兴奋、神秘感和敬畏感。它只是增添。我不理解它怎么会减损。在所有这些之上我无话可说。这对人脑来说太多了。你得告诉我你什么时候要让我闭嘴。好吧，告诉我。你有时间整理一下自己。麻烦的是你看起来很好，但照片从来配不上你。你会没事的。你总是这么说理查德。我知道。而且我几乎总是对的。我一直对科学相当片面，年轻时我几乎把所有精力都投入其中。我没有时间学习，对所谓的人文科学也没有多少耐心，尽管大学里有人文课程是必修的，我还是想方设法逃避学习。只是后来我年纪大了，更放松了一些，才稍微拓展了一点。

[段 3]

I’ve learned to draw and I read a little bit, but I’m really still a very one-sided person and don’t know a great deal. I have a limited intelligence and I’ve used it in a particular direction. We had the Encyclopedia Britannica at home and even when I was a small boy he used to sit me on his lap and read to me from the Encyclopedia Britannica. And we would read, say, about dinosaurs. And maybe it would be talking about the brontosaurus or something. And he would say something like, or the tyrannosaurus rex. And he would say something like, this thing is 25 feet high and the head is six feet across, you see. And so he’d stop always and say, let’s see what that means. That would mean that if he stood in our front yard, he would be high enough to put his head through the window, to put his head through the window, but not quite because the head is a little bit too wide, it would break the window as it came by. Everything we’d read would be translated as best we could into some reality, so that I learned to do that, and everything I read I tried to figure out what it really means, what it’s really saying by translating.

[译文 3]

我学会了画一点画，也读了一点书，但我确实仍然是一个相当片面的人，懂得不多。我的智力有限，而且我用在了某个特定的方向。我们家里有《大英百科全书》，甚至在我还是个小男孩的时候，他经常让我坐在他的膝盖上，给我读《大英百科全书》。我们会读，比如说，关于恐龙的内容。也许书中会讲到雷龙之类的。他会说，或者霸王龙。他会说，这个东西有25英尺高，头有六英尺宽，你看。然后他总是会停下来，说，让我们看看那是什么意思。那意思是，如果它站在我们的院子里，它的高度足以把头伸进窗户，把头伸进窗户，但又不完全能，因为头稍微有点宽，伸进来的时候会把窗户弄碎。我们读到的所有内容都会被尽可能转化为某种现实，这样我就学会了这样做，我读的每样东西都试图通过转化来弄清楚它真正的含义，它到底在说什么。

[段 4]

And so I used to get read the encyclopedia when I was a boy, but with translation, you see. So it was very exciting and interesting to think that there was animals of such magnitude. I wasn’t frightened that there would be one coming in my window as a consequence of this, I don’t think. But I thought it was very, very interesting and that they all died out, and at that time nobody knew why. We used to go to the Catskill Mountains. We lived in New York, and the Catskill Mountains is a place where people went in the summer. And the fathers, there was a big group of people there, but the fathers would all go back to New York to work during the week and only come back over on the weekend. And on the weekends when my father came, he would take me for walks in the woods and would tell me various things about interesting things that were going on in the woods, which I’ll explain in a minute. But the other mothers seeing this, of course, thought that was wonderful and that their other fathers should take their sons for a walk. So they tried to work on them, but they didn’t get anywhere at first and they wanted my father to take all the kids but he didn’t want to because he had a special relationship to me we were a personal thing together so it ended up that the other fathers had to take their children for walks the next weekend and the next Monday when they were all back to work we were all the kids were playing in the field and one kid said to me, see that bird?

[译文 4]

所以小时候我总是读百科全书，但是带着转化，你看。所以想到有如此巨大的动物，是非常令人兴奋和有趣的。我并不害怕会有一只从我的窗户爬进来，我觉得不会。但我觉得这非常非常有趣，而且它们都灭绝了，当时没有人知道为什么。我们过去常常去卡茨基尔山脉。我们住在纽约，卡茨基尔山脉是人们夏天去的地方。父亲们，那里有一大群人，但父亲们每个星期都要回纽约工作，只有周末才回来。周末我父亲来的时候，他会带我在树林里散步，给我讲树林里发生的各种有趣的事情，我稍后会解释。但其他母亲看到这些，当然觉得很好，认为她们的其他父亲也应该带她们的儿子去散步。所以她们试图说服她们的父亲，但一开始没有进展，她们想让我父亲带上所有的孩子，但他不想，因为他和我有一种特殊的关系，我们之间是一种亲密的关系，所以结果是下个周末其他父亲不得不带她们的孩子去散步，下个星期一当他们都回去工作时，我们所有的孩子都在田野里玩耍，一个孩子对我说，看到那只鸟了吗？

[段 5]

What kind of a bird is that? And I said, I haven’t the slightest idea what kind of a bird it is. He says, it’s a brown-throated thrush or something. He says, your father doesn’t tell you anything. But it was the opposite. My father had taught me, looking at a bird, he says, do you know what that bird is? It’s a brown-throated thrush. But in Portuguese it’s a hontarapéado. In Italian, he says in Chinese, in Japanese, etc. He says now they’ve know all the languages you want to know what the name of that bird is and when you’re finished with all that, he says, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You only know about humans in different places and what they call the bird. Now he says let’s look at the bird and what it’s doing. He had taught me to notice things and one day when I was playing with what we call an express wagon, which is a little wagon which has a railing around it for children to play with that they can pull around. It had a ball in it. I remember this. It had a ball in it. And I pulled the wagon and I noticed something about the way the ball moved.

[译文 5]

那是什么鸟？我说，我完全不知道那是什么鸟。他说，那是褐喉鸫之类的。他说，你父亲什么也没教你。但事实恰恰相反。我父亲教过我，看着一只鸟，他说，你知道那是什么鸟吗？那是褐喉鸫。但在葡萄牙语里它叫hontarapéado。在意大利语里，他说在中文里，在日语里，等等。他说现在你可以用所有你想知道的语言去了解那只鸟的名字，当你把所有这些都弄完之后，他说，你对那只鸟仍然一无所知。你只知道不同地方的人类怎么称呼这只鸟。现在他说，让我们看看这只鸟，看看它在做什么。他教我注意观察事物，有一天我在玩我们叫手推车的那个东西，就是那种四周有围栏的小推车，孩子们可以拉着到处玩。里面有一个球。我记得这个。里面有一个球。我拉着推车，注意到球的移动方式有些特别。

[段 6]

So I went to my father and I said, Say, Pop, I noticed something. When I pull the wagon, the ball rolls to the back of the wagon. It rushes to the back of the wagon. And when I’m pulling along and I suddenly stop, the ball rolls to the front of the wagon. I said, Why is that? And he said, That, he says, nobody knows. He said, the general principle is that things that are moving try to keep on moving, and things that are standing still tend to stand still unless you push on them hard. And he says, this tendency is called inertia, but nobody knows why it’s true. Now, that’s a deep understanding. He doesn’t give me a name. He knew the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something, which I learned very early. He went on to say, if you look close, you’ll find the ball does not rush to the back of the wagon, but it’s the back of the wagon that you’re pulling against the ball, that the ball stands still. As a matter of fact, from the friction starts to move forward, really, and doesn’t move back. So I ran back to the little wagon and set the ball up again and pulled the wagon from under it and looking sideways and seeing indeed he was right.

[译文 6]

于是我去找我父亲，我说，爸爸，我注意到了一件事。当我拉车的时候，球会滚到车的后面。它冲到车的后面。当我拉着车突然停下来时，球会滚到车的前面。我说，为什么会这样？他说，那个，他说，没有人知道。他说，一般的规律是，运动的东西倾向于保持运动，静止的东西倾向于保持静止，除非你用力推它们。他说，这种倾向叫做惯性，但没有人知道为什么会这样。这是一种深刻的理解。他没有给我一个名字。他知道知道一个事物的名字和了解一件事物之间的区别，这一点我很早就学到了。他继续说，如果你仔细观察，你会发现球并没有冲到车的后面，而是你在拉车的时候，车的后部在球下面移动，球实际上是静止的。事实上，由于摩擦力，球稍微向前移动了，并没有真的往后退。于是我跑回小车那里，重新放好球，从下面拉过小车，从侧面看，发现他说得对。

[段 7]

The ball never moved backwards in the wagon when I pulled the wagon forward. It moved backward relative to the wagon, but relative to the sidewalk it was moved forward a little bit it’s just the wagon caught up with it so that’s the way I was educated by my father with those kind of examples and discussions with no pressure just lovely interesting discussions my cousin at that time who was three years old was in high school and was having considerable difficulty with his algebra and had a tutor come. And I was allowed to sit in the corner while a tutor would try to teach my cousin algebra. And so problems like 2x plus… I said to my cousin, I said, what are you trying to do? You know, I hear him talk about x. He said, well, you know, 2x plus 7 is equal to 15. He said, and you’re trying to find out what x is. I said, you mean four. He says, yeah, but you did it with arithmetic. You have to do it by algebra. And that’s why my cousin was never able to do algebra, because he didn’t understand how he was supposed to do it.

[译文 7]

当我向前拉车的时候，球从来没有在车里向后移动过。它相对于车是向后移动的，但相对于人行道，它稍微向前移动了一点，只是车赶上了它。这就是我父亲教育我的方式，用这样的例子和讨论，没有压力，只是愉快有趣的讨论。我表哥当时比我大三岁，在上高中，代数学得很吃力，请了一个家庭教师。我坐在角落里，看着家庭教师试图教我表哥代数。于是出现了像2x加……这样的题目。我对我表哥说，我说，你在做什么？你知道，我听到他谈到x。他说，嗯，你知道，2x加7等于15。他说，你要找出x是多少。我说，你的意思是4。他说，对，但你是用算术做的。你必须用代数来做。这就是我表哥永远学不会代数的原因，因为他不知道他应该怎么做。

[段 8]

There was no way. I learned algebra, fortunately, by not going to school, by knowing the whole idea was to find out what x was, and it didn’t make any difference how you did it. There’s no such a thing as you don’t do it by arithmetic, you do it by algebra, that was a false thing that they had invented in school so that the children who have to study algebra can all pass it. They had invented a set of rules which, if you followed them without thinking, could produce the answer. Subtract seven from both sides. If you have a multiplier, divide both sides by the multiplier, and so on. A series of steps by which you could get the answer if you didn’t understand what you were trying to do. There was a series of math books, which starts arithmetic for the practical man, and then algebra for the practical man, and then trigonometry for the practical man. And I learned trigonometry for the practical man from that. I soon forgot it again because I didn’t understand it very well. But they were going to get, the series was coming out, and the library was going to get calculus for the practical man.

[译文 8]

没有办法。我学代数，幸运的是，没有去上学，而是知道了整个思路就是要找出x是多少，怎么做根本没有区别。不存在什么不能用算术做、必须用代数做这回事，那是学校发明出来的东西，这样那些必须学代数的孩子就都能通过。他们发明了一套规则，如果你照着做不用思考，就能得出答案。两边同时减去7。如果有乘数，两边同时除以乘数，等等。一系列步骤，如果你不理解你在做什么，也能得出答案。有一套数学书，先是《实用算术》，然后是《实用代数》，然后是《实用三角学》。我从那套书里学了《实用三角学》。我很快就忘了，因为我不太理解。但那套书还在继续出版，图书馆即将引进《实用微积分》。

[段 9]

And I knew by this time, by reading the encyclopedia, that calculus was an important subject and it was an interesting one, and I ought to learn it. This was, I was older now, I was perhaps 13. And then the calculus book finally came out, And I was so excited and I went to the librarian to take it out. And she looks at me and she says, you’re just a child, what are you taking this book out for? So it was one of the few times in my life I was uncovered my lie. I said it was for my father, his son. So I took it home and I learned calculus from it. And I tried to explain it to my father. And he’d start to read the beginning of it. And he found it confusing. And it really bothered, that bothered me a little bit. I didn’t know that he was so limited. He didn’t understand. And I thought it was relatively simple and straightforward that he didn’t understand it. So that was the first time I knew I had learned more in some sense than he. One of the things that my father taught me, besides physics, whether it’s correct or not, was disrespect for certain kinds of things.

[译文 9]

到这个时候，通过阅读百科全书，我已经知道微积分是一门重要的学科，而且是一门有趣的学科，我应该学习它。那时候我已经年纪大一些了，大概13岁左右。后来微积分的书终于出版了，我非常兴奋，跑去图书馆找管理员要借这本书。她看着我说，你只是个小孩，借这本书干什么？所以这是我人生中为数不多的几次被人揭穿谎言的场合之一。我说这是借给我父亲的，他儿子要看。于是我把它带回家，从中学会了微积分。我试着给我父亲讲解。他开始读开头部分，觉得非常困惑。这让我有些困扰，我不曾意识到他竟然如此有限，他不理解。而我以为这相对简单直接，他居然不懂。那是我第一次意识到，在某种意义上，我学到的东西已经超过了我父亲。我父亲教给我的东西，除了物理学之外，不管正确与否，就是对某些事物的不敬。

[段 10]

For example, when I was a little boy in a Roto Gravure, that’s printed pictures and newspapers first came out in the New York Times, used to sit me again on his knee, and he’d open a picture, and there was a picture of the Pope with everybody bowing in front of him. And he’d say, now look at these humans, he’d say. Here’s one human standing here, and all these others are bowing. Now what is the difference? This one is the Pope, and those are the ordinary people. He hated the Pope anyway. And he’d say, the difference is epaulets. Of course, not in the case of the Pope. Maybe it was a general. It was always the uniform, the position, that this man has the same human problems. He eats dinner like anybody else. He goes to the bathroom. He has the same kind of problems as everybody. He’s a human being. Why are they all bowing to him? Only because of his name and his position, because of his uniform, not because of something he especially did or his honor or something like that. He, by the way, was in the uniform business, so he knew what the difference was with a man with the uniform off and the uniform on.

[译文 10]

比如，当我还小的时候，在《罗托画报》——那种印刷图片的报纸首次在《纽约时报》上出现——他常常让我坐在他膝盖上，翻开一张图片，上面是教皇，所有人都在他面前鞠躬。他会说，你看看这些人。这里站着一个人，其他人都在鞠躬。区别在哪里？这个人是教皇，那些是普通人。反正他讨厌教皇。他会说，区别就在于肩章。当然，教皇可能不是肩章，也许是个将军。总归是那身制服、那个位置，这个人同样有人类的种种问题。他像别人一样吃晚饭，他也要上厕所，他和所有人一样有着同样的烦恼。他就是一个人类。为什么所有人都要向他鞠躬？仅仅因为他的名字和地位，因为他的制服，而不是因为他做了什么特别的事或者他的荣誉之类的。顺便说一下，他从事的就是制服行业，所以他很清楚一个人穿上制服和脱下制服有什么区别。

[段 11]

It’s the same man for him. He was happy with me, I believe. Once though, when I came back from MIT and been there a few years, he said to me, he said, you become educated about these things. And there’s one question I’ve always had that I never really understood very well. And I’d like to ask you now that you’ve studied this, to explain it to me. And I asked him what it was. And he said that he understood that when an atom made a transition from one state to another, it emits a particle of light called a photon. I said, that’s right. He says, well now, is the photon in the atom ahead of time that it comes out, or is there no photon in it to start with? I said, there’s no photon in it, it’s just that the electron makes a transition. He said, well then where does it come from, then how does it come out? So I said, of course I couldn’t answer him. The view is that photons, numbers, aren’t conserved. They’re just created by the motion of the electron. I could try to explain it to him something like that the sound that I’m making now wasn’t in me.

[译文 11]

对他来说，那还是同一个人。我相信他是为我感到高兴的。不过有一次，我从MIT回来，已经在那里待了几年，他对我说，你在这些事情上受了教育，我一直有一个问题始终没太弄明白，现在你已经学了这个，我想请你能给我解释一下。我问他是什么问题。他说他理解当一个原子从一种状态跃迁到另一种状态时，会释放出一个叫做光子的光粒子。我说，没错。他说，那么，这个光子是事先就在原子里面等着出来的，还是原子里面一开始就没有光子？我说，里面没有光子，只是电子发生了跃迁。他说，那它从哪里来的？又是怎么出来的？我说，当然，我没法回答他。现在的观点是，光子、数量是不守恒的，它们只是由电子的运动创造出来的。我可以试着给他解释，就像我现在发出的声音本来也不在我身体里一样。

[段 12]

It’s not like my little boy said when he was just little. One day he started to talk. He was talking, and he suddenly said that he could no longer say a certain word. The word was cat because his word bag has run out of the word cat. So there’s no word bag that you have inside that you use up the words as they come out. You just make them as they go along. And in the same sense, there was no photon bag in an atom. And when the photons came out, they didn’t come from somewhere. But I couldn’t do much better. He was not satisfied with me in that respect, and I never was able to explain any of the things that that he didn’t understand. So he was unsuccessful. He sent me through all these universities in order to find out these things, and never did find out. It was a completely different kind of a thing, it would mean that I would have to stop the research in what I was doing, which is my life’s desire to take time off to do this, which I felt I should do in order to protect civilization, if you want.

[译文 12]

这不像我小儿子小时候说的那样。有一天他开始学说话，他突然说他不会说某个词了。那个词是"猫"，因为他的词袋里"猫"这个词用完了。所以你身体里并没有一个词袋，用掉一个词就少一个。你只是在说话的过程中创造它们。同样的道理，原子里也没有一个光子袋。当光子出来时，它们并非来自某个地方。但我也没有更好的解释。他在这方面对我不满意，我也始终没能给他解释清楚他不懂的那些东西。所以他是失败的。他送我去读所有这些大学，就是为了弄明白这些事情，却始终没有弄明白。这完全是另一回事，那意味着我必须停下我正在做的研究——这是我毕生的愿望——抽出时间来做这件事，我觉得为了保卫文明，如果你们愿意这样说的话，我应该这样做。

[段 13]

Okay? So that was what I had to debate with myself. My first reaction, well, I didn’t want to get interrupted in my normal work to do this odd job. There was also the problem, of course, of any moral thing involving war. I didn’t want to have much to do with that, but it kind of scared me when I realized what the weapon would be, which I realized, and that since it might be possible, it would be possible, there was nothing that I knew that indicated that if we could do it, they couldn’t do it, and therefore it was very important to try to cooperate. If we got to moral questions, I do have something I would like to say about it, because the original reason to start the project, which I had, which was the Germans were in danger, started me off on a process of action which was to try to develop this first the system in Princeton, then at Los Alamos to try to make the bomb work. All kinds of attempts to redesign, to make it a worse bomb or whatever and so on, and working all this time to see if we could make it go.

[译文 13]

好吧？这就是我内心需要挣扎的事情。我的第一反应是，我不想被正常的工作打断去做这件奇怪的事。当然还有一个问题，任何涉及战争的道义问题。我不想跟这些有太多牵连，但当我意识到这种武器会是什么的时候，我确实感到害怕，而且既然我们可能造出来，那就有可能造出来，据我所知，没有任何迹象表明如果我们能做到，他们做不到，因此努力合作就变得非常重要。如果我们谈到道德问题，我确实有一些话想说，因为我最初启动这个项目的理由——我所拥有的理由——是德国人处于危险之中，这促使我开始了一系列的行动，试图首先开发这个系统，先在普林斯顿，然后在洛斯阿拉莫斯，试图让炸弹运作起来。各种重新设计的尝试，把它做成一个更糟糕的炸弹等等，所有这一切努力都是为了看看我们能不能让它成功。

[段 14]

And so it was a project in which we all worked very, very hard and all cooperated together. And with any project like that, you continue to work trying to get success, having decided to do it. But what I did immorally, I would say, was not to remember the reason that I said I was doing it, so that when the reason changed, which was that Germany was defeated, not the single thought came to my mind at all about that, that that meant now that I have to reconsider why I’m continuing to do this. I simply didn’t think, okay? Only reaction I remember, perhaps I was blinded by my own reaction, it was a very considerable elation and excitement and there was a kind of parties and people got drunk and it would make a tremendously interesting contrast of what was going on in Los Alamos at the same time as what was going on in Hiroshima. I was involved with this happy thing and also drinking and drunk and playing drums sitting on the hood of the bonnet of a jeep and playing drums and excitement running all over Los Alamos at the same time as the people were dying and struggling in Hiroshima.

[译文 14]

所以这是一个我们所有人都非常非常努力、齐心协力的项目。对于任何这样的项目，一旦决定去做，你就会不断努力争取成功。但我在道德上做得不对的地方，可以说，是我忘记了我当初说要做这件事的理由，所以当理由改变的时候——也就是德国已经战败——我脑海中完全没有想到过这一点，也就是说我现在必须重新考虑我为什么还要继续做这件事。我压根就没这么想过，好吧？我只记得自己的反应，也许我被自己的反应蒙蔽了，那是一种非常强烈的兴奋和激动，有各种派对，人们喝醉了酒，这与同时在广岛发生的事情形成了极其鲜明的对比。我参与着这件快乐的事，也在喝酒、喝醉、坐在吉普车引擎盖上打鼓，整个洛斯阿拉莫斯都充满了兴奋，而与此同时，广岛的人们正在死亡和挣扎。

[段 15]

I had a very strong reaction after the war of a peculiar nature. It may be from just the bomb itself and it may be for some other psychological reasons I had just lost my wife or something. But I remember being in New York with my mother in a restaurant, right after, immediately after, and thinking about New York. And I knew how big the bomb in Hiroshima was, how big an area it covered, and so on. And I realized from where we were, I don’t know, 59th Street, to drop one at 34th Street, and then it would spread all the way out there, and all these people would be killed, and all the things would be killed. And that wasn’t only one bomb available, but it was easy to continue to make them. And therefore, that things were sort of doomed, because already it appeared to me, very early, earlier than to others who were more optimistic, that international relations and the way people were behaving was no different than it had ever been before and that it was just going to go out the same way as any other thing and I was sure it was going to therefore be used very soon.

[译文 15]

战后我产生了一种非常强烈的、奇特的反应。也许仅仅是因为炸弹本身，也许是因为其他一些心理原因，比如我刚失去了妻子。但我记得战后不久，我和母亲在纽约的一家餐厅里，我在想着纽约。我知道广岛那颗炸弹有多大，覆盖面积多大，等等。我意识到，从我们所在的地方——我不知道，59街——如果往34街投一颗炸弹，它会一路扩散过去，所有人都会被杀死，所有东西都会被摧毁。而且不只一颗炸弹，还可以很容易地继续制造。因此，一切可以说是注定要毁灭的，因为在我看来，已经很明显了，而且我比那些更乐观的人更早看出来，国际关系和人们的行为方式跟以往没有任何不同，一切只会按照老路发展下去，我确信这些武器很快就会被用上。

[段 16]

So I felt very uncomfortable and thought, really believed, that it was silly. I would see people building a bridge and I would say they don’t understand. I really believed that it was senseless to make anything because it would all be destroyed very soon anyway. That they didn’t understand that. And I had this very strange view of any construction that I would see. I always thought how foolish they are to try to make something. So I was really in a kind of depressive condition. But they expected me to be wonderful to offer me a job like this, and I wasn’t wonderful. And therefore, I realized a new principle. It was, I’m not responsible for what other people think I’m able to do. I don’t have to be good because they think I’m going to be good. And somehow or other, I could relax about this. And I thought to myself, I haven’t done anything important. Well, I’m never going to do anything important. But I used to enjoy physics and mathematical things, and because I used to play with it. It was never very important, but I used to do things for the fun of it.

[译文 16]

所以我感到非常不舒服，真的认为这一切都很愚蠢。我看到人们建一座桥，就会说他们不明白。我真的相信建造任何东西都是毫无意义的，因为反正很快都会被毁灭。他们不明白这一点。我对任何正在进行的建设都有一种非常奇怪的想法。我总觉得他们试图建造什么东西是多么愚蠢。所以我真的处于一种抑郁状态。但他们期望我表现出色，给我这样的工作机会，而我并不出色。因此我认识到了一条新的原则。那就是，我不需要为别人认为我能做到的事情负责。我没有义务因为别人觉得我会优秀就非得优秀。不知怎么的，我可以在这件事上放松下来。我心想，我没有做过什么重要的事。好吧，我永远不会做任何重要的事。但我过去喜欢物理学和数学这些东西，因为我过去只是把它们当作玩耍。从来都不是很重要的事情，但我过去做事纯粹是为了好玩。

[段 17]

So I decided I’m gonna do things only for the fun of it. And only that afternoon when I was eating lunch, some kid threw up a plate in the cafeteria, which has a blue medallion on the plate, the Cornell sign in the cafeteria. And as he threw up the plate and it came down, it wobbled and the blue thing went around like this. And I wondered, it seemed to me the blue thing went around faster than the wobble, and I wondered what the relation was between the two. See, I was just playing, no importance at all. So I played around with the equations of motion of rotating things, and I found out that if the wobble is small, the blue thing goes around twice as fast as the wobble goes around. And then I tried to figure out if I could see why that was directly from Newton’s laws instead of through the complicated equations, and I worked that out for the fun of it. And then I went to Hans Bader and I said, hey, by the way, I’ll show you something amusing. And I explained this to him. And he said to me, that’s very amusing and interesting.

[译文 17]

于是我决定，以后做事纯粹是为了好玩。就在那天下午，我在食堂吃午饭的时候，有个孩子把一个盘子扔了起来，盘子上有一个蓝色的圆形标志，就是食堂里康奈尔大学的那个标志。他把盘子扔上去，盘子落下来的时候晃了起来，那个蓝色的东西就这样转。我当时就觉得，那个蓝色标志旋转的速度似乎比盘子晃动的速度更快，我就想弄清楚这两者之间到底是什么关系。你看，我就是在玩，完全没有别的目的。于是我拿着旋转物体的运动方程摆弄了一番，结果发现，如果晃动幅度很小的话，那个蓝色标志的旋转速度是晃动速度的两倍。然后我又试着想能不能不通过那些复杂的方程，而是直接从牛顿定律出发来解释为什么会这样，我纯粹为了好玩把它搞明白了。后来我去找汉斯·巴德，跟他说，嘿，顺便给你看个有趣的东西。我就把这个讲给他听。他说，这非常有趣，很有意思。

[段 18]

He said, but what is the use of it? I said, that doesn’t make any use. I’m just doing it for the fun of it. And then Bob Wilson, who was the head of the nuclear lab there, the same Bob Wilson, had some kind of instinct or something, because it was at the same day that he called me, and he told me that when they hire a professor at a university, it’s their responsibility what the professor does and it’s their risk and if he doesn’t do anything or he doesn’t accomplish anything it’s not his thing to worry about that they’re taking the risk to put him in the environment and I should do whatever I want, amuse myself or whatever I want so with that double combination I could relax somehow I was getting out from some psychological problem and I relaxed and started to play as I said with the rotation This rotation led me to a similar problem of the rotation of the spin of an electron according to Dirac’s equation, and that just led me back into quantum electrodynamics, which is the problem I’ve been working on, and I continue now to play with it in the relaxed fashion I had originally done, and everything is just like taking a cork out of a bottle.

[译文 18]

他说，但这有什么用呢？我说，没什么用啊。我纯粹就是为了好玩。然后鲍勃·威尔逊，就是那里的核实验室主任，就是那个鲍勃·威尔逊，他有一种直觉还是怎么的，因为就在同一天他给我打电话，他告诉我，当一所大学聘请一位教授时，教授做什么那是大学的责任，风险也是大学的，如果教授没做出什么成果或者没完成什么，那不是教授该操心的事，是他们承担了风险把教授放在那个环境中，我应该想做什么就做什么，想怎么玩就怎么玩。有了这双重保障，我多少可以放松下来。我正在摆脱某种心理问题，我放松了，开始像我说的那样去玩旋转这个问题。这个旋转问题引导我去研究一个类似的问题，就是根据狄拉克方程的电子自旋旋转，而这又把我带回了量子电动力学，也就是我一直在研究的那门学问，我现在继续用最初那种轻松自在的方式去摆弄它，一切都像是拔出瓶塞一样顺畅。

[段 19]

Everything is poured out. I, by the way, in a very short order, worked the things out for which I later won the Nobel Prize. Thank you. Well, what I essentially did, and also was done independently by two other people, also independent, Tomonaga in Japan and Schwinger, was to figure out how to analyze, how to control, analyzed and discussed the original theory of quantum, quantum theory of electricity and magnetism that had been written in 1928, how to interpret it so as to avoid the infinities, to make calculations in which there were sensible results, which have since turned out to be in exact agreement with every experiment that’s been done so far, so that in quantum electrodynamics we have a theory which fits experiment in every detail, where it’s applicable, not involving nuclear forces, for instance. And it was the work that I did in 1947 to figure out how to do that, for which I won the Nobel Prize. Was it worth the Nobel Prize? I said… I don’t know anything about the Nobel Prize. I don’t understand what it’s all about or what’s worth what. And if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that X, Y, or Z wins the Nobel Prize, then so be it.

[译文 19]

一切都倾涌而出。我顺便说一下，在很短的时间内，我就搞出了后来因此获得诺贝尔奖的那些成果。谢谢。我本质上所做的工作，另外还有两个人也独立完成了，分别是日本的朝永振一郎和施温格，就是搞清楚如何分析、如何控制、如何讨论1928年写下的最初的量子理论，即电磁学的量子理论，如何诠释它以避免无穷大，如何进行能得出合理结果的计算，而这些结果此后与迄今为止所做的每一个实验都完全吻合，以至于在量子电动力学中，我们拥有了一个在每一个细节上都与实验相符的理论，在其适用范围内的话，比如不涉及核力。正是1947年我搞清楚的那些工作，让我获得了诺贝尔奖。这值不值得诺贝尔奖呢？我说……我对诺贝尔奖一无所知。我不明白它到底是怎么回事，什么值什么。如果瑞典学院的人决定X、Y或Z获得诺贝尔奖，那就随他们去吧。

[段 20]

I won’t have anything to do with the Nobel Prize it’s a pain in the neck I don’t like honors I appreciate it for the work that I did and for people who appreciate it and I notice other physicists use my work I don’t need anything else I don’t think there’s any sense to anything else I don’t see that it makes any point that someone in the Swedish Academy decides that this work is noble enough to receive a prize. I’ve already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation other people use it. Those are the real things. The honors are unreal to me. I don’t believe in honors. It bothers me. Honors bothers me. Honors as epaulettes. Honors as uniforms. My papa brought me up this way. I can’t stand it. It hurts me. When I was in high school, one of the first honors I got was to be a member of the Arista, which is a group of kids who got good grades. And everybody wanted to be a member of the Arista. And when I got into the Arista, I discovered that what they did in their meetings was to sit around and to discuss who else was worthy to join this wonderful group that we are.

[译文 20]

我不想跟诺贝尔奖有任何关系，它是个麻烦事。我不喜欢荣誉。我很欣赏人们对我工作的欣赏，我注意到其他物理学家在使用我的工作，我不需要别的任何东西。我认为别的任何东西都没有意义。我不觉得瑞典学院的某个人决定某项工作足够高尚以至于值得获奖，这有什么意义。我已经得到了奖赏。奖赏就是发现事物的乐趣，发现时的兴奋，观察到别人使用它。那些才是真正的东西。荣誉对我来说是不真实的。我不相信荣誉。荣誉让我困扰。荣誉就像肩章。荣誉就像制服。我父亲就是这样教育我的。我受不了。这让我难受。在我上高中的时候，我获得的最早的一项荣誉之一就是成为Arista的成员，那是一个由成绩好的孩子们组成的团体。每个人都想成为Arista的成员。当我进入Arista之后，我发现他们在会上做的事情就是坐在一起讨论谁还有资格加入我们这个了不起的团体。

[段 21]

Okay, so we sat around trying to decide who it was who would get to be allowed into this arista. This kind of thing bothers me psychologically for one or another reason. I don’t understand myself. Honors, from that day to this, always bothered me. I had trouble when I became a member of the National Academy of Science, and I had ultimately to resign because there was another organization, most of whose time was spent in choosing who was illustrious enough to be allowed to join us in our organization. Including such questions as we physicists have to stick together because there’s a very good chemist that they’re trying to get in and we haven’t got enough room for so-and-so. What’s the matter with chemists? The whole thing was rotten because the purpose was mostly to decide who could have this honor. Okay, I don’t like honors. One way that’s kind of a fun analogy to try to get some idea of what we’re doing and try to understand nature is to imagine that the gods are playing some great game like chess, let’s say a chess game, and you don’t know the rules of the game, but you’re allowed to look at the board, at least from time to time, and in a little corner perhaps.

[译文 21]

好吧，于是我们就坐在那里试图决定谁能被允许加入Arista。这种事情出于这样或那样的原因在心理上让我困扰。我自己也不理解自己。荣誉，从那天到现在，一直让我困扰。当我成为国家科学院院士时我就很烦恼，最终不得不辞职，因为那个组织大部分时间都花在挑选谁足够杰出以至于有资格加入我们。包括这样的问题，比如我们物理学家必须团结一致，因为他们正在试图让一个很优秀的化学家加入，而我们没有足够的空间给某某某。化学家怎么了？整件事都很腐朽，因为目的主要是决定谁能拥有这个荣誉。好吧，我不喜欢荣誉。有一种挺有趣的类比方法，可以试着理解我们在做什么、理解自然，那就是想象众神正在玩某种伟大的游戏，比如国际象棋，而你不了解游戏规则，但你被允许看看棋盘，至少偶尔看一眼，也许只看一个小角落。

[段 22]

And from these observations you try to figure out what the rules are of the game, what the rules of the piece is moving. You might discover after a bit, for example, that when there’s only one bishop around on the board, that the bishop maintains its color. Later on, you might discover the law for the bishop is it moves on a diagonal, which would explain the law that you understood before, that it maintains its color. And that would be analogous to we discover one law and then later find a deeper understanding of it. Then things can happen, everything’s going good, you got all the laws, it looks very good. And then all of a sudden some strange phenomenon occurs in some corner. So you begin to investigate that to look for it. It’s castling, something you didn’t expect. We’re always, by the way, in fundamental physics, always trying to investigate those things in which we don’t understand the conclusions. We’re not trying to check all the time our conclusions. After we’ve checked them enough, we’re okay. The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that’s the most interesting. The part that doesn’t go according to what you expected.

[译文 22]

你试着从这些观察中弄清楚游戏的规则是什么，棋子移动的规则是什么。你可能会在一段时间后发现，比如，当棋盘上只剩下一个象的时候，这个象始终保持在同一种颜色的格子上。后来，你可能会发现象的走法是在对角线上移动，这就能解释你之前理解的那个规律，即它始终保持在同一种颜色的格子上。这就类似于我们发现一条规律，然后后来又对它有了更深入的理解。然后事情可能发生，一切都很顺利，你掌握了所有的规则，看起来非常好。然后突然在某个角落出现了一些奇怪的现象。于是你开始去研究它，去寻找它。是王车易位，某种你没有预料到的东西。我们总是，顺便说一下，在基础物理学中，我们总是试图去研究那些我们还不理解结论的现象。我们不是一直在检验我们的结论。在我们检验了足够多次之后，就可以了。不符合预期的东西才是最有趣的东西。不符合你预期的那部分。

[段 23]

Also, we could have revolutions in physics after you’ve noticed that the bishops maintain their color and they go along the diagonals and so on for such a long time and everybody knows that that’s true. Then you suddenly discover one day in some chess game that the bishop doesn’t maintain its color. It changes its color. Only later do you discover the new possibility that the bishop is captured and that a pawn went all the way down to the Queen’s end to produce a new bishop. That can happen, but you didn’t know it. And so it’s very analogous to the way our laws are. They sometimes look positive, they keep on working, and all of a sudden some little gimmick shows that they’re wrong, and then we have to investigate the conditions under which this bishop change of color happened, and so forth, and gradually learn the new rule that explains it more deeply. Unlike the chess game, though, in the case of the chess game, the rules become more complicated as you go along. But in the physics, when you discover new things, it looks more simple. It appears on the whole to be more complicated because we learn about a greater experience.

[译文 23]

此外，在物理学中也可能发生革命，在你注意到象始终保持在同一种颜色的格子上、沿对角线移动等等很久之后，每个人都相信这是对的。然后你突然在某一天发现，在一局棋中，象并没有保持它的颜色。它改变了颜色。只是后来你才发现新的可能性：象被吃掉了，而一个小兵一路走到了底线变成了一个新象。这种情况是可能发生的，但你之前并不知道。所以这和我们的定律的情况非常类似。它们有时看起来是确定的，一直在起作用，然后突然某个小花样表明它们是错的，然后我们就必须去研究这个象在什么条件下改变了颜色，等等，然后逐渐学会能更深刻解释它的新规则。不过和国际象棋不同的是，在国际象棋中，规则随着你的深入变得越来越复杂。但在物理学中，当你发现新事物时，它看起来更简单了。整体上看起来更复杂了，因为我们了解到了更多的经验。

[段 24]

That is, we learn about more particles and new things. And so the laws look complicated again. But if you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful, it is that we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience. Every once in a while we have these integrations in which everything is pulled together in a unification, which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before. If you’re interested in the ultimate character of the physical world the real, the complete world and at the present time our only way to understand that is through a mathematical type of reasoning then I don’t think a person can fully appreciate or in fact can appreciate much of these particular aspects of the world, the great depth and character of the universality of the laws, the relationships of things, without an understanding of mathematics. I think it’s just… I don’t know any other way to do it. We don’t know any other way to describe it accurately and well or to see the interrelationships without it. So I don’t think a person who hasn’t developed some mathematical sense was capable of fully appreciating this aspect of the world.

[译文 24]

也就是说，我们了解到了更多的粒子和新的事物。所以定律看起来又变得复杂了。但如果你一直意识到一件奇妙的事情，那就是我们把经验扩展到了越来越广阔、越来越狂野的经验领域。每隔一段时间，我们就会有一次综合，把所有东西统一在一起，结果发现它比之前看起来要简单。如果你对物理世界的终极本质感兴趣，对真实、完整的世界感兴趣，而目前我们理解它的唯一方式是通过数学推理，那么我认为一个人如果不能在一定程度上欣赏数学，就无法充分欣赏，事实上也无法充分欣赏这个世界的这些特定方面——定律的极大的深度和普遍性，事物之间的相互关系。我觉得就是……我不知道还有什么别的办法。我们不知道还有什么别的方法可以准确而完善地描述它，或者不用数学就看清事物之间的相互关系。所以我认为一个没有培养起某种数学感觉的人，是无法充分欣赏这个世界的这一方面的。

[段 25]

Don’t misunderstand me. There are many, many aspects of the world that mathematics is unnecessary for, such as love, and which are very delightful and wonderful to appreciate and to be awed and mysterious about. And I don’t mean to say that the only thing in the world is physics, but you were talking about physics, and if that’s what you’re talking about, then to not know mathematics is a severe limitation in understanding the world. What I’m working on in physics right now is a special problem which we’ve come up against, and I didn’t describe what it is. You know that everything’s made out of atoms, we’ve got that far already, and most people know that already and that the atom has a nucleus with electrons going around the behavior of the electrons on the outside is now completely the laws for it are well understood as far as we can tell in this quantum electrodynamics that I told you about and after that was evolved then the problem was how does the nucleus work how are the particles interact how do they hold together one of the byproducts was to discover fission and to make a bomb but it investigating the forces that hold the nuclear particles together it was a long task at first it was thought that was an exchange of some sort of particles inside which were invented by Yukawa called pions.

[译文 25]

不要误会我的意思。世界上有许多许多方面是不需要数学的，比如爱情，这些方面非常令人愉悦、令人赞叹，也令人感到敬畏和神秘。我并不是说世界上只有物理学这一件事，但你刚才在谈论物理学，如果你谈的是物理学，那么不懂数学在理解世界方面是一个严重的限制。我现在在物理学方面正在研究的是一个我们遇到的特殊问题，我没有具体描述它是什么。你知道万物都是由原子构成的，我们已经走到了这一步，大多数人已经知道了，原子有一个原子核，电子绕着它运转，外层电子的行为现在已经被完全认识了——据我们所知，其规律在量子电动力学中已经得到了充分的理解——在那之后，问题就变成了原子核是如何运作的，粒子之间是如何相互作用的，它们是如何结合在一起的。其中一个副产品就是发现了裂变并制造出了原子弹。但在研究将核粒子束缚在一起的各种力时，这是一项漫长的任务。起初，人们认为这是通过交换某种粒子来实现的，这种粒子由汤川秀树发明，叫做π介子。

[段 26]

And it would be predicted that if you would hit protons against the proton as one of the particles in the nucleus, against the nucleus, it would knock out such pions. And sure enough, such particles came out. Not only pions came out, but other particles. And we began to run out of names, kaons and sigmas and lambdas and so on. These are all called hadrons now. And as we increased the energy and the reaction got more and more different kinds until there were hundreds of different kinds of particles. Then the problem was, of course, during all this, this period is from 1950 up toward the present, was to find the pattern behind it. And there seemed to be very many interesting relations among the particles, patterns among the particles, until a theory was evolved to explain these patterns, that all of these particles were really made of something else, that they were made of a thing called quarks, and that three quarks for example would form a proton. Proton is one of the particles in the nucleus, another one is a neutron. The quarks came in a number of varieties. In fact, at first, only three were needed to explain all the hundreds of particles.

[译文 26]

理论预测，如果你让质子撞击质子——质子就是原子核中的粒子之一——撞击原子核，就会击出这样的π介子。果然，这样的粒子被击出来了。不仅π介子被击出来了，还有其他粒子。我们的名字都快用完了，K介子、Σ粒子、Λ粒子等等。这些现在都被称为强子。随着我们不断提高能量，反应产生了越来越多不同的种类，直到出现了数百种不同的粒子。当然，在那段时间里——从1950年到现在——问题一直在于找到这背后的规律。粒子之间似乎存在许多有趣的关系，粒子之间存在各种模式，直到一个理论被发展出来解释这些模式：所有这些粒子实际上都是由别的东西构成的，它们由一种叫做夸克的东西构成，比如三个夸克就构成了一个质子。质子是原子核中的粒子之一，另一个是中子。夸克有几种不同的类型。事实上，最初只需要三种夸克就能解释所有那几百种粒子。

[段 27]

And the different kinds of quarks, they were called U-type, D-type, S-type. Two U’s and a D made a proton, two D’s and a U made a neutron. If they were moving in a different way inside, they were some other particle, and so on. Then the problem came, what is exactly the behavior of the quarks and what holds them together? And a theory was thought of, which is a very simple analogy to quantum electrodynamics, a very close analogy to quantum electrodynamics. Not exactly the same, but very close, in which the quarks are like the electron, and the photons, which go between electrons, which makes them attract each other electrically, were called gluons. The mathematics was very similar, but it’s a few terms slightly different. The difference in the form of the equations that were guessed at were guessed by principles, by such beauty and simplicity that it isn’t arbitrary. It’s very, very determined. What is arbitrary is how many different kinds of quarks there are, but not the character of the force between them. Now, unlike electrodynamics, there’s a thing in electrodynamics, two electrons can be pulled apart as far as you want. In fact, when they’re very far away, the force is weakened.

[译文 27]

不同类型的夸克被称为U型、D型和S型。两个U型和一个D型构成一个质子，两个D型和一个U型构成一个中子。如果它们以不同的方式在内部运动，就构成了其他粒子，等等。接下来的问题就是，夸克的行为究竟是怎样的，是什么把它们结合在一起的？人们提出了一个理论，它与量子电动力学有一个非常简单的类比，一个非常接近的类比。不完全相同，但非常接近，在这个理论中，夸克就像电子，而光子在电子之间传递，使它们通过电力相互吸引，在这里这种粒子被称为胶子。数学非常相似，只是有几项略有不同。方程形式的差异是通过一些原则来猜测的，通过优美和简洁的原则来猜测的，所以它不是任意的。它是非常非常确定的。夸克有多少种不同类型是任意的，但它们之间力的性质不是任意的。现在，与电动力学不同的是，在电动力学中，两个电子可以被拉开到任意远的距离。事实上，当它们相距很远时，力就会减弱。

[段 28]

If this were true and if these were made out of quarks, you would have expected that when you hit things together hard enough, the quarks would come out. But instead of that, when you do an experiment with enough energy that quarks could come out, instead of that, you found a big jet that is all particles going about the same direction of the old hadrons. No quark. And the theory, it was clear that what was required was that when the quark comes out, it kind of makes these new pairs of quarks, and they come in little groups and make hadrons. The question is, why is it so different than electrodynamics? How do these small terms, these little terms that are different in the equation, produce such different effects, entirely different effects? In fact, it was very surprising to most people that this would really come out, that at first you would think the theory was wrong. But the more it studied, the more clear it became that it’s very possible that these extra terms would produce these effects. Now we’re in a position that’s different in history than any other time in physics. It’s always different.

[译文 28]

如果这是真的，如果这些粒子是由夸克构成的，那么你会期望当你用足够大的能量去撞击时，夸克就会飞出来。但事实并非如此，当你用足以让夸克飞出来的能量做实验时，你发现的不是一个夸克，而是一个大喷流——所有的粒子都朝着大致相同的方向运动，形成原来的强子。没有夸克。而理论表明，所需要的是当夸克出来时，它会生成新的夸克对，它们以小团体的形式出现并形成强子。问题是，为什么它与电动力学如此不同？这些微小的差异项，方程中那些略有不同的小项，是如何产生如此完全不同的效果的？事实上，大多数人对此感到非常惊讶，认为这真的不可能。起初你会认为理论是错误的。但随着研究的深入，越来越清楚的是，这些额外的项确实有可能产生这些效果。现在我们所处的地位在物理学史上是独一无二的。当然，每个时代都是不同的。

[段 29]

We have a theory, a complete and definite theory, of all of these hadrons, and we have an enormous number of experiments and lots and lots of details. Now why can’t we test the theory right away to find out if it’s right or wrong? Because what we have to do is calculate consequences of the theory. If this theory is right, what should happen? And does that happen? Well, this time the difficulty is in the first step. If the theory is right, what should happen is very hard to figure out. The mathematics needed to figure out what the consequences of this theory are have turned out to be, at the present time, insuperably difficult. At the present time. All right? And therefore, obvious what my problem is. My problem is to try to develop a way of getting numbers out of this theory. To test it, really, carefully. Not just qualitatively, does it look like I might give the right result? I spent a few years trying to invent mathematical things that would permit me to solve the equations, and I didn’t get anywhere. And then I decided that in order to do that, I must first understand more or less how the answer probably looks.

[译文 29]

我们有一个关于所有这些强子的完整而确定的理论，我们还有大量的实验和非常非常多的细节。那么为什么我们不能马上检验这个理论，看看它是对是错呢？因为我们必须做的是计算这个理论的推论。如果这个理论是正确的，应该发生什么？那件事发生了吗？这一次，困难在于第一步。如果理论是正确的，应该发生什么，这非常难弄清楚。目前，弄清这个理论推论所需的数学已经被证明是极其困难的。目前是这样。明白了吗？因此，我的问题显而易见。我的问题就是想办法从这个理论中提取出数值。真正地、仔细地检验它。不仅仅是定性的——它看起来是否能给出正确的结果？我花了好几年时间试图发明一些数学工具，让我能够求解这些方程，但一无所获。后来我意识到，为了做到这一点，我必须首先大致了解答案可能是什么样子的。

[段 30]

It’s hard to explain this very well, but I have to get a qualitative idea of how the phenomena works before I can get a good quantitative idea. In other words, people didn’t even understand roughly how it worked. And so I’ve been working most recently, the last year or two, on understanding roughly how it works, not quantitatively yet, with the hope that in the future, that rough understanding can be refined into a precise mathematical way, an algorithm, to get from the theory to the particles. You see, we’re in a funny position. It’s not that we’re looking for the theory. We’ve got the theory. A good candidate. But we’re in the step in science that we need to compare the theory to experiment by seeing what the consequences are and checking them We’re stuck in seeing what the consequences are and that it’s my aim It’s my desire to see if I can work out a way to work out what the consequences of this theory are It’s kind of a crazy position to be in to have a theory that you can’t work out the consequences of I can’t stand it I have to figure it out someday maybe To do the kind of real good physics work, you do need absolute solid lengths of time.

[译文 30]

这很难很好地解释，但我必须对现象如何运作有一个定性的认识，然后才能有一个好的定量认识。换句话说，人们甚至还没有大致理解它是如何运作的。所以我最近一直在研究——过去一两年——去大致理解它是如何运作的，还没有做到定量，希望在未来，这种粗略的理解可以被提炼成一种精确的数学方法，一种算法，从理论推导出粒子。你看，我们处于一个很奇怪的境地。不是我们在寻找理论。我们已经有了理论。一个很好的候选理论。但我们正处于科学中的一个阶段，我们需要通过推论并将其与实验对照来比较理论与实验。我们卡在了弄清推论这一步，这就是我的目标。我的愿望是看看我是否能找到一种方法来弄清这个理论的推论。这是一种很疯狂的状态——拥有一个你无法推导出其后果的理论。我受不了，我必须弄清楚，也许有一天会。要做真正好的物理学工作，你确实需要绝对完整的大块时间。

[段 31]

When you’re putting ideas together, which are vague and hard to remember, it’s very much, and I get this feeling very much, it’s like building those houses of cards, where you’re putting together, on each of the cards is shaky. And if you forget one of them, the whole thing collapses again. You don’t know how you got there and you have to build them up again. If you’re interrupted and kind of forget half the idea of how the cards went together, cards being different type parts of the ideas, ideas of different kinds that have to go together to build up the idea, the main point. You put this stuff together, it’s quite a tower, and it’s easy to slip. It needs a lot of concentrating. That is solid time to think. And if you’ve got a job in administrating anything like that, then you don’t have the solid time. So I have invented another myth for myself, that I’m irresponsible. I’m actively irresponsible, I tell everybody. I don’t do anything. If anybody asks me to be on a committee to take care of admissions, no, I’m irresponsible. I don’t give a damn about the students. Of course I give a damn about the students, but I know that somebody else will do it.

[译文 31]

当你在把那些模糊的、难以记忆的想法拼凑在一起时，这种感觉非常强烈，就像在搭纸牌屋一样，每一张牌都不稳。如果你忘了其中一张，整个东西就塌了。你不知道你是怎么搭到那里的，必须重新来过。如果你被打断了，忘记了纸牌是怎么拼在一起的一半——纸牌就是不同类型的想法片段，各种不同种类的想法必须组合在一起才能构建出主要观点。你把这些东西搭起来，是一座相当高的塔，很容易滑下来。这需要高度集中注意力。那就是用来思考的完整时间。如果你有一份行政工作之类的事情，你就没有这样的完整时间。所以我给自己编造了另一个神话，那就是我不负责任。我在主动地不负责任，我告诉大家。我什么都不做。如果有人让我加入一个负责招生的委员会，不行，我不负责任。我不在乎学生。当然我在乎学生，但我知道别人会做的。

[段 32]

And I take the view, let George do it, a view which you’re not supposed to take, okay? Because then that’s not right to do. But I do that because I want to see, I like to do physics and I want to see if I can still do it. And so I’m selfish, okay? I want to do my physics. All those students are in the class. Now you ask me, how should I best teach them? Should I teach them from the point of view of the history of science, from the applications? For me. My theory is that the best way to teach us to have no philosophy is to be chaotic and confused in the sense that you use every possible way of doing it. That’s the only way I can see to answer it. So it’s to catch this guy or that guy on different hooks as you go along. That during the time when the fellow who was interested in history is being bored by the abstract mathematics, on the other hand, the fellow who likes the abstraction is being bored at another time by the history. If you can do it so you don’t bore them all all the time, perhaps you’re better off.

[译文 32]

我采取了一种态度，让乔治去干吧，这是一种你不应该采取的态度，好吗？因为那样做是不对的。但我这样做是因为我想看看，我喜欢做物理学，我想看看我是否还能做。所以我是自私的，好吧？我想做我的物理学。那些学生都在教室里。现在你问我，我怎样才能最好地教他们？我应该从科学史的角度来教，还是从应用的角度来教？对我来说。我的理论是，最好的教学方式——让我们没有固定的哲学——就是混乱和困惑，也就是说，用一切可能的方法来教学。这是我能看到的唯一的回答方式。所以就是用不同的钩子去钩住这个人或那个人。在那个对历史感兴趣的家伙被抽象数学搞得无聊的时候，另一方面，那个喜欢抽象思维的家伙在另一个时候也被历史搞得无聊。如果你能做到不让所有人一直感到无聊，也许你就成功了。

[段 33]

I really don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to answer this question of different kinds of minds with different kinds of interests. What hooks them on? What makes them interested? How do you direct them to become interested? One way is by a kind of force. You have to pass this course. You have to take that examination. It’s a very effective way. Many people go through schools that way. It may be the more effective way. I’m sorry. After many, many years of trying to teach and trying all different kinds of methods, I really don’t know how to do it. I got a kick when I was a boy of my father telling me things, so I tried to tell my son things that were interesting about the world. When he was very small, I used to rock him to bed, you know, when he goes to bed, I’d tell him stories. And I’d make up stories about little people that were about so high, would walk along, they would go on picnics, and so on, they lived in the ventilator. And they’d go through these woods, which had great, big, long, tall, blue things like trees, without leaves and only one stalk and they were in all and they had to walk between them and so on and he gradually catch on that was the rug the nap of the rug the blue rug and he loved this game because I would describe all these things from an odd point of view and he liked to hear the stories and we got all kinds of wonderful things he even went into a moist cave where the wind kept going in and out it was coming in cool and went out warm and so on it was inside the dog’s nose that they went.

[译文 33]

我真的不知道该怎么教。我不知道如何面对不同资质、不同兴趣的学生。什么能吸引他们？什么能让他们产生兴趣？你怎样引导他们产生兴趣？一种方式是靠强制。你必须通过这门课。你必须参加那个考试。这是一种非常有效的方式。很多人就是这样读完学校的。也许这是更有效的方式。很抱歉。经过这么多年，尝试了各种教学方法之后，我真的不知道该怎么做了。我小时候听父亲给我讲故事就很兴奋，所以我试着给儿子讲一些关于这个世界的有趣事情。当他很小的时候，我常常摇着他上床睡觉，你知道，在他睡觉前，我会给他讲故事。我编造了一些关于小小人的故事，他们就这么高，走路啦，去野餐啦，等等，他们住在通风管道里。他们穿过那些树林，那些又高又大又长的蓝色东西像树一样，没有叶子，只有一根茎，他们就在中间穿行，等等。他渐渐明白了，那就是地毯，地毯的绒面，蓝色的地毯。他很喜欢这个游戏，因为我总是从一种奇特的角度来描述所有这些东西，他喜欢听这些故事，我们得到了各种奇妙的体验。他甚至去了一个潮湿的洞穴，风在里面一出一进，进去的是凉的，出来的是热的，等等，那是他们走进了狗的鼻子里。

[段 34]

And then, of course, I could tell him all about physiology by this way and so on. He loved that, and so I told him lots of stuff. And I enjoyed it because I was telling him stuff that I liked. We had fun when he would guess what it was and so on. Then I have a daughter, and I tried the same thing. Well, my daughter’s personality was different. She didn’t want to hear this story. She wanted the story that was in the book repeated again and read to her. She wanted me to read to her, not to make up story. That’s a different personality. And so if I were to say a very good method for teaching children about science is to make up these stories of a little people Who it doesn’t work at all on my daughter It happened to work on my son, okay Because of the success of science there is a kind of I think a kind of pseudoscience that social science is an example of a science which is not a science. They don’t do scientific… They follow the forms. You gather data, you do so-and-so and so forth, but they don’t get any laws.

[译文 34]

然后，当然，我可以用这种方式给他讲所有关于生理学的内容，等等。他很喜欢，所以我给他讲了很多东西。我也很享受，因为我在给他讲我自己喜欢的东西。当他猜出那是什么的时候，我们都很开心。后来我有了一个女儿，我试了同样的方法。嗯，我女儿的个性不一样。她不想听这种故事。她想要书里的故事，一遍遍地读给她听。她想要我读给她听，而不是编故事。那是一种不同的个性。所以如果我要说一个教孩子学科学的好方法，就是编造这些关于小小人的故事，那对我女儿根本不管用。这个方法碰巧对我儿子有效，好吧。因为科学的成就，产生了一种我认为算是伪科学的东西，社会科学就是一个例子，它不算是一门科学。他们不做科学研究……他们只是走走形式。你收集数据，你做这个做那个，但他们没有发现任何规律。

[段 35]

They haven’t found out anything. They haven’t got anywhere yet. Maybe someday they will, but it’s not very well developed. But what happens is, at an even more mundane level, we get experts on everything that sound like they’re sort of scientific. Expert they they’re not scientific they sit as a typewriter and they make up something like oh, food grown with fertilizer that’s organic is better for you than food grown with fertilizer that’s inorganic. Maybe true, may not be true, but it hasn’t been demonstrated one way or the other. But they’ll sit there on the typewriter and make up all this stuff as if it’s science and they become an expert on foods, organic foods and so on. There’s all kinds of myths and pseudoscience all over the place. Now, I might be quite wrong. Maybe they do know all this thing. But I don’t think I’m going to see. I have the advantage of having found out how hard it is to get to really know something, how careful you have to be about checking the experiments, how easy it is to make mistakes and fool yourself. I know what it means to know something. And therefore, I see how they get their information.

[译文 35]

他们还没有发现任何东西。他们还没有取得任何进展。也许有一天他们会，但目前还很不成熟。但实际情况是，在更日常的层面上，我们到处都有听起来像那么回事的专家。专家——他们并不科学——他们坐在打字机前，编造一些东西，比如，用有机肥种出来的食物比用无机肥种出来的食物对你更好。也许是真的，也许不是真的，但还没有被证实。但他们就坐在打字机前，编造出这些东西，好像那就是科学一样，然后他们就成为了食物专家、有机食物专家，等等。到处都是各种神话和伪科学。现在，我可能完全错了。也许他们确实知道所有这些事情。但我不认为自己会看到这一天。我的优势在于，我已经发现了真正了解一件事有多难，你在检验实验时必须多么小心，犯错误和欺骗自己有多容易。我知道"知道"意味着什么。因此，我看得出他们是从哪里获取信息的。

[段 36]

And I can’t believe that they know it. They haven’t done the work necessary, haven’t done the checks necessary, haven’t done the care necessary. I have a great suspicion that they don’t know that this stuff is… And they’re intimidating people, but I think so. I don’t know the world very well, but that’s what I think. If you expected science to give all the answers to the wonderful questions about what we are, where we’re going, what the meaning of the universe is, and so on, then I think you could easily become disillusioned and look for some mystic answer to these problems. How a scientist can take a mystic answer, I don’t know, because the Holy Spirit is to understand. Well, never mind that. I don’t understand that. But anyhow, if you think of it, the way I think of what we’re doing is we’re exploring. We’re trying to find out as much as we can about the world. People say to me, are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics? No, I’m not. I’m just looking to find out more about the world. And if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law that explains everything, so be it.

[译文 36]

我无法相信他们真的知道。他们没有做必要的工作，没有做必要的检验，没有付出必要的谨慎。我非常怀疑他们并不知道这些东西是什么……他们在吓唬人，但我是这么想的。我不太了解这个世界，但这就是我的看法。如果你期望科学能回答所有关于我们是什么、我们要去哪里、宇宙的意义是什么等等这些美妙的问题，那么我想你很容易会幻灭，然后去寻找一些神秘的答案来解决这些问题。一个科学家怎么能接受一个神秘的答案，我不知道，因为圣灵是用来理解的。嗯，先不说那个。我不理解那个。但无论如何，如果你想一想，我认为我们正在做的事情就是探索。我们正试图尽可能多地了解这个世界。人们对我说，你在寻找终极物理定律吗？不，我没有。我只是想更多地了解这个世界。如果最终发现有一个简单的终极定律能解释一切，那太好了。

[段 37]

That would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it’s like an onion with millions of layers and we’re just sick and tired of looking at the layers, then that’s the way it is. But whatever way it comes out, its nature is there and she’s going to come out the way she is. And therefore, when we go to investigate it, we shouldn’t pre-decide what it is we’re trying to do except to find out more about it. If you say, but your problem is why do you find out more about it? If you thought that you were trying to find out more about it because you’re going to get an answer to some deep philosophical question. You may be wrong. It may be that you can’t get an answer to that particular question by finding out more about the character of nature. But I don’t look at it. My interest in science is to simply find out about the world. And the more I find out, the better it is. I like to find out. There are very remarkable mysteries about the fact that we’re able to do so many more things than apparently animals can do, and other questions like that.

[译文 37]

那将是非常美好的发现。如果最终发现它像一个洋葱，有几百万层，而我们已经厌倦了去看那些层，那事情就是这样的。但无论结果如何，它的本质就在那里，它会以它本来的样子呈现。因此，当我们去研究它的时候，我们不应该预先决定我们要做什么，除了去了解更多。如果你说，但你的问题是你为什么要了解更多？如果你认为你试图了解更多是因为你要得到某个深奥哲学问题的答案，那你可能是错的。可能你无法通过进一步了解自然的特性来回答那个特定的问题。但我不这么看。我对科学的兴趣就是简单地想了解这个世界。我了解得越多，就越好。我喜欢去发现。有一些非常显著的谜团，关于我们能够做到比动物多得多的其他事情，以及类似的问题。

[段 38]

But those are mysteries I want to investigate without knowing the answer to them. And so, altogether, I can’t believe the special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be too simple, too connected, too local, too provincial. The earth, he came to the earth. One of the aspects of God came to the earth, mind you. And look at what’s out there. How It isn’t in proportion. Anyway, it’s no use arguing. I can’t argue it. I’m just trying to tell you why the scientific views that I have do have some effect on my beliefs. And also another thing has to do with the question of how do you find out if something’s true? And if you have all these theories of the different religions, have all different theories about the thing, then you begin to wonder. Once you start doubting, just like you’re supposed to doubt, you ask me, is the science true? We say, no, no, we don’t know what’s true. We’re trying to find out. Everything is possibly wrong. Start out understanding religion by saying everything is possibly wrong. Let us see. As soon as you do that, you start sliding down an edge, which is hard to recover from.

[译文 38]

但那些是我想要去探究的谜团，而不知道答案是什么。所以，总的来说，我无法相信那些编造出来的关于我们与整个宇宙关系的特殊故事，因为它们似乎太简单了，太连贯了，太狭隘了，太局限了。地球——他来到了地球上。上帝的某个化身来到了地球上，请注意。看看外面那广阔的宇宙。这完全不成比例。反正，争论没有用。我争辩不了。我只是在告诉你，为什么我所持有的科学观点确实对我的信仰有一些影响。还有另一件事，与你怎么判断某件事是不是真的有关。如果你有各种宗教的不同理论，对事物有各种不同的理论，那你就会开始怀疑。一旦你开始怀疑，就像你应该怀疑的那样，你问我，科学是真的吗？我们说不，不，我们不知道什么是真的。我们正在试图弄清楚。一切都可能是错的。从理解宗教开始，就说一切都可能是错的。让我们看看。一旦你那样做，你就开始沿着一个边缘滑落，很难再恢复过来。

[段 39]

And so with the scientific view, or my father’s view, that we should look to see what’s true and what may not be true, once you start doubting, which I think to me is a very fundamental part of my soul is to doubt and to ask. When you doubt and ask, it gets a little harder to believe. You see, one thing is I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything. And there are many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit. If I can’t figure it out, then I go to something else. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell, possibly.

[译文 39]

所以，带着科学的观点，或者我父亲的观点，即我们应该去看什么是真的、什么可能不是真的，一旦你开始怀疑——我认为怀疑和提问是我灵魂中非常根本的一部分——当你怀疑和提问的时候，相信就变得更难了。你看，有一件事是，我可以与怀疑、不确定和未知共存。我认为生活在未知中比拥有可能错误的答案要有趣得多。我对不同的事情有大致的答案、可能的信念和不同程度的确定性，但我对任何事情都没有绝对的把握。而且有很多事情我根本一无所知，比如问我们在这里有什么意义，这个问题本身可能意味着什么。我也许会想一想。如果我想不明白，那我就去做别的事情。但我不必知道答案。我不会因为不知道事情、在神秘的宇宙中迷失而没有任何目的而感到害怕，据我所知，事情可能就是这样。

[段 40]

It doesn’t frighten me. Thank you.

[译文 40]

这并不让我害怕。谢谢。